Pros at the WSOP

Nick MomrikLeave a comment

Is it just me or are the professional poker players doing very well this year at the World Series of Poker? Johnny Chan won his 10th bracelet early this morning and I’ve recognized quite a few other top players making final tables. Mark Seif (twice), Todd Brunson, Barry Greenstein, T.J. Cloutier, Josh Arieh, Erik Seidel, and Allen Cunningham have all won bracelets so far. 25 events have been completed and by my count 9 have been won by top players. I’m sure there are other big winners that I don’t recognize.

What really sparked my interest in looking this up was the latest post on Daniel Negreanu’s blog. He says that he’s not enjoying the WSOP this year. My guess is that he’s not playing particularly well, which of course will make it not fun. While other top pros seem to be doing very well this year, he’s not having anything relatively close to his performance in the 2004 WSOP.

Negreanu complains about having too many $1,500 buy in events this year because they attract the lower end players. Shouldn’t he be drooling? The other pros seem to be taking full advantage of all the amateurs playing. It makes perfect sense to me. The pros are great at reading people. If there are more amateur players to read a pro should be able to build a stack a lot easier. Instead of blaming the lack of talent at the 2005 WSOP, maybe Daniel should take a look at his own game.

Update: Interesting follow-up discussion at the FCP forums.

WordPress Plugin Update Notification

Nick Momrik4 Comments

Last night I went out searching for plugin updates. I use quite a few plugins at all of my sites, so I wanted to get everything updated. After visiting countless sites, I became frustrated. Most people post about their plugins on their own blogs, but finding some updates is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Today the light bulb went off. WordPress needs a way for plugin users to be notified when there are new versions of plugins. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas.

  • What if there was a central site (maybe there are already plans for the WordPress Plugin Repository) for all of the plugins. Everyone (both plugin users and developers) would have an account on the site. You can download plugins, look at the code, submit bugs, and many other things. Some of these are already available at the Repository. But one thing that the current site doesn’t have is the ability for a user to mark which plugins they use. If users could pick which plugins they use, then the site could mail these users each time a plugin is updated. We’d never have to live with old code again.
  • The second idea may be able to work with the first somehow. If a central site is recognized and used for plugins, a plugin could be created to go through the list of plugins in a WP install. It could then contact the plugin site and compare version numbers. If there is a new version, either email the admin of the WP install, or put a notification in the Dashboard.

These are just a few quick ideas I had today. Not much thought went into it, but I’d be interested in hearing what others have to say. Who knows, maybe Matt already has something up his sleeve.