Personal

Poker games I like to play, things I write, and whatever I happen to be doing at the moment. Some of these became projects. Some are just things I like.

Right now

Updated September 2026
Building
Dealer's Choice, a small platform for the poker variants below, and a simulation study on how people attribute minds to AI over long conversations.
Learning
Search engines, AI agents, and multimodal machine learning — my first semester of graduate coursework at LTI.
Reading
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera), Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Monk), The Order of Time (Rovelli).
Playing
Basketball whenever there is a court, pot-limit home games whenever enough people are around, and whatever game has a system I feel like taking apart.

Dealer's Choice

Poker variants we play at home games — 8 I came up with, 4 I picked up from friends. Open a game for its rules. All are pot limit and bomb pots unless noted otherwise, and all assume you know standard Texas Hold'em.

These are the games the platform I worked on is for. You can play them online, with friends or against bots.

Variants I came up with

Auction

"Everything has a price..."

Economic variant where players bid to receive additional cards.

  1. Standard 2-card starting hands
  2. On a player's action, they can 'deal' a card from the deck, starting bid at 1BB
  3. Other players can outbid; highest bidder wins the card and adds to hand
  4. Limit each player to 1-2 dealt cards and 1-2 bought cards (set before game)
  5. Money from bids goes directly to the player who dealt the card
  6. Pot limit, bomb pot

Black Texas

"Ace King!"

Blackjack meets Texas Hold'em - bust and you're out.

  1. Each player starts with 2 cards
  2. Players can request additional cards at any betting round with 2bb put into the pot
  3. Card values: Aces = 1 or 11, Face cards = 10, Number cards = face value
  4. If hand sum exceeds 21, auto-fold immediately
  5. Board uses normal Texas Hold'em rules
  6. Winner of the board determined by smallest hand of the greatest combination
  7. Winner of the hand by the nearest sum to 21
  8. Pot splits between winners of each
  9. Pot limit, bomb pot

High-Low Boards

"Winning isn't always about being the best."

Double board with contrasting win conditions.

  1. Two separate boards dealt
  2. Board 1: Normal rules (best high hand wins)
  3. Board 2: Smallest hand among the biggest combinations wins
  4. Pot splits between winners of each board
  5. Pot limit, bomb pot

Investment

"Your chips grow safely in someone else’s hands."

Collaborative variant where players can invest cards in others and earn returns from their wins.

  1. Standard starting hands
  2. Each player has a limit of 1-2 investments they can give and 1-2 investments they can receive (set before game)
  3. On a player's action, they can 'invest' in another player by giving them one of their cards
  4. Receiving player adds the card to their hand
  5. At showdown: if winner uses invested card(s) in their best 5-card hand, investor receives percentage of pot
  6. Payout formula: each invested card used = 25% of winner's share goes to that investor
  7. Winner keeps remainder after paying investors
  8. Pot limit, bomb pot

Random Board

"The river flows if fortune allows."

Chaos variant where luck determines if community cards are dealt.

  1. Double board
  2. After river: roll a dice (or use random probability) for each board
  3. If dice/random says yes: deal the next community card
  4. If dice/random says no: skip that card, betting continues without new card
  5. Pot splits between winners of each board
  6. Pot limit, bomb pot

Majority Vote

"Democracy is just organized chaos."

Democratic game where players collectively control which community cards stay.

  1. Double board
  2. After each betting round (before dealing next card): players vote on each card in both boards
  3. Any card receiving majority votes is kicked and replaced with a new card from the deck
  4. If voting ties 3 times in a row, no change occurs
  5. Pot splits between winners of each board
  6. Pot limit, bomb pot

Rob

"Steal a card, lose a friend."

High-risk variant where players can steal cards from opponents.

  1. Standard 2-card starting hands
  2. Each player gets ONE rob opportunity per game
  3. When robbing: steal one random card from target player's hand (you don't choose which)
  4. Robbed player continues with remaining cards
  5. Pot limit, bomb pot

Swap

"Control is an illusion, adaptation is key."

Voting variant where community cards switch between boards.

  1. Double board
  2. After each betting round (before dealing next card): players vote for on card on each boards
  3. Majority vote from Board 1 switches places with majority vote from Board 2
  4. If voting ties 3 times for either board, no swap occurs
  5. Pot splits between winners of each board
  6. Pot limit, bomb pot

Games I picked up

Forty-Nine

"Ha! I get a 10!"

Five-card draw variant with dual winning conditions: best poker hand and highest sum.

  1. Deal 5 cards to each player
  2. First betting round
  3. After first round, players may discard up to 2 cards and draw 2 new cards from the deck
  4. Normal betting afterwards
  5. Two winning conditions: Board 1 wins with best poker hand (normal rankings)
  6. Board 2 wins with highest hand sum where J, Q, K, A count as 0 (max sum = 49)
  7. Pot splits between winners of each board
  8. Pot limit, bomb pot

Indian 1

"Learn to bluff with words, right now."

Hidden information game where players see everyone's cards except their own.

  1. Each player receives 2 cards: one placed face-out on their forehead (visible to all others), one in hand (visible only to them)
  2. Players can see all other players' forehead cards but not their own
  3. Standard betting rounds
  4. Pot limit, bomb pot

Indian 2

"What you show matters as much as what you hide."

Four-card variant with double board and hidden/shown card selection.

  1. Each player receives 4 cards: 2 face-up (shown), 2 face-down (hidden)
  2. When making final hand, must use exactly 1 shown card and 1 hidden card
  3. Double board: pot splits between best hand on each board
  4. Pot limit, bomb pot

Regret

"Commit early, regret forever."

Strategic grouping game where early decisions limit later options.

  1. Deal 6 cards to each player
  2. Before the flop: group cards into 3 groups of 2 cards each (cannot change groups later)
  3. After flop: discard one group (2 cards)
  4. After turn: discard another group (2 cards)
  5. Remaining 2 cards form your final hand for showdown
  6. Pot limit, bomb pot

Terminology

Bomb pot —
All players ante before cards are dealt. No pre-flop betting; action starts at the flop.
Pot limit —
Maximum bet or raise cannot exceed the current pot size.
Double board —
Two separate community boards are dealt; the pot typically splits between the winners of each.
BB —
Big blind. The standard betting unit; 1BB is the minimum bet for that game.

Writing

Poems

Poetry

A Love Letter

September 15, 2023

The Basketball flies me to the bucket, Guitar strings pluck at me, I ride a wind and sit on the clouds, and you're thinking of me.

Read the full poem →
Poetry

Adventure

November 10, 2022

Set out on an adventure, Stop at the dusk, dreams, and cloud. Meet a colorful river, And our stories build a bridge.

Read the full poem →

Prose

Monologue

August 25, 2025 · 8 min read

The boy lies on his bed, his gaze piercing the roof to the moon hung high. His body is exhausted, but his heart won't let him rest. In the daytime world there are many monsters; they keep him jumpy, and he carefully hides himself in a shell he dares remove only at night. The monsters are so stupid - they never guess there's a person inside the shell.

Prose
Read more →

Musings

On freedom and responsibility

Perhaps we are not free. Perhaps every choice is predetermined by the firing of neurons, the chemistry of our brains, the circumstances of our birth. Perhaps free will is an elaborate illusion our minds construct to make sense of a deterministic universe.

And yet, Kant teaches us that we must act as if we are free. When we stand at a crossroads, we cannot wait for neuroscience to settle the question of determinism. We must choose. We must deliberate. We must take responsibility for our actions as if they truly originated from us.

This is the beautiful paradox: even if freedom is an illusion, it is a necessary one. To be moral, to be human, to make any decision at all, we must assume our freedom. The question is not whether we are truly free, but whether we have the courage to act as if we are.

On uncertainty

At the poker table, uncertainty is not an obstacle but rather the game itself. You cannot see your opponent's cards. You cannot know which river card will fall. You calculate odds, read tells, and make the best decision you can with incomplete information. Then you accept the result, whatever it may be.

Heidegger speaks of being-toward-death, the idea that authentic existence requires confronting our own mortality. Death is the ultimate uncertainty, the one certainty we cannot escape but whose timing and manner remain unknown. Every decision we make is made in its shadow.

Perhaps this is why poker feels so honest. It strips away the illusion that we can control outcomes. It teaches us to make peace with uncertainty, to act decisively while acknowledging our limitations. In poker, as in life, we are always playing with incomplete information. The wisdom is not in eliminating uncertainty, which is impossible, but in learning to dance with it, to make our choices and let go of the rest.

Quotes I keep

"I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?"

— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

"As the circle of light increases, so does the circumference of darkness around it."

— Albert Einstein

"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude."

— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

"When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."

— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Elsewhere

Guitar & songwriting

I play guitar and try writing simple songs. I am still learning.

Photography

I like photographing people and landscapes. I am learning to pay more attention to composition and timing.

Storytelling

I want to understand what makes a story work: the first line, the timing of a joke, and how the pieces fit together.

Sports I play, honestly rated

Basketball Good Ping Pong Good Pool Med Frisbee Med Badminton Med Volleyball Low Football Low Tennis Low Soccer Low Golf Low Climbing Low

Want to discuss any of this?

I am always happy to talk about technology, philosophy, game theory, or a poker hand you cannot stop thinking about.

Get in touch