Weekend Warrior

Played in a $3 tourney on Pokerchamps the other night and took first place ($50) out of ~60 registrants. I had a mini-rush when it was down to 13 people... dealt AA off-color, one caller to my pre-flop raise. Flop is KQT, I bet out big and get called. Turn is a blank, I check and he goes all-in. One of the short stacks at the table egged me on: "CALL! YOU'RE POT COMMITTED!!!" I sighed, having lost a good chunk of my chips early on with AA against a Turned straight. I called anyways, and he showed J3 (!) and didn't complete the straight.

I fell back with a big sigh of relief, and when I looked back at the screen, I had off-color AA again. I thought maybe there was a lag I hadn't been pushed the pot from the last hand, but I saw everyone else had cards again. Pocket Rockets twice in a row!?! I raised it, got one caller, and he caught Top pair on the flop and pushed. I bust out two people in two hands! The chat lit up... someone asked if I was having intimate relations with Gus Hansen himself. In the meantime, I get dealt JTs and catch a straight on the Turn, taking out another person and bringing us to the final table. It quickly gets to heads-up and I'm a 3-1 chip leader and easily take the win.

I hope that luck holds up for the weekend. The Midway just started running a Friday night 10/20 game, which I put my name on the list for and will be taking a shot at tonight after work. I hope it's like they say it is... people less willing to chase to the river because of the stakes. No bad-beat river suckouts. I'm just going to play it like 2/4 with red chips... and if I can double up my buy-in, I'll be good!

Then on Saturday, I'm using my accumulated hours at the Cascade for another Vegas qualifier freeroll. These guys run a good set of tournaments... they just need to update their website and keep the Seattle public in the know. Every night for the past few weeks, they've been running a $50 (40+10) Sit-n-Go, a one-table satellite to the main "WPT Satellite" event sometime in early March. If they get a full field of 40 winners from the SnGs, that's $16,000 in the prize pool, and they'll give the Top Five a $3200 package that includes a buy-in to the $3000 NLHE event at the Bellagio's Five-Star World Poker Classic in April, just before the WPT Championship!

So they're holding ONE freeroll (need to have saved up 50 hours) on Saturday for an entry to the main event. I figure if I can't sweep that one, but I do okay at the 10/20 table tonight, I'll use some of those winnings and take a shot or two at the single-table entry satellites. I'm feeling awfully cocky, which I try never to be, but I've been pretty consistent with my tournament play so as long as it all holds up, then I'll ride with the cockiness for awhile!

And lastly for the weekend... we found a place closer to home, PJ Pockets, which is pretty classy. They have big comfy swivel chairs at their poker tables, and their chips are nice and shiny, as if they were just newly laquered. We don't play there often though as they only run 4/8 games. But they have a Sunday noon tournament, as well as a Monday "Moonlight Madness" tourney that starts at 1:30am Monday nights (Tuesday morning). That was one of the two I money'd in on Valentine's day... I probably would have done better than 3rd if I hadn't made a really stupid, STUPID mistake.

Anways, I'll record my idiot play here at a later date. For the time being, I have to focus on my game and try to plan on having one of my best weekends ever!

The Great White North

Most of last week was unexpectedly busy at work, so I had absolutely no time to write or keep up with reading. Then I get a call early Thursday from Mom up in Alaska saying to get the family packed up as we're flying up there for the weekend. Grandpa just had a stroke, and while he recovered well and is currently in good spirits, he made the decision to move back to Thailand and live out the rest of his days there. So he basically he wanted an impromptu family reunion, to be able to see most of the kids and grandkids one last time.

The family gathering went as family gatherings do, lots of hugging and crying and catching up with one another, and lots of spoiling of the children. But the young ones weren't the only ones to be spoiled: while there is no Great Alaskan Casino, there was plenty of poker to be had!

Turns out my brothers run a weekly Saturday night game with a rotating crew of their college buddies and other misfits. And with extra family members floating around, there was plenty of $5 and $10 buy-in action! And while Grandpa didn't participate, he did offer to stake some of the younger ones. So much for grandparents not choosing favorites!

Since I was the most experienced, in terms of hours spent sitting at live casino tables, I was the designated dealer at whichever table I was at. Unfortunately I spent more time dealing than playing, as I dealt myself bad-beat after bad-beat. Once I dealt myself AA, and then flopped quad 9's for my cousin. Oops! I went in as the favorite (at least in my mind), but couldn't money in any of the 5 mini-tournaments we ran over the weekend.

On the plus side, I played my first batch of online SNGs on my brother's Party Poker account, and did pretty well! Two firsts and two seconds out of 9 played (at the $5+1 level) for a profit of $26... which covered my losses from some of the ring-games I tried out!

While the reason for the trip to the Great White North that is Alaska was a somber one; Grandpa wanted to keep it upbeat and joyous, and everyone ended up having a lot of fun.

Gramps, here's to hoping the upcoming trip to your Great White North is just as enjoyable.

The Day After

My favorite day of the year is today, February 15th, the day after Valentine's. Why? Is it because the stress of planning a wonderful Valentine's Day dinner for the loved one is over? No more racking the brain trying to decide which diamond ring to pick out? No more fretting over whether it will all pay off and I might actually get some at the end of the night???

Nah... February 15th is my favorite day of the year because I'm a chocoholic... so today all the V-day candy is on sale. And even better than that, it's the first day Easter candy is available. And that means... I can start on my yearly binge of Cadbury Mini-Eggs!!!

Gawd, I don't know how I make it through the rest of the year without these chocolately balls of heavenly goodness. The crunchy candy shell has a light dusting of what I truly believe is some raw form of crack cocaine, cause there's no other way these damned little things can be so addictive. I can go through a whole one-pound bag in a day... in fact, I'm almost half-way through my first bag of the season, which I just picked up at lunch time.

One year, a coworker of mine kept track of how many bags of Mini-Eggs I ate, and determined that I had a caloric intake equivalent to eating 2 McD Big Macs a day! It's amazing I'm not Mini-Egg-shaped myself!

And now that I have this forum to keep track of my daily going-ons, don't be surprised if this turns into a Mini-Egg Counting Blog, at least through a few weeks after Easter.

Valentine's Day itself turned out to be really nice, especially since my wife didn't want anything fancy-schmancy... rather she wanted to spend a day at the Poker tables with me! I had the day off work, so we did some casino-hopping and hit some of the daily tournaments. I ended up money-ing in 2 out 3 of them!

I'll write up about the tourneys later, that will give me something to do throughout the week... that is, if I haven't overdosed on Mini-Eggs by then!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

No, you haven't stepped into a blogging time-warp. Today is New Year's for those of Oriental descent, or to be politically correct, it's the Lunar New Year. Welcome to Year of the Rooster! Click here to find out your Chinese Zodiac sign and attributes.

Nothing much going on the last week... no wild weekend casino-hopping as I'm in the middle of refinancing the home and want to keep the bank account fat and my nose clean.

In fact, so much nothing has been going on, the most excitement I've had all week was when I discovered they recently opened a Panda Express restaurant just a few blocks down from work! Panda Express is always my #1 choice when it comes to mall-food-court outings, and now I have a whole stand-alone restaurant where I can enjoy the fine cuisine with other connoisseurs of Chinese fast-food, without the distractions of those pesky mallrats.

And the best part is... they have a drive-thru! You mean I can get Orange Chicken on the go without even leaving my car? How FUCKING AWESOME is that???

Anyways, now that I'm done salivating... the qualifiers for the LA Classic are over and I had only taken one more stab at it over the weekend. Obviously nothing came of it... stupid pocket Kings. I really should have followed my own rule on how to play Cowboys and I may have lasted a bit longer. I don't know if I should keep playing on PokerChamps or cash-out and try elsewhere. We'll see how things go after the re-fi and what extra cash we have or don't have to play with.

Made $50 at lunch today. :) The Calendar New Year started off good for me, so maybe the Lunar one will be just as prosperous!

Woes of Working

As much as I'd love to play in the Blogger's tourney, my work schedule won't allow it. How cool is the WPBTOnline though??? My name will be on that leaderboard soon... oh yes, very soon.

In the meantime, I'm happy with the $120 I made at lunch today! Best hand was KQ of diamonds, flop comes all diamonds including the Ace. I'm EP so I check to see if anyone will bet into me. Nope. Turn is a black Q, so I bet and loudly proclaim, "Okay, I'm betting my pair of Queens!" I get raised, I re-raise, and when he caps, I say "Uh-oh, you got me outkicked?" The River is a blank and then he only calls my bet. I show him the flopped nut flush, and he laughs as he showed me he did have me outkicked with AQ. Hey, I wasn't lying when I said I had a pair of Queens!

Lunch hour was over after that hand and I had to leave in the middle of a rush. This working thing sucks... who needs a regular paycheck anyways??!?