April 2010 Archives

The $100,000 Poker Freeroll Tournament (main event) will take place on Sunday, May 30th at 14:00 (Reefer Poker Time) and will award $100,000 cash total, with $20,000 being awarded to the Poker tournament winner.

There is NO Direct entry into the $100,000 Main Event, poker players MUST win their seat into this special freeroll through one of the FOUR methods listed here: Reefer Poker $100k Freeroll
The top 500 players will advance to the $100,000 Freeroll Main Event. Players are only eligible to win 1 seat into the $100,000 Poker Freeroll final.

A truly classic strain of industrial strength cannabis. If I were a medical doctor, and I'm not (disclaimer) I would keep doses of this baby on hand for severe cases of trauma or even to address certain types of distress disorders, or in some cases as a means of putting someone to sleep. If you have a low tolerance for smoking ganja then be warned, this may not be such a good medication to ingest. Symptoms may include euphoria, hysteria, paranoia, imbecilic behavior, introverted mood swings or increased sexual appetite, so watch-out this powerful, predominantly sativa strain marijuana usually lives up to the name: "Train Wreck".

I know of a legendary grower from Eastern Canada who has been breeding this variety of Cannabis for many years, and to great effect. He sells his Arcada cut clones across Canada and has shipped his buds to Amsterdam, on several occasions he's left the bud-tenders and pro smokers totally speechless (literally).

The arcada cut of train wreck gets it name because it was grown, for the first time, on a hillside, that just so happened to have a train wreck happen in the same area that summer, so the guys pulled it early, at around 50-55 days, because they didn't want the grow to be found by the crews doing clean up on the wreck. But what they found out was that the shit was finished, which really shock these guys since it was supposed to be a sat Dom plant. This is the story that I have been told more then once from some very close people to me, that have lived in the Arcada, California area since the 1960's.

Trainwreck

A brain thumping, Sativa, soaring high. Comes on strong as a freight train, finishes in the typical ultra-heady Sativa manner. Very medicinal. People become hooked on it like a hard drug. Old school California taste. Dense rock hard nuggets. Next to no leaf, light green with small calyxes and thin stem with small buds. Legend has it it was started in the early 80's by a couple of brothers in San Diego by crossing Mexican X Colombian with a hint of Afghani. After 10 or 12 years, somehow a clone was let out, and the madness started. It has thrived and been mastered in Humboldt County for 12-14 years and also very common on the menu in the better Cannabis Coffeeshops of Amsterdam.

This is unbelievable pot. (90% Sativa / 10% Indica) As per texas Kid icmag forum

We listened to our members and friends, all across the social networks and poker forums. We listened to our Reefer Partners, some 4,000 strong. We asked the reefer smokers we met along the way the same question we asked ourselves, what can we do better? What do cannabis culture people want? How can we be the coolest 420 place in cyber space? And how could that benefit the planet?

Reefer evolution was caused by osmosis as we always wanted to move beyond poker and built something much larger than the sum of the parts which started with Reefer Poker and Reefer Partners (affiliate portal) then grew to include a social network, Reefer People, a casino and bingo Reefer Casino and Reefer Bingo, meanwhile the Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Google Buzz groups have grown strong and at the same time this un-official blog, reefer smoke, developed into an authority site (by Google rank) with solid daily reader base.

Reefer Club formed alliances with Amsterdam based cannabis companies, to become partners with leaders in the marijuana movement both on and offline. Our dream was to get involved in cannabis cultivation as a unique VIP program. Maybe even have live web cams on a legal grow-op of medicinal marijuana, whereby the VIP member could watch his plant come to harvest and bank the money in a revenue share program, when the harvest is sold to a licensed reseller. Also, have bonus point programs where million of seeds are earned in rewards programs and then random planting would take place via airplane. However, all these great ideas and others related to cannabis were too fraught with danger, so we discovered something acceptable to plant - the rain forest!

High times for American marijuana smokers as police allow thousands of '4/20' pot protesters to light up across the country
Read more from the Daily Mail:

Oh man, if Obama were a young man now, would he be on the front-lines? Sure hope his staff share this brilliant story published about National weed day in America, by the Daily Mail of London today. It's filled with good honest pictures of young people (and old) having a good 'ole time, not hurting anyone, enjoying a reefer or two.
The Daily mail description was fair, I thought:

Marijuana smokers across the America lit up in public parks, outside statehouses and in the posh confines of a Hummer parked outside a pot gardening superstore to observe the movement's annual 'high holiday' yesterday.
Those who weren't within whiffing distance of a college campus or a reggae concert may not have realised that Tuesday was '4/20', the celebration-cum-mass civil disobedience derived from '420' - insider shorthand for cannabis consumption.

Wow it feels like we've reached the tipping point! The marijuana debate has taken over the mainstream media as evidenced by CNBC hosting an entire day of discussions, interviews and segments about marijuana in America, they even advertised it as the "Marijuana-Thon" as though the producers themselves were smoking some green-crack when they planned the schedule. Plus they developed a web section on their website called Marijuana & Money which features over 40 articles, analysis and commentary of the most interesting, honest and useful information imaginable. CNBC even included a State by State comprehensive guide to marijuana laws, enforcement statistics, medical marijuana programs and costs. Then if that's not enough to answer any question and share some truth they added several color photo galleries which include eye candy smoking gear and exquisite cannabis porn.

• Marijuana In America - A look at how marijuana figures into the history and culture of the nation.


• Marijuana: By The Numbers - Pot use and laws vary widely from state to state. Here are some highlights.


• Top Marijuana Travel Destinations - Some places have turned a blind eye to personal use, encouraging travelers from around the globe to visit, with commentary by Danny Danko from High Times


• Tools of the Trade - Marijuana users experience the drug in a variety of ways, and various products exist to facilitate consumption.


• A Gallery of Medical Marijuana - With medical use legal 14 states, there's quite an assortment of varieties available.

Big Kudos to CNBC. In the Editors introduction, Albert Bozzo, Senior Features Editor at CNBC.com explains why they launched this incredible website and dedicated so much time and resources to the topic of Marijuana in America, here's a tiny excerpt to whet your whistle:

Money, Ideology, Policy

Slowly over the past four decades, the drug has worked its way into the nation's social fabric. Baby boomers and counter-culture types of the past are now leaders, movers and shakers, who want to see marijuana over the counter.

It seems that the Bloom Dude over at Celebstoner.com has cleared up a lot of mystery about the genesis of the term 4:20 and for older reefer smokers that's a good thing, since I also thought the term was related to a police code, borrowed from the TV show Adam 12 (ie. "marijuana smoking in progress") which makes me chuckle to think that once upon a time a police dispatcher would actually put out a call saying something like that, now a days the cops would just laugh and think it was a joke. However, apparently that's where the students from San Rafael High School got the idea, so I wasn't all wrong, thanks to Steve Waldo of San Rafael for clearing that up.

According to the Celebstoner - Everything you ever wanted to know about 420 but were too stoned to ask it was the Grateful Dead that adopted 4:20 (the time) to turn it into 4/20 (the date) and the rest as they say, is history. The "Four Twenty" significance has long ago gone global. One of the my favorite café's in Amsterdam is called the "420 Café" it's been there for at least a half dozen years, and all throughout the cannabis culture there's tons of 420 artwork emblazoned on a myriad of products sold from a wide array of shops. Perhaps it's the most well known symbol of the cannabis counter culture, and will likely remain so until well after the last law has been changed, to make smoking weed completely legal everywhere, until then it's our own symbol of unity, recognized around the world.

The list of 420 events has grown huge, some of the most notable are at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of California at Santa Cruz, plus my home city Vancouver, Canada hosts a huge smoke-out downtown outside the art gallery. Many artists and performers plan concerts and special events to commemorate the date, I think the best list can be found on Celebstoner here:

I'll take this opportunity to wish everyone reading this message, who plans on celebrating 420 in style tomorrow, a groovy good time. Partake in 420 with love and peace and remember the words of Freewheelin Frankin:

Dope will get you through times of no money, Better than Money will get you through times of no dope. ~ Freewheelin Franklin

If you asked me, which of the exotic cannabis strains that I haven't smoked, would I most like to sample, I'd have to put Durban Poison on my short list and if it were accompanied by a visit to Durban, South Africa, then it would be my number one pick. Ever since I was a teenager my Australian friends in Canada, who had travelled all over the world, planted the seed (so to speak) about the wonders and excitement of South Africa and in particular the city and beaches of Durban.

Although I'd seen Durban Poison for sale in the cafés of Amsterdam and noticed that the seeds are available from many leading seed banks, I'd still never gotten my hands on this famous sativa strain. The thing about scoring "DP" as they call it, or weed in general known as Dagga (pronounced "dugger" with the "gg" pronounced gutturally as in the Scottish loch) while in Durban is that it's most likely to have been grown outdoor. Durban Poison, they say, originates from the Rift Valley region of East Africa but that doesn't tell us much since the Great Rift Valley is over 6,000 miles long, stretching from Lebanon to Mozambique.

Durban Poison is an exclusively inbred South African sativa crossed with a F1 cross. Considered 100% sativa. Typically an outdoor plant due to its ability to grow quite tall with large leaves, Durban Poison can essentially flourish in both inside and out since it does so well under artificial light as well as harsh summer weather conditions.

Durban Poison usually flowers typically after about eight or nine weeks. The buds are long, fat and tight with plenty of resin. These solid nugs are resilient and strong against molds and other diseases, making Durban Poison a strain that can be grown even in non-harvesting seasons and earning a reputation of being an easy strain to grow.

The DP plant produces a Thai-like aniseed smell similar to licorice. A husky, earthy taste pleasant to the smoker. Durban Poison is well known for it's powerful effect which produces an energetic, trippy high.

For the ultimate cannabis connoisseurs, if there's anywhere on the continental USA you'd want to be this weekend it would be Aspen Colorado, for the First Annual Aspen Cannabis Crown.

April 17-18, Gant Hotel, Aspen Co.
610 S. West End, Aspen, CO 81611
P: 970-925-5000 or 866-956-6317

Guest speakers will include Rick Cusick of HIgh Times Magazine and Anita Thompson wife of Hunter S. Thompson also on hand will be plenty of medical doctors including Aspen local physician Wendy Zaharko. The cannabis crown will be a competition among Medicinal Marijuana care-givers in the state of Colorado.

Winners will receive tickets to this years Amsterdam Cannabis Cup

More information can be found here,

On April fools day the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime released the Afghanistan Cannabis Survey just to let the world know, or at least anyone paying attention, that there's more than just Opium flowing out of Afghanistan. Every day since the survey was released there's been stories in the media about the bumper crop of cannabis grown in Afghanistan this year. Now people are realizing that the world's top producer of opium is also handy at growing weed and making great hash. Since 2006 they've bumped Morocco out of that top spot for Hash production. Well they should be good hash makers, since they've been practicing for hundreds of years, it's sad and shameful that they can't proudly compete in the Amsterdam Cannabis Cup with their great products, instead they get bullied.

The Afghanistan Cannabis Survey estimates the amount of Hash to be 3,500 tons worth approximately $94 Million USD. First off, just for conversation sake, that's just under $13.50 per pound which is very lousy for the producer considering the best discount price to be $10 per gram with over 453 grams in a pound for the equivalent of $4,530 on the street in Europe or America, this makes one of the best profit margins of any commodity grown anywhere. However, $27,000 is allot of cake for a ton of hash, is there a commodity exchange? Do they hire brokers? Can it be bought FOB?

The thought of all that hashish being created inside a war-zone has made me curious about how it get's to market and if history has repeated itself where the U.S. Military has gotten involved in the transportation and black-market trading of all that non-taxable, non-traceable cash generating commodity? Guess we'll just have to wait for the Hollywood mockumentary "Air Afghanistan" by the spin doctors at the department of mis-information, hopefully Oliver North can make a cameo. It's always easier to make a movie of any serious criminal allegations involving the military or U.S. Government.

Pot odds are one of the most important parts related to a Texas hold'em poker game, odds are important in any poker game. Pot odds are related to the relationship of the size of the tables pot which is then compared to the size of the bet you will have to call. A good example would be, if the pot is at $40 and you would only need to call $4. In this case the odds are 10 to 1. You can relate your pot to the odds that you will improve your hand to decide of you is going to call. If your odds of improving are lower than your pot odds then you would want to call the hand. You will want to remember when playing any form of hold'em poker that there can be two different players who will not understand the idea of pot odds.

The first are player they will play very tight. They will fold even when the pot odds would make it profitable for them to call the hand. The second are poker players that will call any hand to the river even when they should know that they are beat. These second set of poker player is where the real money is at. If you can learn how to use pot odds to your advantage you will be able to profit from these kinds of players mistakes. There are more advanced concepts like implied odds and reverse implied odds that can also help you profit from weak player. You just need to remember that poker is a game of math not luck. If you learn the math behind it you will end up a winner in the end.

If you want to learn more about math behind poker odds there are many different books you could read. I would suggest starting out by reading Odds and Probabilities: Limit, No Limit, and Tournament Strategies by Mathew Hilger. This book will give you the tools need to understand everything you need to know about odds and everything about odds percentages and poker. The book has many tests and charts to help you out. Well, do your homework and you'll be winning poker games in no time.

Michael Bush is the Webmaster of www.smallstakespoker.net Strategies and Tools for winning at Small Stakes Limit Texas Holdem

The International Cannabis & Hemp Expo 2010
April 17 & 18 in San Francisco, California at The Cow Palace

The International Cannabis & Hemp Expo 2010 is a public education event, offering a forum for awareness, education and advancement of the hemp industry and medical cannabis community. The objective of the expo is to educate the public on the differences between industrial hemp, medical cannabis and recreational cannabis, and to show the public the benefits of each.

• 100,000 sq ft of exhibition space


• A Patient Consumption Area and VIP Lounge with approved onsite consumption


• 2 Full Days of Speakers for exhibitors / speakers / community leaders / activists


• Guest Celebrities, Experts, Politicians, Etc.


• Hundreds of vendors from a cross section of industries

For ticket information and anything else you need to know, please visit the official website: www.intche.org

In the defense of pot, there has never been a more sound reason, for decriminalization of weed, than the justification defined in this excellent article by David Sirota from Salon. This is the best, short and sweet, summation of an indefensible denial argument.
Title: Making the case for marijuana

This article is such an important point of view, one that I share wholeheartedly ~ Our laws related to marijuana are doing more harm than good. David Sirota adds this poignant point to drive home the message:

Last week, students at 80 colleges asked their schools to reduce penalties for marijuana possession so that they are no greater than penalties for alcohol possession. It's a request with safety in mind: According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, alcohol use by college kids contributes to roughly 1,700 deaths, 600,000 injuries and 97,000 sexual assaults every year. By contrast, "The use of marijuana itself has not been found to contribute to any deaths, there has never been a single fatal marijuana overdose in history (and) all objective research on marijuana has also concluded that it does not contribute to injuries, assaults, sexual abuse, or violent or aggressive behavior," as the group Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation notes.
"It's time we stop driving students to drink and let them make the rational, safer choice to use marijuana," said one student.

For over two years Reefer Poker have been one of the top performing poker rooms on the Merge Network and were amongst the first brands to build a poker community featuring the popular Merge poker room management system. Around 40,000 players have registered to play Merge through Reefer Poker and from the beginning the relationship has been super-symbiotic, as the two teams collaborated on the development of versions 2 through versions 4. The evolution of a brilliant poker platform has been realized, and now the stakes are about to be raised, in a major way, since the network is preparing to welcome it's 40th poker brand, and this time the communities and player base of that brand, is larger by far than the original sum of the previous 36 brands.

Merge Network, Reefer Poker and every other brand on the system is about to experience a quantum leap forward in player activity, player registration, and an overall increase in the amount of money played, with more higher limit cash games and way more variety of cash tournaments.

The level of excitement at Reefer Poker is palpable as the group have planned some very exciting announcements as we approach 4/20. We promise to continue trying to blow people's minds with our strategic marketing.

To date our most new players in a single month was approximately 5,000, which unto itself may be a record considering the low amount of money spent to win those players from our competitors, in a very tough market during competitive times, reeferpoker.com wins hands down in it's word of mouth, social/guerilla marketing.

After more than 2 years building the Reefer Poker brand our community has reached a steady maturity and earned a great reputation for fairness and honesty with our partners and customers. At the end of the day it's been a great steady stream of fun poker but the best part has been the sub-niche "reefer", a very unique and loyal affinity group. We are the poker room for pot heads, there's no other game online for weed smokers and the sheer number of poker playing weed smokers, just in California alone, let alone the entire web population, is staggering! It's a huge niche inside a 100 million player market but it's also the most well established sub-culture, super hip society (this moment), due to positive portrayals in movies, pop culture icons, athletes and celebrities who smoke weed, caused the overall sentiment surrounding reefer to shift, at a time of great legal change in the U.S. market, at a time with medical marijuana in 15 states and California voting to legalize altogether. So the reality is, for the purpose of developing a massive online community, that the cannabis culture demographic is the most ideal group on the planet.

Reefer Poker has reached a size where it is self-sustainable due to the loyalty amongst our members. We love our poker community, love playing poker with you, and love being part of the Merge Network.

Smoke the Competition!
www.reeferpoker.com

Humboldt County along with Mendocino and Trinity Counties make up the "Emerald Triangle" famous for the cultivation of awesome weed. In an article by David Samuels of The New Yorker called "Dr. Kush ~ How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry," he described Humboldt County as:

"the heartland of high-grade marijuana farming in California".

A 2009 report estimates that $35.8 billion of pot was grown in the United States in 2006, with California being the top producing state. The same report said California produced $13.6 billion in marijuana in 2006. It has been estimated that 30,000 residents in Humboldt County are involved in some aspect of the marijuana industry. Prohibition has been the key financial factor in the success of cannabis cultivation in the Emerald triangle, due to more lenient law enforcement and a symbiotic relationship between the citizen/growers and the governing establishment. For decades this was the best place in America for marijuana growers to learn and practice their vocation, this is where the great hybrid cannabis strains were first born and bred, and this knowledge has transferred to all corners of the earth.

In a post financial crisis economy where jobs and good opportunities are increasingly difficult to find, it makes perfect sense that cannabis cultivation will become a growth industry in California. Once it becomes legal there could be an explosion of grass growers all over the state of California. Consider this year's opening of iGrow in Oakland the 15,000-square-foot Costco of grow stores; it has everything you could possibly need for medical marijuana cultivation under one roof, even things you did not know you needed, like bat fertilizer. Members of the "Grow Squad" are there to help and the only membership card required is a pot card which is easier to get than a library card.

"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country."
-Thomas Jefferson

In today's world there's less and less excuse for ignorance, due to the proliferation of information, ease of access to research and the amount of specific data freely available. So how could any elected official defend prohibiting a plant which can't be stopped, doesn't cause harm to anyone and does not create any adverse affect on society? How could anyone allow law enforcement to continue causing harm to innocent people and create an enormous burden on our society? Consider all the criminals being created by enforcement of laws that can't be upheld? The key word in this travesty is "en-force-ment" and it's the same word that makes the very idea fascist because you can't force people to stop enjoying a natural herb that causes no harm to anyone.

Perhaps one of the more important aspects to the marijuana debate is the topic of Hemp. In some ways it's unfortunate that this plant species is incriminated in the same prohibition as cannabis but possibly the fear is that farmers allowed to grow one could easily grow the other and say that they weren't aware that the seeds were mixed. Or maybe it's a conspiracy like so many people suspect. Whatever the case, it's high time to liberate marijuana and to help us do that let's put Hemp on the stand to tell her side of the story. Following is a compilation of data provided by Pat McGrowen of Kentucky, from the TPM Cafe Blog in which he published an excellent paper titled:

The Recreational and Industrial Benefits of Cannabis

With the initiative on the ballot in California regarding the legalization of marijuana. I hope that it would also include the legalization of hemp as well. There are many beneficial aspects to legalizing marijuana such as decrease in crime, increase in tax revenue, and reduction in state spending and a huge boom to tourism just to name a few. There are also enormous benefits to hemp.