Call for Action: Join the Poker Player’s Alliance

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Prestonp

If you aren’t an avid poker player, you may not have heard that the Department of Justice/FBI have recently take some very aggressive action against the game of poker as played through the internet. How aggressive? Well, just click on over to any one of FullTiltpoker, Pokerstars, or Absolutepoker and you’ll find the following notice.

The Banner Annoucing the Seisure of Poker Sites

The signs of tyranny

It spells out the that these sites have been seized as part of a larger criminal legal action against these companies and the individuals who run them. They’re out for blood… and money of course. Continue reading →

Posted in Poker, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

My First Letter to Mavis Dadzie

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Prestonp

Dear Mavis,

I’ve been your sponsor for a number of years now. I’ve lost track as to how many. I hope things are going well for you and that it’s making a difference in your life. Since this is my first letter, I guess I’ll tell you a bit about myself.

I have a 9-year old daughter. I attached her picture so you can see her. She’s almost your age. We have a lot of fun together. I got divorced from her mother a long time ago. I think that it was the sense of loss from the divorce that caused me to decide to become a sponsor.

These days I’ve gotten remarried. A lot of time people in these circumstances fight quite a bit with their former spouses, but I am lucky in that we all get along very well. My ex-wife and my new wife work together with me to give our daughter a good childhood, and it makes me very happy.

As for what I do, I’m a professional gambler. There’s a card game called Poker that I make a good bit of money at. I find it strange that I receive more money doing something that doesn’t really give much back to society. I went to college and got degrees in Chemistry and Geology, but pursuing those jobs just didn’t pay very well. In fact, my first job was working for the Department of Justice in a Crime Lab to help put away criminals. I made so little in that job that I couldn’t afford to pay back the loans I took out to go to school.

I’m sure this all must seem rather strange to you. We live in very different worlds. I am curious to hear what life must be like in Ghanna. Again, I hope my modest contribution is making a difference in your life.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Preston

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None Dare Call It Marxism

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Prestonp

Once upon a time, back when Vampire: the Eternal Struggle Collectible Card game was actually in print, I played a fair amount of it. Then we all ended up friending each other on Facebook. And then Facebook recommends other friends based on the friends you have, and pretty soon you have people on your Facebook friends you’ve never met. That’s all well and good, but inevitably you end up in these political discussions with “friends” who are really strangers and you realize you have no common ground with these people. Worse, you don’t have the luxury of death actually meeting these people to keep things civil.

These exchanges tend to be a waste of time. Inevitably I end up discussing politics with people who parrot a few tidbits of history to support their rather outlandish points of view. These kind of discourses them to be rather tiresome, but I thought the one I had today was rather funny.

Let’s take a look. Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Vampire: the Eternal Struggle | 4 Comments

A Rewrite of the “Replaying” Section of the Pathfinder Society Guide

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Prestonp

Pathfinder has increasingly become my roleplaying game of choice; there is also a growing division between those players who prefer its Adventure Paths (geared toward smaller groups in a home-setting) to its ‘Society’ games (designed for the typical one-shot run at a gaming convention). Breaking it down, Adventure Paths are written to tell a coherent storyline over the effective lifetime of your characters — which, for most Adventure Paths, is level 1 to around 12 or 14. Society games tend toward a similar character lifetime (levels 1-12), but are instead a series of adventures which return the character to an episodic stasis at the end of each adventure. Not surprising, these adventures tend to lack the expected niceties of an overarching plot, or even recurring NPCs, though, you’re often playing these adventures with a different assortment of players from one Society game to another.

I begun hosting Pathfinder Society games at my home in order to meet new Pathfinder players, the ultimate goal being to find those who would be interested in engaging in a more regular Adventure Path game. Surprisingly, to me anyway, I came across some exclusively interested in Society games. It seemed the main appeal there was the official nature of the Society game: requiring the GM to register each section online plus filling out a Chronicle sheet for each player that specifically documents their progress over that adventure. This allows the player to attend a convention and play an officially sanctioned character (which he or she has played before) that has been built up over the course of several adventures. For some players, it would seem this engenders a sense of accomplishment; if the Pathfinder session in which they’re currently playing (read: Adventure Path) isn’t furthering this official standing of their character — they just aren’t interested.

Continue reading →

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Coming Out of the Dark

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Prestonp

It would seem that my wife Auby has a number of friends who are really unstable. Who’d have thought it possible that the woman who loved Jesse the loser/stalker/pizza delivery boy would ever show such lack of good character judgement in general?

Well, long story short, the old prestonpoulter.com was hosted on her bipolar friends site, and he was an amazing jerk to deal with. He was always abrasive when he was asked to do his job. Here’s an example,

Me: Pardon me, but the site’s been down for a few days.

Him: Can’t you see how busy I am. How dare you interrupt me!
I’m going to come and bother you when you play poker.

Yea, I’m not sure why, but but poker made it into every conversation I ever had with the guy. I suppose he had some special resentment in his heart reserved for poker players. Anyway, I get tired of this kind of treatment, so I told him where to stick it. In retaliation, he’s holding all of the data from the old site hostage.

He can suit himself. I’ll be filing suit. I do so love my opportunities for litigation. I get to steeple my fingers nefariously, and laugh maniacally.

Meanwhile, the site has a new look. The old site was dedicated to the whole “Preston and author of doomsday book” aspect. Well I’m way too busy playing cards and doing other stuff to worry about promoting a book, so the blog really became a collection of the thoughts I would rattle off when I had the time- which always tended to revolve around the same topics: Poker, Gaming, Judo, gold, and government.

Since that’s what I seem to talk about, I figure that’s what I’d dedicate the new site to. The header for my site is comprised of images that reflection those interests. Going from left to right, we have:

  • Pocket Aces- a hand close to every poker players heart.
  • Gwendolyn- my favorite of the Inner Circle members from the now out-of-print Vampire: the Eternal Struggle collectible card game.
  • Cassia Riley, a Penthouse Pet. Women in general and porn stars in particular have always been a special interest to me.
  • The Hand of Faith golden nugget. The largest golden nugget ever discovered until just recently, it’s housed at the Golden Nugget Casino- another gambling tie in.
  • Judo- a sport I do with my daughter and enjoy.

So there ya have it. I wish to welcome everyone to my new home. I’ll be putting stuff out more frequently as I move to get my old data back.

Posted in General Announcement | Leave a comment

A Rough Draft for a Gamma World Character Sheet

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Prestonp

I was really unhappy with the character sheet included in the new Gamma World game. The new Gamma World is clearly attempting to dummy down a RPG into something that is more akin to a board game, and I support that. However, in their effort to make the game seem easy, they made a character sheet that just doesn’t have room for enough information on it. So I threw this one together. It’s a rough draft right now, because I don’t have time to clean it up until I get back in town from Texas for Christmas. Oh yea, and I’m getting married on New Year’s Eve as well.

Anyway, if anyone’s interesting in evaluation this rough draft character sheet and providing me with any suggestions, feel free to leave comments.

Here’s the sheet.

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Sicko Banned in Cuba for Being Misleading

Posted on December 18, 2010 by Prestonp

Ok, this is pretty damn funny. Michael Moore’s movie, “Sicko”, was banned in Cuba. I’ve never seen the movie, but apparently it depicts the horrors of American “for profit” healthcare versus socialist healthcare systems in the countries of Cuba, France, and the UK.

Apparently he chose to showcase the best healthcare Cuba had to offer, which is actually not available to just anyone. Instead, you need to be, I’m guessing, fairly well connected in the Communist Party to visit the hospital showcased in Michael Moore’s movie. In fact, the Cubans banned the movie “Sicko” in their country because they feared a popular backlash if the average citizens saw what the level of care to which the privileged were entitled. You can read about it for yourself in the Guardian UK story.

And we know all of this thanks to Wikileaks, which I feel is doing a service to citizens everywhere. For one, it shows you once again how Communist governments manage their citizenry, and secondly it shows you how dishonest Michael Moore was in trying to mislead people in the name of Socialism.

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Preston VTES Buy List

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Prestonp

Here are the Vampire: the Eternal Struggle cards I am currently buying. I will buy virtually unlimited quantities of cards from virtually any edition.

Continue reading →

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How to Apportion a Larger Portfolio

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Prestonp

My brother called a couple of days ago. His wife has $100,000 to invest and he wanted to know where I thought I should put it. I’ve made recommendations in the past and they’ve always made money; which I feel puts a bit of pressure on me because each time I feel I’ve got to live up to my own record.

It’s also tough because the investment market is so screwed up with the recent actions of the Federal Reserve. In the 1800s, investing was pretty simple, you just put your money in bonds and forgot about it. Since consumer prices went down for most of the 1800s (with the notable exception being the war-time inflation of the Greenback fueled Civil War) the return you received on bonds would be in addition to the additional purchasing power the money itself possessed. Few people invested in the stock market in those days; it was seen as a shady place where individuals like Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Nathan Rothschild could use their deep pockets and insider information to force a stock price to be whatever suited them at the time. A stock exchange was more casino than sober investment house. Bonds were where the common man should put his money.

Of course, the advent of the Federal Reserve changed all that. Continue reading →

Posted in Investing and Financial Doomsday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

12 Days of Christmas Inflation Index

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Prestonp

I’ve been saying for a couple of years now that the talk of deflation was going to go the way of the dodo. This year it really seems to have hit home. The only people I see talking about inflation are the bankers at the Fed, who are getting chastized by the international bankers for just using it as a ruse to print money- which is exaclty true.

The Fed points to the Consumer Price Inflation Index as proof that inflation is not happening, but as I pointed out in my book, that index has been tortured to the point where it will confess to anything. I really enjoyed this video entitled Quantitive Easing Explained, for many reasons. Primarily it’s both funny and accurate, but I also love the way it goes over so many items that are more expensive than they were a year ago.

Clearly, comumer prices are going up. The latest story to discuss the rise in consumer prices is the Christmas Index or the price of all the items mentioned in the 12 Days of Christmas. According to the most recent calculation, the Christmas Index is up 10.8% over last year. A 10.8% rise in a basket of goods in a single year is pretty astounding, and I’d venture to guess that it may have something to do with all the money the Fed is printing- call me crazy.

In the 1970s, inflation close to 11% was an unstabalizing force in society and the economy as people began raising prices and demanding more interest in anticipation of future inflation. You know what they say about history and those doomed to repeat it. What can I say, predicting the future is really pretty easy if you know where to look.

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