Vegas Part 2

Texas Hold em

While in Vegas I played in a Hold em tournament and I also played a little 1-2 no limit. I consider myself a little better than average at playing poker. I know how to calculate pot odds, and card odds. I have multiple styles of play and have no problems changing up during table play.

So I bought into an $80.00 tournament. There were 30 players who bought in. You started with 2500 in chips. Blinds started at 25 - 50 and raised up every 15 minutes.

I was seated in the 8th seat at the table. My table was mixed with young and old guys. Some talkers and some non-talkers. It was a good mix. I decided I was going to be very tight early on so I could watch a lot of the play. I was only going to play what I call a top ten hand. So after the first 15 minutes I thought I had a god feel for the table. I felt 5 players were poor players and very loose. I felt the 3 players were solid, and the rest I did not know.

I decided it was time to change my game and just play tight. I would play top 20 hands. the first hand I got involved in I was pocket 9's in dealers position. I decided to raise the un-opened pot and put pressure on the blinds. I got called by the small blind and the big blind folded. The flop came with A, K, 10. The small blind raised more than the pot. I thought this was an odd bet, but this was one of the players I just did not have a read on yet. I decided to lay down the hand since there were 3 over cards on the flop.

After that hand Every hand I played at that table I won. Either I had the cards, or my tight image bullied other players. One lesson I learned is the power of betting. If you make bets at the right times, you can really scare some people.

After about 2 hours the thirty people are down to 9 and one final table. At the table I was about 6th or 7th in chips, not great. I had enough chips, that I could last awhile so I didn't have to make any drastic moves. However, the third hand I was dealt pocket cowboys. I decide to push all in. Basically if I no one called and I stole the blinds I would raise my stack by about 50%. I actually got a caller, and oddly enough I had him out chipped so he was really all in. When he turned up is pocket 10's I new I was in good position. The flop came 5,3,j. I am now thinking I am about 91% to win. That is until the turn came up a 10. I ended up losing the hand and having about 1500 in chips left not enough really. Basically I was all in on the next hand since I was the big blind, and ended up losing.

The next day I played 1-2 no limit and it was fun. I again played tight early, but got real loose after watching. I got some good cards, bet them hard and usually one. I was up big until a guy when all in and I had pocket aces. He had Q, 10. he paired his queen and then ended up pairing his 10 in the river. Other than that hand and paying someone else I new had a straight but could not believe he would bet so much chasing it, I did pretty well.

So those are my poker stories. Stay tuned form my Harrah's rant, and other Vegas goodies.

Vegas Part 1

Hi all,

I am back from Vegas. The next few blogs will be about my trip. Today's blog is on my gambling experience.

While in Vegas I tried many different games. I would say the break down is 70% blackjack, 15% poker, 8% Pia Gow Poke, 4% craps, and 3% slots and other.

Blackjack
What can I say about this game. I like to play two deck, with a 3 to 2 bj payout. Well it seams the casino I stay at decided to rid itself of true double deck. They had a couple tables with single deck with a 6 to 5 bj payout. If you are familiar with the game you know that 6 to 5 increase the house percentage in the game, like the house already didn't have enough of an advantage. I ended up mostly playing an 8 deck shoe with a 3 to 2 bj payout. The house percentage is actually less on this game than a single deck with a 6 to 5 bj payout. The troubles I ran across while playing are the same as normal usual, the double down. For some reason when ever I have an opportunity to double down, I usually end up losing. My last night there the dealer help me keep track and I was 2 for 12 on my double downs.

Poker
See the next post

Pia Gow Poker
Pia Gow is one of my favorite games. You are dealt seven cards and you make two poker hands out of them. If your two hands beats the dealers two hands you win. If the dealers two hands beat yours you lose. Anything else is a push. For the most part I did pretty well at the game. It is one of those games you can really play for a long time. You don't win or lose a lot.

Craps
I love to play craps, I just don't have the bankroll needed to play it often. The game is fast paced and the house odds are low. In fact the best bet in all of Vegas is found on the craps table. I enjoy the action. For the most part I played for a couple hours. I was up and down, craps is a roller coaster. I think when I walked away, I was up a little.

Slots
I do enjoy playing some slots. I know that slots are usually the worst bet in Vegas, but they can be fun. I like the themes, and the chance to hit a big jackpot. Plus my brother-in-law likes to play them and we have fun complaining about how lucky each other is.

Sports Book
I did make a few parlay bets. I lost them all. It was a pretty tough weekend with football. A lot of good teams all lost. So I ended up down.


Hope all is good. Stay tuned for the next update.

Mobile Software Development

Hi all,

So at work, I have been working on a couple mobile computing applications. I am doing one PDA application for one client and a Tablet PC application for another client.

The two applications have very similar challenges. They both need to be able to function disconnected. Both applications need to be able to sync support data and upload gathered data in a timely matter. I think we are going to develop a group of secure web services that will handle the needed syncing functionality.

The PDA also face many more challenges. First are the limiting resources of memory and processor speed. The limited screen size also is a challenge for displaying and gathering information.

Well that is my quick update,
Chris

Scrum

At SpiderLogic, we have Spider Tuesday meetings were we all get together and one of us leads a discussion on a topic. Last night a co-worker lead us in a discussion on SCRUM.

Scrum is an Iterative and Incremental Development (IID) methodology that emphasizes a set of project management values and practices, rather than those in requirements, implementation, and so on. As such, it is easily combined with or complimentary to other methods.

This is how it works.

First there is a backlog of project work items. During the project you are allowed to add and remove work items. work items are also prioritized regularly.

Then, during a sprint/iteration the scrum team will decide what work items they will complete. Theses work items are removed from the backlog and broken down into 8 - 16 hour tasks. Scrum members then will take task as they need. During a sprint, that normally lasts 30 days, work items can never be added, however they can be removed. If a work item does not get completed at the end of a sprint it is added back to the backlog list.

During the sprint there is a daily meeting or scrum, where the scrum members all answer three questions:
1) What have you done since the last meeting.
2) What are you going to do before the next meeting.
3) Are there any road blocks to completing your tasks.

The scrum master runs these meetings. The master is in charge of removing road block in a timely matter, and also making sure the scrum meeting is not to long.

Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging verbal communication across all team members and across all disciplines that are involved in the project.

A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that fundamentally empirical challenges cannot be addressed successfully in a traditional "process control" manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach - accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team's ability to respond in an agile manner to emerging challenges.

Some key practices include:

• Self-directed and self-organizing teams
• No external addition of work to an iteration, once committed
• Daily stand-up meeting with special questions
• Usually 30-calendar day iterations
• Demo to external stakeholders at end of each iteration
• Each iteration, client-driven adaptive planning

So that is what I learned Yesterday. As you can see there are some similarities to Agile, and XP. Were it differs most though is agile and xp will delve more into the implementation of the product as well.

Hope you all have a great day.

Chris