The Future, see it now.

Hi all, first thing first, please watch the video, or the rest of this post will be pretty meaningless.



OK, now that all your jaws are probably dropped to the floor, let's begin. I saw this clip today and I was blown away massively. I'm a geek and I get high on anything innovative, and this one definitely pushed me all the way to geekophoria. This is a product called SixthSense, invented by Pranav Mistry, an MIT PhD candidate. The way our lives can change once this product makes its way to the mass is tremendous. Unlike our other technological breakthrough which (most of the time) seperates our real world from the digital world, this one embeds the two. Imagine going to a grocery store with your shopping list, but instead of looking for the items yourself, the system loads the exact locations of each item and project live-size arrows onto the floor guiding you to it. Imagine pointing to your credit card and have your balance and due date displayed instantly. Better yet, you can have your statement displayed where you can scroll to a specific item and then expand it to display the bill you were paying for. This is made possible because the camera would have it all recorded! This is just so cool.

Btw, I think this is a similar path Microsoft is taking with their Project Natal (please google for more info). However, Project Natal's camera has to be connected to a Xbox and fixed onto a TV so it lacks the mobility SixthSense has. Project Natal is also more focused (entirely focused?) on video gaming and it's obviously not as broadly applied to everyday life (yet). Nonetheless, I think this is the direction computing in general is headed. Btw2, Pranav Mistry is ex-Microsoft.

For more information, google "Sixth Sense, Pranav Mistry". This guy is a pure genius.

The Blog is back!!!

Hi all, guess what? This blog has (finally) awaken from the dead! I'm gonna keep it as updated as i can from now on (which means a post every few days)... however, if you use Twitter, please follow me @PLAU13! I update my status there a lot more frequently, and i post live updates when i'm playing and random rants when i'm not.

For the past couple of months, i've done well in Macau. I've won back-to-back Macau Poker Cup Highroller Challenges. The first game involved four Team Pokerstars Pro Asia members, David Steicke, among other good players. The second time seen EPT London Final-tableist (one of the Team Pro member) Raymond Wu and WSOP Player of the Year Jeff Lisandro. It was surely great to come out on top of good players and be able to put them to my repertoire. Coming up, i'll be playing in the December Macau Poker Cup Championship events, in particular the $5000 Heads-Up and the $20000 Main Event.

i'm not gonna write too much today as i'm having the wisdom tooth problem... it's hurting and it's giving me a buzzing headache... the extraction is scheduled for Friday at 9:30am, and i'm seriously very much afraid of the dentist... so a fun day i guess. The consolation prize is I'll be off from work that day so i'll be able put in a good few hours of online grinding... (it's not like i can do much else with a swollen face anyways!)

Another Omaha Win!

Hi guys, I'm happy to have won another Omaha tournament! This time it's PLO and again tiny stakes. I chopped 1st and 2nd with this guy who's been chipleader for almost the whole tournament. (When we got to heads up I had 122k chips and he had 148k). The payout was about US$200, the game had 180 players and it took about 4 hours 45 minutes. I hovered around and above the 30BB mark all game until I got into the money, when my stack-building lagged the pace of the blinds. I was down to as little as 12BB at one point, which at the time was around 18000 chips. This was when I got dealt AA76 rainbow, and I pot it after 2 limpers. The flop was pretty rag and I shoved the rest of my chips in (not much, only 7k more into the 22k pot) and the lone preflop caller didn't call me! The pot's almost $30k and I took it down without a showdown. Sweet. I was back up to around 20BB.

I didn't really get the chips towards my direction until it was six-handed on the final table. At this point I was dealt KK33 double suited, and I potted after chipleader (who had over 130k chips vs my 35k) limped, and he called me with AQT4 double suited. We're both on diamonds and spades so we dominated each other on each suit. I flopped a K to make top set and it held up. The rest of the tournament was pretty routine but there was this mad chaser to my right who I knew I could beat. I eventually outlasted him when he got out 4th. I asked for a deal as soon as we got down to three players (chipcount: player A = 55k, moi = 65k, chipleader = 150k). I was about to offer the chipleader 1st place for a bit less than the designed payout but he turned me down before I could even give him the number. Funny enough as soon as we got to heads-up (chipcount: moi = 122k, chipleader = 148k) he asked for a chop. I was thinking "hmm sure why not. I was ok with less money than this when it was three of us. lol." So we chopped.

I'm very happy about this win as I'm pretty rusty in Omaha (or known to be). WOOHOO!!!