My Wife Will Not like This

My wife sometimes has, well, delicate sensibilities.  When I told first told her that I use a pee jar when I play online poker, her response was a loud, "Oh Gross!"  Of course, in another tournament the next day, I called her into my office when I was using that jar, and I was told "Oh gross!" as well as, "That's disgusting!"  (Believe it or not, whether to use a pee jar is an issue that is discussed in the poker community):

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32/beginners-questions/do-people-really-use-pee-jugs-1111471/?highlight=do+people+really+use+pee+jars

I just finished watching a 1.25 hour webinar on range building.*  Someone asked whether, when he was knocked out of a re-entry tournament and got flustered, he should take some time to get his head together and decide what to do, or would it be better to jump back into the tournament and not miss a hand.

The poker pro teaching the webinar said that "re-entry guy" should definitely take a little time to get focused.  I disagreed.

One of my poker rules is , "Never miss a hand." I typed into the chat box that the best way to get a good hand is to not miss it when it comes. If  I play an online tournament that lasts for nine hours, I will have a pee jar on my desk and I'm going to stay at that desk and play every single hand.  Other players might get tired, or drunk, or whatever, and that gives me an edge when I'm in a hand with that opponent.  I don't miss hands, period.

The re-entry question was the last of the webinar, and the pro closed it by saying that both I and "re-entry guy" had valid points.  He said that a lot of players looked at it as I did, that a hand should never be missed.  He also said that he understood the other playing taking some time to calm down.

That was how the webinar ended.  I'm sure that my wife will enjoy reading this post.

As always, questions or comments are welcome (see box below.)

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*https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=building+a+poker+range&&view=detail&mid=1D9AD836489DC2CF6B111D9AD836489DC2CF6B11&&FORM=VRDGAR

The Tech Nightmnare Continues--Part 2

I'm not playing much poker lately, even though it's supposed to by my job.  I spent the last year setting myself up for multiple options, playing both live and online.  It hasn't worked out that way at all, and a big part of that is that the available online sites are a mess.  It must seem to some of you that all I do is whine, but the following, which was posted in a poker forum, might change your minds--it really is that bad.

The following comments were posted in a poker forum during the last week.. This is just a sample, there are pages and pages on this topic and no one is happy.  All posters, including me, are also players on the site, Americas Cardroom, which was updated a few days ago.  That update has been a huge mess with no end in site.

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Originally Posted by Poker Clif

You're right, this doesn't work without input from the players. At one time PokerStars had a player's committee. Daniel Negreanu was on it.

My experience with writing programs (in the 1980s, "code" was a noun, not a verb) is not extensive, but it was enough to teach me a few things. The one thing that we were told in class, over and over, was to consider the end user. Make it simple. Make it do exactly what the user wants done.

Only an end-user (poker player) knows what he needs a program (poker site) to do, and those needs are mostly simple and basic:

Keep accurate times of levels.

Cards, numbers and words should be easy to read.

Crashes and lags should be rare (this was the worst or second-worst ACR problem, depending on where you rank botting) in 2018 and early 2019.

All computations should be accurate.

Animation should be clear and not too distracting.

Your list could be completely different from mine, but this isn't rocket science. Each item on my checklist, and probably on yours, is basic and necessary. The point is that they all should be pretty much nailed down before beta testing.

Of course it's more complicated then a simple check list. You need nerds to deal with all of the complicated math programming that we don't see--but if the site crashes or the numbers on the screen are hard to read, what good is all of that math?

I'm expecting a check from another site in a few days, but I'm not going to put any more money on ACR until these problems are fixed. I won't pay to be a beta tester.

Then a player with the user name PokerPastor posted the following:

As someone that worked as a Director of Technology for a couple years for a major corporation in California I can safely say that there are a million shortcuts taking place right now...
Computer Science departments all over the world could use this as a case study on what not to do in software development. It's gross incompetence at an incredible level, and they simply hope that people are too stupid to realize it...