Game times

NCsoft 60-Day Game Time Card
$29.99
This online game is fun, but I don't want to put my credit card online EVER. The play card allows online gaming without the risk.

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time
$59.99
Absolutely an incredible game. I love this game. I am 35 and a life long gamer. I miss platformers. They've been my favorite type of game through the years. I don't care for FPS or RTS or most "online" endeavors. I like the story, the cutscenes, the dialog, the graphics, the puzzle solving, the characters, the jumping, exploring, completion of tasks, etc. Luckily, if you own a PS3, you get this dying breed of game. The Wii and especially the xbox 360 lack them. Uncharted 1 & 2, Heavenly Sword, Ratchet & Clank Series, and InFamous were all not only great games, but the best games I have ever played. Incredible games. The effort in musical score, level design, challenge, reward, puzzle development, artistry in the scenes, voice work, etc. are at an unprecedented level in gaming. You lose yourself in them like never before and simply have...FUN. A crack in Time stands out as a truly brilliant piece of gaming with the time manipulation elements being pure genius by Insomniac. Kudos to Insomniac for making this game, Sony for supporting platforming, and you for looking to buy it! HAVE FUN...with ALL AGES, ALL SEXES, ALL CREEDS. This game is a BLAST! (Literally) :)

Boy's Game Time Future Star Southern Cal?
$22.99
I received my new USC watch like the seller said. Also, fast delivery. Since, I'm a big USC fan, I try to get things that have the USC symbol. When I saw the watch in the internet, I had to get it. The watch looks and works great!! Thanks a lot. Go USC!!!

The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time
$14.99
Michael Craig, The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time (Warner, 2005)

The interesting thing about The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King is that the actual poker game detailed, which went on and off over a period of years, is the least interesting thing about the book. It was limit hold'em, which is much more a game of playing your cards than is no-limit, and lends itself to far less variance. (While the dollar amounts thrown in the book may make that seem like a laughable statement, when it comes right down to it, a unit is a unit. Whether your big blinds are twenty cents or two hundred thousand dollars, a unit is still a unit.) Limit hold'em is normally a game for grinders, those of us who don't mind putting in the time to make one big bet per hour at the table. (That said, the poker books are wrong about that in at least one case; the lower the limits at which you play, the more big blinds you can make per hour, as long as your game is rock-solid. I rarely leave a fifty-cent/one-dollar game before doubling my buy-in, as long as I'm having a winning session. It rarely takes me more than an hour.)Andy Beal was not that guy, not by a longshot, and yet his chosen game was heads-up limit hold'em. Yes, he evened the odds a bit against the world's top hold'em players with his relentlessly aggressive play, but when all was said and done, aggression in a limit game is much less useful than aggression in a no-limit game, especially when each player has $5 million on the table. You push all-in with a stack like that in a cash game and very few players will call you with less than kings. In limit, all you can do is raise another big blind. Still, as I said, the game is far less interesting than the players, and in recognizing that fact, Michael Craig did himself, and those of us who like to read about poker, a great service.

Andy Beal was (still is, probably) a banker with a taste for poker. He also had a taste for buying things no one else would buy just before they got really, really big, which made Andy Beal a very, very rich man. (Still does, probably.) When his business interests took him to Las Vegas, his taste for poker developed into something of an obsession, and having the game's best players at his beck and call prompted him to make a little side bet with himself: could he get good enough to play these folks at their own game? And how far would he have to raise the stakes before the pros were out of their comfort zone? By the time the game had concluded, most every major high-stakes player in Vegas, and a number from California, had gone up against Beal, including both Doyle and Todd Brunson, the late Chip Reese, Johnny Chan, Jennifer Harman, Ted Forrest, Howard Lederer (the Professor of the title), John Hennigan, and a host of others you've heard of if you watch any televised poker whatsoever. Beal would do reasonably well, losing far less than anyone expected him to, then limp back to Texas, do some more research, play a lot more hands, and go back to Vegas armed even better than he was the time before.

But, again, that's not what the book is about. It's about the backgrounds of the people who played in the game. It's about the economics of poker (taking shares, staking people, and all the stuff that no one ever talks about because, let's face it, that math you need for that ends up being more advanced than the math you use in calculating pot odds). It's about a rank amateur and his underdog dream. Good thing Andy Beal did not have an obsession with football. I'm sure the Denver Broncos, for example, would have wiped him out fast. But poker is a game where anyone with a good grasp of the rules, a decent amount of experience, and a dash or two of luck can sit down across a table from Barry Greenstein and end up with all his chips. It's not likely, but it can happen. That's a big part of what attracts us, the amateur contingent, to the game, and Michael Craig--being an amateur poker player himself--understands this and lets it shine through. To me, it's obvious that this is a book written by a poker player for other poker players. The fact that the public glommed onto it is icing on the cake.

Fascinating, highly readable, and for a nonfiction book, incredibly well-paced. Even if you're not a fan of the sport, this one's worth a read. ****