MikeChick.net

A friend of mine that works in the stage crew offered me a couple tickets for the Criss Angel Believe show at the Luxor yesterday. I’ve herd nothing but bad reviews about the show but the tickets were free I figured I’d see it for my self. My first Cirque du Soleil experience was sadly a disappointment, I don’t think the show was as terrible as people have made it out to be but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, especially when you can go see other cirque shows for the same price, that are much better.

My first impressions were good, the classic theater looked great, the inspired costumes, machines, and artwork are amazing. However; the story line was difficult to follow, the cirque performance was nothing spectacular, there were no “oohs” or “aahs”, and it was easy to see right through all the so-called illusions. The faked “accident” in the beginning of the show was just ridiculous. The trap door effects were really starting to get old and Criss’ magic tricks (the pigeon out of the sleeve) were cliched.

I was entertained during the show and I did appreciate getting to see the show for my self (especially for free). I did notice a lot of other disappointed people as I left the theater, many people talking amongst each other saying they didn’t like it at all and lots of negative feedback. Even when you do a Google search for Criss Angel Believe reviews you get nothing but negative criticism, I’m surprised Cirque hasn’t dropped the show since all the other Cirque shows have a great reputation.

I rarely slow play hands since I have an aggressive style and tend to get action when I flop a big hand and come out betting. A lot of times I’ll flop a monster, bet it and players will make a move on me with the mentality “Damn, I didn’t think you would bet with that hand”. Slow playing a hand can be dangerous in sometimes when there is a miracle card that can come peeling off on the turn to turn your top set into second place to a gut shot straight draw and in some situations it’s good strategy because you give one of your opponents an opportunity to make some kind of hand pay your off.

I wanted to write this article after a hand I played tonight in a 1-3 NL game at Wynn. I had K♥J♦ on the button and was faced with a small raise with 3 callers behind the intial raiser. I called the raise and the flop comes K♦10♣9♠ the initial raiser checks and one of the other players bets about 2/3s of the pot and the action is now on me. Unsure if my hand is good I just call and the initial raiser also calls the bet. The turn comes K♣ and the action is checked around to me on the button and I am pretty certain I have the best hand. Now it almost seems worth it for me to put out a bet here but I’m certain if I do that I will either take down the relatively small pot or get called by better hand then mine, so I check my option. The river is dealt and it’s beautiful J♠ giving me the absolute stone cold nuts. The action is now the on the initial raiser who comes out swinging $50 into a pot that’s only about $60 the player behind him then raises all in for about $150 total and the action is on me and I have the nuts so I’m in my glory. I pondered for a few seconds and shoved all in hoping the original bettor would come along. He thinks for a minute and calls A♠Q♣ (nut straight) face up fearing one of us had a full house, which indeed we both did. The player who was all in shows his hand 9♦9♥ and the losing full house.

Two important things about that hand I want to point out, the pocket nines guy did get pretty unlucky by losing that hand since I had to go runner runner to do it, but it barely cost me any money to do so. Also if I don’t check that turn the guy holding AQ folds his gut shot straight draw for sure and 9s full check raises me all in.

The only time I feel comfortable slow playing a hand is when I have a very strong hand thats near impossible to be beat. An example would be if I have pocket aces A♣A♠ and the flop comes A♦9♦9♥ I want to slow play this hand and hope someone with 10♦10♣ gets to see a free 10♠ on the turn that they wouldn’t get a chance to see if they were challenged with a bet on the flop.

Don’t be afraid to switch up your game, don’t always slow play your nut straight or top set especially if there are draws out there that can beat you. When you flop a big hand don’t be scared to put money in the pot, yeah you might only win a small pot but that’s a lot better then losing a big one.

The Deep Stack Extravaganza tournaments at the Venetian are probably the best tournament structures in Vegas short of the WSOP events. The DSEIII will go on everyday through the month of June and they attract a large field. Today was the first event, a NLH Tournament with a $340 buy in that gets you $12,000 starting chips. Levels were 40 minutes and a structure that favors the better players givin’ the large amount of playing chips and the reasonably long blind levels. The field was 700 players and unfortunately I only made it through half of them busting out ~350th place. The prize pool was juicy, top 63 places were paid, first place was ~$60k while the entire final table’s (top 10) payout was over $2K.

I can’t complain with my performance during the 5 hours I lasted, I made very little mistakes, made a couple difficult calls and never got my money in bad. On top of being completely card dead for a couple hours I took an absolutely horrible beat for 1/2 my stack, then shortly after I was forced to gamble with a “not so great” starting hand and couldn’t catch a break.

The hand that crippled me went like this, Blinds were $100-$200 with a $25 ante, I was dealt A♠10♠ on the button with about $13K (average stack). Player in middle position raises pot to $600 I make the call since he’s been playing a lot of hands and I was pretty sure of two things, if I make a hand he will more than likely pay me off and two my hand is more than likely better then his. Now the action is on the small blind, who was steaming from the previous hand (he lost a big pot) and he decided to shove all in for ~$4,500 more. Player who raised initially folded and the action was on me, I could have easily gotten away from the hand but at best I put him on a medium size pocket pair giving me two suited overcards and a slight favorite to win then hand. I decided to call and showed my hand. The player then reveals his hand 10♦9♦ which is great because I have him absolutely dominated. Since the player was all in and there was to be no betting the other player who initially opened the pot tells me “I folded two 9s” which is great news for me because this gives my opponent only 1 out in the deck if he doesn’t end up making a straight or flush, of course. Flop is dealt: J♥3♥5♣, looks great no diamonds, no immediate straight possibilities so he’s down to 1 remaining 9 in the deck. The turn is another dud 6♦, my opponent stands up ready to leave when the river is dealt *snap* 9♠ the only card in the deck that he could win with. I was needless to say steaming after this hand but I was able to shake it off and get another hour or so of play in.

I was beginning to get bullied around based on my stack size so I knew I had to take a stand soon before I was blinded away and didn’t have enough chips to make anyone fold. I was able to push preflop a couple times picking up the blinds & antes and I built my stack back up to about $10k which was about 1/2 the average chip count ($20k). Player to my right in middle position that I’ve been playing with all afternoon opened the pot with a small raise to $2k, blinds were now $400-$800 and I had A♥J♥. I knew the player was a pretty solid player and based on the small raise I figured I had just enough left to shove all in and push him out of the pot, plus I wasn’t sure if I was going to see a better hand then the AJ suited within the next couple orbits, I had only 10 big blinds left, so I figured that was the right time to gamble if he did have a hand and called my all in. After I shoved action made it around to the big blind who unfortunately for me picked up a hand A♠K♦ and moved all in over the top of me. The player to my right folds a A♣10♦as I suspected he would do. The board ends up 10♣10♠5♦K♠8♥ and I’m busted.

I was disappointed me and my horses didn’t end up cashing in this particular event but we will definitely try a couple more events over the next month and hopefully can go the distance. I really enjoy the structure of these tournaments, it truly is a great tournament to play in if you’re looking for a good Las Vegas Poker Tournament.

The first thing I do when I join any game is feel out the players at the table. I try to point out the suckers and see who the squeezers and who the loose cannons are. I’m not the only person that does this, so with that being said representing a deceptive table image is a good strategy to winning big pots. It is important to know that your table image is not based entirely on how you play, but more specifically on how your opponents see you playing.

It’s a pretty basic concept, here’s a scenario; let’s say you get dealt a reasonably shitty that n experienced player wouldn’t normally play, such as K♣9♥. Someone opens up the pot with a raise. You call preflop and the board comes A♦10♣5♥. You got nothing and the player who opened the pot throws out a continuation bet, you then call. The turn is a 9♠ giving you 3rd pair on board, no type of draw, basically nothing. Your opponent bets again, representing an Ace or a strong hand. Check your cards a couple times, take you’re time like you really have a tough decision to make and make the call. The river is dealt 3♥ which is a complete dud. The opponent then puts out a value bet, knowing his hand is best since he’s representing an Ace with a good kicker. At this point you call and without hesitation show the weak 3rd pair you made. Obviously you’re going to lose the pot and some of your chips BUT consider it an investment. Think of what the other players at the table are thinking about you and how weak of a player you made your self out to be with that play, “wow this guy is a fucking moron”. You called a raise preflop with a K9 os and the flop with absolutely nothing, you made a pair of 9s and called it down to river thinking it was the best hand. This is information that will be used in your favor with later pots you’re involved with and you’ve just increased you’re chances of actually being paid off for the big hands you make.

Table image is such an underrated aspect of the game yet I see the same people playing their ultra tight game at the tables and I know never to get involved in pots with them with a weak hand, since they peddle the nuts (only play big hands). These players are usually easy to take pots off, but if they do call you’re bet you might as well give up on the second or third barrel and check it down. Most of the time, you should concentrate on playing your cards correctly and using whatever table image you happen to acquire. However, under certain circumstances, you can take advantage of opportunities to intentionally cultivate a deceptive image.

Knowing how to play your draws in No Limit Hold’em is one of the most important aspects of the game. You need to know when it’s a good time to draw and when it’s just not worth it. You should be able to calculate the odds you are getting on your draws and you should also have a good idea if you make your draw that it will even be the best hand. Over the past few sessions I’ve witnessed some of the worst played hands ever, so I figured I’d write about them.

I was playing a weak 2-5 NL game at MGM the other day when I picked up 6♣7♣ in late position. The player UTG first to act raised to $25 preflop, got action from a deep stack in middle position, myself and the small blind. The flop comes 5♣7♦8♥ giving me middle pair, with an open ended straight draw and a backdoor flush draw. The player who opened the pot bets out with a pot sized bet ($100). Player in front of me folds and the actions on me. I put him on a wired pair, bigger then board something like Jacks or Aces. He had a decent stack (~$1000 before the hand started) and looked to be a pretty solid player who could get away from a big pair. I had enough chips to make a play at the pot but I wanted to play it in a way that made him think I flopped a big hand and not just try to bully him out on flop. So I min-raised to $200 with the intentions of either making one of my draws or taking the pot away from him on turn or the river. The action is now on the small blind, who without hesitations moves all in for ~$400. The player who opened the pot and led out with the $100 folds in disgust, later telling us he had Q♦Q♥ so my read was right and I was priced in to call the additional $200 to see the turn and river. Turn comes 8♦ and river comes Q♣ leaving me with a pair of 7s. The player who shoved all in mocks a 9♥10♥ and I take down a nice pot with not such a great hand putting the player who would have ended up with Queens Full on tilt.

There are a few things in that hand I’d like to explain. I don’t blame the 9♥10♥ for playing the pot since he had a nice draw. 2 over cards, open end straight draw and a backdoor flush draw in hearts. Where he went wrong was shoving in all in on the flop. For 1 if your drawing to the nut hand like he was he could have just called the $200 which would have priced in the over pair to call the additional $100 increasing his implied odds when/if he makes a hand. The problem with his all in is that he didn’t have enough money to get me to fold and he had no hand to protect, since he was on a draw only.

Another poorly played draw was a 1-2 NL game I was playing in at the M resort the other day. I am dealt Pocket Aces in late position and raise the pot to $15 getting 1 called that was on the big blind. Flop comes 10♥J♠6♥ and the player checks, I bet $25 and player insta calls the $25 leaving him self with just under $100. The turn comes 7♣ and player checks again. I bet half of his remaining chips ($50) and the player immediately shoves all in which is another $50 for me to call his all in. I of course call since it wasn’t nearly enough to fold and I was reasonably sure my Aces were still good. The river is dealt, 3♥ and my opponent shows A♥8♥ winning him the pot with an Ace high flush. Now yeah he did get lucky and win the pot, but the way he went about playing his draw was all wrong. He basically sucked me in to call his all in with nothing but a draw. He had 9 outs to make his flush and 4 outs to make his straight with 1 card to come on river. I was probably around %65-%35 favorite on flop and only improved slightly on turn. The guy had to of known he couldn’t get me to lay down for $50 on turn so had he had a big hand like a set of 10s he would have got maximum value and played it great. Problem is he got all his money in with the worst of it and got lucky. What he should have done, was check raised flopped or went all in, if not right on flop then definitely on turn, giving him a chance to win the pot with no showdown using a technique known as a “semi bluff” this way if he’s called he still has outs to win the pot since he had no hand at the time his money went in and I was priced in to call him.

There are plenty of pots I witness at my tables and I analyze the way the hands are played, this is important and it really helps your game. You should always pay attention to the way a player plays his draws and big hands. It may help you make a difficult decision later on.

I tried my luck in a 10 person Satellite for a Wynn Main Event Entry the other week, which was for a $10,000 seat. The buy in was $1,050 which was my largest tournament buy-in I’ve played thus far, although I have played deeper in cash games. There were a lot of satellite’s running for all of the events running that week at Wynn, which were typically like 1k-2k events and the Main Event which was a 10K buy-in. The winner of the satellites would receive tournament entry chips, that you could use for whatever event you wanted to play in. I was excited to play in a big event, so If I was to win I would have tried my luck in the 10K Main Event. Unfortunately I took a bad beat when my top two pair went down to a river ace when I was busted out of the tournament.

I started out good, winning a couple small pots then I got involved in my first big pot with the chip leader. I was dealt K♠Q♠ in late position when a player in middle position raised the 50-100 blinds to 400. I called and the flop came Q♣Q♥Q♦ giving me the absolute nuts, 4 of a kind. The player bet out 500 which was about 1/2 the pot, leaving him about 6,000 in chips. I thought for a good minute and proceeded with a sneaky smooth call, trying to disguise the strength of my hand as much as possible. The turn comes out a 9♥ the player then decides to check, in fear he might be beat and probably didn’t want to over commit to this pot. I thought about checking behind him, but instead I played it a bit differently and put out a nice bet of about 900 trying to represent a vulnerable hand like 8’s or 10’s while I had him on a nice pocket pair as well. The player snap called my bet and the river is dealt 5♣. There is now about ~$3,800 in the pot, which was about the amount I had left in my stack. The player put out what I read to be a blocker bet of $1,000. Leading me to believe he had a strong hand that he believed to be the best and didn’t want to give me the opportunity to move all in on the river and bluff him out of the pot. I thought for a couple seconds, then moved all in which was a bit more then ~$2,500 for my opponent to call giving him ~3:1 on his money to make the call. He opted to fold which was good for me because I didn’t have to show my hand, which was obviously the best hand but not showing the other players at the table how I played the nuts was good as well. Other players at the table tried to guess my hand putting me on two Kings and my opponent said he folded Jacks which sounded about right.

After that pot I was the chip leader and was dealt A♥K♣ where I raised to $500 preflop and got 2 callers. Flop comes K♠8♠10♥ and is checked around to me, I put put a nice sized bet of $1200 and a short stack on the small blind moved all in on me for another ~$2000 and the other player mocked. I called the all-in and we turn over our cards. The player all in shows A♠7♠ giving him the nut flush draw. The turn is dealt 3♠ giving him the flush and leaving me drawing dead going into the river. This pot took about 1/3rd of my chips and tilted me since If i would have won that hand I would have had almost everyone remaining at the table 2:1 in chip count. I sat out a few hands, not getting dealt much of a hand and watched a couple players get busted out. There were now about 6 players remaining of the original 10 and I was dealt K♣Q♥ on the button. Player UTG (under the gun) that was the current chip leader at the table put in a nice raise preflop and since I had position and a decent amount of chips to play with I opted to call, although I don’t recommend calling raises with KQ, since it’s a hand that normally gets you in trouble. The flop comes K♠Q♦5♥ giving me top two pair. The player who opened the pot bets about the size of the pot and action is on me. I decided not to slow play this, since my oppenant probably has a big hand and I didn’t want him to catch up, I moved all in on the flop and my opponent almost instantly calls me with A♠A♥ leaving me with the best of it once again with my money all in. Turn is dealt 9♥ leaving him a total of 8 outs with 1 cards to come. The river is dealt A♣ giving him a set of Aces and busting me out of the tournament.

I wasn’t upset with the way I played in the tournament, I took down some nice pots and I did get my money all in good twice but the deck just wouldn’t cooperate. The main event only ended up with a field of about 100 people, and the guy who won it ended up being a friend of a friend. He took down just over $300,000. I think I’ll try some more satellites and larger MTT during the WSOP next month as long as I can keep raking in wins in Cash Games.

With the recent hype about iPhone 3.0 OS, I decided to jump the gun and try installing 3.0 in it’s beta stages on my own iPhone, which resulted in the death of my iPhone.

First, I downloaded the iPhone 3.0 restore file (iPhone1,2_3.0_7A238j_Restore.ipsw) via bit torrent and attempted to manually restore my iPhone from iTunes with the 3.0 file which was located on my desktop. Everything was going smoothly, it took a couple of minutes for the update to install on my iPhone then my phone restarts and I see this lovely screen in iTunes.

After doing some research I learned that in order to use the 3.0 beta OS you must be apart of the Apple Developers Program which came along with a price of $99/year for the standard package and $299/year for the enterprise. At this point I figured I’d just wait a couple months for the 3.0 OS to be released to the public and decided to restore my iPhone to latest backup which was that day, before I attempted the 3.0 upgrade. Unfortinuately there was no way to restore my iPhone from iTunes, so after a bit more research, I learned that by a specific key stroke I can reboot my iPhone in something called “Restore Mode” which will give me the option to restore my iPhone from iTunes from a file on my computer.

I was able to successfully restore the 2.2.1 OS on my iPhone but after the completion of the software update my phone would reboot as always and iTunes would give me the error below (1013). Apparently the baseband that comes with OS 3.0 won’t downgrade using any method on either the 2st Gen or iPhone 3G. There is no unlock for the new baseband (or the current one for that matter).

When you DFU restore to 2.2.1 iTunes will give you an error at the end (most likely 1015 or 1013) indicating a baseband/firmware mismatch.

So feeling pretty frustrated at this point, I decided I would just put 3.0 back on my iPhone and purchase the Developers Program from Apple. I filled out the application and at the end was notified that the Application has been submitted and I will be contacted by a representative within 5-7 business days. Meanwhile I have no phone, so I figured the best thing to do at this point would be to bring it in to the Apple Store and have them take a shot at recovering it.

Of course the Apple Store in the Fashion Show mall was busy and had no openings to see me until the following day. I was without my phone for over 24hours and it was pretty bad, but when I finally got it into the Apple Store, they attempted the same restore I did, failing as I did and ended up just replacing the device with a new one.

So all is well again and I guess I’ll just have to wait like everyone else for MMS, Landscape texts, Internet Tethering and copy & paste.

I took a short trip last week to the NYC/Jersey area for a business meeting and to visit a friend. After I got work out of the way I wanted to check out Atlantic City, since I’ve never been there and heard the action was pretty decent. Unfortunately I did not enjoy my short stay here and will probably never go back.

Coming from Las Vegas I wasn’t expecting too much since Vegas casinos, weather and entertainment are all top notch. We stayed in a suite at the Trump Marina, which apparently is going bankrupt. We had a nice dinner at an Italian Seafood Cuisine called Harbor View which was really good, had some drinks, no complaints here.

After we ate I wanted to check out the Poker Room, which was non-existent at our Hotel. So we took a taxi over to Borgata, which was pretty nice besides the fact they tried to rob me. Just like any other Casino I’ve been in, lot’s of gambling people, pretty big floor with a ton of games. We walked around then eventually found the Poker Room, which was just a madhouse and full of people. They had an open seat for me at a 2-5 NL Hold’em game which I took right away.

The Robbery

On my way over to the table I was ID’d by the floor, which I was cool with. The Nevada DMV hole punched my NYS ID in the bottom corner because I am waiting on my Nevada ID to come in the mail. So anticipating having some problems with this hole punched ID, I brought several forms of ID. Anyways the floor didn’t care about the hole punch and sat me down at the game. No chip runners so I had to find the cage and get my own chips, which was also fine I guess, I’m not crippled. After playing a couple handles I was offered a drink, and ID’d a second time. The cocktail waitress didn’t give me any problems and brought me a beer. About 30 minutes into the game, I’m up $200 on these idiots (the majority of the players were horrid) a new dealer comes in and I’m ID’d for a third time, I mean I did shave that day but hell I don’t look like I’m 15 and I’m normally never ID’d anywhere in Vegas. So this dealer must of been having a bad day because not only was she extremely rude to me she threw my ID back at me and said this isn’t valid I can’t accept it. I started to reason with her and explain but was cut short when she called over security and told him to tell me not to tell her how to do her job. So the security guard pulls me away from the table and looks over my ID, I try to again explain my situation and tell him I have other forms of ID, but the guy seriously might have been mentally retarded and could not understand anything I was saying. After the failed conversation he told me not only do I have to leave the casino, but they are confiscating my chips. At this point I’m furious at this point and would not accept this since they basically just set me up and asked to speak to his supervisor.

I was escorted to the security office, where I was surrounded by about 12 officers, who were all treating me like shit. After showing several forms of ID and having them scan my hole punched NYS ID to verify it is in fact a valid ID and not expired I was given permission to keep my chips and told I could continue gambling. Without even thinking about returning to gambling I cashed my chips and left the Casino without a single apology or show of good faith for basically ruining my night. I wish that never would have happened because I think I would have made a ton of money in that room since the action was very nice and the players (at my table at least) were not good.

After my awful experience at Borgata we went back to our Hotel and just got silly drunk at the lobby bar, tried Trump Vodka, which was pretty good. Played a couple table games, won some money playing roulette had as much fun as possible since we may have been the only people in the City looking for a good time and not there just to gamble.

The next morning we checked out of our room and were picking up the car from Valet. Since they charged $10 to valet for some reason I reached into my pocket to find I still had a red chip worth $5 from their casino. I asked the teller, if she would mind taking this so I don’t have to go back up to the cage? With an awful attitude she responded “No” of course. I mean what type of casino won’t take it’s own chips as tender?

So if you’re thinking about taking a vacation to Atlantic City, just go to Vegas. A.C. is pretty much a mini, ghetto version of Vegas, where you’re treated like shit and surrounded by degenerate gamblers that are not looking to have fun but just to gamble.

Today Apple released Safari 4 Beta, which is their latest web browser and so far I’m impressed. I can say it’s very elegant, user friendly and feature rich. If your interested in trying out a new browser or if you’re still running IE be sure to give Safari a try, you can download for Mac or PC at apple.com/safari/.

I’ll post a few screenshots and briefly go over some features I see but you can get a full list of new features and much more details from apple.com/safari/features.

First thing I noticed when opening Safari is the Top Sites feature, which is basically graphical tabs of the websites you frequently visit. I thought this was pretty convenient, you also see this screen each time you open a new tab although I’m sure you can change the new tab to open whatever you’d like (blankscreen, google, etc.).

I really like how they made the Address and Search bars much more usable. You can start typing in a query in the search and have google (or your default search engine) do a prediction, latest search or at the bottom it gives you the options to search the page your on for a certain word/string. When typing in a website in the address bar in starts to populate with your bookmarks and history based on your entry, making it easy to find a website you may have visited in the past. I’m not sure if this feature is just for the Beta software but I like having the ability to report a bug to Apple, linking them to the exact website you are experiencing problems. I think this could potentially make Safari almost flawless.

I’m also liking the history/bookmarks graphical view, similar to iTunes and Finder. Also digging the RSS reader and Address book built into Safari 4.

My only disappointment is the lack of developer tools. The only reason I don’t use safari as my main browser is because of Firefox’s plugins, mainly Firebug which I use daily for web development. I think I may have read somewhere that there will be plugins available for Safari soon, but I could be wrong. If this happens I would think there will be something close to Firebug for Safari released but not likely since Safari is not an open source browser like Firefox. I’d like to see Apple address this and give developers some useful CSS/Markup tools in addition to this javascript debugger that I haven’t dabbled with yet.

Like other WordPress theme developers I tend to use post excerpts (the_excerpt) on the home page of a theme rather than full posts (the_content). Using the excerpt controls the size of each post and provides a clean interface for readers to scan content. However, I think it makes more sense to have a permalink trailing each post excerpt rather than the default [...] text providing no usability.

There are plugins for this, such as The Excerpt Reloaded. I for one always try to keep plugin usage to a minimum and this can be done very easily by adding a small function to your theme files.

Open your theme’s functions file or functions.php in your themes directory, if you doen’t see a functions.php file you can create it, and add the following code:

//function to replace trailing text on the_excerpt 
function customtrail_excerpt($text)  
{  
return str_replace('[...]', '<a href="'. get_permalink($post->ID) . '">' . 'Continue Reading &hellip;' . '</a>', $text);  
}  
add_filter('the_excerpt', 'customtrail_excerpt'); 

Your post excerpts should now look something like this..

Let’s take this a step further by making our trailing text S.E.O. friendly links

Making the anchor text dynamic instead of a default “Read Now” or “Continue Reading” is great for Search Engine Optimization. First we need to add another function to our theme files (functions.php) that will go out and get the content of a custom field from our posts meta data. This custom field should be named “anchor” and if you populate this field while writing a post, your custom anchor text will display at the end of each post excerpt as anchor text linking to the permalink of the post, otherwise a default “Read More…” will display in the brackets.

Below is the updated code featuring the additional custom fields function and also some changes to the original Custom Trailing Text function I posted above. Instead of just returning static text it will look for the custom field of “anchor” and display this text, otherwise display the default “Read More…” trailing each post excerpt.

//function to get custom fields outside the loop    
function get_custom_field($key, $echo = FALSE) {
  global $post;
  $custom_field = get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true);
  if ($echo == FALSE) return $custom_field;
  echo $custom_field;
}
//function to replace trailing text on the_excerpt  
function customtrail_excerpt($text)  {  
  $customanchor = get_custom_field('anchor', false);
    if(!empty($customanchor)): 
      $anchortext = $customanchor;
    endif;     
    if(empty($customanchor)):
      $anchortext = 'Continue Reading …';     
    endif; 
    
  return str_replace('[...]', '[<a href="'. get_permalink($post->ID) . '">' .  $anchortext . '</a>]', $text);  
    }  
    
    add_filter('the_excerpt', 'customtrail_excerpt');  
 ?>

Your post excerpts should now look something like this…