Solid last week with a 3-1 mark. As predicted here, Texas Tech and Houston did not put up the astronomical total number that the public was expecting and Vegas cleaned up on all the Over bets falling flat. Time to find some more opportunities to cash in, so let’s get to it.

Florida State Seminoles -4 at Boston College Eagles

This game opened at -6 and it was bet down heavily almost immediately. The ‘Noles took it on the chin at home in a very flat performance against an underrated South Florida squad, and that has influenced the public into going the other way. But what sticks out to me is that Boston College is simply NOT a good football team. They don’t have the scheme or athletes to hang with FSU, and I think the ‘Noles will bounce back in a big way and cover easily. Lay the points and take the Seminoles.

Auburn Tigers at Tennessee Volunters Under 52

The total opened at 47.5 and has steadily moved up, but now it’s at a spot where going the other way is the smart play. The Volunteers have a very good defense but are absolutely dreadful on offense, with one of the worst starting QBs in the entire country. Auburn is the opposite, a much improved offense but an average defense. I think they will split the difference and end up playing a 24-17 type affair. Take the Under 52.

Houston Cougars -16 at Texas El Paso Miners

We’re going with the hot team and riding them to the bank. Houston is firing on all cylinders and is flying high after beating a very game TTU side. UTEP got massacred by Texas. The trend for both teams continues as the Cougs blow out the Miners on the road. Take Houston and lay the points.

Ohio State Buckeyes at Indiana Hoosiers +18

This is simply too many points to pass up. It’s a night road game for the Buckeyes, and Indiana has proven to be better than the experts were predicting. OSU should still win, but IU should be competitive enough to cover. Take the points and the Hoosiers.

Last week: 3-1
All time: 19-10

Took it on the chin with our initial slate of picks, going 1-2. It took a late score by the ‘Skins to keep me from getting blanked. We’re going back to CFB to break the slide and get back to making money.

Missouri Tigers -7 at Nevada Wolfpack

Blaine Gabbert leads a surprisingly explosive offense into Reno to do battle against the Pistol formation of the Wolfpack. This one won’t be close, as Missouri rolls early and coasts to a comfortable win. Lay the touchdown and take the Tigers.

Miami Hurricanes -2.5 at Virginia Tech Hokies

This one is for FRANK, who keeps egging me on to make picks on my favorite teams. The Hurricanes are riding a wave of momentum after pounding Georgia Tech at home and climbing back into the Top 10 for the first time in 5 or 6 years. The Hokies are struggling mightily on offense and needed a last minute miracle to beat Nebraska last Saturday. There will be no such luck come this weekend, as Miami pulls away in the second half to win by 10. Lay the points and take the Hurricanes.

Texas Tech at Houston Cougars Under 73

At first glance this is a battle of high-powered offenses, but but TTech is coming off a bruising loss at Texas and is caught in a nasty predicament with another road game against a resurgent Houston program led by head coach Kevin Sumlin, who has transformed an average squad into a mid-major to be reckoned with. The Cougs will light it up, but expect the Red Raiders to falter enough to not cover the O/U. Take the Under 73 total.

California Golden Bears at Oregon Ducks +5.5

Another FRANK BANK special. The Ducks have always been a tough foe at home in front of their rabid fans and this will be no exception. Cal showed significant weaknesses against a very mediocre Minnesota team on the road that played them even for 3 1/2 quarters. Expect the Ducks to stack the front against Cal running back Jahvid Best and force Kevin Riley to beat them through the air. I sense an upset and think the Ducks will win, straight up. Take Oregon and the points.
Last week: 1-2
All time: 16-9

It’s been a while since my last update (almost 5 months), but thanks to having finally finished work on Uncharted 2 I’m back to having time to do things like:

• sleep more than 5 hours
• see my wife more than 30 minutes a day
• playing online & live poker
• watch football

I’m quite happy with how the game turned out and hopefully it sells a lot of copies. The price cut to $299 on the new PS3 Slim model certainly won’t hurt our chances. But this not-so-thinly veiled brag is not why I’m posting. It’s about NFL football picks obv, so let’s get to it.

Washington Redskins +6 1/2 at New York Giants

There’s just something about this line that screams ‘wrong.’ This is a traditional division rivalry game between two very similar teams. Both like to run the football and both have tough, physical defenses. However, the Giants are hurting at WR now that Plaxico Burress is gone. Last season in the home opener vs the Skins, Burress had 10 receptions for 133 yards, well over half of Manning’s game total in an ugly 16-7 win. You take that out of the Giants offense and you’re looking at a far closer score. I’m assuming that it’s enough to make a 6 1/2 point edge profitable to go the other way on. Take the Skins and the points.

Denver Broncos at Cincinnati Bengals -4 1/2

The Broncos are a fucking mess and their QB is Kyle Orton. Do you really need more reasons? Take the Bengals and lay the points.

Kansas City Chiefs at Baltimore Ravens Total 36

The Ravens are a 12 to 13 1/2 point favorite, but that’s not what is of interest here. The total line is already on the low side, but not low enough in my opinion. The Ravens will utterly dominate the Chiefs while not scoring many points themselves, so take the Total 36 Under.

I’ll have college picks next week to go along with more NFL selections. Until then, good luck to us.

Last week: 0-0

All time: 15-7

I’ve been super busy working on Uncharted 2 and haven’t had much time to watch sports or play poker. However, I made some time last Sunday and played the big ‘grinder’ MTTs (1/4 Million on Stars and Deuce Deuce 200k on FTP) and cashed both. The early structure of the Stars event really stinks (the FTP Deuce Deuce is far superior in this regard) but you can get ITM in less than 2 hours, which is absurd for an event with 10k registrants.

I went much deeper in the FTP event and placed in the top 150, which is the best finish I have had in that particular tournament, but I feel semi-disappointed that I did not go farther. I felt I played very well, calmly thinking through certain situations and discussing previously played hands with my good friend FRANK of the BBC blog THE FRANK TANK, but my bust hand was a situation that could have been completely avoided.

I had reshoved on an loose opener directly to my right at least three times in the last several orbits and I knew that he might look me up lighter than expected if I did it again. Knowing that, I should have been able to easily avoid getting myself in a situation where I’m a severe dog for my tournament life. Unfortunately I lost my concentration and focus for a brief moment and what happened, happened.

Now that’s not really that big of a deal as it’s just one tourney, but this situation has happened to me a number of times recently when I’m deep in the money trying to make a final table run. I think I need to re-examine what it is I’m doing that is causing me to flame out in spectacular fashion on a consistent basis; but besides that, I’m still really happy with how PokerVT has made me a better tournament player in a short amount of time. I wish that I could dedicate even more time to watching videos and studying, but it will have to wait until after UC2 is finished.

The first two rounds of the NCAA tournament are behind us and we’ve learned a few things:

• ACC is always overrated (except Puke and UNC)
• Pac-10, Big-10 and Big-12 are better than expected
• Never ever except anything good from a Tubby Smith-coached team
• LOUISVILLE #1
  

And no matter how many times it happens (every single year it seems), there is nothing quite like watching the upset happen. Siena shocked Blowhio Taint with a couple of deep threes in double OT, Cleveland State dropped a Cleveland Steamer directly on Weak Florist’s head, and the ugliest, worst, more boring team in the known universe (aka Wisconsin Badgers) somehow overcame a double digit deficit and beat a far more talented but mentally retarded Florida State team.

On the poker front, I continue to grind away at 5.50 and $11 mtts and the occasional set of single table turbos, but I haven’t made a significant deep run or cash in a long while. It felt like my mtt game has stagnated and/or I’m making a ton of idiot mistakes. So to that end, I have thrown in my lot with the PokerVT bandwagon and have started watching videos from our resident clownhat JCrapple along with shit from the other banana suckers on the PVT roster. After a few videos, I immediately picked up on a couple of things, mainly that I’m being way too active and playing too many hands out of position.

Now, those aren’t really the things that I needed PVT for to figure out, but listening to someone else exhaustively explain why he fired 2 barrels with junk or why that guy who raised is a prime target to get reshipped on has given me cause to more deeply examine my own situations as to what exactly I’m doing in any given hand. In the short/immediate run, it’s made me stop ‘auto-acting’ which is very important. I believe I fell into a rut where I was just clicking buttons and not really paying attention to what the other players were doing. Even at the small stakes level I play at, you can’t do dumb shit like that and expect to be successful over an extended period of time. I hope to learn more interesting aspects of tourney play from PVT as I continue to gorge on the material (and there is a shit ton of it to watch) and get myself back into the realm of cashing consistently that I was hovering at around the middle of last year.

So since the last update… welp.

I got a call the day before I was supposed to interview at the studio whose phone interview I bombed terribly, from a friend who works at a different studio I had worked at before, asking if I wanted to come in and talk about perhaps working for them. I guess word of Flektor’s failure spread pretty quickly, heh! Drove over there and their initial pitch was for a one project contract with no guarantee of continuing work when the game was finished. I balked. After having worked a few years with full benefits and a steady income, I wasn’t prepared to drop back down to hourly wages and scrambling to live check to check, not to mention I would be taking a step back in my career arc by not being in some type of position of authority with a fair amount of responsibility. So I laid out my demands, shook hands and left. 5 minutes later, before I was even out of the parking lot, they called me back upstairs and made a serious offer that fulfilled nearly everything I wanted. Pretty incredible, IMO, but I still wanted to go on the other interview(literally down the block, these places are almost next door to each other)  just to see what they had to offer.  It was not nearly as enticing, so I signed on with the initial studio and it’s been nearly three weeks of hectic scrambling as we got the game into a state where we could show it to the media.

Which leads to this next bit. The press embargo was officially lifted today so I can actually post about it (a little.) The game is Uncharted 2, from long-time Sony developer Naughty Dog. Below are links to our first official public previews from various online publications:

IGN

Gamespot

Joystiq

1Up

Kotaku

It’s shaping up to be an even better experience than the first Uncharted and that was already a really good game. The large variety of environments compared to the first game will do a great deal to expand the world of Nathan Drake and serve as a backdrop to further flesh out his personality. No, that’s not a quote from a press release.

In other news, the NFL season ended Sunday with an average 3 quarters of a Super Bowl that suddenly metamorphisized into a classic in the final frame with an unbelievable final drive from Ben Rothlisberger and the Steelers to win the game, just minutes after Kurt Warner hit Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald on a slant that went 77 yards for a then go-ahead touchdown.  Warner cemented his status as a future NFL Hall of Famer by getting to the Super Bowl for the third time, on two separate teams, and he has thrown for more yards in 3 games than Joe Montana in 4 games or John Elway in 5. Though he’s 1-2 in those 3 games, TLOANPF points out that in both losses, Warner drove his team to a game-tying or lead-changing score late in the game, only to have his defense betray him in the final seconds. Hats off to him and I hope he decides to play another year.

Summary of the last 24 hours

• worst phone interview of my life Jesus I was terrible IMO
• still got a call back for personal interview later this week
• deposited $50 on FTP
• won a few bucks at PLO
• took 2nd in a 3.30 turbo mtt today to double br
• shot taken at 8/16 LO8b to 2.5x that shit

tl;dr: standard TLOANPF antics

sup

an Angry Whopper appears!

jalapenos, bacon, onion ring, bbq sauce omg sounds good

EAT ATTACK

wtf i am more annoyed than angry, it sux

Final Verdict:

Barkley rating: 1.5 out of 5 drunken blowjobs

<evang_UTES_BCS_CHAMPS> tonight will be the greatest post of my life
<evang_UTES_BCS_CHAMPS> angry whoppers
<evang_UTES_BCS_CHAMPS> bob stoops losing
<evang_UTES_BCS_CHAMPS> praise allah
<FRANK_U-T-E-S_UTESUTESUTES> job interview

Monday morning

So we are at work for about 6 hours this past Monday, after a couple of 3-day work weeks due to holidays, when a squadron of pressed shirt & slacks wearing corporate types come streaming in the back door unannounced. They move as one, like a skulking pride of lions on the hunt, trying to sneak through the side corridor unnoticed but very obviously full of ill tidings.

Fuck.

They bumrush our V.P.’s office, huddle with him for about 10 minutes, and then the inevitable “quick company meeting!” shout emanates from that general direction. Worried looks and furrowed brows are now on the menu. Everyone gathers ’round, and we get the bad news in less than 15 seconds. The company is shutting down, effective Friday, and all our asses are officially out of a job.

Fuck. Double fuck. Triple fuck.

The last 48 hours have have been a roller coaster of emotions that I still can’t fully comprehend. One second I feel confident, the next utterly depressed, and then extremely angry. It’s been a long time since I’ve found myself in such a predicament and this has shaken me to the core.

Although I sometimes talk a little shit about how ‘easy’ my job is/was, the truth is I was pretty heavily involved in the evolution and growth of our company. From the very beginning when it was just 6 or 7 guys sharing an office space smaller than my apartment to the spacious cavern we currently inhabit where every one of the 25 employees has top-notch computers and Aeron chairs, I’ve felt I’ve had a hand in that tremendous growth. Having the entire company axed in a single day makes me feel like I have wasted 2 and 1/2 years of my life for nothing and that’s a thought that I’m having a great deal of trouble reconciling with. I understand that there’s a large number of factors as to why we ultimately failed, but it still feels terrible.

It’s not ALL bad news, though. One positive thing that has resulted from this situation is that I have decided that I’m going to go back to working on video games. It’s the only field where I ever felt completely at ease with myself and my place in the world, and even through the time at my current spot it has always been in the back of my mind to get back to doing that. Now I have a couple of solid years of running a squad of people below me, so I think I make a pretty good candidate for mid-level management or maybe even an entry level associate producer position. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.

tl;dr- lost my job, fuck FOX, lol video games, help

With one of the most exciting regular season weekends in recent years just a day behind us, we have officially arrived at the NFL post-season. Several teams that were expected to make it in were left behind, including the New England Patriots, New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys. The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers were thought to be the favorites for the NFC North title, but both faltered in the second half of the season. Now more than ever, it appears that the salary cap enforces parity to the point that any team is never further than a season away from being in or out of the playoffs.

However, in the place of the fallen we welcome a slew of unexpected but very worthy successors: the Minnesota Vikings survived quarterback benchings, injuries and suspensions to win the NFC North; the Miami Dolphins (TLOANPF’s unabashed favorite) completed the greatest turnaround in franchise history by going from 1-15 in 2007 to 11-5 in 2008 and captured the AFC East crown; and the Atlanta Falcons, with rookie QB Matt Ryan at the helm and one of the most potent rushing attacks in free agent acquisition Michael Turner and Jerious Norwood, fought through a difficult NFC South division to capture a wild card seed.

Onto the wild card picks:

Atlanta @ Arizona, -2. Saturday at 4:30pm EST. The Dirty Birds, with the aforementioned Turner and Norwood, are exactly the kind of team that the pass-happy Cardinals do not deal with very well: a physical team that wants to run the ball and control the clock, thus shortening the game and keeping Kurt Warner and his excellent trio of receivers off the field. Take the Falcons and lay 2 points.

Indianapolis @ San Diego, +1.5. Saturday at 8pm EST. Somehow the San Diego Chargers backdoored their way into the playoffs, but this team is no fluke nor does it lack in talent. In fact, they were considered massive underachievers until they somehow found their stride in mid-November and they have rolled since. Thire offense can run and pass the ball equally well, and the Colts, although they have Peyton Manning on their side, simply haven’t been able to run the ball and that will cost them on the road in the playoffs. Take San Diego and the points.

Baltimore @ Miami, Over 37. Sunday at 1pm EST. The over is the best play in a game that is otherwise too close to call. The Ravens are currently 3 point favorites on the road, but the current version of the Dolphins is too good to be 3 point home dogs, in my opinion. Both offenses come into this game on a bit of a roll and I think it will more like 24-21. Take the Over 37.

Philadelphia @ Minnesota, +2. This line makes very little sense to me, as the Eagles are an average running team and the Vikings are excellent at running and stopping the run. The home dome and crowd is also worth at least a couple points and if you take that into account, that means the linemakers thinks the Eagles are a 5 or 6 point favorite on a neutral field. Huh? Something isn’t right about this, so let’s break the book and take Minnesota and the points.

Lastly, we are rolling along on the college bowl picks. Check my previous posts and there are still a few games left for you to make some post-Christmas money on.

Last week: 3-1

All time: 15-7