On The Bandwagon

A $12,000 Freeroll. Who can say No?

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 6059488

p.s. to PokerStars - brilliant viral marketing campaign! ;)

Into The Deep Blue

Both the Seahawks and the Chargers were in their deep blue uniforms, and they both kicked some arse on yesterday! Woot!

I haven't had much casino time with everything going on at home, but I sure have logged plenty of hours on that thar' Intraweb thingy. So last time I mentioned my online bankroll, I had cashed out over $950 from Caribbean Sun from an initial $500 deposit and after working off a $90 bonus.

I had to withdraw the initial deposit 'cause we had a bit of a problem with a leaky water heater that was soaking some of our things in the garage. I think I got screwed on that deal though, cause I paid Lowes $700 for the heater and installation, and when the guy showed up, he said we needed a special "short" heater for our space and it would cost $150 more... and he just happened to have one on his truck. Hmmm... I didn't have much choice but to pay up.

Anyways, I put most of my online sugar into UltimateBet. I'd read that UB was full of rocks. I thought, c'mon, online poker is online poker... boy was I wrong. I could not get any hands paid off, and I was the sucker that kept running into overpairs or flopped sets. Played a few nights at 2/4, 3/6 and 5/10 and just couldn't hold a profit and was finally depleted. Well, except I have almost $150 in bonus dollars, but I don't know if I'll ever be back to get a chance to work that off.

I took the last $100 of my budding bankroll and went to join the Party. Cha-ching! Believe everything you read, because those 2/4 BBJ tables were just ridiculous! I had taken a few days off to get rid of the sour taste from UB, and my first session at Party netted me over $200 in one sitting! Yes, I was getting good cards and flops, but I just could not believe the number of callers and bluff-raisers that were handing me their cash. After one huge pot, where I flopped a set of Deuces, turned a boat which gave someone trips and another person a flush, someone commented, "When did money go out of style?"

Well, I was able to work that $100 up enough to where I could put $250 into PokerBlue and try out for the WSOP/WPT freeroll. It's been nice to play there, cause you only need 4 hours at their 1/2 table to qualify... so I feel okay logging off after an hour or so even if I've only broken even. If I haven't doubled up, at least I've put some hours towards getting into the Freeroll. And after I get the email confirming my registration, I don't log back on until Sunday.

Last week in the Freeroll, I had QQ run into KK and was out pretty early. This week, I played tight and smart and lasted a bit longer. I recognized the name StB from Beer City Poker on the leaderboard, and I was actually moved to his table (just after he had taken a beating and was no longer in the top 5). I made it down to about 50 out of 170 or so, but the blinds were moving up and it seemed there was a high proportion of large stacks at the table, so I knew I couldn't get away with any steal attempts, and I just wasn't getting any cards to play. I finally put in half my stack with ATs on the button when it was folded to me, the SB called with 77 and hit his set and I was out in 34th. They're running this for a few more weeks, so I plan to get my 4 hours in again and give it another shot. In the meantime, I'll just keep raking it in at the 2/4 BBJ cuz money's never out of style with me!

This was amusing... just after busting out from the PokerBlue freeroll, I hop on a Party table called "Blue Devils." I win a large pot and get disconnected. When I signed back in to make sure I got that last pot, this is what my account was at:

Birthday Bash(ing)

So I went 0-3 in the NL Tourney's on my birthday... pretty bad beats all around too. Funny how I lose with AQ versus KK, then later double up with K2 and K6, and then get crippled when my KK loses to AQ (89TJ on the board).
UPDATE: rest of the bad beats posted at Kicked In The Junk.

It was alright though, as I eventually made all my buy-in $ back (and then some) playing live, so I pretty much got a free day of Poker. :) Traffic kept me from getting to the 6:00 tourney on time, and after gorging on all the chocolate my kids got me, I skipped out on the midnight tourney and stayed home to play some online and continued to kill!

In retrospect, a year ago I thought I was pretty decent at NL tourneys and always blew it in the ring games. But over the last few months, I can't seem to survive past the first round of a tourney, while my limit game has become much more aggressive and profitable. This really came to light when I hopped in a MTT NL tourney and was out in 10 minutes; and then I played in a Limit tourney and was chip leader throughout. Took two beats at the final table - both times I turned top pair, but I was reverse-dominated and that same Turn gave my opponent Two-pair. The two players I lost those hands to ended up being the final two, and I had to settle for 3rd out of 80.

I used to be too passive, and now I can be too aggressive... I need to find a way to balance the two playing styles or at least keep them separate in my mind so that I can be successful at both... practice practice practice, I guess.

Year One

So today's my birthday... I'm 27 (offsuit). Been a year tracking my poker playing... pretty uneventful compared to others who are writing articles and books and playing in WSoP events. But I've had fun and learned a lot and can only get better.

It was an uneventful year altogether I guess. But I have a home and a beautiful family, so there's not really much more I could ask for!

I've got the day off from work because at the beginning of the year, I'd submitted today as one of my floating holidays... my birthday very conveniently falling on a Friday. But since my wife is out of town and my brothers backed out of coming down from Anchorage (one turned 21 yesterday, the other will be 20 on Monday), there's nothing left for me to do but play some poker!!! Here's my schedule for the day:

10:30 AM - $45 buy-in tourney at the Silver Dollar
12:45 PM - $45 buy-in tourney at the Midway
3:00 PM - $25 buy-in tourney at the Cascade
6:00 PM - $35 buy-in tourney at the Rising Dragon
8:00 PM - Dinner break... come home and let the kids "surprise" me.
12:00 AM - $25 buy-in tourney at the Crazy Moose

And since I'm 27, you know I'll be playing that hand every time I see it! :)

Kick-off!

Yea, the Seahawks fumbling the opening kickoff return is going to be real indicative of their season...

Oh well, at least I have the new TV Season kickoff to look forward to this month. Nip/Tuck, Survivor, Smallville. Yikes. As if my current schedule isn't tough enough on the psyche. Getting the kids ready for school, busy time of the year at work, the commute home through a construction zone, the new slew of TV shows, staying caught up in the online class, and to top it all off, there's no wife to keep me company.

*sigh*

Well, at least the Broadway show she's working on is going swimmingly, and the website is up: In My Life, The Musical. The kids and I are being flown out to New York the first week of October to see a preview! I'll have to read up on the NY Club reviews before I go and brush up on my NL game.

The ocassional 3/6 live games I've played here haven't really been anything to talk to about. After dropping the kids off at grandma's last weekend, I stopped at my local Silver Dollar and blew through a rack - luckily I bought in for another $60 just in time to catch an upswing and was able to walk out with only a $20 loss. The next few times I played, I got my socializing fix out of the way and then forced myself to leave when I was up, even if it was only $30 or $40.

As much as I don't like to say it, it's probably better that I'm playing without my wife. She likes to stick around and drink and hang out with the guys all night, and so I end up playing for much too long (oh, woe is me) and usually leave empty-handed.

Wow! Breaking news!!! Judge strikes down ban on strip clubs. I wonder how many places will spring up (pun intended) overnight! But maybe this won't be such a good thing... having only a few places to go really kept the hot stripper population concentrated... now they'll have the option to spread out, and many more cover fees will have to be paid to seek out the best ones.

Speaking of strippers, I briefly mentioned in one of my previous posts that I was on my way to becoming a bonafide bonus whore. A couple of paydays ago, I had a large chunk of overtime, so I put a full $500 into Party with a 1st time deposit bonus code... but I never got the bonus. Turns out that because my brother had transferred me some cash a few months back and I played on the real-money tables, I wasn't eligible for the 1st time deposit bonus. Lame! So in a desperate attempt to become a bonus-whore, I withdrew it all and put $100 into Iggy's new sponsor Caribbean Sun to get their $50 signup plus $40 monthly bonus. Needed 250 raked hands to get the $50 and 200 of those would count towards the requirement for the $40, so an easy $90, right?

Nope, not so easy. The fine print said only hands that had $1 or more in rake were counted, and the rake only hit a buck when the pot reached $20. Hard to get a $20 pot in a quarter or even a dollar game, and I couldn't find a 3/6 or 4/8 table to play on. And once you're in, you couldn't quickly backtrack... you have to wait for a withdrawal PIN to come via snail mail, and they charge a $1 withdrawal fee on top of it all! Pretty crummy if you ask me, but I guess Iggy's gotta do what he's gotta do to keep his site running!

So what did I do? I think I've been reading too much of Sir Waffle and contracted his Go Big or Go Broke syndrome... I deposited the rest of my bankroll and took the last open seat at a 5/10 game. Why not... I buy-in to 3/6 and 4/8 games with just $100 (16 and 12 BB), so I should be okay at 5/10 with 50 BBs. It's the same game, right? The same 52 cards... the same hand rankings. Just play premium hands, value-bet draws, fold to aggression, and position raise for a free card. $.50/1, $5/10, nothing more than a decimal, really.

After 3 nights of playing, I confirmed I reached the 250 $1+ raked hand mark and my bonuses were deposited. I kept myself offline and occupied for the next few days (by playing live!) and a week after my initial deposit, I finally received my PIN and withdrew a little over $950! Not a bad run... I had a bit of a scare when I dropped down to ~$200, but things picked up nicely after that. After the withdrawal hit Neteller, I uninstalled Caribbean Sun Poker... thanks, but no thanks Iggy.

I'll follow up later with further adventures of my bankroll. Online poker season has begun for me!

Martial Law

So martial law hasn't yet been declared, but I heard authorities have been given the okay to shoot to kill. And boy, do I hope they do.

It's one thing to loot a grocery store to get food to feed yourself and your family, but hitting up a sporting good store for shoes and football jerseys?

Reports of people getting raped in the Superdome? WTF? That's Superdome, people, not Mad Max and the Thunderdome. If I were there (and single) I might be tempted to ask every decent looking girl I came across if they wanted to sneak around the corner and shag, given that it could very well be our last opportunity. But it would be consentual... how could you add more trauma to someone's life at this time?

And those idiots shooting at rescue 'copters. What a bunch of morons. Maybe this is just Mother Nature cleaning out the gene pool? Whatever the case, it's a good thing that our government has been on top of things! Oh wait... that's right, our soldiers are out dying on foreign soil and billions of dollars have been spent rebuilding some other country's infrastructure. Wonderful!

My wife is still out in NY, and the kids are spending the weekend with Grandma. I think there's not much left for me to do but try and forget the troubles of the world by hanging out at a 3/6 table.