Shabbir's Diary

Live lobster - served as sashimi

I have seen god in the eyes of live lobster sashimi on my plate at Sushi Taro.

It really freaked me out. The Handsome Chef of Sushi Taro, Imamoto, greeted me and explained the day's specials. "Live lobster" was #1. "It is delicious, but very expensive." I am undaunted. I ordered it for Sarah and I.

Imamoto came and dumped a live lobster on the counter in front of us. The claws, antennas, and eyes were moving. I was duly impressed; the appetizer was live. Sarah and I named him Larry, in honor of the lobster that was almost cooked on Saturday Night Live by Eddie Murphy many years ago.

Imamoto cut up the lobster live, removing the tail and claws. The lobster wasn't dead yet; he pulled the claws out and chopped up the meat of the tail, resetting it into the tail shell with plum leaves. Imamoto re-assembled the lobster, tail inverted, on the plate with the front end alive and the back end and claws "sashimi-ed" for eating.

The tail was delicious. The claws were an amazing experience. For those used to lobster claws that have been boiled, this is an unusual experience. The claws are gelatinous, and must be sucked to experience.

And it wasn't over. Imamoto, the appropriately named Handsome Chef of Sushi Taro, had the backline chefs prepare miso soup using the lobster head which he reserved to us half an hour later. The taste was subtle but delicious.

This is a true test of your experiementation: give it a try. Someday you'll grow old and look back on your life, and this is one of those things you won't regret having tried.

One of the best days of my life.

Eight years ago today I spoke these words in front of a few friends and family in St. Louis.

I promise, to the end of my days, to take care of you; to return the love you've shown me threefold, and to always be your best supporter.  I look forward to a life of anticipating your needs and desires and surprising you by fulfilling them before you ask or even realize them. 

Your love is like the warm sun, and I am thankful I found it while we still have the greater part of our life to enjoy it.  Will you spend that life with me?

Happy anniversary Sarah, you are the woman of my dreams.

Why I love Netflix: The Watch Instantly Feature

Sarah and I haven't watched live television since we got a Tivo 4 or 5 years ago. But now, we're not really even tied to what gets broadcast on cable any more. For the last few weeks we've been working our way through Heroes first on iTunes, and then on Netflix.

We're not watching actual DVDs sent through the ubiquitous red Netflix envelopes, we're using the "Watch Instantly" feature of our Netflix subscription through a PC I hooked up to our TV, though we could do the same thing on a laptop. Turns out that a lot of modern televisions have a VGA input, or some other method for taking audio/video off a laptop and sending it to a TV.

With a 4-at-a-time plan (what we have), you can watch an unlimited quantity of Watch Instantly DVDs. It's really well suited to watching TV shows. Typically when you want to watch the 6 DVDs of a season of a tv show, you don't get them all at once. You have to plan in advance which tv series you want to watch, order it, and then wait for it to show up. And once you plow through all the discs you have, there's a delay while you wait for more.

There's a good selection there.  You're not going to find Quantum of Solace in there, but TV series you may have missed, movies released earlier this year, lots of documentaries, and anything independent is probably here.  Just look for the blue "Play" logo next to the movie.  (See image at right)

"Watch Instantly" changes all that. Sarah and I sit there with a whim to watch a show, and we play it. The delay for buffering is usually not more than a minute or two and the quality is awesome. If we don't like what we're watching, we ditch it and watch something else. We don't have to invest in waiting for the disc to go back and another to arrive. Between watching recently broadcast shows on hulu.com, goofing off on YouTube, and Netflix watch instantly, I can almost see us ditching our cable subscription.

Safdar Tournament Poker Bootcamp: Results

[I love this photo of Vegas I took on the strip outside Planet Hollywood.  Rampant overbuilding, sex blatantly for sale, and Salvation Army, all in the same shot.  It's the epitome of the city to me.  -Shabbir]

Though I played a lot of poker, and met a new poker colleague who lives in the Bay area, the Vegas trip was a financial disaster.  I didn't cash in any of the tournaments I played and over all I lost money playing $2/$4 and $4/$8.  I managed to leave Vegas with $45 in my live bankroll, which I've subsequently put into FullTiltPoker.

I did enjoy myself though, and got a funny story out of it:

I'm sitting at the Imperial Palace Casino (which you should never eat at) and I found myself at a $2/$4 Limit Texas Hold'em table with 6 opponents.  I've got $55 or so in front of me.  One of my opponents says hello to his wife and asks the dealer if she can play his chips while he goes to the bathroom.  The dealer says ok and off he goes.

His wife gets dealt a pair of jacks (JJ) in early position and raises.  I look down at 76 suited and decide to see if I can catch.  The flop comes 752 with no flush draw.  She bets, I raise in case she has Ace-King and might let it go.  She calls, and I think I'm about to spew chips.

The turn comes a Six and I've got two pair.  I'm pretty sure I'm good here, so when she bets, I raise.  She makes it three bets and I raise again and she calls.  The river comes a Ten, and she must think she's good, and I'm pretty sure I'm ahead against most of her range that fits her actions.  I just don't think she'd play a small pair like that, or connectors.  We both bet/raise/reraise each other until her husband's entire $35 is in the pot.

We turn over the hands and the dealer announces play wil be frozen until the husband returns.  He comes back, the dealer explains what happened, and then ships me the pot.  The table erupts in howling laughter.  I can't decide whether I should laugh or cry and do both, pounding my fists on the table with my head on the rail.

The husband and wife walk away arguing while the dealer says, "I would have played those Jacks in exactly the same way."  He didn't tell me when he'll be playing, since that would be an awesome weakness to exploit.

Poker coaching

So my coach and I have settled into a new routine.  I play all week, pick a session at random, and then run it through a processor and add my notes and send it off.  A day later he sends back notes on my notes and we get on the phone and talk for an hour.

I'm playing $.50/$1 Limit Hold'em online (mostly full tilt) and almost breaking even, which is a great improvement over my previous results where I was just spewing money.  I'm happily grinding it out at those stakes.  Although I'm doing ok straight money wise, I'm clearing a deposit bonus, which helps, and I've got an account with rakeback.

Let me explain: when you play poker in anyplace that is an enterprise, they take a little money out of every pot, called the "rake".  This is what pays the dealers, the rent, the lights, etc.  Casinos are profitable businesses, and the rake on poker alone is the least of the money made at most casinos.

There's rake online, and it adds up.  Over the past 30 days I've played about 4,000 hands over 32 hours and paid $76 of rake.  Poker theorist David Sklansky would tell me that I should expect to make 1 big bet ($1) per hour at these stakes if I'm talented.  That would be $32.  My deal to get part of my rake back from the online casino in exchange for lots of play means that I've got about $20.50 coming to me.    Quick math tells you that if I break even on my bankroll, I've got $0.64 / hr coming to me.  It's not much money, but it's better than losing money.

So my coach and I do an hour talk weekly and go through my hands.  I then get homework to focus on next week: learn when to isolate and why, you need to save a bet on the turn to a scary board with actors behind you, practice playing from the small blind, and so on, and so on.  It's fun.  I told him that this last week was the first time I felt I really had a good read on someone online.  Not like he had a betting tell, but that he liked to call hands all the way to the river that were way too weak, and that all I had to do was isolate myself in a hand with him with halfway decent cards. 

That little bit of knowledge allowed me to raise most of my opponents out of hands until it was just the target and myself.  Once we were the only ones in the hand, my habit of playing better quality cards than him meant that I usually won the pot.  I finished that session with $50 in profit, which is astounding to me for such a small stakes game.  (Especially when my entire bankroll for $.50/$1 is $125)

Tomorrow I head out to Safdar Poker Bootcamp.  Matt and I are going and my plan is to play low buyin tournaments ($70 or less) every day from 9am until 10pm.  I'm staying at the Monte Carlo, which has 3-5 of them a day.  To answer Aaron's previous questions, The airfare cost me $115, the hotel $230, and I'm taking $400-$500.  If I lose that, I'll be going to the movies.

Finally, for all you men out there who have colds (except Tim, who has some mysterious illness that's more serious than a cold), I offer you this: