Winner’s Guide to Texas Hold’em Poker – Ken Warren
This was the first Hold’em book I ever bought. I was just starting out playing hold’em and everything I have learned up until the purchase of this book was via experience and the internet. I seen this book at 1/2 price books and picked it up.
I must say, for a starting book on hold’em, this book is pretty good. It covers all the basic preflop strategies, turn and river strategies. However, this book is focused only on cash games. It has a list of hands and how they should be played. It also provides a detailed chart on card odds and what hands beat other hands and the percentage of the time they do beat them.
Over all, if your starting in hold’em and playing cash type of games this book is a good solid foundation to start your card playing career out with.
However, it goes over exact hand starting requirements and what hands you should play and shouldn’t play in certain positions.
This is good for an early beginner in to the game but if you follow hand charts to the letter a good poker player will soon catch on. And exploit the methods of your betting and hand playing.
Yet, I still recommend it to just about everyone. It’s a small book and had some very good tips that everyone can benefit from.
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The Happening
Ok, I went and saw the M. Night. S. movie the other night: The Happening. I was on a forum where people were bashing him because this movie didn’t live up to his other movies (a.k.a. the kick ass ending).
He’s made some good movies in the past and to be judge by those movies is kind of unfair.
Each movie is different in its own way and a director (and writer) can’t guarantee that his movies will be a hit. Just ask Tarintino about his last movie endeavor. It blew.
Anyway, I’m a big movie buff and seen all of his other movies except Lady in the Water (but I will). I didn’t rush to the movies to see this flick. I was told it was scary by some friends so I decided to see for myself.
For the first few minutes it was pretty intriguing. Then, like the SAW flicks, it got old. Don’t get me wrong, creatively coming up with way to off one’s self I guess is a daunting task. Yet…it get’s old.
So, I wasn’t a big fan of this movie. It could have been a lot better. It was more like a sci-fi original movie fodder. It was painfully slow, way to much ‘emotional’ crap between the actors, and stupid decisions like “Here watch my kid because I care more for my wife than my kid. I know my wife is old enough to take care of herself and my child isn’t yet I’m going to abandon her to your care anyway. Also, since I’m a mathematician I know that I have a %68 chance of finding her the next town if I don’t die a horrible death first.”
Well, it wasn’t quite like that but dang near close enough.
Now, if the rude old lady (Betty Buckley) was causing it… that would have been cool. There were way too many subplots and just plain weird people.
I am going to make a generalization here, women in general find anything scary. The women who I talked to said this movie was totally scary and they had to cover their eyes the whole time. You watch it and be the judge; I thought it was kind of soft myself.
Read MoreThe Incredible Hulk (2008)
In the past two weeks I’ve seen this movie twice. Not because it’s a good movie (which it was) but because I just had the opportunity to go twice. I really like the movie. It and Ironman, so far have proved to be very good Marvel movies. The story is not related to the Hulk movie that was produced by Ang Lee. This movie story line is a variation of the T.V. version The Incredible Hulk. It even had cameos by Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby even though I didn’t see the cameo spot by Bill Bixby. Over all, Bruce Banner is hunted by General Ross so he can exploit the power of the Hulk. Along the way, a new threat is introduced: The Abomination. Which leads to a fantastic fight in N.Y.
I have to give the director credit, he was able to show so much feeling and emotion through the facial expression of Bruce Banner and the Hulk that you didn’t need sit through a dance number like in Spider Man 3 or listen to constant whining. It was well directed movie and worth the money for a ticket.
On a side note: if my memory serves me correctly; Betty Ross (Banner’s love and the General Ross’s daughter) was a strong willed woman in the comics. In the movie they made her sappy cry bag. However, I guess it had its place since it would piss the Hulk off enough to help her out.
Read MoreTitanQuest (PC) – Part 1
For years I’ve played Diablo & Diablo 2. By far the best hack and slash game around. Its 3rd person view and ever changing (random) layouts kept the game fresh and fun to play. The game play was not designed around finishing the game on different levels of difficulty. You could complete the game in normal mode but you would never find the kick ass equipment you’d fine on hard or hell mode.
(I’ll get the Titan Quest in just a second)
However, after spending hours creating your character and completing normal mode, you soon discovered on hard mode, your character was a pussy and you died all the time. So, now you had to think about and research how to create a character build that would last through those hard levels up to hell mode. After a while it all just got old.
Enter Titan Quest. Now, it’s not a Diablo replacement or Diablo killer, however, it does have its place among the hack and slash.
You still build character classes and you still have to manage inventory. However, Titan Quest comes with a level builder tool that allows you create your own levels and have friends or family play them. This keeps the burn out of always pressing the left mouse button to a minimum.
I really like Titan Quest. It’s set in the mythical age of titans and gods and where you have to make your way to stop a titan from being released. Along the way you find weapons and equipment to help you develop your character.
Like Diablo you get a skill tree that allows you create a class of warrior. Be it an archer, mage, fighter, they all have different names but do the same function. However, unlike Diablo; for the right about of money you can move skill points from one skill to another if you don’t like how your character is turning out.
This allows you some forgiveness if you pump a lot of points into a skill that turns out to suck.
Now, the game has the difficultly level normal, hard, and super hard (not the right names but you get my drift). And like always if you want to play the game past normal you better put some research in to building your character. I’ve made it with several builds to the super hard difficulty level but just can’t complete it.
The graphics are far superior to most other hack and lashers I’ve played. You can zoom way out or all the way in. However, you will tend to play all the way out since you can see monsters a long ways before they see you.
There is alot more I’d like to talk about. I’ll write a few more articals on this game that will deal with character builds and relics and such. Over all, the game is great and I suggest anyone should try it.
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