FTOPS

FTOPS is next week so it's time for me (and you) to sit down and work out what I'll be playing. (See link here for schedule.) As always I have very little interest in full-ring games. Here's what I think I'll most likely play:

• Event 8 (Sat August 7, 14:00ET): $535 PLO 6-max (PLO 6-max is one of my better games.)
• Event 11 (Sun August 8, 14:00ET): $129 NLH Knock-Out (full-ring NLH is boring as hell so the KO element might unbore it a bit, maybe.)
• Event 12 (Sun August 8, 16:00ET): $535 NLH Heads-Up (I don't usually pass the HU events, depends how I do in Event 11 tho, which honestly means I'll likely end up 2-tabling)
• Event 20 (Wed August 11, 14:00ET): $216 7-Game (I'm a mixed games specialist but no 2/7 triple draw could mean less value. And since I'm not doing HORSE so I'm obligated to play this.)
• Event 23 (Thurs August 12, 14:00ET): $322 PLO Heads-Up (PLO HU is the fun.)
• Event 26 (Fri August 13, 14:00ET): $216 NLH 6-max (shorthanded NLH is a game that I actually pay attention in, in contrast to full-ring donkashit.)
• Event 32 (Sun August 15, 14:00ET): $256 NLH 6-max Knock-Out (6-max AND knock-out? I'm in.)
• Main Event (Sun August 15, 18:00ET): $640 NLH (The Main is probably the only vanilla full-ring NLH I can put myself thru, only because it kinda feel incomplete without it.)

Of the above, I'm most interested in Events 8, 20, 26, 32. See you at the virtual felt!

Mid-stake poker in Hong Kong is (near) dead

Poker in Hong Kong went from mediocre to completely bad over the last 12 months or so. It used to be that 25/50 NLH was the standard game with some 50/100 on weekends. Now? No one but a few good players are willing to play 25/50 anything. The standard right now is 10/20 NLH and if lucky there might be a table of 10/20/40 PLO. Which totally sucks. Some try to organize 25/50 PLO but it usually turns out very dry with 4-5 good players sharing 1-2 bad players. At the end of night being up 1BI is considered good and 2BI amazing. I played reasonably well one time for 3 hours and managed to win 60BB. LOL. I have to say, unless the 25/50 scene improves, I can't be bothered with playing live in HK anymore.

Suggestion: get people adapted to 25/50 PLO. People meaning casual players who can laugh off a couple of Buy-ins, or small time grinders who want to try their hands on the big(ger) stakes. (hint: last thing we need is more pros.)

Self Note for getting SD reader to work on Audi Stupid Stereo System

I wanna keep a self note but I dunno where I should write this so it might as well be here so anyone who's having the same struggle can read up.... The struggle being getting the SD card reader on the Audi stereo system to say something other than "Unreadable". By Audi stereo system I'm referring to the newer version that comes with a built-in SD card reader. (I have a 2009 A4, for ref)

For a product of 2009 this SD card reader is remarkably outdated. I've took it for granted at first and randomly popped in a 4GB SDHC filled with MP3s in subfolders only to get the "Unreadable" error. After trials and errors I found that this reader requires a tight specification on the card for it to work. So here it is:

1. The card must be 2GB or below;

2. The card must be old-style SD and not the newer SDHC;

3. The card must be formatted to the older FAT16, and not the newer FAT32 (note: if you're a Mac user you're out of luck. The only FAT format available in OS X disk utility is FAT32 (which is confusingly denoted as "FAT"). Get a SD format app or use Windows);

4. I heard brand matters but can't confirm all brands. (I CAN confirm that my Toshiba 2GB didn't work while my Sandisk 2GB did);

5. Filenames must be in English or the file won't be recognized;

6. Filenames must be shorter than a certain number of characters (which I don't know exactly, I renamed all my songs to the abcdefgh_##.mp3 formats);

7. I heard files can't be in subfolders but I also heard some had it to work even in folders (just put them all in root to be safe imo).

That's it.

Conclusion: this SD card reader thingy is a piece of junk but it still kinda beats not having it at all.

Yo yo yo

It's July so that means it's Macau Poker Cup time! I'll be back at the big(gish) scene of poker this weekend in Macau. Look out for me in Day 1A on July 9 at 8pm! I'm more determined than ever to win one of these so I'm definitely not there to mess around this time. I'll try to tweet as much as I can (data roaming is fucking expensive and Macau doesn't seem to support text-to-tweet (correct me if I'm wrong)).

Also, look out for a new Chinese/English magazine called Tao of Winning. I'm featured in their debut (July) issue.

Let's gogogogogogogogogo!!!!!