I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers, you too can take part by registering on WBCOOP
Registration code: 247424
No really! Well, except for stepping on a bee earlier today and getting the business end of it in my toe. Yesterday was what I hope to be the first annual Poker @ Rob’s WSOP ME Special Poker Night (PaRWSOPMESPN ???). Nine of us gathered around the felt to play a special poker game using the November Nine’s starting stacks from the WSOP Main Event. I didn’t make it to the money but Nikki finished 3rd and covered our expenses for the night. Starting chip stacks varied from 58.9 million chips all the way down to 6.8 million chips. Doesn’t sound very fair does it? Well, let me put this in a little perspective. Mooney bought the big stack and started with almost 60,000,000 chips. Nikki cheaped out (hehe) and started with 6,800,000. Mooney busted 6th, Nikki finished 3rd. At one point, 3-handed, she was even chip leader!!! As well, a friend of our’s from Talking Poker made the drive down from Toronto to play as well as join us for supper! Brag: Staying up till 4am shooting the shit about poker and computers. Beat: getting up at 8am with the kids. Brag: TOTALLY worth it!
Today the weather was….HOT! Hovering somewhere at 30 degrees C but felt like 43C with the humidex. Spent the better part of the afternoon outside with Alex, hanging in the pool and staying cool. This was after I stepped on the bee.
I’ve just upgraded the site to v2.5 of WordPress. Nothing really has changed on the front end of things. Well…not much – right now there isn’t a random picture displaying because I need to upgrade the Gallery software as well – but other than that nothing has changed but it’s a lot nicer on the backend.
In other news, Brent, Craig & I went to play in a poker tourney last night to support a local baseball team. It was a $40 buyin and you started with $40.00 in chips. Blinds started at $0.25/$0.50 and were VERY aggressive. By VERY aggressive I mean they DOUBLED every level. It was sick. There were eight tables and they played in a double-shootout format. For those not in the know, that means that the winner from each table advanced to the final table (second place got their buyin back). Because of the format and the blind structure you couldn’t really wait around for the monster hands. Unfortuately I didn’t make it to the final table. I was still around $40 in chips with blinds $2/$4 and looked down at AsQs. I pop it to $15 and folds around to a guy who goes all-in. I immediately call and he turns over KsJs. I called out for spades. No spades came. The flop was x-T-K – all red. I call out for a jack. No jack came. No ace came. I go. Mooney also didn’t advance beyond his first table. His pocket tens was all-in against two other hands and were cracked by a river spike. Brent, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be afflicted by the bad luck that Mooney & I held. Instead he seemed to be the one dishing out the bad luck. Not only did he win his table to advance, I believe he was solely responsible for sending every other player to the rail. Not much changed at the final table either. The ones he didn’t send to the rail he was responsible for severely crippling. When it got down to the final three one other player suggests a chop to which Brent replies, “If you two want to chop second and third and leave me with first I’m good with that.” The other two hashed it over for all of about 30 seconds and shook hands and said “Good game.” Just like that the game was over with Brent walking away with 1st place. There probably wasn’t any question that he was going to win anyway. His stack was easily 3 or 4 times BOTH their stacks combined. So now he’s trying to decide if he wants to buy a PS3 with his winnings.
Since things wrapped up early at the tourney we headed over to a local dive called Sam & Bill’s. Unsound, my friend Steve’s band, was playing there. They haven’t played too many gigs lately and was glad that I was able to go. Had a great time there too. Saw a couple of friends that I haven’t seen in a while and found out that Carrie is going to be moving out West in the summer to be with her boyfriend. Very awesome for her! Also got to catch up with Teresa about all the goings on with her & Steve and Domino’s life. I was hoping to be able to make it there last night and thought about taking the camera but I didn’t want to have to carry around through the poker tourney and I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave it in the car whilst I get my cards on – so no pics from the gig last night.
So last night Rob, Adam and Jason and I headed towards Strathroy for a NL hold’em tournament that Adam heard about. After about a 40 minute drive it was clear it wasn’t quite in strathroy and to be honest, I have no idea where we were. It was definitely an out of the way town especially since I had never heard of the place before.
We took two cars, Rob and I followed Adam and Jason. Jason was the cellphone contact as Adam was the only one who knew how to get there. And when we pulling into the drive of what was probably a farm, I said to Rob, “You know, if Adam is actually a serial killer, this is the perfect place to lead us to.” We park and Adam leads us into a barn/shed. It probably at one point held a lot of farm equipment but was mostly cleared out except for the tables and chairs for all who were going to play.
The buy-in is $26+4 (we think). From what I gathered from Adam, it was a “charity” tournament for the local Optimus Club. It really wasn’t clearly advertised what the rake was, so we have no idea how much the real buy-in was. In fact, it wasn’t a very organized tournament; it was more like a very big home game.
The blind structure and chip counts kinda sucked. They started the blinds and 1/2 and then doubled them every 20 minutes(for the most part, there were a couple stages where it wasn’t a double). And we only started with 150 chips. Definitely not a structure I’m used to. There were 30 players and 4 ended up paying out. First was a cool $312.
It was slow for the game to start. Everyone seemed to know everyone else–if they weren’t related–so there was a lot of chatting and catching up on news before everyone was ready to play. When we did get going, Jason and I ended up at the same table and Rob and Adam were at two others. The best way to describe the play is “LOL, donkaments!”
It was bad; it was worse than the play at our home game. Everyone at the table would limp in. Although, if there were raises, it still didn’t thin the field, it just sweetened the pot. The betting typically consisted of min bets, ocassionally someone would bet 2XBB but that was rare. And if they had an Ace in their hand, that was good enough to call down to the river. So, my strategy was to wait. I didn’t want to get into to many pots with so many players. It was tough though, because of the blinds, waiting also meant worrying about being short stacked. As well, if I was in the BB or SB and I hit TP or better, I was staying until the river as my hand was likely good.
I really didn’t have a choice about waiting for hands, though. I was not getting very good cards either way. So I folded and folded and folded. Blinds are about 5/10 and I look down and see TT. My stack is so-so, so I decide to make a hefty raise and re-evaluate on the flop. I get two callers and the flop is 34Q rainbow. The only thing I am afraid of is a queen so I push and hope neither player has one. One calls and one folds. When she flips her cards I’m happy to see A7o. The turn is a 5 and I’m now dreading a 6 on the river, but I hold up when it’s just a seven. I scoop the pot and I’m good for a couple more blind increases.
My friend, Jason, is eliminated shortly after that and as he is busted he says to me “I hate the Mooney tables.” Mooney is the worst player at our home game. I nod to Jason in agreement as I’m a little frustrated as well.
Part way into the 10/20 blind stage, I looked down to see KK in the BB. Time to make a move, I need to get more chips if I want to get to the final table let alone to the money. The whole table limps in, so I push. Everyone folds except for one caller. He flips A6o. I laugh and just feel an ace coming since I do have the kiss of death. Amazingly, my hand holds up.
Later, I double up a short stack when my TT ran into her QQ. Then next hand I call another all in with AKo and he flips QQ again. I’m beginning to hate the ladies. I end up lucking out and the two of us split the pot when the board made a straight.
During these hands, Adam goes broke and then later I see Rob come by my table so he’s out as well. It’s up to me now to represent.
Finally, the “tournament director” yells out that we will be going on break and after break we will be at final table! Blinds will also start at 20/40. I count my chips and I’m hurting. I have just under 200 chips. Once the game was one again, I check the chip stacks at the table there are 8 of us and only one other player is as desperate as I am. I was definitely going to have to push with any type of good holdings.
First hand is dealt and I’m UTG. I check and see QQ. Perfect, I’m sure to get a caller with this hand, so I push my stack in. Nope, everyone folds. Okay, the ladies really are a crappy hand for me tonight. In the BB I check and see 94 both spades. Sigh, with 60 chips coming off my stack this and the next hand, I’m not likely the looks of how things are going. So before the flop is dealt, everyone but one person limps in. As the cards are dealt, I see spade, then spade and finally a third spade. I flopped a flush. Not a great one, but it’s all I have, when it’s my turn to act, I push my stack to the center again. I get one caller again and when he flips his cards, my tournament is over. His K3 of spades, makes his King high flush better than mine. My only hope is a runner runner for a straight flush. It doesn’t happen and I end out in 8th place.
I head over to where Rob and Jason are and the three of us wait until Adam finishes playing a Sit and Go that had started up. His game ends and he tells us he finished in first, so at least one of us were able to leave with a small profit.
This is just copied from my poker blog and Rob will likely post a few additional comments on the night later today.
Last night was the return of the monthly poker nights at casa del us. We had two new players, Kris & Lisa, come out as well as the usual bunch of rag tag players. Two people had said they were coming but they never showed. So, counting Nikki & I, we had 12 people – an average turnout.
We got underway a little late as we were waiting for a couple latecomers. First hand I’m dealt 92s in the big blind. There’s a few limpers and I check. The flop comes 982 rainbow. VERY nice hand for me. I bet out 300 and Mike calls. The turn comes a 7. This is a bad card for me. Mike is capable of calling with pretty much any two cards at this point. If he happens to have JT, I’m screwed. I check and he pushes all-in. I SERIOUSLY went in the tank. I was trying to do everything I could to convince myself to throw the hand away. Alas, I couldn’t do it. I made the the call, turned over my two pair and Mike turns over…….JT. With only the river to come, I’m in serious trouble here. There are exactly 4 cards in the deck that would save my ass – the other 2 nines and the other 2 deuces. Brett tells me he folded a 9. Shit. I don’t remember what the river was, but it wasn’t a 9 or a 2. I was out. On. The. Very. First. Freakin’. Hand.
So, with me out, that left the table five-handed. So I wasn’t wandering around the room lost, I ended up dealing for the table until enough people were knocked out that we moved down to one table. We, being Brent, Lisa, and I, started playing a cash game with 5c/10c blinds. As more people got knocked out, the cash game grew. I think at one point we had 7 or 8 people in the cash game.
I bought into the cash game for $5 and we Kris, Lisa, and I called it quits just before 3am, I ended up with almost $15. So it covered my loss in the tourney.
The top 3 for the tourney were Nikki in 3rd (winning $24), Mike in 2nd ($36), and the big winner for the night was Tim, taking home the first prize of $60.
It’s looking like the next event will be either October 14th or the 21st. Not sure which yet. I’ll send out emails and see which night is best for everyone.
Last night was a great night! We had an awesome BBQ with WAY too much food. Of course, I think that’s a staple of BBQs – way too much food. Once we made sure that everyone had enough to eat we made our way downstairs and setup for poker. We ended up having twelve people playing so we started with two tables of six, with the plan to merge to one table at 8 people.
My table consisted of myself (duh), Mooney, Brent, Brett, Mike C, and Mike H. Nikki’s table was occupied by Jason, Scott, Liz, Ryan, and Jeff O.
Mooney was the first to drop out of the game as his hand ran up against Mike H’s boat, kings full of aces. Ouch. Unfortunately, Nikki was the next to go as Jason sent her packing. After Nikki, Liz didn’t last too much longer either before she was sent to the rail. The final table was created when Jeff O was sent packing.
The remaining 8 gathered at our table and we started dealing. The order in which people fell rather eludes me at the moment but we ended up in th money when I sent Mike H to the rail, leaving Brent, Jason, and I to battle it out for supremacy. I double up the very short-stacked Brent a couple times to give him a playable stack. I then double up off of Jason and knocked Brent out shortly after that. Heads-up against Jason didn’t last too long. Without figuring out the exact numbers I probably had a 20:1 chip lead on him and finally knocked him out to win the Canada Day Poker tourney @ Rob’s! Woohoo!
So a big thank you to everyone that came out for either the BBQ or poker! And an even bigger thank you to our parents, who not only came out for the BBQ but also brought food!
As I mentioned, the entire day was incredible. Well, except for Alex. He’s got at least two more teeth coming in and they are bothering him a LOT so he was particularly cranky yesterday. Getting him to sleep was near impossible and didn’t happen until around 11pm. I thought that was hopeful that I’d be able to sleep in a bit this morning. Apparently his 4:30am wake-up call had other plans. I got him back to sleep at he slept until 7:30. He seems to be in a good mood thus far today though.
So yesterday was Father’s Day. Alex was so excited about it he thought he’d get an early start to the day by getting up at 5-freakin’-o’clock in the morning. I could only get him to settle down for 15-20 minute chunks of time. I finally surrendered at about 6:10 and we were up for the day.
Since he’s still rather on the youngish side we didn’t have any real big plans. However, we DID have a couple fairly big poker tournaments to play in so we asked Nikki’s folks if they would like to borrow Alex for the day.
The first thing we did after dropping off Alex was head over to Golden Griddle for their weekend buffet breakfast. Yum yum yum. After that we had to track down a cover for the pool. Hopefully this will stop the animals from puncturing the inflatable air ring around it. Our first stop was Toys ‘R’ Us. We didn’t find any pool covers but we did find a shit load of stuff we’d LOVE to buy for Alex. I soooo can’t wait for him to get older. Hot Wheels and Lego…I can’t wait!
Off to Wal-Mart. Jackpot! Pool cover central. So we scoops up the pool cover and head home with a quick stop at Price Chopper to grab some baby food.
We got home just before 1pm so I head out to the backyard to re-patch the pool and put the cover on. I didn’t get a chance to reinflate the air ring last night and there was a rather large rainstorm. When I heard it coming down, I was hoping that I wouldn’t wake up in the morning and find a completely drained pool. THAT woulda sucked in a BIG way. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear to have lost any water. I’ll reinflate it today and see if it holds.
The first poker tourney was a freeroll at UltimateBet for an entry into their $1million Freeroll in July. This was the monthly qualifier. We had already made our way through the daily qualifier and the weekly qualifier to get to the monthly. Unfortunately, both of us busted out before the entries were handed out.
Next up was the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP) at PokerStars. Big field of 2274 players. Only 54 places offered prizes. Nikki went out 313th and I was VERY shortstacked so I pushed all in with KJs and was called by AQs. He caught his flush and I was out 303rd. While not making the prizes kinda sucked, I was still very happy with how deep in the field that we made it. Most of these players are VERY good players.
So after busting out, we headed back over to Nikki’s folks’ place to pick up Alex. After chatting there for a bit we headed home where we retired to the backyard briefly. Alex played in the sandbox and I dug up some weeds in the backyard. I also scrubbed all the bird crap off of our cars. We then gave Alex a cool bath and tried to put him down for the night. Note the word tried. He wasn’t having any part of it. Maybe it was because he didn’t really get a chance to crawl around the living room for a bit before bed or maybe it was because he was over-tired (since he was awake at 5 and only napped for a total of about 1 hour over the entire day). We ended up bringing him out to the living room so he could play for a bit and finally got him to bed around 9.
We then played in the poker forum league event last night. I started off rather decently but then lost a decent sized pot dropping me down near the bottom of the list. I managed to claw my way back to 3rd and managed to hang in until there were six of us left. Unfortunately, the cards weren’t coming my way and I ended up being down again. I pushed and was called. I lost.
So all-in-all it was a pretty kickass Father’s Day. I know that it’s just the first of many to come and I’m really looking forward to the ones when Alex is old enough that we can actually do things.
Hey all! Our next poker night is scheduled for Canada Day, July 1st, 2006. It’s on the usual Saturday night but we’re going to kick things off with a BBQ! We’ll be serving up burgers, hot dogs, probably some corn on the cob and maybe some salads. Here’s the thing: I *NEED* to know how many of you are going to coming out for this one before hand as I need to buy the right amount of food. This isn’t just like picking up a few bags of chips and some veggies where if there’s leftovers Nikki & I can finish them off. Also, since we’re having the BBQ, we’ll just be having chips during poker. Also, we’re asking for $4 to cover the cost of food instead of the usual $2. So, here’s what I need from all y’all – if you’re interested in coming please send me an email (rob (at) surfergeeks (dot) net) letting me know if you’re coming out and how many of each thing you would like.
If you’re interested in just coming out for the poker, please send me an email letting me know as well. Poker will be the usual $10 buyin.
We’ll be kicking of the BBQ at about 6:30. Also, I’ll have the pool up and running by then so feel free to come earlier and hang in the pool. Keep in mind, this is just one of the 10′ diamater 29″ deep jobbies. This isn’t a pool like Tim has. Sorry. Of course, if it’s raining the pool might not be so attractive. 🙂
Anyway, PLEASE let me know if you’re interested in coming out! The more the merrier!
I wrote the following for my poker blog but I figured I’d post it here as well – just in case anyone in our poker world visits here that doesn’t visit my poker blog.
I know, I should have posted this yesterday but I was too tired/lazy. After the league tourney ended I started railing fellow forum member, eejit, in a $3.30R on Stars. Around midnight I called it quits and went to bed. Well, eejit hung in there (and you gotta realize, he’s in the UK – it’s LATE there!) and took the fucker down! A nice, just-shy-of $6K payday for the kid! WTG eejit!
So, on to my play. I only played two games, a $6.50 turbo and the league event.
I finished 6th in the turbo. Just wasn’t really catching the cards. I think I had one good hand prior to that and then continued to get blinded down. Ah well. Can’t win ’em all.
The league event was kinda disappointing. Only five of us turned out. There was myself, Nikki, Ash, RoC, and Bunny. RoC went first, then Bunny. W00t! Made the money! Then I went next to Ash. Then he finished off Nikki as well. GG Ash! The most amusing part of the whole thing was that it appears that one of the players doesn’t seem to think it’s right that Nikki & I play in the same tourney. Well, they didn’t come right out and say it but when I said “sure, we can talk, but you and I could also be talking over MSN – it’s the same thing” the reply was “it’s not the same”. Alright, it’s not quite the same so I replied “okay, but it’s no different than if I were talking with someone on the phone” to which the reply came “it’s not the same thing but I’m not going to get into it”. WTF??? How the hell is it not the same thing?
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Nikki & I have decided to cheat to win this league thing. You know, because winning an extra $100 or so is sooooo critical to our bankroll/life that we’re willing to risk our good reputation to do it. So anyway, we’ve decided to cheat. So, we sit in the same room and tell each other our pocket cards. Obviously, this gives us a slight edge over the other players as we know 4 of the 52 available cards vs. 2 of the 52 that other players know.
Now, let’s examine an alternate scenario: another player and I decide to cheat. So we’re on the phone with each other. We tell each other our pocket cards. Again, this gives us the same edge over the other players as the above scenario. How is it not the same? Because I can’t see the person? Do I really need to? Even if Nikki & I were sitting BESIDE each other so we could see the other’s screen, it makes no different (other than the person couldn’t lie to us, but, since, in these scenario’s, we’re supposed to be colluding so lying doesn’t make sense). The same scenario holds up for MSN as well.
If we’ve decided to cheat, it simply makes NO DIFFERENCE whether we’re in the same room, on the phone with each other, or using an IM program. Hell, smoke signals if we were feeling really energetic.
Anyone that knows Nikki & I know that we are far too competitive with each other to cheat. We both love winning too much. For those that don’t, you’ll simply have to trust us. If you’re not able to do that, then you have two options: a) don’t play with us and/or b) bitch about it. Either way, the more you bitch, the more respect for you I lose.
So, to recap: Nikki & I play in SOME (not all) games together. This includes the forum league event and the occasional small buyin MTTs (which we’ve already cleared with Stars). Our living room has an ‘L’ shaped sectional in it. I sit at one end, Nikki sits at the other. It is simply not possible for us to see each other’s screen since neither of us ever sent in the required 53 boxtops + $2.99 for shipping & handling for our X-Ray Specs. We do not, have never, and will never collude when playing at the same game. Period. It’s simply not worth it. We’ve made a few friends playing online and would not risk those friendships over this. I said above that it’s not worth it to win an extra $100 or so. Let me amend that: it’s not worth it to win ANY amount of money. Integrity and trust are two things that are too important to fuck with.
Okay, I’m done ranting now. It’s unlikely that anyone that doubts our honesty and integrity actually reads this but hey, I don’t have a livejournal so I need to whine here. On the off chance they do, I have this to say to them: If you’re life has evolved to such a place where you cannot offer the basist amount of trust required to believe us, I feel bad for you, I really do, but I’m not going to continually defend myself against allegations of cheating and colluding. I’m simply going to block chat from you. That way you can rant to all the other people at the table and see if you can sway their opinion of us and I don’t have to read any of it.
There are going to be hands that Nikki & I end up heavily involved in. It would be so easy to cry “chip dumping” (in fact it happened in the first league event. I don’t know if the people being serious were joking or not, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they were joking. This has been discussed on the forum so if you want to read more about it, go there.) if one of us lays down a hand after some heavy betting. All I can tell you is that it is not because we’re talking about the hand. Once in a while, we’ll talk about a hand AFTER the hand is over. Even then, we don’t always tell the other what we had. Too competitive.
Okay, now I’m really done.
That should cover it.
Well, last night was our regular monthly game. It was the smallest tournout we’ve had yet: 10 people. It’s a shame really, there were over 20 people that expressed interest and we ended up with 10. Some people had good reasons: ill, wedding, etc. but then others just never bothered to reply. That sucks. So anyway, the folks last night were Nikki & I (obviously), Jason, Jen & Mike, Jeff M, Jeff O, Mike H, Liz, and the one-and-only Donkey Boy (aka Mooney). Format was the same as last week. We decided that we’d go down to one table at 6 players. Technically, we could have started at one table, but then it would have been a unnecessarily crowded table. Top 3 places paid out. Our final table was formed when, at table 2, Nikki and Liz are all-in against Jeff M’s bigger stack. Nikki caught and sent Liz to the rail and doubled-up off of Jeff, sorta crippling him a bit and giving her overall chip lead. The final table was made up of Nikki, Jeff M, and Jen from table 2 and Jason, Mike C, and myself from table 1. The four bounced players started a twoonie game at the other table. Jason & Jeff were the first two to go out at the final table. Jen fell next, making the final three Mike, Nikki, and me. I went next. At this point I started dealing for Nikki & Mike. They finally ended up all-in together and Nikki was the victor, taking down the tourney.
Since it was such a small tournout, the game went fairly quickly so we decided that the remaining people would do a $5 buyin as soon as the other table’s twoonie game was done. It ended quickly after we badgered everyone into going all-in. Liz won that one. So our short game ended up being: Jason, Liz, Nikki, Jeff M, myself, Donkey Boy. Since there was only $30 and 6 players, we decided that Top 2 would pay out. Liz was first to drop, followed by Jeff, then Nikki. She was horrendously card dead the entire game and ended up seriously short stacked. So we’re down to the final three: Donkey Boy, Jason & me. We finally sent Mooney to the rail after the best hand held up for once against him. That guy sucks out more that Monika Lewinsky sucked. Heads-Up. Jason & I. We go back and forth a bit until we end up all-in. Jason had cowboys and I had something that made up a straight draw. Let’s call it 9T. The board showed KQx. I needed a jack AND the board not to pair. I rivered the jack and doubled-up off of Jason, giving me a HUGE chip lead. It was only a matter of time at this point that I finally beat Jason, winning the small game. But it was a plain, simple suckout on that hand. Jason should have won right there with his set.
So it was a good night all around. I think everyone had a great time. We had a new player join us. And, best of all, Nikki and I finished in the money in the main game, first & third respectively, and I won the second game. Kinda makes up for the lack of either us making the money last month.
Next month’s game is May 27th. We’re hoping to have more than ten people at it.
The next poker night is May 27th. That’s the weekend AFTER the long weekend. If you’re interested in coming out, let me know!
Also, we’re thinking of doing our BBQ poker night July 1st. Get everyone together around 6pm for burgers/dogs/whatever and then sit down to play ’bout 8pm. Lemme know what y’all think!
As I write this, my desktop weather widget is telling me it’s 21° outside. For all you people that can’t quite grasp metric, that’s 70°. Not too bad for April. I took Alex outside today in his little car and sat it beside my car while I cleaned out the backseat, floor, and trunk. Then I moved him to the backyard while I did a bit of work back there moving and repositioning a downspout drain and one of the satellite dishes. Such a beautiful day out. I would have done more out there but Alex was starting to get a little cranky out there. I think he was bored.
We’re taking my car in on Monday to have a couple new tires put on it. I’m also going to get the muffler fixed and an oil change. While Nikki’s car is in a bit better shape than mine (no thanks to some asshat trying to break into my car last year and royally fucking up the driver’s door lock) it will be much, much easier to load Alex in and out of my backseat. We’re hoping that late fall/winter we’re going to trade both cars in on a new car. Fingers crossed. I’m itching to test drive the forthcoming Saturn Aura. I’ll also test drive the Saturn Relay while I’m there. We haven’t really decided which direction we want to go: sedan, SUV, or minivan. Each has it’s plusses and minuses. Here’s the list of what I’ve decided to test drive for CERTAIN: the above two Saturns, from Pontiac: G6, Montana minivan, and the Toyota Matrix. If I go the SUV route I’ll definitely testdrive the GMC Envoy/Chevy Trailblazer EXT. I don’t like the Saturn VUE so that one’s out. It’s a while off yet though, so we’ll see. What vehicles would any of you suggest I test drive??? I know that one of my visiter’s, Phronk, drives a SMART car and as much as I’d LOVE to have one of those, I just can’t see it be a very useful family car; especially considering the fortwo model only has two seats and no room for the kid…
In other news – I’ve created a separate blog for my poker exploits. BIG news will also be posted here, but if you want to bore yourself with the mundane poker shit head over to Robbie Robb’s Poker Blog. Bookmark it bitches!
Apparently, I am actually pretty good at tournaments. I decided to play a $2.20 today. And well, I ended up winning! Yes, I have now won another tournament. This one had a very nice payout as well. First place paid $528.76. Not bad for 5 1/2 hours of work. Click on thumbnail for a bigger image.
So I figured I’d give a $4.40 180-person SNG tourney at Pokerstars a try for the first time. In case you haven’t figured out from the title of the post, it didn’t go too well. Actually, it was going along VERY nicely until the hand below. Then it all came to crashing halt. I’ll point out the key parts below…
PokerStars Game #4549063440: Tournament #22663247, Hold’em No Limit – Level III (25/50) – 2006/04/07 – 10:33:57 (ET) Table ‘22663247 4’ 9-max
Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: Robbie Robb (3955 in chips)
Seat 2: Jackman (1280 in chips)
Seat 3: Gammon39 (4225 in chips)
Seat 4: SAL JAM (1220 in chips)
Seat 5: lucky 1991 (1810 in chips)
Seat 6: Kaloster (4545 in chips)
Seat 7: jimpepper (5100 in chips)
Seat 8: potman2 (1080 in chips)
Seat 9: Mikle (1870 in chips)
lucky 1991: posts small blind 25
Kaloster: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Robbie Robb [Ah Ac]
The absolute best starting hand in Hold ‘Em. The dream cards.
jimpepper: raises 200 to 250
potman2: folds
Mikle: raises 250 to 500
Robbie Robb: raises 3455 to 3955 and is all-in
I loved this. jimpepper makes a sizeable raise and then mikle follows it up with a reraise. I shoved all my chips in at this point for a couple reasons: 1) I had the BEST hand. There are none better. Worst case scenario one of the other two has AA as well. 2) I was hoping to chase one of them out of the pot. While AA is 88% to win heads-up, that number drops rather quickly when faced with more than one opponent.
Jackman: folds
Gammon39: folds
SAL JAM: folds
lucky 1991: folds
Kaloster: folds
jimpepper: calls 3705
Mikle: calls 1370 and is all-in
Okay, so they both call. I’m still in good shape. Because of the way Pokerstars does their hand histories, you’d have to scroll down to find out what cards they hold. To save you the trouble, I’ll print them here. jimpepper turns over KK and Mikle turns over QQ. As soon as I saw those, I figured I was dead. What are the odds that I’m going to duck both a king AND a queen in five cards? Read on…you’ll see…
*** FLOP *** [Kc Qd 9d]
See what I mean??? At this point the ONLY card that will help me is one of the last two aces.
*** TURN *** [Kc Qd 9d] [Jc]
This jack actually helps me a little bit. Now, in addition to the two aces, any ten will complete the straight and I rake in the pot. Six outs. Fingers are crossed.
*** RIVER *** [Kc Qd 9d Jc] [Ks]
Figures. That gives jimpepper quad kings and mikle the boat, queens full of kings. If you’re keeping track, both those hands beat me two pair, aces and kings. FUCK!
*** SHOW DOWN ***
jimpepper: shows [Kh Kd] (four of a kind, Kings) Robbie Robb: shows [Ah Ac] (two pair, Aces and Kings)
jimpepper said, “wow”
Kaloster said, “poker stars”
jimpepper collected 4170 from side pot
Mikle: shows [Qc Qh] (a full house, Queens full of Kings)
Robbie Robb said, “nice hand”
jimpepper collected 5685 from main pot
So that ended my first run at a $4.40. It wasn’t bad play, just horrible luck in that instance. I like the way I played that game and even this hand – I got my money in when I had the best hand. That’s all you can do sometimes.
So as most of you know, Nikki & I went to Toronto for the day yesterday. Before I go into letting you all know how our day was, I want to say that I’m EXTREMELY proud of Nikki being able to leave Alex overnight for the very first time. I know it was tough for her, and I tease her about mercilessly, but she did it and I couldn’t be more proud!
Now, on to the report. We left London about 11:00am and got downtown about 1:20pm or so. Traffic was light the entire way. The purpose of our going to The Big City was to meet up with the operator of Talking Poker, the forum that we live in frequent. The plan was to meet up with Mark around 5:30 or 6 for dinner, then afterward play some poker with a couple other people from the forum. Since we were headed down anyway, we figured we’d make a day of it and play Joe & Josephine Tourist.
After we got parked (corner of Yonge & Dundas), we decided that we’d go up the CN Tower. Nikki couldn’t remember if she’d ever been up to the top or not and I hadn’t been up there in ages. So off we go, headed toward the CN Tower. For those not familiar with the downtown Toronto area, the CN tower is on Front St. at John St. That’s a pretty good hike. We went down Yonge to King, then along King to Bay, then down Bay to Front and over to the tower. The view was really good yesterday, not too hazy and not very cloudy. I took quite a few pics of the view and will post those up later today or tomorrow. After the trip up, we browsed through the gift shop and bought Alex a sippy cup that was cute. On our trip back downtown we decided to walk up John to Queen and across Queen to Yonge. This path took us past the CHUM-CITY building, home of CITY-TV, MUCHmusic, Bravo, and many other CHUM media properties. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be happening and there were no big star sightings.
When we got back downtown we decided we would walk through the Eaton Centre (which is REALLY weird to call it that when there’s no Eaton’s in there anymore). Our feet were a little sore at this point so we chilled in the food court and split an order of New York Fries while we rested. After all, we didn’t want to spoil our supper. We checked out a few stores in the mall but didn’t actually buy anything. I tell you though, if I ever won a lottery, THAT would be the place I would head to shop for clothes…man…the bundle of dough I would drop there.
After going through the mall we headed out to Yonge to wander up it. We’d been in touch with Mark via text message and we were on track for a 5:30-5:45 meetup for supper. We headed up Yonge and stopped at the World’s Biggest Book Store. We browsed the science fiction section before deciding to head out. Our next (and last) stop was the HMV superstore on Yonge. I used to LOVE going to this place when I was younger. They had a section in the basement called, appropriately enough, The Bassment. It was where they sold all the 12″ vinyl and CDs for the dance club crowd. Sadly, The Bassment no longer exists. We browsed through their DVD selection. They were having a big 2 for $30 sale so we ended up picking up The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: The Bueller Bueller Edition. At this point is was about ten after 5 so we headed back to the car to drop off the DVDs and pick up our laptops and poker chips to head for the meeting.
We walked up Yonge to Mark’s hotel at College & Yonge, the Courtyard Marriott. After figuring out how to get into the joint, we sat down in the lobby and I sent Mark a text letting him know we were there. Lemme tell you, carrying two laptops is pretty heavy. The poker chips weren’t very light either. A few minutes later, Mark comes down and introduces himself, as well as his friends that were joining us for dinner. Mark took us back up to his room so we could drop off the laptops and chips. Up in the room, he gave us some goodies that he brought up for us. Each of us were given 3 TalkingPoker.com poker chips, a TP.com pen, and a TP.com mousepad. VERY cool swag. We then headed across the street to Hoops, a sports bar and grill, for dinner. I ordered a burger, Nikki ordered a chicken sandwich, while the others split a pizza and some nachos. A couple of pitchers of beer were also polished off over dinner. Thanks again to Mark for picking up the tab for dinner. Whenever we make it to Florida next, it’s our turn to treat! Print it.
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and chilled in the hotel’s lounge. We’d planned on sitting in the lounge and playing poker so we cleared that with them. They were cool about it. We were waiting for Kirsten (hope I spelled that right MB!) and Mike, her newlywed hubby, to join us for some poker. They showed up just after 8 and we said our hellos, chatted for a bit, then got down to playing some poker. The conditions weren’t exactly ideal: chairs were REALLY comfy, table was a little on the low side (it was a coffee table after all) and a little small, but we made do. We had decided on a $20 buyin with the top two places paying out $75 and $25 for first and second. We had the chips all ready to go and got down to some poker. Oh yeah, I should mention here that the drinks were flowing at the table too. I had a rum & coke then switched to 7-up as I had to drive back to London in a few hours.
The game started off fairly tight. Some chips moved back and forth until I looked down at my hole cards to see AA. I raised the pot pre-flop and Nikki calls. The flop was rags, all low cards, 4-x-x. Nikki bets out and I decided to raise her all-in. I had put her on something along the lines of a high pocket pair (KK, QQ, maybe AA as well) or AK. She quickly calls and turns over 44. Ugh. That gave her a set of fours over my pair o’ aces. Unfortunately the luckbox was empty and I didn’t catch an ace. She had me covered and I was now on the rail. Actually, I was now the dealer…
Mark was suprisingly the next to out to Kirsten in what had to be the bravest, or dumbest, move of the evening when she called Mark’s all-in with ten high and caught her flush, beating Mark’s nine-high flush. That put us down to three and Nikki still had a sizeable chip lead over the other two. Chips moved back and forth for a bit until Mike’s all-in or fold tactic finally succumbed to a better hand and he joined the men on the rail. Kirsten and Nikki then started battling it out for the win. Nikki finally took down Kirsten and walked away with the $75 prize.
By this time, the lounge had closed and they were essentially cleaning around us. We said our goodbyes and headed home. The drive home was uneventful. It was a long day though and I was VERY glad to get home. From the time I walked in the door to the time I was in bed was approx. one minute.
All in all, it was an AWESOME day and a big thank-you goes out to Mark for being a very generous host yesterday!
Okay folks, the next poker night is going to be April 22nd. Same bat day, same bat time, same bat format. We had 14 players at the past two events. We’d LOVE to have a full 20. Let’s see what we can do to drum up some more people! I’ll be emailing everyone that played last night and a few others that have expressed interest. If you, or anyone you know, is interested in playing – get in touch with me!
Well, for the first time at poker night, neither of us made it into the money. We made it to the top 6 then Nikki fell victim to Mike H’s cards to finish in 6th place. Denise went shortly after that, leaving us at four: Scott D, Mike H, Brent, and myself. I was dealt KhTh and jammed with it. Unfortunately Brent caught a straight that sent me packing in fourth. Next to fall was Mike H. – walking away with $28. We were then heads-up between Scott & Brent. The second hand of heads-up was an all-in match up that Brent held out over Scott. Scott managed a $42 payout while Brent left with $70! The next poker night will probably be around the end of April; I’ll decide in the next couple days and post it on here and email everyone.
So take a look at the screen shot below. Yup, that’s right, first place out of 1951 entrants. Check out the first place prize as well. The adrenaline is still rushing through my system!
