Mike Rundle's Weblog

Straight Flush, Verizon Trip, Federal Hacking Charges

Last night I got a straight flush (7-8-9 of clubs) while playing three-card poker at Turning Stone Casino. The payout was 40:1, so you can imagine the black chips flowing forth into my hand while my gaping jaw hit the table and my eyes got as large as golf balls. Right after I won that absurd amount of money (which was desperately needed by the way, I'm a pauper in real life) I ran over to the 3-6 Hold 'Em table where my two friends were playing and I couldn't spit the words out of my mouth fast enough. I ran directly to the cage, cashed my dough, and laughed a little bit as the big-faced bills spilled into my awaiting hands.

I walked briskly out to the lobby and pulled my cellphone out in dramatic twisty/showy flair in order to call my girl and tell her the good news. As I got it out, I saw a girl with a drink cart and I decided that I wanted to grab a Coke before I made the call. She got the soda out, and as I pulled the wad of green out of my pocket in order to tip her, all my money flew dramatically out of my hand and landed on the floor and on her drink cart. We both immediately bent over to pick up my bills, and when I bent over I forgot that I had a soda in my hand so I promptly spilled that all over my cellphone which was in my other hand. I didn't pay attention to it at the time for I was trying to get my money, but after the money was accounted for I noticed that my screen no longer worked and the phone was vibrating constantly. About two hours later my phone miraculously decided to turn on, so I called Eleni and then decided that I'd go to Verizon today in order for them to check it out.

While waiting at the Verizon store (aka, the last ring of hell) this kid started talking to me about this LG phone I was looking at. Turns out he's an IT person at LeMoyne college near Syracuse, and we got to chatting about multi-processor motherboard design, the benefits of 64-bit applications, Raid-0 SATA hard drive configurations, and other fun stuff. Then he decided to tell me his life story.

In highschool, as a Sophomore, he decided to hack into his high school's network in order to snoop and see what he could find. Turns out he hit the motherload, and found a directory simply named "Tests" which had all midterms and finals for every class in the highschool. He and his friends stored every piece of data found in the folder locally, and then sold the questions and answers to the tests to excited students at $100 a pop which netted him slightly over $8k in profit.

From the profits acquired by his wrongdoings, he and his friends decided to totally geek-out and build a rocket-propelled lake kayak using jet fuel stolen from a Lockheed Martin secure facility in Syracuse, NY. The only reason they did that, is because at the time, the guy I'll call Matt M. happened to have a cozy little internship at Lockheed doing Department of Defense goodies. So he used his security clearance to gain access to the jet hanger, then sneakily made it past some security guards late at night and stole 100+ octane jet fuel for their satanic creation.

That weekend they went up to White Lake and attached the kayak to the rocket engine (!!!!) they made out of all industrial-quality parts. Unfortunately, they cheaped-out on the hoses attaching the fuel tank to the engine, and the rocket blew up and burnt down a train car that was behind the testing grounds. As the train car kept burning, they booked it out of there in Matt's car. Unfortunately, as they were driving away, State Police cruisers rolled up on them after noticing the blaze and brought them to jail.

After Matt's father posted bail, the guys found out that one of the students who bought the final exam answers decided to rat them out, and now they were being brought in on federal hacking charges via co-operation between the State Police and FBI investigators. Matt was only 16 years old, but was facing life in prison because of the Three Strikes law and the three felony charges that lay in front of him — hacking, arson, trespassing and theft of government property.

Luckily, Matt's father is a bigtime physician in the Utica area and was able to pull some high-powered attorneys for his young son facing life in prison. The legal team managed to combine all three felony charges into one criminal mischief misdemeanor, and Matt got away with 200 hours of community service (which he only did 10, and forged the rest.)

Even if the story is totally false, damn do you meet some interesting people all because of spilt soda :)

Flush over a straight

And I was the straight. Six hours later, I broke even. God, I hate poker.

Texas Hold'em at Verno's

But first: Okay guys — especially Nicole! — here's a little beta page that shows off the new style of the site. I pretty much copied the code from the old phark.net site, but switched the colors and images. My goal was to keep it really simple, but interesting. On the right side (where there is currently nothing) will be the secondary navigation. But for right now, enjoy my newly redesigned About page. :)

All my friends gave into my incessant pestering and let me get some people together for a little buy-in tournament. We ended up playing over at Chad's friend Verno's house, and to be honest, I really don't remember the hands all that well because it was so late. But anyway, I won it for $20. So including the money I won at our regular poker night this past Monday, I'm now up $60 this week from Poker alone :)

I was scoping the 'net for some nice poker tables, and pretty much hit the proverbial jackpot. Using my extensive Googling skills (the query was "poker tables"), I managed to find Stine Game Tables — a poker player's equivalent to porn.

It appears as though the entire company consists of four people, and they make all of their tables by hand from (what appears to be) very expensive materials. I landed at the Build-Your-Own table section, and proceeded to make a dream table:

The table that I made wasn't round — it was a 9-person poker table (oblong/rectangular in shape like this table). The total price came out to $3600, but with the 20% discount offer they have going on, my table would cost under $2900.

The absolute coolest thing is that these tables aren't just for gaming — they include a dining tabletop to make it fit in with the rest of your kitchen. Check out this beautiful picture which includes the wood that I choose in the Build-Your-Own section.

So my fellow readers, my birthday is this coming Friday (March 26) and this would be a nice gift. Thanks in advance ;)

Poker Night: 3/15

I play poker. Hold'em, specifically. No, I'm not as good as Andrei — not even close — but I still like to play.

Our game tonight: $5 buy-in Hold'em Tournament. Winner take-all, second place is the first loser. We play the same game every Monday, with pretty much the same guys: myself, Chad, Adam, Leo, Random Guy, Dan, and Leo's buddy George (aka Geo, or Mr. Geo Metro).

I have been preparing for tonight's match since my stunning defeat last Monday (I went all-in on cards the Salvation Army wouldn't have accepted), and I was prepared to play as conservatively as needed in order to overtake everyone in the match. We started playing around 10pm (Adam's fault), and the game lasted until just after 3am. My strategy was to maintain my stacks of high society until some people went out early. And I did just that.

I only played high connectors or pairs (American Airlines, Big Slick, etc.) or medium-high connected cards (9 & 8 suited, T & J suited) for about two hours, and I was pretty much even. After Adam and Random Guy went out early, I decided to step the strategy up a notch or two.

I started playing more hands — stuff like 8s, and 5 & 6 suited — and it worked out well for me. I picked up a nice pot with a painted Flush around 12:30am, and that took most of the chips away from Dan who was one of the chip leaders at that point. A half-hour later, Chad went all-in on a semi-bluff, and got the socks knocked off his feet when two other guys called him. Game over for Chad, one of the strongest players at the table. Down to myself, Dan, Geo, and Leo — the fab-four if you will.

The blinds were pretty big now (8 and 16), so the short-stacked guys were in a tough spot. Fortunately, I wasn't short-stacked.

After playing alongside three guys for a few hours, Dan started to feel the box o' wine he punished and wanted to get to bed ASAP. He started playing irrationally, and went all-in with crap to make it a three-person game around 2:30am.

I was short-stacked big time, so I had to make some good decisions if I wanted a chance at this pot. I opted for the George Costanza-like approach, and did the opposite of what I would normally do to see where it would get me. Calling on Trey Six off-suit, check-raising without any sort of draw, etc. I started pulling down the blinds (16 and 32 at this point) pretty regularly, so that threw me right back into the contest.

Just before 3am, I looked at my cards to find the best two rectangles I had seen in about a half-hour: pocket 7s. I was the big-blind, and raised pre-flop. The other guys called me. Oops.

The flop came and it was huge, something like Q J 9. Others checked, and when it got to me, I hesitated for a moment. If I was to go all-in to give my other chips company, I couldn't make it look like the bluff that it definitely was. I threw on the Oscar face, took a deep breath, and pushed the pile.

Leo takes one look at me, says "You don't have it", and pushes his pile in too. Now it's all on George, and wow did it take him a long time to decide what to do. After memorizing his cards over and over again, he looks up at me, then to Leo, then back to me, then back to his cards. I could see the wheels turning in his head — he wanted to call so bad, but just couldn't pry his cards (nor his chips) out of his hand. He doesn't do it, but instead shows us he folded A Q.

"Queens? What the hell were you thinking?" shouted Leo and I in unison. For some reason, he was extremely complacent about the whole thing; it was as though he rationalized the lay down so much that his brain already had decided that he couldn't have won with Queens. That is until I laid my hand down. Pocket 7s. Crapola. Wow, was he pissed off.

Leo showed that he was looking for the big straight as I got up from the couch (doing my best Phil Helmuth impression) and waited for the runners. First one, no help. Second one, no help. I won with pocket 7s!

Now Geo and I are going heads-up. It is now just before 3am, and we've exchanged 50 chip blinds for a few hands. I decide that it's time to take the game into my own hands. I'm dealt Ace Trey... let's do it.

Check, check. Flop is 2 2 4. Raise, raise, call. Turn is 4. I can't let my chips go away that easily, so I go all-in. I figure that he doesn't have either a 2 or a 4, and my Ace kicker will be better than whatever he has. For no apparent reason, he calls me! He flips Q 9. We're both all-in, and he's short-stacked. One more card and I win. Down drops the Jack, it's all over.

Mike Rundle, victor of Poker Night on March 15th.