Of Which I am a Fan

Here are some random things I have experienced the last few days of which I am now quite a fan.

Doodle Jump

Hank introduced me to this iPhone game last week, after claiming his son was addicted to it. The game is simply chock full of win. It's very simply, and I've found myself playing again and again both at the poker table or at home on packing breaks. While at Bay 101 I was playing during a big pot (in which I was not involved) and towards the end I died and let out a help of pain. Everyone laughed (they knew what I was doing) and the guy next to me said in a very serious tone "It's not funny when people die". Reading this now it's not really that funny but at the table people were almost hurting themselves laughing.

Doodle Jump Wikipedia
Doodle Jump Video

There is another app available called Doodle Army that I can only assume is also fantastic.

Party Poker

You'll note that I have a link to Party Poker on my blog now. This is because I was contacted by a marketing company and have a "contract" (I'm using the term loosely) to display the link for 12 months and actually get paid for it. I actually have a sponsor! As an aside, the uptick in ad clicks that happened a few months ago when I mentioned looks extremely comical on my adsense lifetime graph.

The California Grand

Last Friday Pete, Hank and myself took a field trip to the California Grand Casino. It was excellent in every regard. First of all, we all arrived with a new player coupon that gave us a free $30 in chips, so long as we pinky promised to play for at least 2 hours. Second of all, they have a $2 lunch special where you get to pick one of 4 dishes (a pizza and salad thingie, chicken fried rice, a blt and fries, or some pasta dish). People in SoCal probably aren't finding this surprising, as food down there is free so long as you play a reasonably sized game (usually 20/40 and up), but up here it's common for me to spend $10 or more on my lunch at Bay 101 or Garden City. Then we had the building itself, which is brand new and probably the nicest in the Bay Area. And finally, the games. Oh the games. Even with Hank, Pete myself, and another friend who also made the trip in his own car at the 15/30 table, the game was still superb. If Hank and Pete were in the blinds (I was seated across the table from them for about an hour) I could literally count on an 8+ way pot. For some reason they use the arcane one chip on the button rule (something I haven't seen in years), which further stimulates action (you're already 1/3rd of the way in, on the button....96o with 4 limpers? EZ call). Eventually we all got moved to the main game (within 15 minutes of each other, which was also fantastic) and found it to be even better than must move. Everybody won (except Hank), and everybody had a ball. I strongly suggest you try it out if you live anywhere near the place.