It’s not easy to go across town for breakfast or brunch. Especially if you’re like me and consider noon to be the beginning of the day on a weekend. But, I managed to pull myself out of bed for brunch downtown at a place called Artisan House. Surprisingly, it didn’t just have the kind of upscale brunch items I have grown used to, but a couple items I hadn’t seen before.
A lot of good things are happening in Downtown LA these days. One of these things is B.S. Taqueria, which is kind of like a spin-off from Broken Spanish, a restaurant that I have never been to and probably never will. Not surprisingly, it specializes in tacos. After a bit of a wait, we made our way to the back section that felt like eating outdoors at a taqueria in the tropics.
EDIT: Umamicatessen has become Umami Broadway and is more or less now just a glorified Umami Burger from what I hear.
The word “Umamicatessen” is quite a mouthful. And I’m pretty sure that’s what the people behind Umami Burger were thinking when they put together a deli in downtown LA. They were thinking, “We want to fill mouths with delicious deli food, while preserving the Umami name.” To me, that’s quite the name to maintain, because Umami is still my favorite burger in LA. Plus, while LA doesn’t have the big name delis of New York, there is still some stiff competition from the likes of Langer’s.
Originally situated near USC, Mo-Chica was a place I’d been wanting to get to for a while. The only trouble was that…well…why would I ever hang out around USC? Fortunately, earlier this year they moved to central Downtown LA to bring their Peruvian delights to a more cultured audience. I found my way to Mo-Chica for lunch and quickly found out they had themselves an interesting lunch special. And by interesting I mean that you couldn’t order any entrees without getting the lunch special. The lunch special included two sides and a dessert, which were different every day. In truth, they could have said all entrees come with two side items and a dessert, but for some reason the wording made me feel like I was somehow being cheated.
What’s the first thing you think about when someone tells you you’re going to a place called Garage Pizza? Flying unicorns with laser beam eyes? Doing the backstroke through a sea of sour patch gummy worms? No, you think of pizza found down a shady back alley with a haggard old man selling you a grimy looking slice of pizza out of a homemade oven built from used industrial parts. Thankfully none of those are true (despite the fact that flying unicorns with laser beam eyes are pretty sweet and totally real) and I can happily say that Garage Pizza is a legitimate, mostly haggard-free, pizza establishment.
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STRATEGIES
The basics of solid poker strategy involve many concepts that you must combine to become a consistently winning player. The following concepts are crucial to learning poker strategy:
- Tight play
- Aggressive play
- Random play
- Taking advantage of the mistakes of other players
Keep these concepts in mind as you develop as a poker player.
SOME POKER STRATEGY CONSIDERATIONS
DECISIONS FOR THE NEW POKER PLAYER
Decide whether you want to play poker to win or to play for fun. To play at a consistently winning level requires both time and effort. In other words, it takes work. There is nothing wrong with playing poker for fun, but there is no reason to plan to lose, even when you are playing for fun. However, deciding which type of poker player you want to be before you start will make your decisions and sessions easier. Test out these professional tips at Pkv Games online tables.
MAKE GOOD DECISIONS – THE RESULTS WILL FOLLOW
Even the best poker players in the world have losing sessions. Don’t make the mistake of expecting to win every time you play. Your goal should be to play to the best of your ability in every session. If you do, the cards and winnings will take care of themselves as you improve. Many players make the mistake of judging their poker playing ability based on the results of each session. Your goal should be to make the best possible play every time. The closer you come to this, the better your results will be.
THE MATHEMATICS OF POKER
Poker is a mathematical game, and it’s a game of incomplete information. That may sound complicated, but it really isn’t. On a very basic level, winning poker starts with the selection of which starting hands to play. If you enter the pot with the best hand more often than your opponents do, you will win more times than your opponents.
BEYOND STARTING HANDS
Starting hand selection is fundamentally important, but it’s only one piece of the poker strategy puzzle. Once you have mastered solid starting hand guidelines and understand how they change by your position at the table, the next area you should work on is your play for the rest of the hand. The area that separates professional players from amateurs is that professional players tend to play much better than their opponents during the remainder of the hand, after the starting hand decisions are made. This is especially true concerning the decisions made at the very end of every hand. These skills involve calculating pot odds, recognizing betting patterns, bluffing, and using position. The years of practice necessary to master the middle and end game play are well worth the effort, because even small improvements in a player’s abilities can have a tremendous effect on that player’s lifetime winnings.
AVOIDING TILT
Another meta-skill that should be part of a winning player’s poker strategy is avoiding tilt. Your opponents will use your emotions against you, but only if you let them. Emotional play results in poor decisions and lost money. Tilting and steaming can happen to anyone, and sometimes the only cure is a break from the game. That’s okay; the game will still be there ten minutes from now. In fact, it will still be there tomorrow.