And so it begins ....

That's what I normally say when I'm down to 200 chips and quad up, but in this case it refers to the launch of the PokerXFactor Training Center late today. It's going to be very busy (don't miss our conference call tonight at 11pm ET, see details below), so I can't really blog for ExtremeTilt today.

I just wrote the first PokerXFactor blog, which you can't see yet because the site is not yet live -- so here it is. Talk to you later!

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Subject: Being Green

Today, of course, is going to be very busy as we move to make PokerXFactor's Poker Training Center "live" during our pre-launch phase. But I wanted to quickly post about a hand history that Sheets sent me late last night.

Right now, Sheets and Bax are busy sending me hand histories, which we animate in the PXF Hand Viewer, then they add their narration to them. Bax recently sent me a great hour and half of video, which we are working to edit, compress, etc. Great stuff.

So Sheets casually sends me a hand history last night of a $500 SNG that he won with a simple comment that this was "a pretty good one." I load up the hand history in the viewer and take a quick look.

Now our "developer's hand viewer" has some special features. It shows all the hands played on the right side and if Sheets wins a hand for more than the big blind, that hand is highlighted in green, if he loses a hand for more than the big blind, it's highlighted in red. This lets him quickly scan the upcoming hands so he can make sure he doesn't miss something interesting. Plus, for really long tournaments, it lets him (or Bax), skip a few hands to the next important one. Here is a quick picture of the hand history Sheets sent me:



So I load this up and I'm looking, looking, looking -- it's ALL GREEN!

I finally find just three hands where he lost more than the big blind. And this wasn't some 50 hand SNG where he simply blew out the table. It was a tough, 147 hand slugfest -- and he lost THREE HANDS larger than the BB. Sorry, I just think that's sick. What's the song by kermit the frog? "It's not easy being green..." I wouldn't know! GG Sheets.