Belisarius

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"Thus do I ever make my fool my purse, for I my own gained knowledge would profane if I would time expend with such a snipe but for my sport and profit"
~Iago, William Shakespeare's Othello

Prefer to be a Pro-Mafia Player.

I am Belisarius, username chosen after the great Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius. Elsewhere on the internet, I sometimes utilise the sobriquet Bleys J. Maynard, a practice that started due to the impossibility of anyone not directly related to me correctly spelling my Ukrainian surname. I'm not going to post said surname, but to get a general idea of what it might look like, refer to the bottom line of an optometrist's eye-testing chart.

Timezone: GMT-04:00 Atlantic Time (Canada)

Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. I sometimes range as far away as Halifax, Nova Scotia, but I never cross international or timezone boundaries.

Nationality: Scottish-Canadian, with links to Ukrainian heritage via adoption

Notable interests: Shakespeare, history (Particularly those sections of history covered in Shakespeare's histories), the writing of Stephen R. Donaldson, the Monarchy, Final Fantasy (Currently subscribed to FFXIV), and a level of xenophilia regarded as unusually high even for a Canadian.

Age: 33, but I'm old for my age.

Units of measurement: Metric system

Drink of choice: Martini. A proper one, not a vodka martini. I am not a communist.

Beer of choice: Alexander Keith's

Pop or soda: Pop. I am not a communist.

Blood type: red

Favourite colour: blue

My quest: To seek the holy grail

Airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow: 10 m/s

Capital of ancient Assyria: Aššur

Rules for getting along with me: No swimming, no swearing (as fucking if, ha ha), no laughing, no crying, no talking out of turn, no line dancing, no moose calling, no swordplay, no pumpkin carving, no mummified cat juggling, no wallowing in your own self pity, no circumstantial evidence, no walking on the grass, no pancakes on Monday, no dessert til you eat your vegetables, no slapstick comedy, no balloon animals, and absolutely, positively, no barking like a seal. It upsets me.

Hydras

Hamlet with fuzzybutternut

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS with goodmorning

Breakfast with Stalin (formerly Scumfuck) with fferylt

Playstyle

• I absolutely hate metagaming. Hate, hate, hate. -- I'm softening on this stance quick-like. It's harder to avoid than I thought. Belisarius 15:10, 2 January 2013 (EST)
• I am somewhat competitive and want to win, but my first priority is to enjoy myself as much as possible.
• My first core principle in any game: It's better to make the others react to me than it is to react to them. It gives me more control over the game and it's easier to get accurate reads based on someone's interactions with me than it is between two others.
• The second core principle is Shaheed's Law, simplified as "If you need something to be true or you're screwed, assume it is."
• Third core principle: "A shit leopard can't change its spots" ~Jim Lahey
• "Active Lurking" and "IIoA": Buzzwords used to stifle discussion and scare people away from using humour. If you use these buzzwords, autovote me every game because I shall no longer be silenced save by lynch.

Misc

• If you give me any opportunity to quote Shakespeare, expect Shakespeare.
• My favourite thing about Mafia is that "Magnificent Bastard" moment when I realise somebody has successfully pulled the wool over my eyes.
• Some Canadians may like to spell words the American way. I am not one of those people. I speak the Queen's English, please do not "correct" me when I spell words the correct (for me) British way.

Shaheed's Law source

“But of course poker isn’t really a card game. It’s a game of people. The cards are just a tool for playing your opponents. That may be why you weren’t good at it. Bridge comes much closer to direct problem solving— the extrapolation of discrete logical permutations. You can’t ignore who your opponents are, naturally, but you win with your mind more than your guts.

“You’re trying to win this one with your guts, Morn. You need to use your mind.”

Morn drank more coffee. She didn’t say anything: she didn’t have anything to say. Instead she concentrated on the pain in her throat. “We have a maxim in bridge,” he continued. “If you need a particular card to be in a certain place, assume it is. If you need a particular distribution of the cards, assume it exists. Plan the rest of your strategy as if you have a right to be sure of that one assumption.

“It doesn’t always work, of course. In fact, you can play for days without it working once. But that’s not the point. The point is, if your assumption is false you were going to fail anyway. That assumption represents the one thing you have to have in order to succeed, so you might as well count on it. Without it, there’s nothing you can do except shrug and go on to the next hand.”

Donaldson, Stephen R. (2010-07-09). Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision (pp. 180-181). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.