Announcing the WWdN Tournament of Champions At PokerStars

Posted on By Wil

Today is the first Tuesday edition of the Friday Game. Since I didn’t play last week, and was therefore unable to be knocked out by someone, I decided to make good on a threat I issued at the WPBT Winter Classic, and named this week’s game after the blogfather himself, Iggy.

What: WWdN: Bonus Code IGGY Invitational
Where: PokerStars.
When: Tuesday December 20th. 7:00 PM EST
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 16742725
Buy-in: $10+1

We are already in our ninth week, which just blows me away. It rules the most that these tourneys continue to draw as many players as they do. Like PokerGeek said, "It’s the world’s biggest homegame."

Last week, I mentioned that a major announcement regarding the tournaments would come out, and sugggested that wild and rampant speculation should immediately ensue. Well, the speculation wasn’t particularly wild or rampant, which I’ll chalk up to holiday exhaustion, rather than a soul-crushing lack of enthusiasm, but here’s the news:

Every player who wins one of the Tuesday Night WWdN Invitationals will be freerolled by PokerStars into a WWdN Tournament Of Champions Sit-N-Go, where they’ll get to play against me for some serious money. A PokerStars table seats nine players, so every eight weeks, we’ll play a WWdN:ToC where I will join the eight weekly champions to crown the Super Mega Totally Awesome Champion. Since we have eight winners already, I’ll work with PokerStars to schedule the first WWdN:ToC in the very near future.

I will be live blogging tonight’s game at CardSquad, so if check it out if you’re into that sort of thing. I hope to see lots of players tonight!

Lakeside Shadow

Posted on By Wil

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I‘m not sure how many people are listening to Radio Free Burrito, but a bunch of you wrote in asking for a stand-alone MP3 of my ambient tune Lakeside Shadow.

Look, you’re totally not the boss of me, but I did sort of say that if enough people asked for it, I’d put it here on its own.  I’m proud of the composition, and I’m happy to put it out there for anyone to listen to, or use in a creative way.

If you like it, you’ll probably like some of the artists who influenced me over the years: Woob (especially 1194, and especially the track strange air) Dedicated (especially Global Communication, also called 76 14), and Solitaire (especially Ritual Ground). Also, Instinct Records (still alive) and Silent Records (sadly, tragically, defunct since 1996) released an amazing number of genre-defining ambient discs in the 90s. And now, just to prove how hardcore I am, I’m going to throw out Pete Namlook, and the FAX Label, but their stuff is far more experimental than the rest of my list, and isn’t what I’d use to introduce a new listener to Ambient music.

Finally, if you can find it, Silent Records put out an incredible record called Earth to Infinity (I think in 1994) which was pulled shortly after it was released, due to some sampling issues. I think it’s one of the greatest ambient recordings of all time, and don’t ask me for it because I’m not going to jail for you, Chachi.

Anyway, here it is. The file is 4.9MB, and is a 192kbps MP3, at 44.1kHz. It’s 3:30:  Download lakeside_shadow.mp3

Lakeside Shadow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. If you decide to do something cool with it, let me know and I may just
link it up. If you want to pretend we’re really in the radio business,
you can send me some money and a hooker to help influence my decision.

The photo in this entry, which is the photo I’d use if I’d made this into an actual record or whatever, was taken by jpmatth. I found it at flickr (using the tags winter and lake) and is used according to his Creative Commons license. Pretty cool, huh?

WPT could lose some top pros

Posted on By Wil

I read in a couple of blogs last week that some
poker pros are unhappy with the release the World Poker Tour requires
them to sign before they can play in WPT events.

So I called up Chris Ferguson, who I’d heard is unable to play in WPT
events due to the scope of the current release, got some comments from
him and wrote an article about it for CardSquad.

These days, when you sign up for a poker tournament, in addition to
plunking down your buy-in and flashing your ID, you often have to sign
a release. In fact, for any televised tournament, including World Poker
Tour events, if you refuse to sign the release, you won’t be allowed to
play. This has created some tension between the World Poker Tour and some of the top tournament players in the world, who who can’t — or won’t — agree to the WPT’s terms.

[. . .]

[T]he
player the WPT may miss the most is 2000 World Series of Poker Champion
  Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. I
caught Chris a few minutes before a tournament last Thursday, and he
told me, "The release has gotten worse over time, and I simply can’t
sign it." He explained that the WPT release is so broad, it asks for
rights Chris is not legally able to relenquish. "I have business deals
that prevent me signing this release," He said.

Some Internet commentors have been critical of the pros, suggesting
that they wouldn’t be in this position if television hadn’t made them
famous, but Chris said, "I’m not asking for money, just the right to
control my image outside the program." He reminded me that in
tournament poker, the players put up all the money for the prize pool,
in addition to paying for the rake. "In no other sport do participants
put up [as much money as poker players do] for the events," he said,
and that’s a major point of contention for some players, who feel that
they are taking all of the financial risk while the WPT profits from
their tournament participation.

Commenting is currenty hosed at CardSquad (probably because they are
associated with me, and we all know how technology breaks whenever I
get too close to it — NASA calls me before an important space probe
launch, just so I won’t do something crazy like think about it) so feel
free to comment on it here.

The story has also made it to digg,
even though it doesn’t say anything about the Xbox, haxxoring
[whatever] or contain a top ten list. So check me out! I’m totally
doing journalism . . .ish . . . things.

I’m grows up and grows up and grows up! Yeeehhhaaahahahahaaa!

Radio Free Burrito Episode 3 (fixed. again.)

Posted on By Wil

This episode of The Burrito is the longest, yet, weighing in at 37 minutes. It was so long, in fact, that I had to break it into two parts in garage band, and use audacity to join them together. However, it’s relatively small; just 15.2MB. I listened to it in headphones and through my Powerbook’s speakers, and it sounds fine to me, but let me know if you think it sucks. You can also let me know if you like it, of course.

I’m not very happy with this episode, as I fell into one of my chief complaints about podcasts in general: it rapidly devolves into just some guy talking about bullshit. I mostly did the show so I could stay on the weekly schedule, and I really just wanted to share this song that I made in garageband, because I think it’s kind of cool.

I’m always interested in feedback which can be sent to podcast at wil wheaton dot net. The feedback some listeners have chosen to send in has been extremely useful, whether it’s praise or constructive criticism, so thank you all for that. Questions for next week’s show, which will focus exclusively on family and holiday themes, can be sent to ask at wil wheaton dot net.

Anyway, If you have 37 minutes to spend listening to me blather on about bullshit, please enjoy: Download radio_free_burrito_episode_three.mp3
<– the second fixed version. The first one had huge gaps where I addicentally erased a track, while the second one had an additional track layered over the beginning that I didn’t delete when I replaced the first deleted track, for fuck’s sake. But this should be the "good" version now, and if you have one of the earlier versions, hermetically seal it and start planning for your retirement.

Show Notes:

  • Yes, this should be called Episode Two. I am an idiot.
  • Continuing the "I’m an idiot" meme, I inadvertently deleted an entire track, which took some of the bumpers with it. This results in about 20 seconds of silence around the 5 minute mark. I will repair this, and replace the current file later tonight. Sorry about that. Okay, thanks to some audacity-fu and a bit of garageband voodoo, I fixed it. Nothing to hear here. Move along.
  • The intro music comes from Squirrel Nut Zippers’ 1996 gold album, Hot. The song is titled "Hell."
  • My tune is called "Lakeside Shadow." I made it in Garageband.
  • Comments can be sent to podcast at wil wheaton dot net, questions can be sent to ask at wil wheaton dot net. Please use a descriptive subject line.
  • Radio Free Burrito is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
  • Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend!

Mirrors, provided by WWdN reader Brian M:

Low: 6.46 megs, vbr 24kb max, mono
http://badmonkies.com/rfb/radio_free_burrito_episode_three-low.mp3

High torrent:
http://athena.unearthed.org/torrents/radio_free_burrito_episode_three.mp3.torrent

(Thank you, Brian!)

friday night at MGM

Posted on By Wil

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My WPBT Trip Report is currrently under
construction [insert totally awesome 1996 .gif of a man with a shovel
on a yellow diamond here. It’s retro-ironicool!] but I came across a
photo that so perfectly captures my Friday night at MGM, I had to post
it right now.

This comes from Flickr, via CujoFan’s blog. You will note that, even though I had position on Paul Phillips, he still managed to make me his bitch, which is probably easy when I’m playing near my gulp limit, and he’s playing below his "guess what I found under a couch cushion" limit.

I guess it goes without saying that Paul is a remarkable poker player . . . but until you’ve sat with him, and watched him completely pwn a table, you have no idea how scary good he actually is. Paul has said that he’s just about finished playing poker, which is a real shame. He could utterly destroy just about any WSOP field he enters, and I’d like to see him take at least one bracelet before he retires.