“In 2007, a 19-year-old gang-rape victim in the Saudi city of Qatif was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison for meeting with an unrelated male.”

My favorite passage: Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

At the time that article was written 45-50k people had died from the earthquake, presently the death toll is around 150k. That is a devastating number for a fairly routine earthquake. I get depressed with humanity when I think that if people were a bit more intelligent and a bit less corrupt such tragedies could be substantially diminished. Thinking about human failures can twist my mind horribly and endlessly so I mostly just hope that people get lucky and horrors like this earthquake can be mostly avoided.

It’s about that time again where I post another mailbag. As always these are real submissions from real readers all over the world (emails are bolded)

From Kristian:
i have one question… i see you now how you play pokerstar, 1vs1 with 2250$… and you almost always win, and, can you give me 5$? i will return your cash, and i will give same more cash… i have’t a credit card which should i have(i have masetrocard….

tnx in advance

Kristian, I am intrigued by both your offer of cash in exchange for the same more cash. As I learned in my contracts class last semester, this may be a valid binding contract but I have some concerns…oh wait that class was last semester…nevermind. What is a maestrocard?

From Jigger Jones:
Hi, Would you happen to know where I can get info such as: In Online Texas Holdem, whenever I get a king in the hole, an ace always falls on the board; why does three of the same suit fall on the flop when I have a different suit in the hole. Why do faces and aces fall on the board when I am dealt low cards, but low cards fall on the board when I get aces and faces, and yet when I get hands like A-2 or K-3, the board will show cards in the middle range. Why do I get so many deuces on the blinds? Why do I get a hundred times more deuces than aces in the hole?

Jigger Jones

Jigger, it is a statistical fact that someone has to be the unluckiest person in the world. I submit that you are it and that answers each and every one of your questions. Make sure not to go skydiving or take a law class with a rigid Socratic professor anytime soon. On the flip side, you drew an amazing name in the game of life.

From Jessica:
Steve, do any women read this blog? Given that you associate with wealthy guys that wish to live as bums my guess is a resounding no. Get a life.

Jessica, according to Google 84% of my readers are male. I have no idea how they have data for this. I apologize for my lack of life.

From Roman:
Hi! I am very glad that you have a blog … now have the opportunity in touch with you! My name is Roman. I have long been watching your game on PokerStars and me through your soul happy skill to play immediately for 5 tables at a minimum. I am from Russia. I just want to express to you a great Respect, your playing skills are very useful if you observe them!
I would like to ask you to help me, as a good person or even a good student … I have here a situation: my father told me if I make $ 600 in any manner for a week, then he would buy me a car, and I dream about it for over two years. So could you lend me $ 100-150? I certainly do not ask all the $ 600 because I am ashamed. I know that for you is a very small amount and you funny to look at these phrases, but still … Please understand me from the heart! If the $ 600 it will be simply impossible, I will be happy until the end of his days! glad you all my life …. Yes, even if $ 150 is also a pride for me … I have them try the same tricks to collect up to $ 600 as you do it ….
I know that you take the right decision …. Thank you great!

Roman, An interesting proposition from your father to you and I wonder again if it qualifies as a legal contract. If it does, then surely a gift from me to you of $150 would not qualify towards your $600 goal. Clearly the $600 is not a goal to be achieved to pay for the car, it is simply to prove that you have what it takes to repay his car loan. As a future member of the bar I cannot take part in defrauding your poor father. I was going to give you the money but you told me that you know I will take the right decision, the decision I am taking is to not take advantage of your fathers generosity.

From Jimmy:
Steve, I need advice. Recently my girlfriend has been ignoring me. I am 19 years old and a very successful poker player. I made 1000 dollars last month. She said she wants someone older so I sent her flowers to declare my love and show off my maturity. To make a very long story short, it didn’t work and she still is not answer my calls. I tried waiting outside her dorm room and that just made her angrier. Why isn’t she impressed by my dedication??

Jimmy, sorry man, that’s brutal

From anxioiu
I would like poker from you gift me cards. Life is cards if I am aces and I am not kings

Yup, these are my readers

I will continue to play low and medium stakes to make myself accessible to everyone. Additionally, as was the case with the previous blog, I am happy to blog about subjects on which you would like my analysis. Let me know at the table or feel free to comment on here and I’ll use some of the best blog ideas in my future writing.

Some other exciting announcements from my life. I have begun work on a poker/law novel set largely at the Borgata Hotel and Casino. My unique knowledge of both fields should make the story vivid, realistic and interesting. The added Team Online notoriety will allow this book to hopefully go into wide distribution next year. Additionally I just finished my first semester of law school and my second is starting now. If you have questions about any of these subjects, I’m happy to talk with you. Thank you for reading and come play with me on Pokerstars!

Ever since seeing Star Wars I have really wanted this superpower, not for any heroic or even interesting purposes, I usually just want the remote to come to me when I’m being super lazy. As to whether I think it’s possible, the short answer is I don’t but the long answer is that I kinda think it is. Clearly no human being today can accomplish such a feat (although someone recently alluded otherwise to me in an email…). However, there must be other living beings in the universe, its too big for this not to be the case. I don’t think it’s impossible that for these beings, possessing traits unknown to us at this point in time, could come to earth and move objects with their minds.

There you have my extremely uneducated opinion on extraterrestrials and jedi mind tricks.

New Years is surely an arbitrary holiday. This does not make me scoff at the idea of celebrating it, after all, any occasion is somewhat arbitrary and any reason for loved ones to spend time together really can’t be that bad. The idea of New Year’s resolutions however has always seemed utterly absurd to me. This is not an original idea, I always hear people saying things like “improve yourself all the time! Don’t wait for New Years”. I make new declarations for myself pretty much daily and stick to about 1/50 which means I get something very productive done about 7 times a year. If I only made resolutions on New Years then, at that completion rate, it would take me a virtual lifetime to complete one simple resolution. Since I can’t sleep now for some reason, I’m going to spend this blog trying to figure out why people are obsessed with the notion of compartmentalization.

Every poker player in the world has been asked the question at some point. Most are asked by just about everyone they know at some point. “How much did you win/lose today? To most people this is by far the most logical question to ask a poker player that spent the day gambling. If you always answer the question in a technically correct manner, you may say you won $500 and receive congratulations when the night before you lost $5000. This ambiguity leads to frustration with the question for most poker players. The omnipresence of the “how did you fare during X unit of time” question has made me think long and hard about this human trait I call sessionizing.

Sessionizing: the compulsive need of humans to reduce their lives into quantifiable chunks for easy analysis

With every New Years resolution I hear, I am more and more convinced that the reason we sessionize is because otherwise the “downswings” would be unbearable for most people. People want to be able to say (and have it be reasonable), “So what if I hate my job, never exercise, and am growing more sedentary, boring and predictable. That was all me during X time, now it’s Y time.” Sessionizing can wipe the slate clean.

Most poker players know that any given day playing one’s normal games is irrelevant. What matters is the long run, and the long run is very long. This academic knowledge cannot even stop reflective and mathematical poker players from sessionizing. Everyone just seems to need it.

I wonder if it’s even possible to see life as just one continuous line as opposed to a series of definable chunks. Maybe life is too long and our memories are too short to allow for such a broad overview. I’m only 26 and I already have trouble remembering the specifics of many things that happened when I was 16. The only way to take a mental trip back is to sessionize, remember the grade I was in and what teachers I had. Remember my classmates in each class, what I did each day, where I went aside from school, the list goes on…Only by sessionizing can we remember living, so despite the fact that it’s massively illogical, it’s a basic human need, like food and sleep.

At least this is what I have decided at 4 am when I can’t sleep for the life of me.

At a news conference in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said, “We are very happy with the Somali national who attacked the house of the Danish cartoonist who previously insulted our prophet Mohammed. This is an honor for the Somali people. We are telling that we are glad that anyone who insults Islam should be attacked wherever they are.”

Full Article here

She swiped her card, entered her pin and picked up the bags to go when the cashier stopped her and was like, ma’am there was only 3.14 on there, you have to pay the rest. The Asian woman said, 3.14, ok i pay 3.14. Cashier was like, nooo, you need to pay 16.73, there was only 3.14 on the card. At this point I noted that the card was unlike anything I had ever seen before, I have no idea what sort of debit card it was, but it wasn’t a usual one issued by a bank. The Asian woman responds (in a way that indicates no surprise or sadness), “i need this (pointing to like 14 dollars in her wallet) for taxi, I just take this one (and grabs one of her 3 bags)”. The cashier says “ma’am it doesnt work that way, you can’t just take a random bag of groceries for 3 dollars”. The Asian woman looked confused as the cashier called over 2 other workers to try to figure out how to deal with the dilemma.

At this point a couple options were running through my head:

1) watch the debacle, assume I’m going to be wasting the next 30 minutes of my life, and hope to come away with an interesting story
2) leave my mint milanos there and just go home. There was no movement by another clerk to open another register so I would certainly be waiting awhile if I wanted to buy them.
3) Be kind (but also kind of selfish to save time) and buy the woman her groceries so that the cashiers would not have to accomplish the impossible (for them) task of figuring out how to back her groceries out of the register.

What would you do?

I went with option 3. The oddest part of the story is, after I offered to pay, the clerks were visibly happy that they wouldn’t have to figure out how to remedy the situation. The Asian woman on the other hand collected her groceries without even looking back and walked out as if she expected someone would eventually take care of her. I suppose since my act was partially selfish, I shouldn’t expect any expression of thanks, but nonetheless another experience that I doubt will be repeated.