I would hate to be Michael Vick right now. I mean I would realllllly hate to be him.

His brother is a thug. He’s a thug. A huge thug.

And now this.

He is toast. And rightly so. The things he “allegedly” put those dogs through is despicable.

While He Who Must Not Be Blogging is sitting in a self-imposed internet exile, I thought I’d take a second to post about my preferred (and ignored) blog topic of choice…poker.

As those of you who follow the poker scene should know, the World Series of Poker has been running at the Rio in Vegas for the last six weeks or so. For the last two weeks, the $10,000 buy-in World Championship No Limit Hold ‘Em Tournament has been running. Yesterday, the final table was conducted, with nine players vying for a first place prize of $8.25 Million.

As an aside, I would note that this is the first year in recent memory when the total number of entrants in the Main Event has declined from the previous year. I could rail against the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) for its contribution to the freedom of the poker playing American public, but I shall hold my tongue.

Anyway, I ordered the ESPN PPV live broadcast of the Final Table, hosted by Ali Nejad and Phil Gordon. The only real drawback for the average poker watching viewer was the absence of the “hole card cam” to check the holdings of the players as the game progressed, but for the purist, it was really a bit more exciting at times to watch the play without knowing everything that the players were holding at all times. The commentary was excellent, the quality of the show was very good.

It was an interesting final table, to say the least. Coming into the last night of the tourney, the chips were relatively evenly spaced among the players, and with large stacks in relationship to the blinds and antes, there was plenty of room for the players to make moves.

As the game played out, though, only one player really made any moves. California psychologist and poker amateur Jerry Yang came in as one of the shorter stacks at the table, but certainly did not waste any time in becoming active with his chips. He came into pots early and often, usually starting out with an oversized initial raise of the blinds pre-flop. At the first stages of the blinds (120K-240K), Yang most often came in for 1.5M as an opening raise, when conventional play would suggest an open raise of between 600K-800K.

He was able to take a couple of pots early, and double up his initial starting stack. From that point, he managed to catch hands at opportune moments, and took out the starting chip leader as the first casualty of the Final Table. From that point forward, he never lost the chip lead, gong on to knock out 7 of his 8 opponents.

Characterized as weak-tight coming into the Final Table by conventional wisdom, Yang somewhat masterfully, somewhat inartfully maneuvered his way through the field like a buzzsaw. Practically every time an opponent decided to play back at Yang, he either forced them all-in or called their all-in.

I don’t know that I’d call him a great poker player in general, but there is no doubt that he was in the zone during the Final Table. He did exactly what his opponents were not expecting him to do. He always applied pressure, almost never caved to responsive pressure, and held a stranglehold on the tournament from the get-go.

Bottom line is that his plan worked perfectly, and he’s now $8.25M richer for it. He won his entry in a satellite tournament for $225. Not a bad parlay.

I’m interested to see how the overall media reports on this event turn out. Yang is a very devoted Christian, and made no apologies for that, both during the tournament and afterward. He’s donating 10% to three charities. From the debacle of Jamie Gold’s championship last year (where the darker, less public friendly side of poker and money were opened to critique), Jerry Yang may be a refreshing return to poker as an “everyman’s” activity.

Congrats to the Champ.

Just walked past TV in UT law lounge during PMBR lunch break, heard something about bookstores in Israel opening on Sabbath to sell Potter book. Heh. No spoilers, though. Phew.

Nine hours without surfing the Web; already going through withdrawal. :)

Okay, here goes. This is doomed to fail, but I’m going to say it anyway, and see if I can actually surprise everyone, including myself, by sticking with it:

I will not use the World Wide Web for the next 96 hours.

You might think this is about the bar exam, and my desperate need to cram instead of procrastinate. You might think it’s just the logical extension of my previous announcement that blogging will be light because I’ll be studying. But you’d be wrong. This about something much more important: Harry Potter. (”[He] needs to work on [his] priorities.” –Ron Weasley.)

I gather that the alleged leak of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows onto the Internets via BitTorrent is, in fact, real. I say “I gather” because I’ve deliberately avoided reading articles or blog posts about the leak, because I’m deathly afraid (pun intended) of accidentally stumbling across spoilers — even unintentional/implicit ones. (I assume the MSM isn’t explicitly reporting who dies, but often times, reporters telegraph information they know but can’t say, like exit polls on election day. I’m guessing there will be some allegedly “spoiler-free” articles that will nevertheless make it pretty easy to surmise whether Harry lives or dies. Anyway, better safe than sorry.)

In any event, now that the cat’s out of the bag, I fear it’s only a matter of time before I accidentally stumble upon some information I don’t want to see, whether via Drudge or Fark or some blog or news article, or via my own website’s comments (as almost happened today), or via some other source I don’t anticipate. Maybe not — maybe I’d remain blissfully ignorant — but it isn’t worth the risk. The only surefire way to avoid accidentally learning the truth on the Web is to, well, totally stop using the Web until I arrive in Denver in four days (at which point I will have presumably finished the book during our day of travel). Hence my pledge — which, of course, has the beneficial side-effect of freeing up extra bar-study time for the remainder of the week.

Even if I stick with my pledge, it won’t totally eliminate all risk, of course. There is also the possibility of accidentally overhearing something in person, verbally. Indeed, it occurs to me that Saturday morning’s midnight book-release parties are now fraught with peril. Some of the Potter fans in attendance will have had it spoiled for them already, but even if (as I would anticipate) those fans are generally respectful and don’t spill the beans for others, all it would take is one a**hole — out of a crowd of hundreds — to walk in and yell, “________ dies on Page __!” to ruin it for everybody. In other words, the real-life equivalent of this afternoon’s troll. And there are a lot of a**holes in this world. I bet it will happen somewhere. I just hope it’s not at my store.

But while I can’t totally protect myself from such accidental revelations, I can at least ensure that I won’t learn the ending online. That means not checking my own site’s comments for four days, but hey, now that my Inquisitorial Squad has been empowered to monitor comments, I don’t need to check them myself. So I won’t.

I guess I should qualify my promise insofar as I’ll probably need to use the Web a few times for purely functional things like printing out directions on Google Maps and the like. As for blogging, I’m sure I’ll post a few things via cell phone. But beyond that, I vow to stay off the Web for the next 96 hours, starting at midnight.

How long do you think I’ll last? Make your guesses in comments. :)

Oh, and in case this wasn’t clear already, NO POTTER SPOILERS, dammit. Those go here.

This is Brendan Loy, signing off. See ya Saturday.

I’ve been thinking lately about the electoral implications of a possible Rudy Giuliani candidacy — specifically, the fact that Rudy could potentially win New York (especially if he’s running against someone other than Hillary), which, it seemed to me as I initially considered it, would be pretty much “game over” for the Democrats. I mean, can the Dems win an electoral-college majority without New York?

Well, last night I did the math. One significant fact that I’d forgotten is that New York’s E.C. representation has fallen significantly from the 36 that I had in my head. That number was correct in the 1980s; it was 33 in the 1990s; and now it’s 31. But that’s still a lot of votes, and they’re votes the Dems are used to being able to just depend on without any effort. Not so if Rudy runs, methinks.

If Rudy’s the nominee and wins New York, the Democratic candidate could win both Florida and Ohio… and still lose the presidency, 270-268. (Heh. Ouch.) To win without New York, even with those two big-kahuna states in their corner, the Dems would need one additional Bush state, with New Mexico (5) or Iowa (7) being the most obvious possibilities. (Alternatively, if the Dems win New Mexico and Iowa, and also Missouri, they wouldn’t need Ohio — just Florida.)

Of course, it isn’t just New York’s 31 electoral votes that Giuliani could threaten to yank into the Republican column. As my dad pointed out when we talked about it on the phone last night (yes, this is what my father and I talk about… heh), Rudy could also put New Jersey’s 15 votes in play. If the GOP could capture NY and NJ, the Democrats would have a lot of ground to make up: they’d need Florida (27), Ohio (20), and 17 votes from some combination of New Mexico (5), Iowa (7), Missouri (11), West Virginia (5) or some other states — maybe Nevada (5), Colorado (9) or Arizona (10)?

Anyway, the point is, it’s not impossible for the Democrats to win without New York and New Jersey, but it’s not easy, either. And in any event, Rudy would certainly expand the list of “battlegrounds” by making those states reasonable GOP targets. All of which could make a Giuliani candidacy very interesting.

Okay, dorky electoral-college nerdiness over, back to the bar.

P.S. You can play around with the Electoral College math yourself here.

In order to decrease the likelihood that trolls will be able to ruin the fun for everyone with Harry Potter spoilers, I have devised a straightforward process for quickly moving any offending posts to “That Which Must Not Be Blogged.” Anyone not currently a guestblogger who would like the power to do this (i.e., to get rid of any spoiler posts that you happen to stumble upon), shoot me an e-mail at brendanloy [at] alumni.usc.edu. Current guestbloggers, you’ll be hearing from me later today. :)

Some troll, who probably found his/her way to my blog via the New York Times blog article linking to “That Which Must Not Be Blogged,” just posted a bunch of Harry Potter 7 spoilers in various threads. Luckily, I saw them quickly and, immediately realizing what they were, stopped reading them and moved them to the proper thread (while literally holding my hand in front of the screen, so that I wouldn’t see what was written).

I will be taking various steps to hopefully prevent such things from occurring again in the next few days, but unfortunately, there are a lot of a**holes on the Internet, and there’s only so much I can do to combat them. As such, I cannot guarantee that spoilers will not appear where they shouldn’t, at least for a brief period of time.

If you want to guarantee that you won’t stumble upon any spoilers, the safest course of action is to not read ANY comments on this or any blog until after you’ve read the book. For that matter, you should probably stop surfing the Internet altogether and turn off the TV for the rest of the week. Now that the book has (apparently) been leaked on BitTorrent, lots of people are going to find out the (alleged) ending, and even well-meaning folks may inadvertently let something slip (explicitly or implicitly). And of course, as this afternoon’s incident proves, plenty of jerks will deliberately try to ruin everyone’s fun.

In any event, I beg the good faith of regular readers on this blog. I realize this whole situation is a major “don’t stick peas up your nose” temptation for those who scorn Potter fans as a bunch of obsessed nerds, but for the love of all that is holy, please resist it. (Obviously, anyone who doesn’t resist it will be instantly and permanently banned from the blog, as the aforementioned New York Times troll already has been.)

Just in case this isn’t already clear, don’t post spoilers in comments on this post! This thread is for discussing this issue without revealing anything about the book. Spoilers go in “That Which Must Not Be Blogged.” Thanks!

P.S. Also, don’t stick peas up your nose! :)

As of today, Becky is officially 16 weeks pregnant — and little Baby Loy is now “about the size of an avocado.” Here is a highly scientific image of what the baby currently looks like, created with the latest ultrasound technology:

Note the hair color!

(What was that I said about this being crunch time? Well, I think I’ve officially cracked. With a mighty crunch.)

Anyway, on a more serious note, Becky has been reporting for almost a week now that she thinks she can sometimes feel the baby move around. I didn’t believe her at first (it’s pretty early for that, especially for a first pregnancy), but then yesterday morning, she pointed out that her baby bump* was distinctly lopsided — it was definitely over on the right-hand side of her belly. A few hours later, it was centered again. So yeah, I guess the little tyke is already squirming around in there. Maybe the baby is unusually active… either that, or we’ve actually got quadruplets and we just don’t know it yet. But, shhh, never mind that now, I don’t need anything extra to panic about, at least until the bar exam is over!

On a distinctly less serious note, this week of pregnancy marks the last week in Baby Loy’s gestational life in which he or she will not know whether Harry Potter lives or dies. Oh, don’t kid yourselves: that bit of knowledge will go directly through the umbilical cord into the baby’s brain. It’s that important. Anyway, yeah, by the time Week 17 starts, we’ll be in Denver, either Voldemort or Harry (or perhaps both) will be dead, and I’ll be in full-on, holy-crap, 24-hours-left-to-cram-for-the-bar mode.

Speaking of which… back to the books.

*Oh, and yes, she totally has a bump! It’s not huge, but it’s there. And when she wears maternity clothes, she looks totally pregnant and TOTALLY adorable. Thus far, she hasn’t let me blog photos of any of this, but stay tuned. It’ll happen eventually.

As should be obvious from the countdown sidebar at left, it’s crunch time for bar prep… and if today’s PMBR practice exam is any indication, I still have quite a bit of “crunching” left to do.

So, at the risk of inviting ridicule vis a vis my tendency to say “blogging will be light” and then ignore my own protestations and continue blogging just as much… blogging will be rather light for the next nine days or so.

Guestbloggers, if you have anything you’ve been saving up for fear of it getting instantly bumped by my hyperactive blogging, now would be the time. :)

Now I really feel like I’m back in law school…

Aww! That was just moments ago. This was last night:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix did rather well in its first weekend at the box office.

P.S. I just e-mailed Nikki Finke, in part:

I’ve been pondering the likely impact of the Harry Potter 7 book on the second-weekend receipts of the Harry Potter 5 movie. My theory is that next Friday’s receipts will be slightly elevated due to Potter fans whetting their appetites for the book by going to see the movie again, while next Saturday’s receipts will be drastically reduced because every Potter fan in the universe will be at home reading the book, not at the theater watching the movie. I’m just wondering what are proper metrics to test this theory. What would be the “expected” drop-off percentage — for a movie of Harry Potter’s caliber, released on a Wednesday — from first-Friday-to-second-Friday and from first-Saturday-to-second-Saturday? Maybe that’s too specific of a question to give a good answer to, but I’m wondering if you could give me some rough ballpark idea, at least. That way I can either gloat when my theory is proven right, or hang my head in shame when it’s proven wrong.

It’ll also be interesting to see the long-term impact of the book on the movie’s receipts after the second weekend — i.e., will the third week, fourth week, etc. see less robust box-office receipts that one would expect, because Potter fans will consider the movie “so last month” after reading the book and finding out how it all ends?

UPDATE: Finke writes back: “any drop off less than 50% would be considered normal. 30% or less incredible. 40% or less excellent. personally i dont think book will have any effect on movie either way. different animals.”

Well, she’s a box-office expert and I’m not, but I think the Harry Potter book is going to be such a cultural phenomenon that it will have a detectable effect. My guess is that the Friday “bump” might not be measurable, but the Saturday “dip” will. We’ll see.

As I wrote in my reply to Finke, “I suppose the question, really, is what percentage of next Saturday’s Order of the Phoenix watchers would normally be expected to be avid Potter fans, as opposed to casual moviegoers. The numbers of the latter won’t be impacted by the book’s timing. The numbers of the former, I think, will.”

Becky’s latest hobby — which I think is really cool — is sending letters, care packages and various requested items to American soldiers stationed overseas through BooksForSoldiers.com. We can’t afford to break the bank on this effort, but a lot of the stuff they want is surprisingly cheap (in some cases, they just want letters, even from strangers, which kinda breaks your heart), and it makes you feel good to actually “support the troops” in some tangible, even if very small, way.

It’s sometimes amusing, and sometimes heart-rending, to read the lists of things that soldiers are requesting. (You have to be an “Official BFS Volunteer” to view the troop requests; it’s free to join, but to become an official volunteer, you have to get the application notarized.)

For example, it’s kinda funny that some of these guys, after spending their “on duty” time fighting real-life insurgents with real-life weapons, want to spend their “off duty” time playing violent video games and shooting each other with squirt guns. Then again, it serves as a reminder that these are young people, mostly young men — barely older than boys, really — who have volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way, away from their families, in defense of the freedoms that so many of us take for granted (a noble decision whatever one thinks of their current mission). That fact hits home repeatedly when you read one request after another for video games, DVDs, and glossy magazines like Maxim.

On the tear-jerking front, your heart hurts when you read soldiers’ requests for gifts to send home to their children for birthdays they’re missing, or the request from an expectant father who wanted baby books so he could audio-record himself reading them aloud, then send the tapes to his wife so that she can play the recordings to her belly, allowing their unborn child to hear its daddy’s voice.

Anyway, I’d encourage anyone with a bit of free time to get involved with this. It gives you a warm fuzzy feeling to think you might be brightening somebody’s day “over there.” And if you don’t have the time or energy to send stuff yourself, but you still want to help in some way, make a donation via my PayPal link — I’ll put all PayPal contributions received for the remainder of this month into Becky’s send-stuff-to-the-soldiers fund. Here’s the link (it’s also in the left sidebar):

Is it really “easy” to get so distracted by video games that your children nearly die of neglect? Hmm.

(Hat tip: Fark, whose headline is, “Sure, the kids are starving to death, covered in sores and cat urine, but mom’s 17th-level half-elf paladin KICKS ASS.”)