Saturday's Sundries

Some olio for this Saturday:

• PokerStove. A few posts ago, I implied that Pokerstove was dead (here). A few people have since corrected me. Turns out that one can evidently still find the program online, just not through the original website. I won't provide the links here, however, as I have no idea how safe those particular sites are; you're on your own if you want to download a third-party copy. Also, some folks have told me that if you already have a copy installed but it won't run because it's trying to update, you can trick 'Stove into continuing working by fiddling with the date and time settings on your computer. See the comments of my original post to read more about that particular option... 
• MemphisMOJO. I'm still vicariously high from fellow blogger Dave "MemphisMOJO" Smith's deep run in the Seniors $1K event at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Vegas. Seriously, besides blogging about it, I must have told a dozen non-poker-playing friends this week about his feat. Wooot!
• Full Tilt Poker. Holy miracle of miracles: my Full Tilt Remission is finally on its way. I received a formal email this past week that the money owed me would be transferred into my back account within 7-10 business days. About freaking time, US Government. FWIW, I plan to use the money to play in the upcoming Arizona State Poker Championship in August.
• Monthly Tournament. I'm still smarting over forgetting to Look Left at a recent local tournament I played in. Argh. Mojo commented on my blog post that he calls this sort of behavior the "Execution Gap"; i.e., something you know you should be doing, but you don't for whatever reason. Argh.
• Omaha. Should you play Ah7h4s7d under the gun in PLO? Unlike Texas Hold'em, there really isn't such a thing as a starting hand chart in Omaha-- way too many hands to fit on a chart. The other day, I did some digging and discovered an improvement to the old Capelleti point system for determining the playability of PLO hands. It's called the Hutchison approach, and while it's too complicated to go into herein my blog (click here if you really want to read more about it), I've played around with the system and it indeed seems to be the real deal. Anyway, per the Hutchison system, this particular suited Ace hand has just 19 "points," which means it has only an ~8% chance of winning hot-and-cold by the river. Said simply: it's a long-term negative-EV hand to play out of position (OOP). Without knowing anything else about your opponents tendencies, this means this is a pretty easy fold preflop.

-------------------Non Poker Stuff Below-----------------

• Evernote. I'm still really really liking Evernote, which I switched to from MS OneNote a few weeks back. Yeah, I know: is there anything more boring than some zealot proselytizing at length about a new exercise obsession and its alleged results, or a new new life-changing religion, or how to get rid of head lice, or whatever? Well, hold on and prepare to be bored for a moment (or just skip this entry altogether; I won't mind). I've tried a few times in the past to make the switch to Evernote, but I never really figured out what all the hoopla was about. Now after a few weeks I "get it", and it's pretty awesome. No, it's not perfect, but it is significantly helping me get and stay organized at work. Besides just good note taking abilities and web page clipping and the like, the real benefit to me right now is how it integrates into my email inbox. As an engineering manager, my life at work is consumed with reading and replying to emails, teasing out action items, assigning them, and then following up on them with all the various employees that work for me. I end up with literally hundreds of emails per week that I'm chasing, a half-dozen lists of action items, reminder notes stuck to my computer monitor, etc.. Anyway, it turns out there's a cool way to use Evernote that helps streamline this whole process and essentially ensures I "touch" an email only once, but don't lose any action items I need to follow. I spent a few hours last Saturday watching a series of training videos and learning how to do all this, and--I can't actually believe this myself--I now actually have an empty email inbox for the first time in over a year. I'm really hopeful this is a magic bullet for me staying on top of all the action items and tasks I juggle daily and weekly...
• Home Argh Stuff. I've been fighting  broken plumbing, ants, pack rats, and an intermittent electrical smell in the house this past week. Oh, the joys of home ownership....

All-in for now...

-Bug