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!