[A Mrs. Fly post.  This is seriously good, and will make your third serving of leftovers more bearable.]

Right. So before I share my recipe, I have to clear up a couple of things.
1. I was NOT fired. I quit. Okaaay?? Not because I didn't like communicating with you guys, but it just got a little busy. Nothing personal. You can't believe everything that The Donald, I mean, The Doublefly says.

2. My mother is NOT a commie. Okaaay?? She fled North Korea BEFORE the lunatics took over. Okaay?
3. If Doublefly calls me a commie, I immediately retaliate by calling him Commoner or Peasant. Enough said.  [LOL - later post]

Soooo... here is a recipe. Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Hawaiian Souffle

Ingredients
Sweet Potato Mixture:
* 3 large or 4 medium sweet potatoes, thoroughly cooked
     (Boil for an hour and a half. Once cooled, peel off skin)
* 1/2 cup melted butter
* 1/3 cup milk
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1/2 brown sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 eggs, lightly beaten
* 1 cup roughly diced canned pineapples

Topping:
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1/3 cup butter
* 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
2. In a large bowl, mix together sweet potatoes, melted butter, milk, white sugar, vanilla extract, and eggs and puree with a hand held mixer until creamy. And I mean puree it to death baby! It'll turn the mixture not only light and fluffy, but will also cut through all the long stringy fibrous strands that you find in sweet potatoes.
3. Fold in pineapple (no liquid).
4. Spread sweet potato mixture into the prepared baking dish.

Topping:
In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar and flour. Cut in 1/3 cup butter until mixture is crumbly, then stir in pecans. Sprinkle topping mixture over the sweet potatoes. Bake for 30-35

You can make the souffle a couple of days ahead. However, don't sprinkle on the topping until ready to pop into the oven. Keep the topping in an airtight container in the refrigerator. This is one of my most requested recipes. The sweet potato dish goes especially well poultry and pork.

[x] finally broke out of my 140K hand break-even
[x] up $23K in my last 40K hands: 9+ptbb
[x] even a blind squirrel gets a nut once in a while

Seriously tho, it sure feels nice to have things go my way for a change.  As I had mentioned before, I was convinced I was getting much better last month (since I moved permanently back up to 2/4+ full ring), but I just couldn't believe how I couldn't win a hand at showdown.  Anyway, we'll see what December holds for me.

The family went to a ginger-bread house making event at a local church yesterday (later post), but I still had a cold so I stayed home and decided to plunge into the full slate of Sunday MTTs.  I entered four, and made a deep run in one of them.  So check this out...  There were 1423 entrants, and I finished 22nd!  I was the virtual chip leader, then lost half my stack with my top set to a 6 outer, and then AK < KK AIPF.  Standard.  Unfortunately, 22nd place only paid $249 (after entry fee), while first place would have been over $21,000.  Seriously, is there a 85x difference in skill/luckboxing between coming in 22nd and 1st in a 1400+ person field?!?  See?  Even when you do well at an MTT, you feel like crap.  How do MTT "pros" live like that?!?  That sh*t is such a sub-human form of existence.  The ankle-stabbing / mouse-breaking rate there's got to be pretty high.  Mole People.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm getting much better at tournaments too.
[?] brag
[?] beat
[x] variance

Oh yeah...  while I was LOSING money during my "great" MTT runs yesterday, I made $1.20 a hand playing mostly 2/4 cash games.  Mole People.

Rush week starts today, so I guess I'll try and use that as motivation to get in more hands.  This month is going to be BY FAR the lowest volume month of the year...  only 70K hands this month - that's half of the volume I used to put in at the beginning of the year.  Sigh.

Since I've been a little under the weather, I've been playing a little less and watching more videos.  I decided to take another look thru CardRunners (since my membership is free thru FT).  There are always the "standards" for mid to high stakes - like jcl, iRock, Rask, NuteDawg, and PoorUser (my favorites, probably in that order).  Anyway, they are all good watches.  I'll also watch DamnRinger once in a while (since I know him from the forums), but he does mostly small stakes stuff.  But in the last 6 months or so, they seem to have added a bunch of new mid-high stakes people.  I was pleasantly surprised that a few of them in particular seemed pretty good, so I thought I would give a few shout-outs:

Nicolak - He's probably the winningest 2/4-5/10 reg (in terms of dollars at those stakes) CR has in their lineup, so if you want to learn to mass multitable, he's your guy.  He's all about the fundamentals, and watching his videos you begin to understand that winning is not about making the fancy plays... it's all about consistency.  He also writes a regular blog (link in my blog links), and cohosts a podcast called Cash Plays, so he's a good read/listen.

In general, I'm not as keen on guys who don't have a long track record of success.  But the following two new guys seem to make some educational and entertaining videos.

Matthew Janda - Normally, when I've never heard of a guy and I can't look him up on PTR, I tend to put him on the bottom of the "watch" list.  But I was really blown away by some of the "fresh" ideas he's had in his videos.  He does a "sweat/replayer" format where he goes thru all hands in a session where he VPIPed, that I think is an interesting twist on some old ideas.  He's also fairly thorough and organized on his theory videos - not sure if I agree with everything he says, but he's thought provoking.  You definitely need to move him out of the bottom of your list.

D_Zoo - I vaguely remember him from another training site.  I guess the thing that stands out the most about him is that he's pretty animated in his videos.  I always laugh when he gets raised on a low equity c-bet and he says something like "Psst.  If you want it that bad, take it."  His commentary almost makes up for having to watch those shitty iPoker interfaces for an hour.

We hadn't done much the past few weeks socially.  I think we were a little burnt out from Halloween and various end-of-fall outdoor events.  It was a pretty relaxing few weeks, and it was great timing because I was under the weather.  But unfortunately, "we sat around the house and chilled" don't make for very interesting blog posts.  December should be a little busier, so we probably needed a little break.

For Thanksgiving, we went to my brother's weekend house for a food orgy.  Headlining the meal was an 18lb fried turkey.  I think turkey is a pretty meh meat, but deep fried is one of the better ways to prepare it - the meat seems to retain more flavor.  Or maybe all the oil gives it more flavor.

My brother seems to go to all the yuppie food places in Manhattan, so he found a Japanese butcher in his area.  Apparently, pretty much the whole store is wagyu (the Kobe beef cow).  So he got a whole bunch of wagyu NY strip steaks.  On paper, this sounded perfect because strip is a chewier steak cut, and the extra marbling should put it over the top.  TBH, it was a little to fatty for my taste.  Yes - it is possible for beef to be "too fatty" for me.  I know - who would have thunk it?!?  So I think on the wagyu, the skirt is still my favorite.  Of course, this doesn't mean I didn't eat like a pound of it - because, c'mon!  it's still high quality dead cow!

As good as the meat was, I think some of the best items were the side dishes.  Everyone brought either a side dish, appetizer or dessert.  Mrs. Fly brought the sweet potato casserole (recipe in a few days) and sausage stuffing (both of which were excellent).  And some friends of our brought a creamed spinach that was outstanding.  They also brought homemade pies.

The appetizers were really good too.  The best thing was a hybrid crab salad / crabcake on a lettuce wrap.  I could've eaten the entire platter by myself, but I refrained and ate just one (one wrap - not one platter of wraps).  If that doesn't show much I love my family and friends, I don't know what does.  The other thing that was a little unusual was they actually had a foie gras spread that I've never seen before .  Usually, people will serve a pate that's has some foie gras in it, but I've never seen a pure foie gras spread before.  It was really good.  And I must've had like a dozen of the assorted puff pastries, to absorb all the wine LDO.

Alas, no tales of drunken ribaldry ensued...  Just a nice quiet family get-together.

Here's part II of my investing in securities segment:

4. RISK/REWARD- Keep in mind the risk vs the reward.  My biggest pet peeve when talking to people who claim to have outperformed the market goes something like this
Dude: "I generated 50% returns last year"
Me: "That's pretty good.  What did you do?"
Dude: "I bot Apple stock and sold puts"
Me: headexplode.gif
You have to understand that in the world of finance, your rate of return (altho the most important thing), isn't everything.  It would be way more impressive to me (or anyone else in finance) if you took half as much risk as the S&P500 and made as much, than if you took 3 times as much risk to double the return.  So don't think of your performance as one number - it's actually two.

KNOW THE CALENDAR - If you have a portfolio of stocks, you should be aware of key dates on the calendar - earnings releases, economic data, product releases, etc.  Those are the days where the security can really move.  If you are good at anticipating results, you can do well to trade around these "events" where there can be significant movement in the price of the security.  This was actually my specialty - finding value in volatile markets.  Well, except the times I was wrong.

KEEP EXTRA BULLETS - You're never going to be right on the timing of all your picks.  Sometimes, if you really believe in something, you may want a little extra ammo in case there is an initial move the wrong way.  If you thought it was good 20% ago, revisit all your assumptions (as to why it went the wrong way) and if needed it's always nice to be able to fire another bullet.

THINK ABOUT A STOP-LOSS - Sometimes, you're just going to be wrong.  I talked about firing additional bullets above, but the key to trading successfully is knowing when to give up.  There should be a price point at which you need so say, "I was wrong."  Don't be like those Lehman or Enron dudes that rode that stock down to zero.

THE GOLDEN RULE - MAKE SURE YOU ENJOY INVESTING - I don't hear about this much.  As with anything else in life, if you are going to spend a lot of time doing something, make sure you enjoy it.  Refer back to the calendar if you have to.  ;-)  Life is short.  Spending all this time researching, analyzing and following the markets is pointless if you don't enjoy the challenge.  You might as well just put your money in a diversified portfolio of index funds if you're not that interested in regularly keeping on top of your money.  That's what I do.

On this day of getting together with loved ones (as annoying as they might be), I want to share a quote from It's a Wonderful Life: "remember no man is a failure who has friends" and family (I added that last bit).  Happy Thanksgiving!

HANDS

One of my leaks is not betting enough hands on the river for (thin) value.  Maybe it's because I feel an obligation to call when I get raised, and that can be burning money.  Usually what ends up happening is that I say to myself "what kind of moron is going to call three streets with anything below TP on the flop?"  Now after this hand, I can value bet thinly in peace - because villain may just be that "moron" who'll call down light.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00 BB (9 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($294)
UTG ($600)
UTG+1 ($501.75)
MP1 ($219)
Hero (MP2) ($1183.30)
MP3 ($374.10)
CO ($651.75)
Button ($1666.35)
SB ($772.05)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with Q, K
3 folds, Hero bets $18, 3 folds, SB calls $15, 1 fold

Flop: ($42) 2, 10, 3 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $24,
[I think a cbet on this board with overs is standard]

SB calls $24

Turn: ($90) 6 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $69,
[I felt like getting frisky - you need to mix it up once in a while, and this particular villain's range is superwide.]

SB calls $69

River: ($228) J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $168,
[at this point, I see all blockers to him having a decent T, except the "A" and the FD missed, so if I have to do this once in a while for balance, why not now?]

SB calls $168

Oh well.  I guess he had AT.  NH.

Total pot: $564 | Rake: $3
Main pot: $564 between Hero and SB, won by SB
Results:
SB had 5, 3 (one pair, threes).
Hero had Q, K (high card, King).

Outcome: SB won $561

North Korea is in the news (again)...  As an American of South Korean descent, I have a wide range of feelings about it.  I'm probably like everyone else, who's a little tired of the incessant attention whoring and obvious blackmailing (aka begging, because he ran the country into the ground, winter's coming, and they probably don't have enough food) by the North Koreans.  I still have a lot of relatives in S Korea, so I'm also a little concerned for their safety.

But mostly, I'm pissed off.  Kim Jong Il is such a pathetic POS.  Clearly a "God" is going to be some ugly midget mofo with bad hair, an oompa loompa body and ladies glasses.  I don't know if I'm more mad at him or the N Korean population for being so retarded as to believing that he *could* be a deity.  This is why I can never be religious - you can't believe everything you hear.  When the day comes where the population figures out how badly they were duped, all hell is going to break loose.  I think that day will come during my lifetime.

And he really does nothing for the image of Koreans.  Because if you ask the typical person on the street what they think of when they think of "Koreans," the Top 5 list would probably go something like:
5. The War
4. dry cleaners
4. kimchi
2. massage parlors
1. Kim Jong Il
That's not a great list.  Like Sweden gets "hot women," France gets "awesome food," and we get Kim Jong Il?!?  It's so annoying that Koreans (men in particular) have such a bad image in the media (later post).  Some dude in 2+2 actually asked if there were actually any 6' tall buff Korean dudes.  Plenty!  Like me!!!  ...if you took away the all-natural winter padding I chose to grow.

The only positive I see to Kim Jong Il is that at least the clueless people out there get to hear about Korea, so that they at least know it's a country.  Kind of like what Borat did for Kazakhstan.  I liked Borat.  This one... not so much...

HUMOR

Mrs. Fly's mom originated from North Korea, and when I heard my father-in-law refer to his wife ("somewhat" affectionately) as the "the red one" (commie), I felt I needed to carry that tradition over to our family.  I try to sneak similar references into our conversation every once in a while.  Like I'll refer to the middle of our bed as the "38th parallel" (border between N and S Korea), ask if she got her sunglasses from her cousin (Kim Jong Il), etc.  You know, like any affectionate husband would do.  :-)

OMG!!!  I just realized that my sons are a quarter commie!!!

Have No Class

Since there was some demand, here is the second installment of my stats analysis series...

Today, I'll talk about the "HoleCard" report in HEM.  It's actually fairly instructive to see what your win rate is by hand.  Sometimes, there may be certain types of hands you don't play well.  So here are "Mark's" win rates by hand (I left out suited connectors, aces, and gappers because I don't have any useful benchmarks).  I think the following are "reasonable" win rates for premiums in the small to midstakes games (for a decent winner).

AA 9.5 bb/hand
AK 2.0 bb
AQ 1.0 bb
KK 6.0 bb
QQ 3.5 bb
JJ 2.0 bb
TT 1.0 bb

There are two things that stand out on Mark's breakdown.  The first is that his win rate on premiums is lower than what I think is typical for a "moderate winner."  I think a big part of that is his low 3bet strategy (which I discussed last time) - it makes it more difficult to get paid on on monsters.

The thing that really stood out is his win rate on low pairs.  The full ring games are known for absurd levels of set mining.  As you can see, Mark is leaking from the low pairs.  Set mining is definitely a useful weapon, but you really need to be judicious as to when to use it.  The fact of the matter is, in a heads-up pot, you need 2 bets out of your opponent JUST TO BREAK EVEN (assuming you can't take the pot away some other way).  There are a whole bunch of people you are rarely getting three streets of value from (let alone stacking) - even if they have TPTK.  Obviously this also depends on your own image.  Even in multiway pots, there might be times where people will fold TP to a second bet.  You need to recognize what situations you are likely to get paid off.  Don't be a set mining monkey.

Let me know if you want me to do more of these.  BTW, if 5 people post their premium or pocket pair win rates for the year in the comments, I'll post mine.  ;-)

I seem to be digging myself out of the hole I put myself in week 1.  Things are feeling like they are coming together.  We'll see in the coming weeks if this is indeed the case.  I've been having some problems getting in volume the last few weeks.  Part of the volume issue is me playing a few FTOPS tournies, which doesn't show up in my hand totals.  And after a few brutal beat-downs in MTTs, my willingness to play more poker goes away.  I've actually made some pretty good runs in MTTs this week and cashed in a few, but basically all min-cashes, which is almost as frustrating as not cashing.  Also, TableNinja's timebank button hasn't been working so I've had to play fewer tables.  I think most of the volume problem tho is that I'm trying to get over a slight cold the last two weeks.  Maybe also explains the lack of "funny" posts the last few weeks - hard to feel funny when you have a cold.  Excuses excuses excuses.  :-(

As an aside, I'm generally not a "drugs" guy.   If I'm not feeling well, I like to just rest and eat right and let mother nature take care of itself.  But a few years ago, I started taking Airborne at the first sign of a cold and I was really surprised it worked.  Not sure if it's the just echinacea or whatever, but the past 4 years or so, severe colds have not been a problem for me.  Granted, I've had this cold for almost 2 weeks now, but the severity has been very low - much lower than the cold Mrs. Fly and D had earlier in the month.  Anyway, couldn't hurt.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

So here's something a little out of the ordinary.  No - not the fact that we're eating dead animal... and in particular cow.  We were at the supermarket the other day and saw hanger steak.  For some reason, we don't see hangar steak very often.  You see its siblings all the time: flank steak and skirt steak (the beef in fajitas).  Hangar steak is extremely chewy, but it has very good beef flavor.  IIRC, meat from the underside of the cow (skirt, hanger, flank) used to be considered a less desirable part of the cow, and was used for things like ground beef.  But nowadays, when you go to the supermarket, it can cost at least as much as ribeye.  It's a tougher cut, but it's all about the flavor.  To be honest, the flavor was so good that I don't it needed the sauce Mrs. Fly made.  Hanger's probably as good as skirt.  Flank is not one of my favorites tho. Not like I would turn it down or anything...

For the past year or so, Mrs. Fly and I have enjoyed watching Korean dramas in our spare time.  We used to rent American movies from Netflix, but they grew a little tiresome.  Since we both immigrated to the US when we were around 6 years old, we don't have super strong ties to Korean culture.  But one day we decided to rent a Korean movie from Netflix and found that it was nice change of pace, so we watched a bunch more.  The *one* movie that really stands out is Old Boy - a psychological drama.  The director is one of Quentin Tarantino's favorites, so if you like some of his stuff, you should give it a looksie.  It won an award at the Cannes Film Festival and it's gotten high marks from Ebert, Rotten Tomatoes and CNN.

So after a while, we saw most of the Korean movies worth watching on Netflix, and we decided to give the Korean dramas a try.  I remember my parents watching Korean dramas when I was younger, and I thought it was *unbelievably* lame.  But within the last 7-10 years, Korean dramas have gotten better and are becoming immensely popular all over Asia.  They have even started making its way into the Western markets.  That's probably why Netflix has over a dozen or so Korean dramas (lasting from 16 - 60+ hours each).

Two reasons we watch them is because we feel a cultural tie and we get some language practice.  But we would probably still watch some of them even if we weren't Korean.  Sometimes, a foreign language movie once in a while can be entertaining.  A few months ago, we watched a Swedish movie "The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo" and thought that was pretty good.

FLYS' THREE FAVORITE KOREAN DRAMAS

This is a bit of a flyer, but in case any of you guys get tired of watching Snooki get punched in the face (I know - how can that ever get tiresome?!?), or you are a Dallas Cowboys or Buffalo Bills fan and need something non-violent to do on Sundays...  here are our three favorites (from the 15 or so that we've seen):

3. Boys Over Flowers (romantic comedy) - the premise is *unbelievably* stupid and some of the acting is very affected, but all the cute "high school" girls in short skirts will help you get past the first few episodes, and then the story becomes more entertaining.  Then it gets a little slow again, and then the heroine starts wearing a French maid outfit for a few episodes so it becomes all good again.  On a more serious note, it probably gives you a more "modern" look at how Koreans of differing socio-economic statuses live.

2. My Girl (romantic comedy) - Nothing really to say, other than we like romances, and this is our favorite.  It kind of drags on in the middle, but I guess that is to be expected when you have to fill 16 hours of air time.  Probably also has the best Korean soundtrack we've heard (Boys Over Flowers would be a close second).

1. Chuno (historical action) - A few weeks ago, Mrs. Fly and I stayed up ALL NIGHT!  That's just how The Fly rolls, baby!  But um... we watched 9 episodes of Chuno because we couldn't stop watching.  It's got some martial arts, and the story is pretty good.  It also gives you an idea of what Korean culture and costumes were like way back in the day.  And all that political plotting, class system, etc probably explains why Korea was a chronic invadee, rather than an invader for five millenia.  There are a few cultural and historical references you may not get, but I think you'll still enjoy it.

Right now we're watching one called Iris, a spy drama, that looks like it has the potential to be in the top 3.  Anyway, if you're bored, just watch one or two episodes and see if you like it.  We go thru a site called www.dramafever.com to watch.  We pay the $4 a month or whatever to watch commercial free, but if I were you, I would probably watch an episode or two for free (with commercials) just to see if you like it.  They are also on www.crunchyroll.com and www.hulu.com for free with subtitles.

The merchandise in the Black Card store has been a welcome change - you can now get 60" TVs, Aeron chairs, 30" monitors, Macbook Pros, Tumi Luggage, and even a Range Rover for your FT points.  Unfortunately, since they started offering cash bonuses, it pretty makes offering a lot of these items useless.  That's because it's cheaper to get the cash award and just buy the item yourself.

For the $5K cash bonus, you get $4.55 per 1000 points ($4.35 for the $2K bonus and $4.17 for the $1K).  The Apple Macbook thru Amazon (with shipping) gives you $3.96 of value per 1000 points.  The Sony 60" TV thru a number of places (with shipping) gives you $3.66 of value.  See what I'm getting at?  You get 10-24% more "bonus" by just getting the cash.  I don't see what the point of having items in the store is, if they are going to be priced so that no one is going to buy it.

The only reason to get a merchandise thru the store is if your rate of play (to earn the cash reward) is so slow that it would take you much longer to get the cash (and subsequently buy the item yourself) than the 4-8 weeks it takes to get that item from the store (assuming getting the item "quickly" was more important than getting value).  And this assumes you are some kind of busto with no money or a credit card who didn't have the means to purchase it otherwise.  The only people who should want to get merchandise thru the store are people planning to move to Stars (or another site), so they do not want to "work off" a cash bonus.

Merchandise in the Black Card store need to be cheaper.  If some mom and pop internet store front can negotiate with a large manufacturer to drop-ship items to its customers (and make a decent profit), I don't see why FT couldn't use its leverage to negotiate a good rate.  I think there's more than enough room for the Store to be a profit center, but I've suspected for a while that there's a lot of inefficiency there.  Granted, the Black Card program is new and they obviously haven't thought everything thru.  I think other changes are supposed to be coming soon, so it should be an interesting few months.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

Mrs. Fly's interpretation of Korean bibimbop and her 10 hour beef broth.  We got all the veggie ingredients at the Asian supermarket and it's a very quick and tasty meal.  Basically it's a whole bunch of marinated vegetables, a little beef, egg all mixed with some red pepper paste.  A Korean staple.

The broth is a work of art.  Mrs. Fly befriends the local butchers and fishmongers.  Mrs. Fly was going to use ox tails for the soup, but the butcher suggested to her that we should consider using neck bones (cheaper and just as tasty).  Ox tail is one of my favorites, but the neck bones was a nice change of pace.  Anyway, she put both ox tails and neck bones and simmered for 10 hours.  TEN HOURS.  Pretty much every ounce of flavor was extracted, and it was preeeety good on a chilly day.