Mental Preparation—having typically survived one or more fiscal chasms, thriving pros incorporate action plans that are designed to champion cerebral calmness and clarity. Risk Takers—as we know, –cheap ugg cardy boots–poker often rewards aggressive, borderline dangerous play. Tournament announcers often say winners display ‘heart’. Playing poker as one’s livelihood involves being comfortable with moving meaningful amounts of chips and living a life of ups and downs emotionally and financially. Successful professionals have developed philosophical outlooks that enable them to ride these tidal waves. Bankroll Needs How much does one need to enter the starting gate? I recommend beginning with at least 250 times the big bet if you are playing limit games. For example, a $15-$30 Texas hold ‘classic cardy uggs grey–em professional should be able to play comfortably with a $7,500 beginning bankroll. For no-limit players, I suggest 30 minimal buy-ins. So, for a $2-$5 no-limit hold ‘em game where the minimum starting stack is $200, I’d play behind a $6,000 bankroll. –cheap ugg boots cardy-A super-aggressive player might increase these requirements since she will experience greater highs and lows than a more conservative competitor. Of course, if you keep accurate records (as you should), you would adjust these guidelines based on your historical performance. Most importantly, your poker grubstake should be separated from funds required for food, rent and other necessities (discussed below). Normal Needs When I worked nine-to-five (as a manager with a telecommunications company), my employer provided disability, medical and dental coverage. My company also funded my retirement pension and gave me a life insurance policy. My consistent, reportable income and lifestyle allowed me to obtain a good credit rating and a mortgage for a home purchase. Poker players must pay for insurance needs and fund their retirements from winnings, ugg boots classic cardy grey or go without these necessities. I have heard several sad stories about a professional’s life savings evaporating after encountering severe medical problems. Several have left their families on weak fiscal legs by eschewing life insurance, and then dying early. If poker becomes your chosen livelihood, you must implement contingencies to combat financial ruin for you and your family. Cash Games versus Tournaments I suggest beginning professionals forego tournament poker until accumulating a large bankroll. Cash games offer control over your time commitment. When entering a tournament, you may play for 12 hours, or get knocked out during the first level. cheap ugg classic cardy The longer one sits at a tourney table, the more difficult it becomes to maintain optimum focus. Coincidentally, at the end of long tournament days when the blinds and antes have escalated, players must often make critical decisions. Live game competitors handle stamina issues with ease; when fatigued they cash in and go home. Cash-game record keeping is simple and virtually audit proof. (Big government has no way of monitoring one’s wins and losses in ring games. ) While your tournament results will be highly erratic when compared to charting your ring game wins and losses, that doesn’t mean you won’t be subject to sustained losing periods when playing cash games. Your emotional stability and discipline will forever be tested during these slumps, as long as you pursue a career in poker. Written for Online Gambling Magazine.
ST. LOUIS – A consumer group contends one of the holiday season’s must-have toys is unsafe.
But the maker of the robotic Zhu Zhu Pets hamsters defended its product Saturday against a study by San Francisco-based GoodGuide that said higher-than-allowed levels of the chemical antimony were found in the toy.
Good Guide named Zhu Zhu Pets hamsters one of the top-selling toys with low ratings after finding antimony, which can cause health problems, on the hair and nose of one of the toy hamsters, called Mr. Squiggles.
The group assigned the toy, aimed at 3- to 10-year-olds, a rating of 5.2 on a 10-point scale.
But the toy’s maker, St. Louis-based Cepia LLC, insisted in a statement that its product is safe and has passed rigorous testing. The company said it was contacting GoodGuide to share its testing data and determine how the report was founded.
“I have been in the toy industry for more than 35 years, and being a father of children myself, I would never allow any substandard or unsafe product to hit the shelves,” Russ Hornsby, Cepia’s CEO, said in the statement.
Zhu Zhu Pets, which retail for about $10, have become this season’s toy craze, following in the footsteps of Tickle Me Elmo and Cabbage Patch Kids. The items fetch $40 or more on resale Web sites like eBay and Craigslist.
That’s what brought it to GoodGuide’s attention. GoodGuide CEO Dara O’Rourke told The Associated Press on Saturday that his group bought three of each of the year’s 30 hottest toys and tested them multiple times.
Antimony was measured at 93 parts per million in the hamster’s fur and at 106 parts per million in its nose. Both readings exceed the allowable level of 60 parts per million, said O’Rourke, an associate professor of environmental science at the University of California, Berkeley.
O’Rourke said GoodGuide’s test results, released Friday, also indicated the possibility that some toys contained phthalates, chemicals that were subject to tougher standards in the Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act passed last year.
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VIENNA – Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka, whose controversial works in metal, paint and pencil alienated as much as attracted the public died Saturday, Austrian media reported. He was 81.
The Austria Press Agency cited gallery owner Ernst Hilger as announcing Hrdlicka’s death in the daily Die Presse. Telephone calls late Saturday to Hilger’s private number as well to his downtown Vienna gallery, which frequently exhibited Hrdlicka’s works, were not returned.
Hrdlicka’s sculptures, drawings and paintings are known as much for their artistic subtlety as their controversial themes. His religious works, in particular, drew protest from believers who considered them blasphemous.
Among his better-known works are his cast iron sculpture of a prostrate figure covered by barbed wire in downtown Vienna. The starkly disturbing “Memorial Against War and Fascism” has been occasionally defaced since it was unveiled in 1991.
Known to have been deeply influenced by his studies of the mentally ill during the late 1960s, Hrdlicka turned to a figurative expressive style meant to provoke his audience to confront the world’s anguish, pain and misery. For him, art was agitprop and he understood his life as an artist as a mission to educate the public to oppose war and violence.
An atheist who espoused communist beliefs, he married religious themes with topics considered taboo among believers. One of his last exhibitions “Religion, Flesh and Power” was exhibited last year in the museum of Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral. A central work based on the Last Supper was removed on orders of Vienna’s Cardinal Cristoph Schoenborn after protests that it depicted Jesus and his apostles as homosexuals at an orgy.
Born in Vienna Feb. 27, 1928, Hrdlicka first was apprenticed as a dental technician before starting studies at the Academy of Fine Arts under Josef Dobrowsky and Albert Paris Guetersloh. Later he participated in Fritz Wotruba’s sculpture class until 1957.
Just seven years later, after a series of exhibitions in Austria, he was chosen to represent Austria in the Biennale in Venice. He taught at fine art academies in Stuttgart, Hamburg and Berlin, before returning to the Austrian capital and a professorship at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna.
His oft-cited dictum, “all art comes from flesh” is reflected in his later works. For Hrdlicka, art that avoided the human condition was nothing more than decoration and not to be taken seriously.
Hrdlicka was also sought after as a set designer on opera and theater stages across Europe.
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RENTON, Wash. (AP)—Tim Ruskell has been pushed out as president and general manager of the Seahawks, leaving the door open for Mike Holmgren’s possible return to Seattle.
Ruskell announced his resignation Thursday, weeks before his five-year contract with the team ends. He asked the team if he was going to be retained so he could begin planning for offseason moves. Owner Paul Allen, the ailing Microsoft Corp. tycoon, and Seahawks chief executive officer Tod Leiweke told Ruskell no, so he left.
“Obviously there’s great sadness today but I will leave here with great memories of this place and the people. It’s been the people for me,” Ruskell said, his voice breaking and holding back tears during a news conference attended by his sister and the team’s staff.
The team’s ownership gave Ruskell full authority to shape the franchise soon after he arrived before the 2005 season. Seattle made its only Super Bowl that season.
Since then, he has presided over failed top draft choices, expensive free-agent busts—and the awkward ouster of popular coach and former GM Mike Holmgren at the end of his contract this past January.
Ruskell brought in his own coach for 2009, Jim Mora. The 4-7 Seahawks are on their way to a second straight season without a playoff berth. Last season they finished 4-12, their worst record since 1991.
“Quite simply, we didn’t win enough games,” Leiweke said. “I work for a man, Mr. Paul Allen, who has exacting standards.”
Ruskell understood that.
“It didn’t happen quickly enough,” he said, “but it wasn’t because we didn’t do it right.”
Seahawks vice president for player personnel Ruston Webster will serve as interim general manager.
Leiweke added that he expects Mora to remain the coach, Webster would be a good GM candidate, and “stability is something we will try to push for.”
No conceivable candidate knows the Seahawks better than Holmgren, who became their longest-tenured and winningest coach from 1999-2008. The first four years, he was also their GM.
Holmgren has declared his desire to return to the NFL after one year away. He took 2009 off as a promise to his wife and family but now says he wants to return to football. He hasn’t specified where, or whether it is to coach or be an executive.
But the former Super Bowl-winning coach has long coveted a second chance to be a GM. He’s often said how much he admires the position Bill Parcells, a good friend and another former coach, now has atop the Miami Dolphins’ franchise. Holmgren still owns a home in the Seattle area.
When asked whether Holmgren is a candidate, Leiweke said, “I’m just not going to go there. I’m just not going to talk about that today.”
Ruskell arrived in February 2005 as a veteran of 20 years in scouting following a stint in Atlanta as the assistant GM, when Mora was the Falcons’ coach. Ruskell presided over three consecutive NFC West titles to begin his Seattle tenure, including that Super Bowl season of 2005 when he overhauled the defense and scored a major coup in drafting overlooked linebacker Lofa Tatupu(notes).
But the Seahawks have regressed since then.
Ruskell was part of the decision that allowed perennial Pro Bowl offensive lineman Steve Hutchinson(notes) to leave for Minnesota as a free agent soon after the 2006 Super Bowl; Seattle’s line hasn’t been the same since.
Ruskell signed running back Shaun Alexander(notes) to a $62 million, eight-year contract with $15.1 million guaranteed even though Alexander was about to turn 30—an age at which most running backs begin to decline. Just over two years and several injuries later, Alexander was released.
To replace him, Ruskell spent millions on veteran running backs Julius Jones(notes), T.J. Duckett(notes) and Edgerrin James(notes). Jones is fighting for his job with emerging Justin Forsett(notes), a seventh-round draft choice in 2008 whom the Seahawks cut last year then brought back. Duckett and James were released this season.
Seattle is 29th in the league in rushing.
Ruskell traded a first-round draft choice to New England in 2006 for wide receiver Deion Branch(notes), then gave the former Super Bowl MVP a $39 million contract with $13 million guaranteed. Branch has had seasons with 53, 49, 30 and now 26 catches—plus two knee surgeries, including a reconstructive surgery.
PITTSBURGH (AP)—Ben Roethlisberger(notes) was “hurt” by teammate Hines Ward’s(notes) remarks questioning why a concussion kept him out of an important game against the Ravens. But the Steelers quarterback now agrees he shouldn’t have played.
Roethlisberger patched up his relationship with Ward during a phone call Monday, and the two have since moved on to Sunday’s game against Oakland.
“He reached out to me and I told him I was just hurt more than anything else,” Roethlisberger said Thursday. “You know, we got over it, moved past it and now we’re preparing.”
Ward apologized separately to Roethlisberger and the Steelers (6-5), saying he spoke out of frustration soon after learning the quarterback wouldn’t play in the 20-17 overtime loss in Baltimore. Ward didn’t know at the time of the interview that a team doctor recommended that Roethlisberger not play due to post-concussion headaches.
Roethlisberger received at least his fourth concussion since 2006 the previous week in Kansas City.
The quarterback said he was “in shock” when coach Mike Tomlin unexpectedly told him the day before the game he wouldn’t play. Now that he’s had time to consider the reasons for the benching, Roethlisberger said the move made sense.
“(I) respected what they said,” Roethlisberger said. “You do have to think about your future and your family. It’s not fun, but you can get knee replacement surgery, you can have rotator cuff surgeries, but you can’t get a new brain.”
Roethlisberger was seriously injured during a June 2006 motorcycle accident in which he received a concussion and numerous other facial injuries, including a broken jaw. He still has five plates in his head resulting from that crash.
“A lot of people forget the accident that I had,” Roethlisberger said. “They (the doctors) remembered that. It was life-threatening.”
Roethlisberger said he hasn’t had a recurrence of the headaches brought on by physical activity that occurred following three practices last week.
“I feel great. I’m ready to go … ready to rock and roll.”
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ATLANTA (AP)—Roddy White(notes) looks forward to seeing Michael Vick(notes). Just don’t expect the Falcons receiver to don another T-shirt showing his support for No. 7.
“I’ve got to be locked in,” White said Wednesday, breaking into a hearty laugh. “This is a big game for us.”
No one is quite sure what kind of reception Michael Vick will get when he returns to the Georgia Dome for the first time since serving 18 months in federal prison for dogfighting. After being out of the league for two seasons, the former Falcons quarterback is now a little-used backup for the Philadelphia Eagles (7-4), who face the Falcons (6-5) Sunday in a crucial matchup of NFC playoff contenders.
Far from the spare part he is now, Vick was one of the league’s most dynamic players during his six years with the Falcons, leading the team to the brink of the Super Bowl after the 2004 season. Some Atlanta fans continue to wear his No. 7 jersey to games, and one group is even planning a welcome home rally for him outside the stadium.
Of course, there will likely be plenty of boos from fans still appalled at the heinous crimes he committed against animals and how much he hurt the franchise that gave him the richest contract in NFL history.
“I don’t really know what’s going to happen,” Vick said Wednesday at the Eagles’ training complex. “I know I still enjoy the city. I’ll never forget the fans. I’ll always be true to them. Who knows? I look forward to going back and being in that stadium. That’s going to be like a dream come true, even though I’m on the opposite side.”
Back in 2007, on the very day Vick was sentenced to prison, the Falcons played a Monday night game against the New Orleans Saints. White paid tribute to his disgraced friend by wearing a “Free Mike Vick” T-shirt under his jersey, which he pulled up after scoring a touchdown so a national television audience could see the handwritten message—a stunt that drew a $10,000 fine from the NFL.
White has no such plans for Sunday, and there’s been so much turnover on the Falcons’ roster that only a handful of players who took the field during Vick’s tenure are still around. Among the 22 starters, a mere seven are holdovers from No. 7’s era.
“I haven’t been thinking about it. It doesn’t matter to me,” said tight end Tony Gonzalez(notes), who’s in his first season with the team. “I know he’s coming back. I’m sure there are some people who are going to welcome him and some people that are not. That’s not my deal. I’m out there to play football.”
But Vick still has friends on the team, including White and another receiver, Brian Finneran(notes). Both have stayed in contact with the ex-Atlanta quarterback.
“We’re always texting back and forth,” White said. “It’s more about life, what’s going on, things like that. It’s nothing football related.”
Have they exchange messages this week? Sure.
“I texted him and said, ‘I look forward to seeing you on Sunday,”’ White said. “He told me, ‘Good luck, get out there and do your thing.’ I think I’m going to text him today and ask for the game plan.”
The receiver was only kidding, of course, but his feelings for Vick are genuine. He’s not defending what his former teammate did away from the field, only remembering the good times they had together.
“He welcomed me here, took me under his wing, got me the ball. How could I be mad at the guy?” White asked. “We’re cool, man. Right before he had to go off and do his thing (prison sentence), we used to hang out. We developed a great relationship. We’re still going to be friends, regardless of football.”
Vick also speaks from time to time with Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who supported his former star’s re-entry into the league and has continually said he would do anything to make sure he keeps his life on the right track, though he ruled out any chance of Vick ever returning to the Falcons.
“I’ll probably give him a call before I get down to Atlanta,” Vick said. “We still have that relationship. I always enjoy speaking with Mr. Blank. He’s a great guy. He’s awesome. He’s done a lot of great things for me, things I’ll never forget. He’s a special person, a person who holds a special place in my heart.”
Atlanta broke all ties with its former franchise player by drafting Matt Ryan(notes) with the No. 3 overall pick in 2008. The rookie won the starting job right away and led the Falcons too a surprising playoff berth.
In an interesting twist, Ryan won’t be playing Sunday because of a toe injury and Vick figures to get only a few plays for the Eagles, if his role up to now is any indication. The three-time Pro Bowler has 15 carries for 65 yards and is 3 of 9 passing for 6 yards. He has yet to score his first post-prison touchdown though he came close in last weekend’s win over the Redskins, breaking off a 4-yard run to the 1.
Vick would love a chance to make up for his last game at the Georgia Dome, which was Christmas Eve 2006. He had one of the worst games of his Falcons career, completing 9 of 20 passes for 109 yards with two interceptions and running four times for 32 yards in a 10-3 loss to Carolina.
But Vick knows he’s not likely to get on the field for more than a few snaps — quite a letdown for a guy who once dominated in the dome.
“This week is going to be a little tougher than average because I played in that stadium,” Vick said. “That’s where I started my career, and I have so many great memories.”
He no longer has the ritzy house in a gated suburban community; that was put on the auction block after he went to prison. But Vick still has plenty of ties to Atlanta.
“The majority of my friends are still there in the city, and who knows if I get a chance to visit with a couple of them? My time is going to be very limited, so who knows?” Vick said.
“The primary focus is on the football game.”
AP Sports Writer Rob Maaddi in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
NFL teams now have new, stricter instructions for when players should be allowed to return to games or practices after head injuries, guidelines that go into effect this week.
In the latest step by the league to address a hot-button issue, commissioner Roger Goodell sent a memo to the 32 clubs Wednesday saying a player who gets a concussion should not return to action on the same day if he shows certain signs or symptoms.
Those include an inability to remember assignments or plays, a gap in memory, persistent dizziness, and persistent headaches.
The old standard, established in 2007, said a player should not be allowed to return to the same game if he lost consciousness.
Wednesday’s memo also says players “are to be encouraged to be candid with team medical staffs and fully disclose any signs or symptoms that may be associated with a concussion.”
Nearly one-fifth of 160 NFL players surveyed by The Associated Press from Nov. 2-15 replied that they have hidden or played down the effects of a concussion.
The new policy states, in part: “Once removed for the duration of a practice or game, the player should not be considered for return-to-football activities until he is fully asymptotic, both at rest and after exertion, has a normal neurological examination, normal neuropsychological testing, and has been cleared to return by both his team physician(s) and the independent neurological consultant.”
Teams were told this month they have to find an outside neurologist who can be consulted on concussions, and NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said this week the league is “very close” to having all of those independent doctors approved and in place.
Since last month’s congressional hearing on NFL head injuries, momentum has been building for changes in league policy. The revised return-to-play rules come about a week after Goodell sent a memo to clubs informing them that the two co-chairmen of the league’s concussions committee had resigned and that he has been looking into possible rule changes.
On Wednesday, word emerged that Cleveland Browns running back Jamal Lewis(notes) will miss Sunday’s game with an unspecified head injury, raising the possibility his NFL career is over. Lewis had previously said he would retire at the end of the season. His teammate, starting safety Brodney Pool(notes), got at least his fourth known concussion last weekend and is likely out for the year.
The two starting quarterbacks from last season’s Super Bowl—Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger(notes) and Arizona’s Kurt Warner(notes)—sat out last Sunday after saying during the week they planned to play despite getting head injuries the previous week.
“The evidence demonstrates that team medical staffs have been addressing concussions in an increasingly cautious and conservative way,” Goodell wrote in Wednesday’s memo. “This new return-to-play statement reinforces our commitment to advancing player safety. Along with improved equipment, better education, and rules changes designed to reduce impacts to the head, it will make our game safer for the men who play it, and set an important example for players at all levels of play.”
