Wolf's Howl

Relocated

2010-05-31T09:01:00.001-04:00

You can currently find the Howl located here

http://wolfshead.net/wolfshowl/

and we hope you will visit us in our new home.

Is it working?

2010-05-26T13:53:00.002-04:00

Have to think my new site isn't working as Josie hasn't shot off her yap in it yet. (and I'm not doing any links on this site, you want them you have to use the new one)

For those who got 500 messages please try again, I've made some changes to the name servers.

Damn I'm Good

2010-05-25T22:01:00.002-04:00

Okay, have done most of the modifications for my blog. Font color is a bit light but I'll find out where they hid that and get it changed. Otherwise I think I'm ready to give it a test drive. As of now and unless it blows up in my face all posts to my blog can be found at www.wolfshead.net or www.wolfshead.net/wolfshowl . All comments and suggestions will be appreciated. Thank You

More on moving. Need a favor

2010-05-25T15:31:00.002-04:00

Moving this thing is becoming tougher than I would have thought. I thought I had found a good skin for my blog but it seems that the comments section doesn't work right, others seem to have problems with my blog roll so it's back to theme hunting. Modifying these damned things ain't easy either, it's looking like I need a class in writing code since good old drag and drop don't want to work. Anyway I would appreciate it if anyone could try the links in the message below or type them nto their browser to see if they can get to my site. I have tried 3 different computers and have no problems but Mojo says he's getting errors. Would appreciate any input. Thanks.

Moving

2010-05-23T18:38:00.003-04:00

Working on a new site for my blog as part of an overall website. Who the hell knows when it's going to be finished but it is going to happen, very soon I hope. Once it does I will put the new link on this site but this is just a heads upfor those loyal readers, all 6-7 of you to be prepared. For those who have me on your blogroll a new link will be necessary, for those who don't it will be a good chance to add anew listing. Thank You

PS.

Well it isn't totally ready but the framework is up and can be found at www.wolfshead.net or www.wolfshead.net/wolfshowl

Online Origins, The Finale. Maybe

2010-05-22T18:11:00.003-04:00

Seems I have to continue with the trip on the wayback machine. Might get scalped if I don’t. Actually this thing has gone on longer than I originally anticipated but as long as it’s being enjoyed I guess I can keep it up. It ain’t no Frantic Friday but I seem to have found an audience however small and after all I always did love to hear the sound of my own voice and the keyboard is only an extension of the tongue and one people can turn off a lot easier. Story is probably more interesting than my poker ones but that ain’t saying much. What is really interesting is that as I am in the middle of this tale I’ve gotten a Facebook friend request from Jeff, a great guy I originally came across in Lapub and though he wasn’t around for this gathering we met at a number of other gatherings in Chicago and elsewhere over the years. Glad to know he’s doing well. So for those who are interested, here goes.

We left our intrepid hero heading off in the wee hours to grab a few hours of alcohol induced sleep. 8 am comes awfully frikkin early after a night of partying. Luckily the hotel was close. I grab some zzz’s then I’m up and showered and back to the house. Linda, my greeter, has kind of adopted me for the weekend and I’ve become her chauffer. She’s a good friend of Lavona and is staying at the house so I pick her up for breakfast and we hit a small coffee shop for some fuel for the day. I find out that she is a school teacher, whoo boy if the school board ever finds out about these weekends <>. (BTW, the <> with a G inside is a holdover from the P* days. It’s basically the equivalent of :-> before such things were thought of. Damn hypertext kind of kills my use of it these days) I also find out she’s from Terre Haute, been widowed and divorced and has a couple of kids, one who lives about two miles from where I work. Small world. Of course she’s not the only one talking but no sense repeating my vitals. So we finish up and head for the house where everyone that is heading for the zoo is meeting. We get there and sit around for awhile and eventually about 30 of us divvy in to cars and head in to Chicago. I’m driving again, mainly because I like to drive and because my car takes 5 without squishing so no one is objecting. It’s a beautiful day as we head out, sunny but not ridiculously hot considering it’s July. Traffic is nowhere near what it was like the day before but the construction is still there so ain’t exactly a picnic.

We get to the zoo and split in to groups with plans to meet up for lunch in a couple hours. Seems there was a beer garden type place there, might have been called Beer and Brats but don’t hold me to that, that we decide to hit. Always loved zoos. I grew up about half mile or so from a local park that had a small one, mainly US type animals such as bison and deer but there was a couple of big cats there also. Spent a lot of time in the park and zoo. Also used to hit the Philly Zoo every so often, even had a membership there for a few years when I was married. So I was really looking forward to seeing what this place held. It was a great zoo, very nice exhibits and a bunch of us cracked up when we hit the monkey isle. They had this large pit with a high mountain type structure in the center and a very large pack of monkeys running around the place. What had us laughing our asses off however was that a few of these simians decided to get in to the spirit of the weekend. In addition to a couple screwing their little buns off a few more males were sitting on the side whacking away. Then of course some wiseass chirps in with “do you think we should invite them to Studio whatever the next time we go?” And of course the jokes start coming, pun intended. Lunch was pretty good as far as lunches at these places go. Had me a brat, first time I had encountered them, and a beer. First time I came across beer in a zoo also. Definitely added to the experience. So we do lunch and head on out to finish our visit and my passengers agree to meet at the gate we came in at in a couple hours to give us time to get cleaned up a bit before dinner. Dinner is at the house so nothing really fancy but walking around the zoo in the sun was a bit sweaty even if it wasn’t scorching. Yea, a shower was called for. So we finish the day trip, head back to the house then I go over to the hotel for a shower, a change and to pick up my bottle of Myers rum. I’ve learned in my travels that Pa doesn’t necessarily have the worst liquor laws in the country so I usually carry a bottle with me, just in case. I also later came to realize that hotel rooms were a necessity at these things but a hated expense as you spent so little frikkin time in them. Be that as it may, showered, changed and carrying the necessities I head back over to the party. I also found out the black rum wasn’t so popular as it seemed that I kept coming across leftover bottles of Myers at various places I stopped at in the visits I made over the years.

Forget what we had for dinner that night only that it was good, as Richard was a pretty mean cook. He whips up a lot of it and one goes grabs what one will during the course of the night. People are basically just shuffling in and joining the crowd. I’m informed that if I want to spend some computer time there are some available to use upstairs. Folks just kind of wander up and down all night, some working their shift in the chat room, others just playing around, checking email or giving updates on the goings on in Chicago. I take a wander on up later and find that there is a whole room with about half a dozen computers or so Macs in it to be used. It is then that I find out that most every one is a Mac freak and, as a PC user, I’m the lonely little petunia in the onion patch. It is also then that I’m asked if I have any interest in being a Tend, a room host. It seems that AOL in its formative years would offer folks like Lavona incentives to develop things like chat rooms to attract new users. They offered the hosts a 2 for 1 deal, 2 hours of usage for every 1 they put in working the room. Considering the cost of hourly time one has to consider it, especially if one likes to play online. I tell them I would think about it and let them know. After AOL went to a monthly fee all workers just got a free account which was nice. Anyway I wander back downstairs where a number of folks are running wild, mostly outside, with the Super Soakers and Silly String. Don’t know who wound up cleaning up the mess, if it was, but there must have been some nice neighbors as the battles ranged all over the yards around that house. As time wore on the group settled down to mainly conversation and silly practical jokes played on one another. One character disappeared upstairs only to come back down wearing one of the teddys purchased the day before. Didn’t do a thing for his figure. Anyway, as a newcomer I was usually able to avoid the soakings and the jokes but I did meet a lot of people including a couple who lived not far from me in De. They had just applied for jobs with AOL and informed me they were hiring anyone with computer skills they were expanding so fast and would let me know if they got hired and I was interested. Not long after they did get in and offered to try and help me but it was an offer I turned down for a number of different reasons. Big mistake on my part. So, again in the wee hours I head off to the hotel after making arrangements to join everyone for a farewell brunch before we all head out for home. At least I could get a couple extra hours sleep as plans for food weren’t until about 10-10:30.
So the next morning I’m up, showered, packed up and checked out and heading to an Old Country Buffet for food before I take off. No heading to the house and no passengers on this trip. Linda, my steady passenger all weekend was staying longer so had another ride back to the house and almost everyone else was booking from the buffet as was I. I wasn’t sure I had arrived at the right place as it was set in a shopping center but I then saw John standing outside so figured I hadn’t gotten lost. It was here that the only fiasco of the weekend took place. It seems this wasn’t the best place for a farewell meal. First they had a bit of a problem seating us altogether. Then, by the time that problem was solved they had started changing the buffet over from breakfast to lunch. As it was still fairly early most of us were more in the mood for eggs or waffles rather than ribs. We made the best of it, not letting something like this spoil what was a very good weekend. As we finished eating we said our farewells and headed our separate ways knowing we would be back in touch with each other in cyberspace within a day or so.

While eating I thought I was going to have to make a side trip to the airport as I left. One of the old timers with the handle of Godfather, and believe me he fit the name, looks wise at least, had a flight out that morning and was having problems getting to it. I volunteered my services but at the last minute he was able to hook up with a limo service and I was spared my first trip to one of Chicago’s airports. Made many trips to both of them since. So I said my goodbyes, pointed the Legend east and headed home, my first Live a success, in my book at least. The drive through Chicago was nothing like the trip in, Sunday traffic being at a minimum, something I couldn’t always say on subsequent trips. Somehow I got turned around getting on 80 and found myself heading towards Iowa but rectified the error quickly and was soon headed towards home. Ever notice how the trip home seems to pass by much more slowly than the trip out? Anticipation of something new does seem to help time pass. This feeling was abetted by the fact I was driving in daylight so had to behave myself compared to my late night travels. I actually didn’t get home that day as the family had a house in the Poconos that I decided to stop at and grab a bit of rest. It wasn’t all that far from home but on a homeward trip of that length the last couple hours always seem the longest and a rest seemed advisable since it was available. Was back home early the next morning and online that night, even though it was a Monday, to let them know I arrived safe. Thus ended my first live interaction of people met in cyber space.

I eventually decided to become a host and Linda was appointed my mentor to show me the ins and outs of keeping order in the room and making folks feel welcome. As time went on both AOL and Lapub grew. I attended a number more Lives not to mention other gatherings with friends I met through Lapub. The gatherings grew much bigger over the years as more folks got involved eventually stretching the whole week though the core was still the weekend. Those attending the gatherings just decided to get there earlier and do things together. I eventually started hosting a spring picnic at my place in late April/early May and ran about 5 of them until my marriage caused me to quite. In fact first words asked of me when I announced that I was separated a couple years later were, “when’s the picnic?” I even met my ex through Lapub, not one of my more glorious moments there <>. We were a tight community, not dissimilar to the blogging one though interaction was a bit easier.

Now that this tale is through I would like to dedicate to a very good friend, Tom. While Tom and his wife Jen weren’t part of this first gathering they arrived in Lapub soon after and as they lived in the Chicago area I soon met them at a Live. They’re good people and some of the best friends I’ve ever made, reality or cyber. Tom and I were kindred spirits and even resembled one another. While I was an inch or so taller and a few pounds, ok maybe more than a few, heavier we were both big, bearded men who loved a good time and good drink. In fact Tom’s only fault was that he was a Scotch drinker but that could be forgiven. In fact I still have a bottle of Johnny Red that he left at my house after one of my picnics. I made more trips to Chicago to visit with Tom and Jen and a few others that would gather on our own for a long weekend than I did for other reasons. I say this because I made my last trip to Chicago a few years ago for a very different reason than all those others. I went there for Tom’s memorial service. Tom had one other fault besides Scotch, cigarettes. He passed away from lung cancer at the age of 45. Tom was as good a friend as anyone could have especially considering we lived around 800 miles away from each other. I bring this up both to honor a friend and to ask other friends out there that if you smoke do your damnedest to quit. While we may not be the kind of friends that Tom and I were you are still friends and I am sure there are folks out there in the blogosphere you probably do have that kind of friendship with. If not for yourself do it for them. It’s a bitch to lose a friend so young.

Thanks for the listen.

Online Origins, Part 2, Cyberspace Meets Reality

2010-05-21T00:37:00.003-04:00

Took time to post about Saturday’s game and a few other things but time to continue the trip on the virtual wayback machine. So off we go on another exciting into the history of my online adventures. Aren’t we all excited?

I was playing around on America Online for not quite a year, spending a lot of time in the chat room LaPub, mainly on Tuesday nights. I occasionally visited other nights but costs basically kept my time down and I had come to know the PubTends, the name given to the hosts of the room, from 8 to 10 fairly well. Oldwolf was the first person I had talked to as he was working the room when I first found out about. SeaSiren followed him and again I became very friendly. Oldwolf wasn’t really that old and Siren lived by a lake rather than a sea but who cares. So I was hanging around this chat room and after a few months I hear talk about something called Live out in the Chicago area, Wheaton to be exact. It seems that the founder of the room, a woman named Lavona had a gathering at her place on a weekend in early July. I said what the hell, I’m conversing with these people I might as go meet some of them. My family was aghast. You don’t know these people, they could be ax murders, was repeated more than once. Hell, I don’t know a lot of people I meet at the local bar or at the Jersey Shore either and I’ve survived those places. This is different in only distance. Besides, I’ve never been to Chicago. Since I’m new at my job I don’t have a whole lot of vacation time but it’s only a weekend so I decide I’ll leave Thursday night, take Friday and Monday off and do some major league driving. At the time I was driving an Acura Legend I had just bought before I had been laid off my old job and had never really had given it a chance to stretch its legs. I was used to a large part of the drive as I had been traveling from E. Lansing, Mi. to home and back the years I had lived in Mi. Besides the junkers I was driving then were nowhere near as good as the Legend.

So I packed the car when I got home from work Thursday, left a bit early, and caught a nap figuring on shooting across I-80 through the night. Got a few hours sleep, filled a cooler with a couple boxes of burgers and meatballs, my new job was IT manager for a meat processing company, as a donation to the event and headed out about 7-8 that night. Driving 80 at night in a car meant for driving is an experience not to be forgotten when you are young enough to do it and old enough to appreciate it. The Eastern part of PA you have to be cautious, it’s populated enough that the state troopers are usually out and about. I had it timed that it was still fairly early when I hit it. Nice cruising, making good time. I hit the central area of the state just as it was getting later. Here the towns are fewer and farther away from the highway. Cops are there but they are usually cruising, don’t have to worry about them sitting on the side of the road once it gets past 10-11 at night. Foot gets a bit heavier and the engine is purring. The western half of the state is deserted, ain’t even that many long haulers out right now which is how I had it planned. I’ve learned to be cautious through Ohio; those troopers are persistent and cut you no slack, so I want to make time before I get there. This is still the age of 55 even though my speedometer goes to 140. I never did pin that needle on this or subsequent trips but I gave the car the workout I had been wanting to since I bought it. Cranked it back down at the Ohio line but was still moving pretty well. Even though it was late, or very early, traffic picked a bit up once it blended in to the Ohio Turnpike but still not exactly bumper to bumper. I keep cruising and eventually pass my old turnoff when I would head in to Mi. in the old days, Toledo exit, think it might have been 5. A mile or two off that exit there used to be a place called Johnny’s Diner that I and a couple of friends had once hit on a road trip one night. Don’t ask. All I remember that something we ate had us driving back to E. Lansing with all windows and the sunroof open even though there was a steady rain falling. Just a short aside there, back to our adventure. So I’m booking on down the road and I’m soon in uncharted territory as I pass an exit we had once used to get to E. Lansing when we missed the other turnoff. So I’m booking along and soon I hit the Indiana border. Obviously I have hit the anteroom to the Great Plains. Ohio ain’t much but there are some dips in the road. Indiana was flat. Maybe not as flat as Kansas, which a friend once described as being so flat that he hated to get out of his car to take a piss because the people in the house 10 miles across the field might be able to see him, but it seemed damn flat to a Pa. boy like me. Don’t have any idea of what the cops in this state are like but it’s early morning, there’s no traffic and it’s a flat stretch of road. Maybe I can talk my way into just a warning if I get caught and off I go. Besides we’re only talking fine here, it ain’t a border state with Pa. so no reciprocal points. Not much to remember about the trip across In., not much there but farm fields. Do remember I had to turn off the ac as it was fogging the windshield so I opened the sunroof and somewhere along the journey I must have passed an herb farm because I smelled basil for about 5 or so miles. And I hit the outskirts of Chicago about an hour after the sun came up.

So now I made great time up one state and across 3. I now proceed to take over 3 hours to travel the last 60 miles of the trip. Little did I realize what the traffic conditions were in Chicago when you combined the morning of a work day with construction season? And I thought Philly was bad. Instead of my usual lead foot I needed a quick one on the break and my head on a swivel. Never knew when a closed lane would be coming at you. Fun part about this was I made several trips out to Chicago for a number of years and for the first 3 the construction was not only still going on but actually expanding, you would think they would finish one part then move to another. Not Chicago. Then all of a sudden it was gone. I made a trip and I saw no sign of construction anywhere. It was like Poof, the magic fairy made all traces vanish. Never did figure out how they did it. Anyhoo, I creep my way up the so called expressway until I hit the cross highway to take me out to Wheaton. My hotel is right off the main road but it’s a bit early for check in so I head for the gathering spot. It’s only about 10 min. away and I find it with no problem even though this is before the age of GPS. I do wonder if I’m at the right place though as I am confronted by what used to be called row homes in my younger days but when they are in this newer iteration they’re town homes. Nice looking place but seemed a bit cramp for a large sized party. Might as well find out and I head on up to the door and ring the bell. It’s opened by a woman about a decade or so older than I and I’ll never forget my introduction to the group. After all that time on the road to get here the first words I’m greeted with are “Who the hell are you?” Kind of left me a bit speechless. I finally manage to say that I’m herb, aka Wolfshead and find out I’m talking to Linda, known online as AFALindaS, who invites me in. While still wondering about the greeting I’m introduced to a few of the people who are there, most of whom I do not know as they aren’t regulars on Tuesday nights when I’m in the room. I meet Lavona, our hostess, and John, her husband. Her ex, Richard, is also there. Seems he does the honors in the cooking department for the weekend. I meet a few others that have shown up already and after giving them the boxes of burgers and such, which aren’t used that weekend though considering the quality and amount of food served I can’t complain. Anyway I grab a drink and fade in to the background and listen to the plans for the weekend.

Seems somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 people are expected and Richard is cooking lunch that dayv and dinner the next. The talk turns about the night’s activities some of which seems to involve a lot of Super soakers and Silly String and the anticipated reactions of the neighbors once they are brought in to play. I did say this house was in the middle of a group of town homes didn’t I? Not exactly the appropriate battleground for such items. What the hell, I don’t have to live here. There is also talk of a trip after lunch to a place that is basically a high class adult store. Have I mentioned the group around me right now is mainly women? Very bawdy women as I was to come find out. One of the adventures of LaPub was to see how far one could push the envelope. As I explained earlier America Online had its Terms of Service, rules you could not violate and overt sexual language was one of the no-nos. Suggestion and double entendre however became a well developed skill and pushing the envelope a time honored ritual. Well it seemed that it carried over to the Live get togethers. OK, in for a penny. A trip into Chicago for dinner and a night at a club s planned for dinner. Saturday it seems a trip to the Brookfield Zoo is on the schedule and then dinner and general mayhem. Sunday is brunch and everyone heading home. Sounds like a busy weekend.

So I head over and check in to the hotel and head back over to the house for lunch. Afterwards I get a couple of passengers, including my greeter from this morning with whom I seem to have a lot in common, and we head over to the adult store, going by the famous name of Studio 54 if I remember right. It’s an interesting place compared to what I’m used to seeing in an adult store. It’s not cheesy or set away from every thing else. The building isn’t the standard windowless cinder block structure nor is it garishly done. Actually it looked like a standard shop you might find anywhere. The front could be considered PG13 actually. Mainly sexy outfits and maybe a few less obtrusive accoutrements. Basically looked like a clothing store. The back room however was anything but. Videos, rubber novelties, whips, chains, handcuffs, you want it, you got it. Seems they were the main supplier to the strippers and drag queens in the Chicago area. Got to talking with the clerk and he said they had files on sizes and preferences of a lot of their customers. What a job. When we get back I find that some of the women had availed themselves of the delights of the back room. Some folks were in for an interesting night. Though not this trip I will say that subsequent trips did bring more than one proposition. It could be a high old time.

I head back to the hotel for a bit of a rest. Later we are headed in to Chicago to hit the North Pier. Dinner was to be at Dirty Dick’s, whose mottos were, the Shame of Chicago and You Can’t Kill a Man Born to Hang. This just keeps getting better. Then the plans call for a stop at the Baja Beach Club, an innocuous name. Was I to learn different. After a short nap I get ready and head back to the house to pick up a few passengers and we head to North Pier. One thing I notice when we got off the highways and on to city streets is that compared to Philly Chicago was a clean city. Parking was a lot better also and we head in to North Pier. We head in to dinner and I get my first look at Dick’s. It’s nothing fancy, basically a lot of picnic style tables and seats. Everyone mingles. Then I look over to the bar and above it looks like an acre of bras tacked to the ceiling. Hokay, great atmosphere. Sitting at the table I meet more folks who are attending the weekend but haven’t been to the house yet. Next thing I know is the waitresses start bringing drinks and a favorite, among the women at least, is something the mix at the table and slip a condom over. It obviously generates a gas as the condom starts to expand. Whether it was the actual drink or just the accompaniment to one I never really found out. Another popular one was something served in a flute shaped glass which the woman was supposed to pick up and drink without using her hands. Hard to see how the night could get any better. Food was ok but nothing special but the presentation was in keeping with everything else going on. One of the best dinners I ever had.

After dinner it’s still a bit early to hit the club so the crowd wanders. Some decide to get a bit of fresh air, others head for the virtual reality arcade in the pier and some of us just decide to wander the shops. Don’t remember much about them but on had a pretty eclectic collection of sweat shirts. One stood out, saying Because I’m The Fucking Queen. I remember it because my mother used to say it was because she was the queen when my brother or I questioned her when we were too old for the because I said so routine. Somehow though I don’t think this one would go over big with her however. After wandering around we decide to hit the club.

The club is another eye opener. Right after we go through the door there is a tub of bottled beer, Bud and Bud Light, the special of the night. How I noticed the beer is beyond me as presiding over the tub is a very lovely young lady wearing, if that is the word, a couple pieces of dental floss as tastefully as something like that can be worn. You bet that was an eye opener. What have I been missing doing my drinking in taprooms and fire halls for the last few years? After we get seated it seems that there are a number of scantily dressed members of the female persuasion peddling all kinds of different ways to part men from their money. Most popular seemed to be the two young lovelies in high boots and whips with a leather belt full of test tubes containing shooters. Seemed it was very popular for someone to pay them to go serve some one a drink in a most humiliating manner. Thank god I was a newbie this trip, no one wasting their hard earned dollars on me. Later trips I wasn’t so lucky. The show consisted of two guys playing grand pianos across from one another and running a singing war of very bawdy ballads. It was a hoot and I spent most of the night laughing my ass off. We closed the place up and headed back to the house to drop the passengers off, everyone making plans to eat breakfast wherever and meet later in the day to head to the zoo. Seems Linda and a couple others saw fit to allow me to tag along for breakfast so I head for the hotel and a short night’s rest.

Getting long again and I haven’t even gotten around to my picnics yet but we’ll take a break and continue later. Thanks for the listen.

Un-frikkin-believable

2010-05-20T23:10:00.003-04:00

Channel surffing to find something to watch and ESPN Sportcenter was showing Flyers-Habs hilites. Would you believe that talking about a hockey game they found a way to slip in references to both the Yanks and Kobe Bryant? Wouldn't have thought it possible but somehow they found a way to do it. God help us.

It's Half Assed Because I Was High Schooled

2010-05-20T11:34:00.005-04:00

Waiting for the Mookie to start. Flipping channels to see if anything worth watching. Yanks on ESPN again. What, third time this week already? Too bad the Yanks don’t play poker in the WSOP, ESPN would be covering it live wire to wire.

What’s going on with the blogs tonight? Comment I left on Waffles is no longer there. Waffles doesn’t seem the type to make one disappear. On to Josie’s and it says 3 comments but none are shown when I go to check. WTF is going on? I’ve entered the Mittelmarch.

On to the game. Seated at my table and recognize most of the names even if I haven’t had much converse with them. I see Julkeus, muhctim and Pushmonkey. Gary I’ve talked to. Trouble across the table in TwoBlackAces. See his name at too many final tables to take him lightly. MaggieO and DaBag make up the table. So far after 11 hands I’ve had a weak ace in 5 of them. Played it twice, in sb and otb. Won 1, lost 1, minimal pots. So far nothing major has taken place. Coop has joined the table. Take a decent pot when my ace gets stronger otb this time, A-K. Gary raised, coop and I call and flop comes A-Q-J. They both check, I bet 2/3 and take it. Been folding mostly but dump over 1000 to Gary. He raises, coop calls and I reraise with Q-Q. Gary calls and coop folds. Ace through the gate on the flop and I figure I’m cooked but Gary checks and I go 2/3s and he reraises and I fold. Get it back soon from coop however. I raise with A-Qs and he calls. Ace on the flop, he checks, I bet and he raises. I think a bit then call. Turn and he checks and I go all in. He calls, A-Q vs. A-8 and river bricks and I double. Soon take Julkeus out. I limp with K-Q off and he raises. I call and I hit a K in the door. I check and he shoves with about 900. I call and he has A-J and the Ks hold. Few small pots here and there as the tourney goes on. Mainly some steals. Have learned aggression pays.

Make it to the first break with about 6500. Gary is out. 23 Warsaw raises and Gary shoves his short stack. It’s only about 750 and I contemplate calling with 9-T suited but fold with regrets. Maggie calls and it goes to the flop and a check down to the river. Pair of 7s takes it but my T would have been good. Oh well. Lightning has joined the table as a shortie but soon doubles up. They must be putting all us nitty old men in one place. Where’s Mojo? Coop is out when his J-J loses to K-K. He hit his set but so did his adversary, Maggie. Too bad. Lightning has made a decent comeback from his short stack and guess who has taken coop’s seat. Shabazz Jenkins, wondered when he would show. Key Twilight Zone theme. Guess I’m going to have to link him this post just for FT’s persistence. Shabazz is gone, he shoves slightly over 900. I call with a weak ace and Lightning comes over the top. I fold and it’s Shabazz with A-Q vs. lightning K-K and the Ks hold. I soon take out microvillian when my T-T turns a set against his A-Q. Soon give it, and more, to muhctim. When I double him up with 5-5 against his 7-7. Thought he was C-betting a lo flop. Soon raise with T-T and get 2 callers but get no action when I flop a set and river a boat even though the turn is a K. Go into the second break with about 7500.mmThe rum is kicking in.

I get a few more chips after the break when my small pair gets no action but I get a double KO a few hands later. May have to continue this later. Game getting interesting and I’m buzzed. Do a double up when my A-K goes up against two all ins. BrainMc shoves his A-Q and Maggie comes along for the ride. Case ace hits but K kicker holds and I’m sitting decent. I do ok when my ducks flop a set against Warsaw. He min raise pre and I call from the BB. I hit the set and check as does he. Turn comes a Q and I check again and he bets. I minraise and he calls. River a blank and I shove my last 4900 and he folds. Couple hands later I chip up against AgSweep and my A-T hits top and bottom on the flop. Ag shoves bottom with gutter ball draw and my two hold up. My stack doesn’t last long as I shove Q-Q in to Dakota Black’s K-K. Board helps me not and my last chips go to OSU when he shoves top pair with a flush draw. I have 23 outs when I call with bigger draw, oesd and two overs but turn and river brick and I am gone in 16th place. Oh well, would love to cover final table but I’m shot for the night. GL all
‘
This is going to have to wait to be posted. Too tired to link and do the spell check. Didn't think one could get so screwed up on umbella drinks. Of course when you knock off the entire bottle maybe it makes a difference. Just found out that OSU won. Congrats, glad to see you put my chips to good use.

Thanks for the listen.

WTF Was I Thinking?

2010-05-19T17:42:00.002-04:00

Quick hitter before the Mookie.

Was playing the Buy In League game at PA last night. Make the final table as short stack but somehow get to be chip leader at one point. Finally get to 3 way play and all about even. Play goes back and forth and the guy who was fighting me earlier in the tourney for chip lead, and took it after I got donkish, gains a decent lead on us. Finally I figure I'm tired and when he makes a play from the button I decide to defend my blind with a weak K. Having played with him a bit I know he is very good at playing big stack poker and isn't above bullying when he can. K hits, I bet and he shoves and I call. Of course A-K and I'm gone. Good game. As I'm signing out to hit the hay the screen pops up saying I won $25 for third. Whaaaaat? Somehow my mind was blanked, I never even thought of the frikkin payout. How the hell do you play a damned poker tournament, especially a buy in, and forget all about the money? Was I that tired? Have I degenerated that far? I play a frikkin tourney and forget about the prize money. Maybe I have ascended to a higher level where the beauty of the game is the thing. I check the lobby and find out that first was $60+. Not bad for a $3 buy in, games must be getting bigger. WTF was I thinking? This shit has got to stop.

See you at the Mookie. Thanks for the listen.

Is it just me

2010-05-18T00:05:00.002-04:00

or does anyone else seem to think that ESPN is the house organ for the Yankees and the Lakers? Trying to get some info on ssome games tonight, including the Phils and it seems every 5 min they are cutting back to either of those teams. Don't know whose ass they kissed more tonight, Kobe's or Arod's.

Saturday night

2010-05-17T12:32:00.000-04:00

So I’m getting ready to eat some dinner, leftover pizza, I’m a real heath nut, before getting ready to head out to Saturday’s poker game when I get a call from Doug. He’s calling to ask if I can give him a ride to Ron’s. Even though it’s a bit out of my way I tell him sure. I like Doug even if he is my nemesis at the poker table. Doug is a good player of the LAG-tard variety. He makes ck seem almost passive and it’s almost impossible to put him on a hand. Not to mention he’s also lucky as hell. He’ll bluff and bluff and somehow if he doesn’t buy it he winds up with the best hand by the river any way. Actually playing Doug is one of the reasons my game improved. When I started playing NL I was a very passive player and used to let Doug control the action. Even when I figured I was best I reacted rather than acted and more times then not let Doug catch something to beat me. I finally figured that if I wanted to win against him when I was good I had to be the first off the mark so as not to let him get there which in turn led me to a much more aggressive playing style. Nowhere near what he does but a lot more than I was. While it has helped my overall game it hasn’t seemed to help me much against Doug. This is because while I’ve learned to attack when good and win some pots from him Doug will still think nothing of attacking back every so often and somehow it usually all winds up in the middle and then he still sucks out on me somewhere in the course of the night. Actually I think Doug occasionally reads this damned thing. Either that or he’s bluffing in a different sense. A couple times last night I bet into him with strong draws and/or over cards and he called me down with middle pair. Now at one time Doug would never have done that. He may have made a play and come over the top but never just called yet here it happened and he took my chips a couple times. Afterwards I asked him about it and he tells me to forget it, my image is shot. What the hell is he talking about I ask and he just says he hears things. Now what he could have heard is beyond me as I haven’t played anything local but these games, not even the bar games, so there is no one who could be telling anything about me. There are only two places where I have talked about my game and that is the poker forum I frequent online and here and I doubt he’s reading posts in that forum.

Be that as it may I’m getting ready to head out. Game starts at 7 and while I’m usually one of the first there most folks don’t wander in until a bit later. Today however I’m going to be one of the later guys. Due to circumstances beyond my control things go FUBAR and I’m running late. I start rushing around and finally am ready to book when I get a call from Doug saying Wookie just stopped by his house and so he’ll ride up with him but can he catch a ride home with me. Again, no problem, it will save me time and off I go. I get a mile down the road and it dawns on me I was rushing around so much that I left without various items including my card protector. Nothing that was necessary but just some things I like to have but I’m not running back for them. The omens are not looking propitious for this game. I stop at the Wawa on my way to pick up a cup of soda and a bag of ice for the bottle of umbrella drinks I brought with me. Ron has a great selection of whiskies at the Manor but it’s getting warm out and straight whisky is a thing for winter drinking for the most part as far as I’m concerned. Beer and boat drinks are for the heat. While there I wonder whether to tap MAC for some back up cash as I only have 3 buy ins with me but I get overconfident and decide not to. Forgot about those damned omens. So I got my stuff and head out and finally get to Ron’s. Game is already in progress and my favorite seat is already taken. Damn, them omens are really starting to suck. Put the ice in the freezer, the drinks on the kitchen table and head in to the game room.

The game is mostly NLHE, .25/.50, with a $40 buy in or 75% of the big stack if you are late or rebuying. As the night goes on we’ll throw in a round of the Pineapple variations or PLO or O8 just for a change of pace. It hasn’t been going on for long so it costs me $40 to start. There are 6 already seated. Ron, our host, banker and owner of the palatial Snakster Manor is at the head of the table. Very good solid players, not usually given to flashy moves but he will occasionally have his moments. Going clockwise the next player is the above mentioned Doug. Next is Chris, a friend of Doug’s, whom I know nothing about. Next is Wookie. Wookie is puzzlement. I’ve played with him only a couple times, usually in tourneys, so really have no idea how his cash game is. Also he has usually been heavily into the beer when we’ve played before but tonight there is a glass of ice water at his elbow. He does partake of Ron’s hospitality with the whisky eventually but compared to what I’ve seen him do to a beer supply it’s exceedingly moderate. What effect no beer will have on what little I do know about his game is any one’s guess. Next to him and in my favorite spot, is Trucker, Dave. We ran across Dave at the RPT games and he’s a pretty nice guy with an offbeat sense of humor at times and he wound up being invited to the game and is now a regular. A retired Teamster and a decent player though he’s mainly her to have fun and socialize which does color his play at times. Finally there’s Pops. Pops is Ron’s father-in-law, a great old guy and has in-law quarters at the Manor He only sits in for about the first two hours of the game then calls it a night. Have to be careful around Pops; you never know whether he’s got A high or the freaking nuts. He has a tendency to get frisky at times. I’m informed that Darryl and Frank are supposed to show later. Darryl I figure is a given, he’s pretty regular. There was a time I would have said the same of Frank but over the past year or so instead of showing up early he’s come late when he has shown at all. Last couple games he said he would be there and hadn’t shown so who knows. I mention that my nephew said he might come after he’s done work at 11.

So I pull up a seat between Chris and Wookie as I like keeping Doug to my right and right away some one mentions that Darryl’s gonna complain I’m in his spot. No biggie as I say I’m putting in my claim for Pop’s seat when he leaves. It puts Doug on my left but I hate sitting down on the corner of the table. First or second hand I dust off some chips to Dave. Talk about insult to injury, he’s in my seat and taking my chips. According to him it makes his night, he doesn’t care what happens as long as he won a pot from me. I did say Dave has an offbeat sense of humor didn’t I, especially as far as I’m concerned. A couple hands later I spread some of the cheer to Wookie. I really should have paid attention to the omens. I put another $20 in the bank as I hate being caught short stacked and play goes on. It’s not too much longer when I ship the stack to Wookie when my K-Q runs in to his A-K and the K hits the turn. Oh well. I put the rest of what’s in my pocket on the table and it ain’t even 9 yet. It’s already been a long night. I win a small pot or two and Darryl shows up just as Pops is getting ready to leave. I go out to pour me a drink, he takes his seat and I grab Pops’. Pops had been up earlier but I think he may have gotten frisky and put most of them back. I take a couple more small pots and think maybe my luck is turning even though I donked off a few to Doug when he called me down with middle pair and caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. Then I’m in the cutoff with T-T and after a couple limpers I make it $2.50. Ron, otb, sits there and thinks with Doug doing all he can to get him to call. Doug finally persuades him and then calls himself and everyone else folds. Flop comes 2-7-6 rainbow and Doug checks and I go $10, which is about the pot. Ron shoves for about $30 more. I figure that Ron might have had connectors, maybe suited otb, and hit top pair, maybe top two. I call thinking that I might have him beat or if not I still have outs. The turn and river are blanks and he turns over a pair of ducks for the set. Never figured that because didn’t think it would take him that long to decide to play a pair from otb. True it was a small pair but my raise wasn’t all that big by game standard and with Doug intimating that he was playing pre there was enough implied money to make it worthwhile to set mine. A couple hands later I dust off what I have remaining to Doug when he makes a play to my A-Q suited and I shove on a low board with the overs and nut flush draw. True, I didn’t have enough to really force him off but he only had middle pair and as I said later there was a time he would never have made that call knowing that he couldn’t come back and force me off my hand later. So I’m tapped and might have gone home but it was still early and I wasn’t in the mood to leave. So I tell them to keep my seat warm and back off to Wawa and the ATM I go.

I pick up another 4 buy ins and return and cash half of it. We’ll see where we go from here. My luck starts to turn a bit. A small pot here and there and I finally hit a decent one. I pull 5-5 and call a raise by Chris. I figure I’m racing at best so far and probably behind as he’s been playing tighter than a bull’s arse at fly time. There’s another caller, Dave I think. Flop comes 3 low and Chris bets which makes me think that he’s got a bigger pair and we both call. The turn puts a straight draw out there and puts me open ended and scares Chris as he checks as does Dave. I bet the 5s with the OESD and Chris folds, Dave calls. River gives me my straight and Dave checks and I bet and he calls and I win and Chris kicks himself as he thought I had made my straight on the turn and he laid down best hand at that point. Playing way too tight. I win a couple more nice pots though not as nice as I would have wished. One was when we were playing PLO. I’m in the BB and flop quad Qs. How do you get paid off here? Everyone is going to be cautious with that pair on the board. I fiddle around and get lucky when the turn puts flush possibilities out there and a couple of small bets get me some chips from Darryl as he has the nut flush but had to size them right because even as he was calling me on the river he was figuring I had a boat but bets weren’t big enough to lay it down. Another hand I had –T-T again and smacked the set on the flop with Dave and Doug in the hand with me in the middle. Dave and I checked and Doug bet out which is what I was looking for. Dave and I both called. On the turn Dave bet out, I called and Doug folded. Damn, I wanted Doug in this hand, not Dave. Doug had the bigger stack and I wanted to use his aggressiveness against him. River pairs the board and Dave bets again and I raise and he folds. Doug says that he had hit top pair on the flop but that when both of us came along for the ride when he bet he figured he was cooked. Damn Dave, Doug with top pair and a big stack? I could have made up all my losses and then some.

Somewhere along the line Frank actually showed. Frank’s a hell of a nice guy and a decent player or he was. Somehow he’s come to the conclusion he’s got to be like Doug and all the other LAG-tards out there and it doesn’t work out so well for him. While he still plays a solid game he has Matasow like blow ups usually at the wrong frikkin times and winds up donking back everything he has accumulated and then some. Last night I felt a bit sorry for him for while he made a few plays he shouldn’t most of his game was solid, just unlucky. I got to him first when he raised and I called with suited connectors. I flopped open ended and turned the straight and when I raised the river he called and I had outdrawn his pocket queens. As the board was draw heavy he should never have made the call but then again I was a bit loose as I called a pretty substantial flop bet with my draw. A bit later he got it all in with Qs again against Dave’s 9-9. After the turn Dave started to congratulate him on the hand and it was no sooner out of his mouth than the river comes a 9. Poor Frank He buys back in again but a bit later he runs across Doug. Forget how preflop went but I’m sure there was a raise in there somewhere as Frank had A-A. Flop comes 3 spades and Doug shoves. Frank is in the tank and Doug tells him he has the flush. Frank is still thinking and he and Doug are going back and forth about the hand. Frank finally calls and shows 2 black aces vs. Doug’s 9 hi flush. Both turn and river brick and Frank is broke. There ensues a lively discussion on the merits of the call with Frank saying that as it was a cash game it was entirely appropriate while Doug insisted that in the specific situation it wasn’t. Doug’s argument wasn’t that drawing to the nut wasn’t correct in a cash game but rather when you don’t have anything left to rebuy it becomes more like a tourney situation and you have to wait for a better spot. Kind of agree with Doug on this one.

Before Frank bottomed out my nephew Patrick joined the game and his arrival jinxed me. I had been doing halfway decent and it looked like I had made a recovery but after he got there I went card dead. Oh I took some small pots here and there and gave some chips back the same way. There is a house rule about giving a half hour notice before leaving, unless you bust out of course, just your table stake not your wallet, and along about 1 Wookie mentions he’s going to give notice soon. I say I’m booking at 2 anyway myself and Doug right away goes 2:30. 2, I say. Anyhow somewhere along the line we get started on a round of PLO8 and since I always stay to the end of the round it somehow wound up closer to 3 before the game broke up, mainly because of two hands. One was a 3 hand pot between Doug, Wookie and Dave where Dave wound up shoving the river and Doug calling leaving Wook contemplating a $100 bet into about a $350 pot with the second nut high. Here things got a bit dicey as the table talk, while appropriate for a HE game was not for a hi/lo one. Doug, figuring Dave was all in and the bet had Wookie about covered so he had no more at risk started discussing the hand with Wookie. Basically he was telling Wookie that he had the same hand and that if he couldn’t beat it he should fold because he would lose money. Part of the problem is that Wookie didn’t quite get the hang of the quarter figuring that even if he lost half the hundred to Dave because of the lo there was still enough in the pot to make up for it. What was inappropriate was that one didn’t know whether Dave was playing hi or lo so talking Wookie out of calling was depriving him of half the bet if low or maybe even the whole thing if hi. As it turned out Wookie finally folded Dave had lock lo and Doug had 2nd nut hi, the same as Wookie had laid down. I heard Doug did offer to make up Wookie’s missed bet as we were leaving but don’t know if Dave accepted. Knowing Dave, probably not. The other hand was again Wookie, this time with Ron on the last hand of the night. Wookie potted the flop which left Ron in the tank trying to put him on a hand. Seems Ron had top 2 with a lo draw and wasn’t sure if Wookie had bottom set. Took him awhile to figure it out but eventually he decided Wookie did have the set which he did. The rabbit hunt showed it was a good fold as Ron would have gotten neither a hi or lo. As Ron is the banker however we spent some time waiting to get cashed out as this hand played out.

All in all it turned out to be a decent night. It was enjoyable playing with these guys again and when I totaled things up I found I was $15 to the good. Not a great haul but considering where I had been earlier I’m not going to grouse about it. Was actually up a bit more but a couple of draw heavy PLO hands that didn’t pan out cost me about a buy in or so. I’ll be waiting for the next one.

Thanks for the listen

Online Origins, Part the first

2010-05-16T13:09:00.002-04:00

The game went off as planned last night, well not as I planned, but right now I’m still tired and I’m planning to spend a couple hours talking to my daughter so no time to write it up just now so we’ll just go with one I was working on for the time being and get to the gory details of last night a bit later. After all, I'll have plenty of time, I don't suckup for invites.

Between my trip to get jerky, the time of the year and Jordan mentioning a trip to Chicago it brought to mind my LaPub picnics. Most of you probably don’t know what LaPub was though it is possible some of my friends made at that time read this. It dates back to my earliest forays in to the online world and I made a lot of friends through it though many factors, mainly the development of the Web brought about its demise. So I decided to get a bit maudlin here and reminisce for a bit.

My online dicking around dates back to the days of the old electronic bulletin boards, usually run on DOS platforms. Still have a book listing the old BBS services and their modem numbers. Damn thing ran to about 250 pages give or take. There were no graphics, no chat, not a whole lot of anything but one could leave messages and download files. They were good places to go if you needed a small app to tweak something you were working on. It’s where the geeks and dabblers went to share, and show off, their abilities. The Internet consisted of the newsgroups and you needed a government or university account to access it and the Web, what everyone surfs these days, might have been a gleam in its inventors’ eye but I can’t really say for sure. The only comprehensive online service I knew about was CompuServe and it was about $15 an hour to access. I stuck with the BBS as most were free. I later found out about a service called Prodigy or P* as users called it. Prodigy had been around for a few years and had a graphic interface and charged a monthly fee which made it sound reasonable to check out.

Got my subscription to P* in the early 90s and it was decent. Lots of info at your finger tips and some of the first online shopping. Didn’t take advantage of the shopping but I did the info. In addition to all the standard info out there the message boards were the bomb. Need to know something, just post in the appropriate forum and you got dozens of responses within hours. (America Online had similar features but not quite as user friendly but more on that later.) Was a dedicated P* user for a year or two but then they slit their own throats by changing their pricing structure. They decided to start charging an hourly rate for access to certain areas, one of those being the most popular feature, the message boards. It’s tough to start charging for something people have had free for years. In addition America Online started to make its move and while they charged an hourly fee they offered all that P* had plus a bonus, real time chat. They are the two things missing from the current Internet. Search engines aren’t bad but the message boards on Prodigy and AOL were much better as the answers were always on point and hardly ever had to be sifted through as with search engines because keywords can be interpreted in many ways. And though there are chat features on the Net I’ve never seen any work as smoothly as those on AOL even though the bandwidth was a minor fraction of todays.

So on I moved and installed America Online, it wasn’t AOL just yet. Still have my America Online DOS floppy and my AOL for Windows floppy, they’re history. AOL was great but at $7.95 an hour I didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. Basically just buzzed around until one day I saw a banner flash for LaPub. LaPub, what’s a LaPub? Clicked on the link and was taken to a chat room, a virtual pub. I found out later that it was the first online chat room, developed when the forerunner of AOL was a Mac service and later moved to AOL. All the geeks behind it were dedicated Mac users and I found myself in a distinct minority as a PC user when I showed up at my first gathering but I get ahead of myself. I was welcomed by the host and made to feel at home by him and the 5-6 others in the room. It was a Tuesday night as I remember and the host changed on the hour. The chat went on for 3 hours, 9 to 12 Eastern I think, and then the room closed down. Not that you couldn’t get there but the hosts weren’t there and no one ever took advantage of the empty room. Of course you never really needed to as AOL gave you the ability to set up private chat rooms where you could invite those you wanted to speak with and keep out the riff raff. Also, anything went in private rooms but in the public chat there were rules of behavior and enforcing them was another of the hosts’ duties. Violators of the rules would be tossed from the room for a first offense. In fact it was called getting TOSsed as it happened for violating the Terms Of Service. If they came back and persisted subsequent offenses carried account suspensions with them, anywhere from an hour to a week. I mainly lurked my first couple times there not saying much (ain’t that a laugh) but went back on a couple subsequent Tuesdays. As it was $7.95 and hour I wasn’t spending a whole hell of a lot of time there as I had just gotten a new job and my pay wasn’t a hell of a lot more than that at the time. Be that as it may it was here that Wolfshead was born. I had registered my AOL account under my real name but I noticed that those in the chat room used non de plumes so I figured I needed one. I had been reading a series of books by Leigh Brackett featuring Eric John Stark, a wolfshead, a man without a place or people. Well I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of local friends as I had not gone to the local high schools as did my friends from younger days and then I left for college in Michigan and had started spending my break times out there and eventually lived out there for about 10 years. After I came back and started work in this area I picked up a bunch of drinking buddies but after I was laid off from there you kind of lose touch. My new place of employment was mainly old men and women in the office so no one there to pal around with and I had just bought a place in a semi country area so you weren’t running across neighbors sitting on the porch in the evenings. So I decided yea, Wolfshead was probably an appropriate moniker for the chat room. Needless to say most never understood the term and thought it referred to the animal itself and it usually just got shortened to Wolf but Wolfshead it was and Wolfshead it’s been for nigh on 20 years now. So I started spending Tuesday evenings in LaPub, a cyber version of Cheers. The people were friendly and the only thing missing was the alcohol and while the cost of it wasn’t really cheap it was probably no more expensive than my forays to real bars were running me and a hell of a lot cheaper than they used to run a few years earlier. And so it went for awhile until I attended my first get together of LaPub regulars out in the western suburbs of Chicago. And what an experience that was.

But it seems this missive is running on, I do tend to ramble, so I think I’ll finish it a bit later so as not to bore you too much at once. Thanks for the listen.

Had to take a day out

2010-05-15T01:02:00.002-04:00

Just heard that the game is on again for this Saturday. Of course it was supposed to be on for last Saturday also so we’ll see. Hope so, I’m going stir crazy.

So crazy that I took a bit of a run around today. Supposed to stay off this foot but it’s a question of mental vs. physical health. Besides my car hasn’t been run for over a week, needs the exercise. First stop was the Farmer’s Market about 15 miles away. Zern’s is great, all kinds of shyt there though I can’t do a lot of strolling around to browse. Main problem is it is only open on Fridays and Saturdays so not a large window time wise to play with. Speaking of not a large window time wise it seems it was even smaller than expected. When I worked my trips were usually on Sat since the place is usually packed come the evenings. I found out a few months ago on a previous trip that they don’t open until 11 am on Sat. I had shown up around 10 and had time to kill. Today I’m smart; I don’t get there until 11:30. Real smart, everything still shuttered. I see people walking around getting ready so I figure OK, Friday, maybe a 12:00 opening. Hang around until a bit after 12 but nothing seems open. OK, change of plan. Time to hit the book store.

Original plan was to hit Zern’s then travel down Rte 100 to the 422 Expressway and then the Expressway to the book store, back down 422 to the supermarket, a Wegmans, great place with lots of goodies, then the liquor store and home. Not exactly a great circle route but as reasonable a loop as can be made with those places in mind. Zern’s not being open just screwed up those plans. Oh well. Hit the bookstore but not much on the shelves for my taste. Found a copy of Fear Itself by Walter Mosley. Mosley writes some great stories set in the Watts section of LA in the 50’s. Looked a bit better than the copy I already have and was only a buck so I picked it up and I’ll keep whichever one is better and sell the other. Next I hit the manga section for my daughter. I know this one is going to cost me as the last time I had her there she found a copy of Inu-Yasha and she started that series. Next time I was there I found 20 more to the series sitting on the shelves. I got her 2; let’s not get out of hand here. That being so I know I’m getting 2 more. I get to the shelves and get a nasty surprise. The 18 I left last time are still there, they were nos. 15 to 32. I had picked up 13-14. However I saw issues 1-12 sitting there also but looking different than the others. I figure what the hell; I’ll get her 2-3 to go in order as she has 1. Then I look. The damned things were $15.95. WTF? The pricing is half the cover for paperbacks but that still means $8 for these which is more than the price of the other ones new. Why so damned expensive? (For any Canadian readers I have you guys getting an even bigger reaming, they want C$ 25.95 for them. That’s hard cover territory. Can’t figure the discrepancy either as the C$ isn’t that far off the US one) Anyhow I got 15 and 16, lots cheaper, but I know that my daughter is going to spot these others and I’m going to get reamed somewhere along the line. Luckily I’ll be able to keep her occupied with the other volumes on her next trip as I can do a 2 or 1 offer but this summer is going to be tough. Anyway she still made out better than I did and now I’m back off to Zern’s.

Get back to Zern’s and surprise, most places are still closed. My main stops were the nut shop and the butcher’s. I find someone behind the curtains at the nut shop and ask what time they open. She says about 2. It’s about 20 mins. to so I head over to the butcher shop to check on them. On the way over I decide to stop for lunch and grab a crab cake sandwich at the seafood snack bar next stall to them. Nothing spectacular but not expensive and probably a lot better for me than the usual couple of corn dogs I cram down my throat when I’m there. Figure by the time I finish places should be open. Woman at the stand is very nice and as there is no business we have a nice chat. I finish my sandwich and head to the butcher shop.

While I used to visit the butcher’s when I held my old Lapub picnics around this time mainly because they had great ribs, I only went there for jerky this time. I used to frequent another stall but they have since closed so this has become my place for jerky. They have a great selection of it but the damned stuff s so expensive, even here, that one has to limit oneself unless the funds are in great condition. I also don’t eat as much jerky as I once did, too many crowns to risk it they way I once did. Ah to be young once again. As it is the stall is no longer a butcher shop. They now call themselves a deli and the cases are filled with an even larger variety of jerky, different types and sizes of cured sausages and salamis and cheese. Doesn’t really make a difference as I’m only after jerky but the larger selection is going to make behaving myself difficult. They have regular beef, steak and turkey, all in various flavors from regular to blazing hot. I like the steak but it is softer than the others and while easier on the teeth, disappears too fast so I’m getting plain old beef as I’ve never been big on turkey. I skip the various flavors of hot, the Cajun and the garlic and get a half pound each of original, teriyaki and PA Dutch sweet beef. Should last me awhile. On to the nut shop

Place was finally open. Nuts there are about ½ to ¾ the price in stores not to mention the greater selection. Also a good selection of trail mixes and dried fruit. My main staples are pecans, plain and glazed, pistachios and dried cherries. Picked up about a pound of each. They had some dates so I got some of them. Usually pick up some Turkish figs there too. They’re about half the price of Calmyrnas and just as good IMHO. Didn’t get any on this trip though. In a couple weeks. Also skipped the date nut rolls. Love them and so does my daughter but already bought the dates and don’t need to overdo it. Pick some up when my daughter comes down again. Next stop.

Next to the nut shop is the candy stall. This place is fantastic though I exercised restraint. It’s the only place left that I know of where you can get jujubes. Had to forego the pleasure however. Damn crowns again, not to mention too much sugar is a no-no these days. Years ago I used to cause jaws to drop when I’d ask for 5 lbs of the damned things. Would keep them on my desk at work. Hey, didn’t get up there that often. At least two co-workers pulled fillings when they raided the stash. The risk you take with jujubes. They also have one of the greatest selections of what used to be known as penny candy that I’ve seen since the sweet shops of my youth have closed down. It just ain’t a penny anymore. It’s a real bitch, you have money and you’re old enough that there are no longer parental restrictions on the good stuff but now your so old your body tells you to forget it. Anymore I only stop there for licorice. While they have a big selection of it my taste is for plain black, foreign made if it’s available. American black licorice is ok but Australia and the Netherlands have it all over us for licorice. Aussie has a much more intense taste while Dutch is kind of salty tasting. Finnish, Italian and German ain’t bad either. Unfortunately only US and Aussie are available here. Actually two types of US are there. Standard Twizzlers and a new brand, Kenny’s. Never heard of the Kenny’s before and the girl tells me it’s a bit harder than the Twizzlers and offers me a piece to try. Actually it’s also a bit more intense in flavor though not as strong as the Aussie. It’s also cheaper than Twizzlers. So I decided on a half of each and a pound of Aussie. Yes I know, the sugar again but every so often I just get a jones for black licorice and I have to poison myself. Also picked up some spearmint leaves for my mother. Wherever she usually gets them hasn’t had any her last couple trips and she’s been suffering withdrawal symptoms. Gotta help out where I can. Ok, finally done here, onward and upward.

Head back down towards home. Wegmans trip canceled as it’s now out of the way. Liquor store next stop. Quick stop there. Couple bottles of red and, since it’s pretty warm it’s umbrella drink season. Don’t feel like mixing so a couple bottles premixed stuff. A bottle of Rum Runner for the game tomorrow night and one for home. Want to pick up another bottle for home but forgot whether it’s Bahama Mama’s or Hurricanes that have the passion fruit in them. I hate passion fruit so guess I’ll have to pass on the second bottle. Will send my dickheaded nephew you out on a run later this weekend. Make a quick stop in the supermarket next door to the liquor store, just a simple one not as fancy as Wegmans, looking for some fruit pops. Useless visit as all they had was plain popsicles, did get fudgesicles though couldn’t waste all that extra walking, and my day of travel was over. Head home for pizza for dinner and a large Rum Runner and to bore everyone with this missive. Hell, when you don’t get out a lot and are as simple as I am you make the best of what is there. Now a short trip for poker tomorrow night and another week of sitting home behaving.

Thanks for the listen.

Web hosting

2010-05-14T16:49:00.002-04:00

I've owned my own domain for a few years and it has sat idle. Now that I've al this time on my hand I'm thinking of putting it to use, maybe tranferring this blog there, maybe throw up a commercial page. It looks like if I want to do this however I'm going to need a web hosting company. It's a pain because I have a server here at home, originally planned as the centerpiece the home network and a family mailserver. Fios however does not issue a static IP unless you go business class so that rules that out. There are services for dynamic to static but if I'm going to pay for them I might as well check into web hosting and let someone else deal with the maintanance problems. I'm also eligible for free hosting with my Fios account but there you have to put Verizon in the site url and if I'm going to work my own site I want my own domain name up there. I'm paying for it, I want it up there. So basically this post is a question. Is anyone out there using a site host and if so is it any good and is the price reasonable? Would appreciate any comment on this.

Thanks for the replies and the listen.

Just some thoughts

2010-05-13T23:43:00.000-04:00

Went out 21st in the latest Mookie. Best finish so far in the BBT5 but it wasn’t nothing to crow about as I never went above 7100 chips. Sat around and watched it for awhile. Interesting final table in the fact that except for RGC, who led the tourney most of the way the other 8 runners were all within a couple thousand chips of each other and even he was only about 15K or so ahead. About as balanced a final table as I’ve seen. Lots of chip movement for awhile before Mondogarage made the first mistake and depleted his stack and eventually left the table first. As it went along it seemed that a different person built his stack as someone went out so that the table stayed very balanced until it came down to RG and Tripjax. Sorry to say I missed the finish. Got up to take a whiz and swallow a couple pills and by the time I got back it was over. GG to the table and nice win Tripjax.

Looking over the schedule for this year’s WSOP. I see they’ve replaced the 50K HORSE with a 50K 8 game mixed and calling it The Player’s Championship and awarding the Chip Reese trophy to the winner. Sounds nice but unless you’re in Vegas you ain’t seeing nothing but NLHE. Seems ESPN coverage is driving things again and ESPN likes nothing but NLHE. Seems ESPN wouldn’t cover the final table unless it was only NLHE and a lot of the players are going along feeling that the TV coverage will up the participation. I don’t mind watching the NLHE but I really enjoy the other games. While I enjoy playing them I like to see how the pros do it. LCD screws me up again. Bad enough half of TV is made up of reality shows these days even poker is caving in to the wish of the masses. Is nothing sacred? Besides the game gives advantage to the NLHE specialist at the final table instead of favoring the all around player as a Player’s Championship and a trophy named after Reese should. Seems the WSOP forgot its roots, when it was something for the players not a TV event that caters to the masses. Big money wins out again. Kind of reminds me of coverage of the Olympics used to be like. All you saw were the events that the US did well in or had major followings. Well that’s what the people want to watch and what gets the ratings. True, but the people aren’t ever going to change their tastes if they aren’t exposed to different things. It’s funny, they won’t try different things elsewhere but they keep trying to cram soccer down our throats after years of failure. There goes that different drummer again. Since it seems my plans for Vegas aren’t going to work out I’m stuck with ESPN which means NLHE.

Enough for now. Thanks for the listen.

Another Mookie down the drain

2010-05-13T12:58:00.000-04:00

Mookie starting. Not many familiar names at the table, Buddy Dank to my left and Bad Blood across the table but that’s all I recognize. Start OTB with Q-9. Not suited, easy fold. Suited, otb, I like Q-9, it’s the ultimate suckout hand. Xkm1245 notices that there are three monkey avatars in a row and brings up the see no evil, …, line. As I’m the third one I have to disabuse him of that notion as I definitely speak a lot of evil. Played two earlier tourneys and cards sucked in them and not much better here. Went out both of them when I ran pocket paint, J-J and Q-Q, into K-K. Can I make it a 3fer?

So far this game my cards would be a donkey’s dream, lots of sooooted. Right now, lots of folding. Tried to push the Hammer and it cost me. Back to folding. Damn, folded suited Q and flop brought the flush with OE straight flush redraw and two pair to one guy and set to another. What a haul it would have been. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Now it went from sooooted to weak aces. Need more patience because I can’t manufacture dick at this table, always a call if not a raise. Can’t even play my blinds, every one has been raised and none worth defending. Talk about being cold decked. Looks like I’m going to see how far folding can get me. Got some chips back. Had flush draw on a paired flop. Put out a value sized bet as a blocker from utg and it actually took down the pot.

Hey, finally, a real hand. Called bigdav’s raise pre with A-T and flop came x-T-T. He lays out a little over half the pot and I call. He checks the turn and I go about 3/4s and he folds. Hooray. BadBlood screws me up. In BB with 8-9 suited and first two guys limp. Just what I like, multi-way pot with suited connectors in the BB. Gold if you hit the flop, easy to get away from if you don’t. Blood spoils it all by shoving his short stack. Short maybe but still too big for a call at this stage. The suited cards keep coming, at least 8 straight hands suited. At least there was a K-Q and A-T among them. Nice pot off of Kajagugu. A-K in the BB with 3xs raise in front. Kaja calls as do I. Flop comes 3-3-6 and we all check. Turn a 9 and another check and Kaja bets slightly under half. I don’t believe he has the 3 and at best hit the 9 so I take a flyer and call. River brings a K and I check figuring on a trap but when he bets about 3’4s I chicken out and just call. K is good and I chip up a bit. Next hand is 8-8 but a preflop raise and all overs on the flop sends them to the muck.

Just gave most of my winnings to OMGItsPokerFool. Draw heavy board with flush and straight possibilities but can’t force him off his weak ace once he hit it on the flop. Gave up after 2 bullets. One of these days I’m gonna learn to fold once that ace hits. Couple hands later I’m forced off my BB with J-8 off with a 4xs raise and 2 callers. Flop is 9-T-Q rainbow. It figures. Q-Q in the BB. It’s either going to get folded to me or I’m seeing Ks. Glorioski Sandy, Flip74 raises and bigdav calls. Good chance there is no huge pair out there so I shove. Flip folds but bigdav has chips and calls with K-Qd. Good, only one over. Flop comes 9 hi but with two diamonds. Shit, make me sweat. Turn another 9, good. River a blank and I’m still alive, both figuratively and literally. Doctor once said I was going to stroke out playing poker. Made a liar out of him, I learned to relax at the poker table. I was asleep when I had the stroke. Still feel a rush during certain hands though.

Why does Shabazz Jenkins always wind up at my table in these blogger games? Not that I have any problems with him, or it, it just seems funny that with all the players in these games he consistently winds up at my table sometime during the game. Cue the Twilight Zone theme. Suited connectors and I think about raising but fold instead. Could have been a good fold as Mondogarage and bigdav get into a pissing match in a battle of the blinds. Mondo raises, dav reraises and Mondo tops him. Was there a real hand here or was it just a testosterone show? Dav folds so we’ll never know.

Make the second break though I’m scratching felt. Best I’ve done in any of the BBT5 tourneys so far though. Can’t seem to really add to my stack. Get up around 6 to 7K and then give a couple grand back. Very aggressive table tonight.

I swore I wasn’t going to mention Josie in this post but Tilt decided to put her right at my left hand. So much for good intentions. She dumps a lot of chips early when she calls an all in and it’s her A-6 suited against A-A. Gets them back from Shabazz though when she shoves A-K. Shabazz hasn’t played a hand since he sat down calls with K-Q. He gets a Q but Josie hit Broadway and doubles. And I go out. I get a couple decent hands and shove since I’m under 10 BBs but no action. Otherwise it’s weak aces and sooooted cards. Finally shove A-Q off into Columbo’s raise. He calls and it’s a race against his 9-9. Oh well, never was much of a racing man. It was fun as the Mookie always is.

Thanks for the listen.

It's spooky how she can keep it up

2010-05-12T15:31:00.001-04:00

Just finished Janet Evanovich’s Plum Spooky. Not very spooky but it sure is funny. While not a new Evanovich novel, January of 2009, it’s not all that old. The main reason I decided to put it in here though is that she has a new one coming out in a month or so, so figure this one might introduce some folks to her work.

While she has other books out there Evanovich’s main body of work deals with Stephanie Plum. She basically brings out one book a year, titled with a number. In addition she occasionally adds another book around the holidays, what are called her between the number books. These between the number books are usually thinner than the regular books but the feature Stephanie Plum and follow the usual formula. Plum Spooky is a between the numbers book.

Stephanie Plum is a Jersey Girl, Trenton NJ to be exact, and the novels all take place in Trenton and the surrounding areas with the occasional side trip to the Shore or Philly. As introduced in the first book Plum is unemployed and her prospects aren’t great. So she winds up taking a job as a recovery agent for her cousin Vinnie’s bail bond agency, to the horror of her proper, suburban housewife mother, who wonders why she can’t work at the bank or the button factory like the daughters of all her friends. So that sets the background for the books. Evanovich writes to a formula for her plots. Stephanie gets a number of recoveries at the beginning of the story, mostly minor skips but usually one fairly heavy character, and the book traces her adventures in trying to apprehend her cases and get the rent money. Suffice to say Plum is not the most competent of recovery agents and thus follows some funny misadventures because while nominally a sort of who done it the books are mainly comedy and Evanovich has a knack for it. Her imagination comes up with some of the wackiest characters I’ve ever come across and you will split your sides laughing.

While Plum Spooky isn’t quite as good as some of her other works it’s still very good. The main problem as far as I’m concerned is there are a few periods in the book that seem to drag compared to the others but if you start with this book you’ll never notice it. In this one Stephanie is chasing a nerdy scientist who has broken the nose of his supervisor and run off with a piece of equipment they were working on. Not so dangerous until the geek teams up with a vampire looking partner named Wulf with a sinister reputation, not to mention supposedly paranormal powers. When the supervisor turns up dead with a broken neck and a hand print burned in his neck things take a decidedly more deadly turn. Helping Stephanie in her endeavors are her regular sidekick, Lula, a former ‘ho gone straight who is supposed to be a file clerk in the bail bond office, Diesel, a large, attractive, mysterious agent of some sort who claims to have some kind of special powers of his own and is related to Wulf and who complicates the hell out of Stephanie’s life, both professional and personal, and Carl, a monkey that Stephanie is involuntarily baby sitting. If you think a monkey can’t be an interesting character you’ve never run across Evanovich. In addition a large part of the book takes place in the Pine Barrens, the home of the Jersey Devil, and many other interesting characters according to Evanovich. Along the way we run across the Easter Bunny, Sasquatch and Elmer the Flame Farter. One of the disappointments of the book is that Plum’s grandmother, one of the more colorful characters in a series filled with them, only makes a cameo in this one. While they are not as fast and furious as in some books the laughs are just as loud as you might expect in a book that has Elmer and a monkey that can flip you the bird. There are even a few tense moments when Stephanie finds herself in the hands of Wulf and his pet scientist. You know she’s gotta get out of the situation however, the real mystery is how much destruction will be wrought as she does it.

All in all another good book by Janet Evanovich and, while maybe not up to the usual standards of the “number” books, a good place to start if you want to check her out or a worthwhile acquisition if you are acquainted with the numbers but were leery of the holiday books.

Thanks for the listen.

Grind, grind, grind

2010-05-11T22:27:00.002-04:00

Why the hell do I play poker these days? I’m sure I could find some more productive activity for my time, like sticking burning splinters under my fingernails or being nice to Josie. Worst thing is I’m not even losing. Playing a couple hours a day of low stakes NL ring these days, usually .10//.20. Should probably throw in some tourney just to keep in practice as I get a bit loosey goosey in tourneys when I play long stretches of ring. Be that as it may I’m doing ok at the tables right now but it’s getting to be a real grind. Never have I seen such tight tables at these stakes. Admittedly that’s contributing to my winnings but it’s like trying to build a snowman one flake at a time. In addition it’s not really been giving me any blog fodder. Even given my deathless prose it’s kind of hard to make something interesting out of raising A-J off 3x’s and everyone folds 20 times. Even when I do get action it rarely goes beyond the flop. Today I’ve played 52 of 185 hands so far, 12 of which went to showdown, 6 of which I won. I have 33 other wins and am up 2 buy ins. That’s only because since I started writing this I doubled up against the big stack when we both flopped flushes with me holding the nut. The other 51 hands, 38 of which were wins had me up a whole half a buy in before that. Today the deck even smacked me as I’ve pulled K-K 4 times and A-A twice, the first time I’ve seen aces in my hand in almost a week. No action. None, nada, zilch. Twice I had them in the BB and not even a frikkin limper. And today I’m up big compared to the last few days. Usually it’s 4 hours of play and maybe up a buy in. Last night I wound up a whole 2 bucks, stuck in the same $4 range most of the night, up a few, down a few. Basically what I’m saying here is this is starting to feel like work except work had a guaranteed payoff and only half the frustration.

Probably play the Mookie tomorrow. At least that usually gives me material for here. Right now my mind is stagnating and I have no idea what to write about. Yea, I know, I’m pushing out a lot of words but mostly just a bunch of blather. Reading a lot and think about doing some book reviews but most of the stuff I’m reading is older stuff so not sure how of how much interest it will be. Especially since I have what, about 5-6 readers? Not like I’m Josie sucking up to (or bullying) everyone for links. Have a couple new books on pre-order but not sure when they will be in. One has been pushed back twice already. Summer movie season upon us but never was a big movie goer, usually wait until the video hits so nothing timely is going to come from there. Even Vegas is looking less likely this summer unless the Feds get off their duff and give me a quick resolution to my disability app. but that is unlikely. You know how fast the government is.

I see Josie has the first featured post on the Poker from the Rail site. Hell, she’s been crowing about it since before it happened. So much so that they probably heard her on the West Coast. Only thing is she says she got the spot without sucking up or other various techniques. C’mon Josie, no fibbing here. You’ll never get to heaven that way and considering that I’ve already got a waterfront lot and a reserved seat on the express elevator to the other place I sure don’t need to be spending eternity with you in the vicinity. ‘Fess up and maybe it will be forgiven. After all, the guys doing the selecting are guys. We know they can’t resist. I will sat they did make a good pick for their first selection as she does seem to have a large readership and gathers quite a bit of commentary on her blog. Hell, even I read it though mainly because she offers such opportunity for abuse. Face it Josie, you play poker, you comment here, you live in Boston, you crave abuse. Do you also golf? And by the way, that selection comment was not a nice one; it was based strictly on practicality. Don’t want you getting your hopes up.

Guess that’s enough for tonight. See you at the Mookie. Thanks for the listen.

A quiet Mother's Day

2010-05-09T18:50:00.000-04:00

Got a new frikkin mattress the other day, memory foam. Lots of fun. It’s comfortable and supportive I will say that. OTOH it’s a bear to get out of when you have a weak side and are more than a tad out of shape. You sink in to the foam as you lie in it for a time and trying to lever up with only one good arm is a circus. If that is a circus trying to roll over is the whole 3 rings. I’m going to have to hit the gym just to be able to get out of bed. Or maybe not, just getting out of this thing is a workout in itself. But damn it is comfortable for a man with arthritis. Only my waterbed felt better.

Giving my ex a bit of a gift today seeing as it is Mother’s Day. Sundays I normally spend a couple of hours on the phone with my daughter but today I’ll not make the call as much as I want to talk to my daughter. I’ll let her have the time to spend with her mother. Now whether her mother will take advantage of it or appreciate it is a whole ‘nother story.

We’re going Jewish for Mother’s Day. Deli that is. Mom doesn’t want anything fancy and there is a great Jewish deli not too far away so we are headed there for dinner tonight. Mom’s a big fan of their soups; she could eat soup if it was 120 degrees out, and a corned beef or pastrami fan. As for me they have a great pastrami Reuben. I just love a pastrami Reuben with a thick slice of raw onion, regular, not red. In my younger days I visited a deli across the street from where I cashed my pay check every Friday. Got so that as soon as I walked in the door my glass of iced tea was on the table and the sandwich was on the grill. I hate being predictable. It’s a shame that place closed down. Pastrami now an occasional instead of a regular part of the diet. Probably a lot better for my health though.

Playing a bit of low level NLHE on UB while killing time on a Sunday afternoon. Couple of strange rangers to the left and right of me. Both put $10 up and they keep it up. Neither plays a lot of hands and when they lose, even the blinds, they restock. Haven’t the foggiest about what the hell is going on but I’m up a few bucks and they are contributing here and there so I can’t complain. Curious as hell though. My acquaintances with aces continue in this game. I’ve seen them twice today. Once when I was holding K-K and the other when I had Q-Q. I’m spending my time grinding out 30 to 60 cent pots and both times when I get big hands and it’s AIPF for a decent pot I frikkin run across bullets and there goes all that work. Only game more frustrating than frikkin poker is golf yet most poker players also golf. In fact I even did so for a number of years until my shoulder put the kibosh on it. Was even worse at it than I am at poker. Just goes to show you, we are nothing but a fucking bunch of closet masochists. Use us, abuse us and throw us away, we love it. No wonder I’m always in pain, I revel in it. I never knew this about myself. Just noticed a third one of these constant chip stack players has sat down. Have also noticed another thing about them. They bet a constant 4 times bb when they play and they also do not raise with an A-T when oop. Some kind of bot? If so they are not doing so hot. Whoops, take that back, one of them just played a hand to showdown. It all went in preflop and as I suspected, big pair against big pair. The suspect player had Ks vs. someone else’s A’s and hit the K on the flop to double up. Either a bot or some guy has an iron butt and rock solid patience. Just glad it wasn’t me finally holding A-A.

Back from dinner. So much for good intentions. Have been trying to behave myself in the food dept. lately but tonight was tough. Can feel my arteries clogging already from the pastrami. In addition the mushroom soup and onion rings were damned good also. At least I brought the carrot cake home for later. If I ate it there I would’ve had to been rolled from the place. We got there just in time because the place started to fill up about 15 minutes after we arrived. Was lots of fun because it was almost like being in a Chuckie Cheese from the amount of rug rats present. Every family that wanted to take mom out but had kids too young to go fancy decided to hit this place or so it seemed. Most of them were fairly well behaved though so except for one crying jag when a young boy conked his head it wasn’t all that bad. Passed a couple of the really fancy places on the way up and back and think they had to run shuttles in their lots. Lot of families out for dinner today.

Well, it’s early but think I’m going to call it a day, find a book and break in the new mattress while reading. I hope all you mothers out there had a Happy Mother’s Day and my best to you. Remind your families that every day should be Mother’s Day. (I think I got myself in deep with a lot of husbands out there) Thanks for the listen.

Damn!

2010-05-08T17:11:00.001-04:00

Friday I decided to skip Power Poker for awhile and play some AP, .10/.20 NL. Ah, that’s the low limit table I am used to. Family pots, min raises, chasers, weak aces and calling stations. And suckouts of course, lots of suckouts. Took me a while to get used to after those tight ass tables at Power. Oooops, made a mistake, I was playing PL not NL. Oh well, most of the stacks were small enough that the pots made it all ins after the flop possible. Didn’t do as well as I do on Power as I lost a buy in or two due to early suck outs but came back and added a few bucks to the bankroll. Yea, I know, Cerus network, crap sites, security issues, etc., etc. Hey, it’s winnings, I play low limits and anyone who wants to take the time to hack the few bucks at a time I put out there needs the money a whole lot more than I do. With those kinds of skills he’d make a better living at an honest job.

OK, Sat game at the Manor called off. Damn. Remember a time when there was a waiting list to get in to this game. Guess the erratic schedule over the last year or so has sent folks looking elsewhere not to mention there probably is a bunch of donkey games out there. Not to say there weren’t donkeys in the game, after all you need someone to contribute, but there were usually some really good players in there. Even Riggs showed occasionally. As a new guy I think I was granted the donkey exemption when I got my first invite. Was really looking forward to this game too as I haven’t played a live game recently and also it’s been awhile since I’ve seen some of the players that were on the invite list. Not to mention I would have gotten some blog fodder out of it. That can be a risky proposition however since I don’t know how many, if any of those guys read this. Not that I’m worried about giving away my game, hell, I’m transparent as glass as it is but some of the others have holes in their game big enough to drive a concrete mixer through. Since no one sits down at these games thinking they got the ATM pass I would hate to be the one enlightening them by describing their game if the should by some chance come across this. Trying again for next Sat. Hope so.

I’m not making AC for a few weeks when an overnight trip is planned for Dad’s birthday. My brother and I ran across a pretty cool seafood place on the outskirts located right on the bay with good food at reasonable prices. Brother asked me if I could swing dinner if he gets the room, not a casino deal. Told him yea but how come I get stuck for dinner and he gives me the old, the room is more expensive bit. What am I, a dummy? I know he still has points from when he used to go visit his son in college. He’s getting a reduced rate if not a freebie. Have to check for the exact days we’re heading down. I’d like to get some poker in while down there but if it’s a weekend I may try to get my daughter down for the trip. If I do however it will kill any poker possibilities even though my parents would probably watch her for a few hours. Have to how it goes. May be a moot question anyway if the trip is midweek as my daughter will still be in school. Damn school where she is goes runs until late June before they let out for summer. Of course if I can do Vegas this June it might be a blessing in disguise.

Thanks for the listen.

And a Wacky Wednesday it was

2010-05-06T14:06:00.003-04:00

OK Josie, a few words about the Mookie. Now maybe you are doing the Dank/Buddy thing just to make nice to Waffles but think of this for a minute. You have started, and pushed, your own tourney, The Very Josie. All well and good. Enjoyed playing the last one. However allow your mind to wander into the future. You can do that can’t you; you seem to have a good imagination concerning other things. Anyway think of the time you either grow tired ad bored of the whole blogger and/or poker thing or, heaven forefend, you can no longer manage to handle such things. Someone decides that since you are leaving the game they are going to take over the running of your game as homage to you. Have no doubts, it will happen because there is always someone out there with more testosterone than brains. So now, your tourney is out there, with your name on it, being continued as a tradition by some peckerwood without any sense. Do you want someone pushing for the tourneys name to be changed to that peckerwood’s just because he is running it? (Buddy, this is not to imply you are a peckerwood, just a general swipe at some future, possible Josie admirer. Course if you take over running the Very Josie at some point in the future I reserve the right to alter my judgment) Back to the tirade. So Josie, do you want tradition to go hang and have someone pushing to name YOUR tourney after some futuristic Mojo type just because he hasn’t the brains god gave bastard geese in Ireland? Just think about it the next time you start to write Dank/Buddy in your blog in place of the Mookie. Is sucking up to Waffles worth all that? Just think, the Very Josie is pushed to become the Very ~~Mojo~~ Whatever?

Man it was Wacky Wed. at least as far as the Tokers game went. A tight table at lower levels started getting 4-5 limpers at about the 5th. Usually people tighten up as the blinds get higher unless they are shoving. I figured I was going to end this one early given the structure and the fact I had a few other games coming up. Little did I know even when I took a big hit just before break time. I figured the structure would make this one a quickie but when it started I found out it was a triple stack, or almost. Actually it was some weird number close to a triple in keeping with the Wacky Wed theme I guess. Even wackier was that when I took a peek at the lobby to see the players I noticed that third place is listed as top prize. WTF. I mention this in the chat box and someone else mentions that no, they see it as 4th so I look again and sure as hell 4th place is now on top and third is low man on the totem pole. I recognize a couple of the players from the GFN Forum Wars I’ve been playing and the Poker Analysis league games but on the whole it’s mostly a new bunch so have no idea what to expect here. Well I go along, grinding out a decent stack, lots of limping and checking by the table with a well timed bet able to take pots. They aren’t big but keeping me in business until I take a big hit just before the break and drop down below starting stack. After the break both the PA league game and the Very Josie start up and things really became wacky. Who needs a toke when it’s all a blur anyway? I have no idea how things went after break as all 3 games were being played at a decent speed and Josie was yapping away like a Pekinese and I’m on a fast track to who knows where. All I know is that in this game I’m playing a lot of pots and winning with a lot of air. Eventually I notice I’m second stack. Next thing you know we're down to the bubble and my stack is just average. No, I didn’t lose any; it’s just that while I’m grinding along here the rest of my opponents are doubling up and getting knockouts. My way was effective but theirs seemed a lot easier. I keep muddling along and we’re down to 6 and I’m second stack again and I think do I really want to do this? 4th place is the top prize after all but no one seems to be making an effort to dump chips so I keep on relying on good old air. It got me this far. Finally it becomes 4 handed and I even have a way figured to go out in 4th as long as I have the proper position but no one seems to be trying to hit that spot so I think maybe the payout figures are a joke and keep on playing. We play 4 handed for awhile so now I’m sure someone is just fucking around and I have become chip leader by a small amount. I take out the former chip leader and now have a massive chip lead on the other two. I also KO the short stack and I think the second place finisher just decided to give it up as a few hands later they shove with nothing and I actually had a hand. I won. Or did I? It seems that it was no joke, 4th place actually got the bigger money. Something I need to file away for the future. Even better is that as strange as this game was it was played against the background of both the Very Josie and eventually the Mookie. Head was definitely spinning.

While I did well in the game I figured to basically be a blow off game the rest of the night wasn’t so hot, at least on the poker side. Overall I cam out about even money wise give or take but of course I lost money on Tilt while adding more on Cake. I can’t do anything right. The PA league game and the VJ started up the same tie and I was already in the Toker game. The PA game didn’t last long so Josie I never actually got to those 4 games at once. I maxed at 3 last night. Don’t remember much about the PA game. Was heavily involved on both the Toker and VJ tables while Josie was still making like a yappy dog and I was getting taken to task by Gary for busting her chops. Oh boy, another tripper . Actually Gary ain’t a bad guy who was at the end of a loooong day and we got things on an even keel. No problems Gary, I’m used to those reactions from men where Josie is concerned. She has some kind of strange effect on them. Anyway, back to the league game. Went out early on a hand where the flop was T-5-5. Flopped TP2K and bet the flop and got a caller. Turn was low so bet again and again was called. Figured no 5 there since no raise so I shoved the river and guess I was called as next thing I know I was out. Don’t even know what beat me as I was tied up elsewhere. More than likely some peckerwood called me down with an ace and spiked it on the river. Oh yea, don’t even know the river card, I basically shoved without even paying attention.

Do have to say that the V-Josie was fun. (No that ain’t a nice comment about you) even if the cards stayed away. Took an early hand off Gary with a T-T. When the flop hit with 2 overs he bet and I said what the hell and threw out a raise. He thought about it then called. Turn was a blank and he checked and I bet and again he thought and again he called. Aw shit I’m thinking, I can’t get rid of him, he’s got a higher pair. River brought me a T but also put a possible straight and maybe flush out there. He checks and I’m debating, bet or check. Was he drawing and did he hit and now trapping? Check is probably the proper move as I’m probably beat if he calls or raises. He might however be holding top pair with a weak kicker so the right bet might net me a bit more. I bet, hoping he don’t shove over me. He thinks for awhile and then folds calling himself chicken. I’m just as glad he didn’t make that call. After that it was all down hill. I couldn’t catch a dose in a $2 house of ill repute let alone a decent hand. Coop still whining about having his aces cracked by Cricket’s jacks and Mojo talking about having them about 5 times. Hell, the only time I see aces any more is in the other guy’s hand when I have kings or queens. Anyhow with Josie in the game I couldn’t even try to make a play as everyone knows she’ll call you down with any A-rag. : It was still interesting and fun, the chat alone worth it even if Josie dominates it. Give it a try come the first Wed in June. You’ll like it, Mikey does. Somewhere in the chat dept I found I had a reader in Lucki Duck. Thanks Lucki, you represent a higher class of reader, I hope, judging by the lowlifes I usually find in my comments section . BTW, speaking of the chat Jordan plays a mean game in the trash talk department.

The Mookie was not memorable. The cold cards traveled over from the table at the Josie and it seemed every player at my table knew it. Every time I tried to manufacture a bit of luck I wound up getting check raised. Talk about bleeding chips; I was hemorrhaging like my carotid was cut. Somehow I scratched felt to the break but decided I wasn’t going anywhere so popped a sleeping pill figuring it and my demise in the game would t6ake effect about the same time. Actually the demise came a bit sooner when I made a stand with K-Js against an A-K. So I watched the end of the Very Josie and saw Jordan climb out of a big hole to take out Josie but come up short when Mojo hit Broadway to his flopped trips. Good game Jordan and nice win Mojo. There was one bright spot to the Mookie. Seems Josie has a thing going for Riggs and so was railing him at the final table and saw him go down with A-rag. She commented on it in her blog and when Riggs commented explaining his play Josie decided to give him a poker lesson on the play of A-rag. Priceless!!! Hell, I’ll pay a dollar to see the elephant pull a football out of a monkey’s ass any day.

And on that note it’s farewell for now. Thanks for the listen.

Wacky Wednesday

2010-05-05T20:36:00.001-04:00

Been playing on ring games Power Poker lately even though I really don’t care for the site, at least tourney wise. This is because I have winnings sitting there and don’t feel like just letting them sit there so I’ll either play until I lose them or I have enough to cash out. Had about $200+ but dropped about half that on a day the poker gods were particularly pissed. Usually play the limit games there and do well but lately there have been no tables in my range so I’ve been playing the .10/.20 NL or the .05/.10 if nothing open in the higher table open. Only reason I decided to bring this up is because of two facts. One is that these are the tightest tables I have ever seen at these levels. They’re aggressive when they play but they don’t play much. Have never won so many hands on the flop but then it’s usually just me and one other player in, not the 4 or more common on other sites. So far I’m doing OK but it’s not a site to play unless I really feel like grinding. The second reason is there seems to be a lot of quick hitters among these players. A lot seem to disappear right after they hit the occasional big pot that does get played. Don’t expect to get your money back if you get sucked out on, at least not from that player. Have no idea why I mention this as I figure I don’t have much of a readership and I’ll lay a prop bet out there that of those who do 75% play either Stars or Tilt or maybe both but that’s about it. Yes they are the premier sites and I would probably be playing them too but for the fact of my membership in the Poker Analysis leagues. They range over a bunch of lesser sites, usually newer ones needing to build a base and so willing to pony up some bucks for freerolls or addeds to attract players. FT and PS really don’t need to do this so games there aren’t as common. Add in the fact I can’t build a roll at FT and you find me at the other sites more often. I also prefer AP for low level tourneys as they cut you more slack in blind levels. Used to play $5 SnGs , one on Tilt, one on AP at the same time and I would be hitting level 7 on Tilt while still on 4 on AP. I appreciate the fact they aren’t in such a hurry to clear the table.

Speaking of tourneys it looks like I’m going to screw myself royally tonight and go for 4. The Poker Tokers buy-in is on Cake is at 8. Wasn’t going to play it but they seem like a decent bunch so I figure I’ll donate some of my ill gotten gains on that site. It’s only a small buy in but the added will double the prize pool. Since it’s the mother site for the network of the same name, of which the above mentioned Power is a skin it’s a given that I’m not a fan of the tourney structure but one plays the hand one is dealt. Also their software is not conducive to multi tabling, the seating isn’t bad but the controls suck big time. You can’t set the slider for increments at all so you have to be careful on how you click. Last time I played the site I wanted a 3 times raise and wound up betting half my stack because I was in a hurry, 5 tables running that time, and wasn’t careful. They also don’t give you a whole lot of time to react compared to other sites. Given the structure however I should either be out or have it almost won by the time the Mookie starts.

At 9 I add 2 more tables, the PA freeroll league game, also on Cake and the Very Josie. Not really expecting to do well in the PA game, see above and it’s also a bigger donkfests than the Mookie. At one time the games were better than your standard freeroll. It used to be most of the entrants were at least trying to improve their game, in fact that is what it was started for but change of ownership at the site has loosened up the rules needed to qualify for the games and recently more freeroll chasers have come to set their butts in the seats. Fields have doubled in size; though not as big as they were when I first joined, but a lot of the new faces are just there to donk not improve. The Josie is going to be interesting though if I can concentrate enough on it.

Yes, I’m playing both the Josie and the Mookie and I’m even giving her a blog link. Don’t think I’m being nice either; it’s just that if I’m playing her tourney it’s only proper she get the respect for setting it up. Would link to the Mookie if he were still in action these days also. Just keeping the air clear about motives here. Still don’t know why people seem to have to decide between playing the Very Josie and the Mookie. Some folks make it sound like a big decision. I’m not talking about those on the West Coast where time is a factor but the other ones. The ones that make it sound like a big decision. Hello, can you say multi table? It ain’t like either one is that expensive either. Hell, the PTFR is more expensive than both together. Waffles is an exception since, as I understand it his budget is limited and some times he has to wait on it but that’s no excuse for anyone else.

The Poker Tokers game has started and I noticed the biggest prize is for third. Wait a minute it now it’s listed as 4th. WTF? Well what can you expect from a game called Wacky Wednesday sponsored by a site called Tokers. Gonna be interesting, BTW, while the levels still suck this tourney has a triple stack to it so might last a bit longer than I thought. Damn, A-K pre with a number of callers to the raise and an A-K on the board but don’t think it’s going to happen with 4 spades on the board also. My frikkin luck.

Finally at 10 it’s going to be the Mookie. Yes, the Mookie damn it, not some other name. BTW Josie, have a few words to share with you on this subject in a later post. By this time I’ll either be ready to concentrate on this game or will be busier than a one armed paper hanger with a case of the crabs. Obviously there ain’t gonna be any live blogging tonight and probably not a lot of hands relayed either in later posts. As I said it will be interesting. See you on the felt.

Thanks for the listen.

Some poker played, some to be played

2010-05-05T00:04:00.000-04:00

Decided to play the PFTR game on Monday after all. Sorry I did. Didn’t really last long. Won a small pot or two early then got my table switched. Not long after that I went out when Lucko lived up to his name. He raised 3 times out of an early position. I was sitting with Q-Q in middle position and reraised 3 times his bet plus a scoch. Everyone folded and Lucko shoved, I called. He has A-K and rivers a K and I’m gone. I can never figure out why people are willing to shove A-K in this situation though it is commonly done. We were both about the same stack size with 65 BBs left, give or take so basically it’s putting your tourney at risk while it’s still fairly early. Yes, I know A-K is considered a premium hand but it still isn’t a made hand and if you have already raised and been reraised fairly strong I would be figuring a race at best with a good possibility of domination. Not to say I would fold in this situation but not sure I would risk the whole 9 yards here when there is still a decent stack in front of me. This also isn’t an indictment of this play in this instance; it’s a question I’ve been asking on some of my poker forums for quite awhile because it is a play I see quite often. I’ve yet to get a satisfactory answer to it. In fact listening to Rounders Radio one night (sorry Buddy) while playing their This Show Bites games on Reefer they did a show where a number of pros were remarking that they considered A-K on of the most overplayed hands in tourneys. As you might suspect, I’m beginning to agree with them though I’ve always thought it was either A-J or K-Q. Anyone willing to chime in on the subject I’m still looking for answers.

Some live poker this weekend. No, no casino trip, foot is still too screwed up for that but got a text asking if I was interested in playing at the Manor. As if he had to ask. Only thing that keeps me from a game there is a family function or a weekend with my daughter. While it’s probably better I stay off the foot it’s only a walk across the street so no great stress on the foot. I’m there. Been about two months since the last game which is a shorter time frame than the last period between games. Our host is a fanatic about the game with cards and chips worthy of a casino. Unfortunately his wife does not share this passion so his playing time is limited. Last game he said he did want to try and get the game on a monthly basis, give or take a week, so maybe he’s working on it. Only have heard one or two guys committed so far besides myself so have no real idea as to who will show. If I’m unlucky maybe Riggs might be there. He usually does get an invite though it’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen him at the Manor. .

Well, time to sack, need my rest. Early start tomorrow. Weather been so nice I gotta put on my walking cast and try and finish the berry trellis that’s been languishing since I screwed up the foot. Damn raspberries are throwing out runners all over the place so that even though only 3-4 canes survived the initial planting I may be glad of it to keep from being overrun in a couple years. Thanks for the listen.

Do I play tonight?

2010-05-03T16:16:00.003-04:00

What to play? For some reason I never seem to do well on Tilt so that to play there I usually have to deposit. I have winnings on about 6 other sites but can’t seem to build a bankroll on Tilt. So now do I deposit a few more bucks to play the PFTR tourney tonight? I know I’m playing the Mookie this Wed. (and it is the fucking Mookie damn it, no matter what anyone else thinks. It amazes me that people are actually agreeing with Waffles.) but do I play in the VeryJosie tourney also. Maybe that’s my problem on FT, I don’t multi table much. Trying to concentrate on one online table usually doesn’t work out for me.

The good news is that I seem to be coming out of the bleak mood I was in last week. I finally finished the online story I was reading that I mentioned at the end of my last post though I haven’t gotten around to critiquing it yet. Still feeling too frikkin lazy to do a whole lot of mental work. Today I picked up a book I hadn’t read in years and started on it though if I’m playing tonight I have to make sure I put it down a couple hours early to give my eyes time to refocus.. If I’m reading I’m in much better shape as books have always been a major part of my life. If I’m neglecting them I’m in a really foul funk. Another good sign is that I’m starting to feel like playing poker again, another main vice. I played both BBT5 games last week but that and a couple of PA forum special games were about all I played and wasn’t really into them. Haven’t even played many league games. Have to take a short break every so often.

Yesterday I played some ring on Power and a tourney on AP to kill some time. Results were so-so. The tourney was HORSE. Main reason I played it was that except for the occasional league game that shows up don’t get to play much HORSE and I like it. This one actually had enough people registered to make it interesting, around 45-50 runners, so I jumped in. Poker gods obviously didn’t like me playing it however. Was doing ok in the top 7 or so in chips until the bets were up there and I pissed away all my chips in Razz. I learned quickly in the first round that this group chased because there was always one guy with two face cards up to my 9 high board who would keep calling me down. Bluffing wasn’t going to work with this crowd. Somehow I blew all my chips on two hands, a 7 high then a 6 high, almost back to back. Now someone has to be really pissed off at you to get trashed in Razz twice like that in that short a time. Ring however was a bit better. Played a bit of .10/.20 NL and picked up about $22. Hit one good hand, boat over flush, but mostly it was lots of small pots just adding up. That and avoiding the one big chip dump that usually kills me in NL ring no matter how good my session before it. Table was fairly soft, if anyone had anything they bet, if not they checked and a bet into them could usually take it down. Not even any calling stations. Picked up another $10 this morning, same type table but gave it up. It was so tight that even the small pots were too small to be worthwhile. Again hit one good hand, boat over trips this time, and some small ones but gave it up as too hard. I’m not that back in to the game that I can do that kind of grinding.

Reading Schaubs and Waffles blogs on the no shows at the Invitational and have to agree with them. Al spends a lot of time arranging this thing and Tilt is posting some great prizes and people can’t be bothered to show? C’mon, there are hundreds of us out here that would kill for invites and you guys are just blowing them off? Way to go people. Hope Al’s keeping a list and checking it twice. Come to think of it, dye that hair and beard and he might make a passable Santa though what the kids would make of the SoCo I don’t know. For that matter would he be able to tolerate the milk that goes with the cookies? Don’t know about you but I hate sitouts at online tourneys. It’s one of the features I appreciate at AP/UB. If you don’t hit the take my seat screen they pop up at the start by the end of the first level you are then removed from the tourney. That way you aren’t fighting the inertia of a dead table. They seem to be the only sites that do it however. Anywho, I know Sunday evenings can be a busy time for folks, especially the nice ones we’ve been having, but still think folks would jump at the chance to play these games. Of course I’m just a crippled up old fart with a lot of time on my hands so my point of view my be skewed. Either way, get with the program people.

Hey look, a whole post and no mention of Josie. Thanks or the listen.

Oh to slip the surly bonds of earth

2010-04-30T18:15:00.003-04:00

Been catching up on my blog reading and came across a couple of mentions of a Survivor tourney, usually by Josie. Finally find a link to it in Rigg’s blog and follow it to check it out. What the fuck is going on here? I spend almost every night navigating the shoals of reality shows in hopes of finding something decent to watch and now someone has the frikkin brilliant ideas of bringing them to the poker table? Poker is my escape from such dreck. I take pride in being one of the few, if not the only, persons in the US with a TV set to have never seen one episode of either Survivor or American Idol. In fact I could almost claim to have never seen an episode of any of the multitude of reality shows that Survivor has spawned except I have to cop to having once watched an episode of Dancing with the Stars, but only one mind you. Yet now some peckerwood has seen fit to drag the garbage to the poker table. How come I smell Riggs in here somewhere?

Of course I can see why Josie is anxious to play. If I read this thing right it’s based on Survivor where so many start and one by one they get voted off. Just picture it, Josie and a bunch of drooling males thinking with the head between their legs rather than the one on their shoulders as the contestants. Can you picture one of them voting Josie off? Hell, they’re all going to be stabbing each other in the back in the hopes of getting to be the one to go one on one ~~on top of~~ with Josie. Damn, she’ll be able to play them and gut them like trout. No wonder she’s anxious to get it started, she’s practically got it locked up already. Might be interesting to follow at that.

What else is there to talk about? Right now not much. People dream about sitting around with nothing to do when they retire. Believe me, it sucks. Hell, even when I was in the hospital with my ass pinned to a bed there was still the obnoxious rules and officious attitudes to skewer and the enforcers of such to drive mad. I had fodder for this blog and an audience to enlighten. Sitting here, stuck in the house, my mind stagnates. I can’t even go to the bar games and make myself obnoxious there. Well, not that I really can’t go but I try to walk only when necessary to keep pressure off this fucked up foot so that it can heal faster. Of course if I should get a message that there is a real poker game somewhere walking becomes necessary. But on the whole I am bored. Bored, bored, bored. I don’t even feel like reading right now and anyone who knows me knows that is a bad sign. Hopefully this mood shall soon pass. Would be nice if the feds would make up their mind on the disability app I sent in. If they approve I can make some plans to visit Vegas knowing I have some cash flow and can blow a bit of savings. If they decline I can at least get fired up to fight. The waiting sucks even though I know it’s going to be at least another month until I hear anything. Of course I might even get an approval but the doc will say no because of the foot. That would be a bitch. Oh well, we’ll see. Enough being a whiney bitch. Something will break soon.

Oh, btw. If any of you folks enjoy sf/fantasy stories I said I would plug one for an online acquaintance from one of my literary forums. Guy is an aspiring writer and has put a couple of stories up on Smashwords.com. His name is Chris Northern and I read the first one he told me about, The Last King’s Amulet. On the whole not a bad story. He’s still a bit raw and needs a better proof reader in spots but it was enjoyable and kept me fairly interested and turning pages. It’s also got me reading the sequel, The Key to the Grave. The story is cheap compared to paperbacks, only $2 to download. So if you are interested in that kind of story and looking for a new author give him a try. Hey, if he makes it you’ll be able to say, I knew him when … Also you get to critique his work if you wish, something I’m sure he will appreciate as he’s still new to the game and working on improving where he can and if you enjoy there is another story out there already waiting. Give him a try if the genre is your thing.

Hokay, enough commercials. Thanks for the listen.

Another Mookie done done

2010-04-29T23:29:00.001-04:00

Played the Mookie, and it is the Mookie, last night though wasn’t feeling the greatest. Even worse I had spent the previous couple of hours reading and when I do that my eyes go out of focus on the computer screen. That means I have to full screen the table to even see my chip count and tell the difference between a 6 and an 8. Given this there was absolutely no chance of any live blogging the game or even keeping a running tally of the table action to post later. Even worse there was no possible way to see, let alone participate in, the damned chat box so that the trash talk that makes this game so much fun wasn’t happening either.

I do remember a few things that happened. Was at ck’s table but she didn’t last long enough for a cup of coffee. Seems she got a bit aggressive against Blaargh and shoved a flopped mediocre top pair, 9s I think, into his pocket Ks. Early night for the Black Widow. Right after I told her she was getting to be as big a luck sack as Riggs too. Just had to go and make a liar out of me didn’t ya. I almost followed soon after and would have if I hadn’t won a small pot earlier. This time I was the one with the K-K and got trashed when Cracknaces gambled his tourney life on two over cards to the board and a flush draw when he raised my pot bet then called my shove on a 2 club, 10 high flop with K-J of clubs. As ck would say damned crubs. That left me sitting with about 250 chips while still at the first level. Somehow I was able to hang in and actually rebuild my stack up to around 2500 chips at one point but that point was somewhere after the first break so it wasn’t exactly a great stack by that point. Mainly a lot of shoves a couple that got calls here and there and hands holding up until my final shove with A-Qs came up dry against J-J. Would have been nice to make a deep run after being down that low early but it wasn’t meant to be. Used up that bit of luck when I pulled it off Monday night in a game amongst members of the Poker Analysis players when I went from an early mauling to tourney winner. Can’t expect that to happen too often.

Something I’ve been wondering about over the last couple of weeks is what gives with Josie? Don’t get me wrong Josie, it ain’t about you as such, you write a good blog, seem to be a decent person and don’t look half bad either if that is really you in that picture. However it seems every blogger with a dick is tripping over it in trying to make nice with you. C’mon guys, haven’t you ever dealt with a woman before? I mean Waffles I can understand, it’s entirely possible that he hasn’t if the rumor mill is correct but there can’t be that big a drought out there in blogger land.

Speaking of Waffles he seems to be desperate to get people on this change the name of the Mookie to the Dank bandwagon. Reading his blog I see he has Hoy listed as someone who is calling the Mookie by either The Dank or the Buddy in his effort to get others to do so. Hoy? Hoy? Now I don’t know what goes on between those two but from reading Waffles blog it sounds like Waffles would be the first guy to give Hoy a drink if he were in hell. Of Tabasco. Yet after reading nothing but trash talk from the aforementioned blogger he now cites him as an example. Oh the depths some people will sink to in pursuit of their agenda.

Damn, how did I live without all this fun when I took that hiatus? Donning my asbestos earmuffs. Thanks for the listen.

Some more politics

2010-04-28T15:25:00.002-04:00

You know I keep hearing the GOP say they want banking and financial reform, a good political move from the way Main Street feels about Wall Street, yet they stand in a solid bloc behind Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as he yells NO at the top of his lungs and tries using the same scare tactics about the banking bill that he used concerning heath care. He’s not even saying that the GOP wants a bill and while they have problems with the one sitting there to be passed and that he and his fellow Republicans are working with the Democrats to iron out some differences he just keeps yelling NO and trying to convince Joe the Plumber that the bill is nothing but a big government bailout of banks should they again need one. So what is it? Are the Republicans just a bunch of dumb assholes or do they think that Joe and Jane Citizen are? Considering the amount of people who still believe that Obama was not born a US citizen or how many people they convinced that the health care bill was pure socialism it may be they are betting on the latter. All I can say is that considering it was their hurry to deregulate these self same institutions, and thereby causing the current economic situation. they now say they want to regulate I somehow find it hard to believe that they really feel regulation is necessary. After all, if we take care of the rich they’ll look after us. Hasn’t that been the GOP mantra since the days of Saint Ronnie if not longer? Maybe some of you may not agree with me but just remember this, these self same dickheads, who were in a great hurry to deregulate every thing in sight when they were in power were more than willing to take the time out to find some way to regulate your ability to play online poker. Think they are on your side?

Tonight's Mookie

2010-04-21T21:44:00.019-04:00

Gonna try something different tonight. Am going to try live blogging of the game, as far as I'm concerned at least. May go further after I get KOed but not committing to anything. Hell, might not be able to keep it up as far as my participation goes but we'll try.

It's 15 minutes to start and 95 runners at the gate so far. Will we break 100?

We start with 114 runners and I find myself at a table with Josie and Riggs for familiar names

A lot of folding early but Josie has lost about half her stack to NYRambler.

Lose my first hand of playable cards to Riggs. Lousy flop so not a lot of damage

Seems Waffles is at the table and I just recovered some of my chips thru his good graces (hah)

Seems Waffles donated again. I'm going to get ripped if this keeps up.

Tough fold. Raise in position and get reraised by niktak. Flop gives me TPTK but niktak bets out fairly strong. Too early to push, overpair probable.

Riggs scores double KO, including Josie when he turns a set of Ks

Pick up some chips from Mattazuma when my A-Q turns out better than his K-Q on a A-K-J-x-x board

KK, gets no action from a 3xs raise. Oh well.

Waffles has just informed me he has a feeling I'm going out before him. Hey, anything is possible.

Just split a pot with Jamyhawk. PP9s lead all the way until we both river a straight. Called down with A-9. I then get called by Waffles on a J-8-8 flop with A-K. Doesn't anyone believe me when I bet?

Well, it's better than Monday night. I made first break and even have some chips. At least the poker gods ain't playing tricks tonight (except that split pot) On the whole the cards just suck so I'm folding a lot.

NYRambler just dropped the hammer on me with a reraise to my raise. Thing is, I wasn't a whole lot better.

Damn, K-K again, in SB, and all fold. BB folds to raise.

Take some chips off MaggieO. She minraised my BB and I call on general principle and smack the flop. She calls flop and turn bets and folds to value bet on river. Was I called down by another A-x?

Waffles shoves and called by myself and Jamyhawk. I hit the flop and bet and am called. Turn brings a 3rd spade and even tho I have top pair with nut flush redraw I check and Jamy shoves. I fold, he has Q-Q, Waffles A-T. River a 3 and Waffles is gone, so much for his feeling tho it was almost a draw. I lose half my stack.

Jamyhawk just takes out VinNay. He's on a roll. Called VinNay's shove of his raise with A-8 to VinNay's 3-3 and caught a straight.

I'm out. A-K shove with about 11 BBs. MaggieO had raised and Chippy McStacks called and both called my shove. MaggieO, with Q-J catches a J and Chippy with 7-7 and my A-K go begging.

I find CK has taken my seat and as she is live blogging, and does a much better job at it than I, I guess I'll shut down for the night.

Thanks for the listen.

Silly season is here again

2010-04-20T17:33:00.001-04:00

Election time is once again upon us and the bullshit has started though not in full bloom yet. This isn’t a rant over position on either side this is just an early reply to a statement I heard often in the last election and will probably hear as well in this one. The object of this missive is the opinion of those pundits that the vast middle of the electorate, those called the undecided, are useless because they have gone for years without making up their mind about where they stand. They are made to sound like no nothing morons because they don’t declare their support for any party or candidate right out or have a stated political philosophy that can easily be labeled. Not that it will do any good because quick quips, sound bites and talking points are what these bloviating peckerheads are all about but as on of these supposed “no nothing idiots” I figure I’ll try to educated those who would hold such opinions.

First off, when a person says they are undecided doesn’t mean they haven’t made up their mind on a political philosophy, it means they just haven’t taken a stand on a candidate. Unlike many who call themselves liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans and walk in lock step to whomever is the leader of that school of thought of thought us independents have no philosophy that can be covered by a single label. Many of use believe in bits and pieces of each of the well defined philosophies out there. I, for example, like the idea of balanced budgets, less government spending and interference in our lives and term limits, once solid points of the GOP, but hastily abandoned once they got in to power. OTOH I am what could be described as libertarian when it comes to social issues. As far as I’m concerned as long as you aren’t hurting anyone whatever you do with your own life is your concern. For environmental issues I guess I fall in to the liberal category. I don’t give a damn about Spaceship Earth; the earth will survive whatever man can do to her. I do however don’t believe in fucking up said spaceship’s life support system. Hello people, that’s what keeps us and our descendents alive and kicking. If I had stayed happily unmarried and had no offspring I might not care so much but I was a fool and spent some time in conjugal bliss, if that’s what you want to call it, and produced offspring, so now I have to give a shit about what happens after I shuffle off this mortal coil, if only for her sake. So yes, people like us have definite views on issues, they are just not views that can be collectively quantified under a simple label.

So you see, it’s not that we are morons with no opinions or even indecisive. We have strong felling on a lot of different matters and find no one candidate fits the bill as they have to play to the base, those great unwashed masses that find it easier to spout a party line than to use the brains they supposedly came equipped with. One has to sort through the issues and decide whether to go with one or two one feels strongly about or whether to go with quantity over quality and pick the guy who agrees with more of your viewpoints. Hell, it’s a lot easier to parrot a party line and spout talking points as if they were gospel truth. I have an uncle that passes on every conservative based email that gets forwarded to him and refers to them as signs that his viewpoint is correct without even bothering to check as to whether they had any truth to them or not. I usually run them through a fact checker and send the results back but it never seems to do any good. So, not that it will do any good when it comes to the parrot brigade I figured I will get this out there to try and enlighten those with a spark of intelligence and free will. Hey, maybe so straying candidate might even read this and try to appeal to us.

Thanks for the listen.

A matter of priorities

2010-04-19T23:19:00.001-04:00

Started the Poker from the Rail tourney in a blaze. Caught Quad Js and got a quick KO when Columbo filled up. Even a blind squirrel and all that jazz. Caught another KO when I caught Qs a couple orbits later and Willythe wise shoved his pp10s. Nothing for either of us on the board and I take chip lead for a bit. Didn’t last long as the very next hand I run K-K into Avoque’s A-A and hand over almost half my stack. About one orbit later I hand over half of what’s remaining to Xsyyunx when my flopped top 2 run into their flopped middle set. Never saw that one coming considering I had one of those 8s in my hand. Worked myself back to about 2500 chips with a few small pots here and there but go out a few orbits later when I my A-Q flops TPTK but Julleus is holding a K-K. Had some outs on the river as an A, a Q or a club would have given it to me but alas, no suckout and I’m out before the first break. Oh the ignominy of it, quads, two early KOs and I can’t even make first break. Oh well, I told the table I was there to donk chips and no one can say I’m not a man of my word. The Mookie on Wed. You know, been away from Tilt for a while and forgot how much fun these games can be.

OTOH I got a really good shave today. My mother was doing some Spring cleaning over the weekend and in one of her closets found two single edge razors, one double edge and, wonder of wonders, an injector. Gave to my father to give to me. Glorioski Sandy, didn’t know she was a reader. What’s a poker tourney compared to a close shave? One just has to have their priorities straight.

Thanks for listening

A not so hot day of poker

2010-04-19T00:50:00.001-04:00

My big Sunday has not started out so hot. Decided to move up a bit on the limit tables that have been treating me decent so went to the 2/4 table. My god, the play here was terrible, worse than that on the .1020, .25/.50 and .50/1 games. Ordinarily I would have eaten this table alive but today was not ordinary. First, understand, it’s limit; I expect chasing and unlike many do not rail against it. Hell, I want those chasers, the odds say they are going to lose more often than not and unlike a casino table where you have 5-6 chasers in a 2/4 game so someone was likely to hit here you had only 1 or 2 so the odds are in your favor. Not only that but these characters couldn’t even be considered legit chasers. Today the poker gods decided to ream me proper with even benefit of a reach around. Never have I seen so many runner, runner hits after people called 3 and 4 bets preflop and on the flops with nothing more than a weak ace and a backdoor draw. I would be ready to quit when I would win a pot big enough to keep me going thinking that maybe the cards had turned. In-fucking-credible is the only appropriate description. Instead of being up a couple hundred that such shenanigans should have brought me I wound up down a buck and a half due to the gods’ disfavor. Even worse, after being down about a buck the suckouts had stopped enough for me to actually come back and go up a couple of bucks. Should have stopped there but the reaming started soon after though the start this time was a legit beat when my pocket aces were cracked by a 9-9 that flopped a set. .This time the beats weren’t so bad in the sense it was good cards that weren’t good enough in about half the cases, A-A vs. K_K or set over set but there were still enough of the perfect hits to let me know that the poker gods were still enjoying their jest. As I write this I have a couple hours to go until the war game for my forum and the 35K sniper for me and I just hope the poker gods have wandered away to torment someone else tonight.

Well, the war game is over, at least for me, and I did not exactly shine. Finished somewhere in the bottom third. Cards were not kind but I did grind out a few extra chips early on. I flopped sets twice but no action on one and minimal on the other made a couple of wasted opportunities and I lost about a third of my stack when a suited K-3 in the BB wound up hitting a K on the flop on an unraised pot. A lead bet got a call but when a third suited hit the turn and my bet brought a raise it was time to release. There was a little give and take and I was sitting with T-T and about 14-15 BB. A 3xs raise got a caller out of the blinds and they bet on a flop of 6-7-8 rainbow. It was either shove or fold and with the blinds going up in a min or two I shoved. Snap call and the blind had Q-Q. No 9 or 10 and I was gone. Just what I was afraid of after that early session this am. Now waiting for 35K sniper to start. Will see where that gets us.

The 35K has started and ain’t doing so well. Down a bit more than a third of my stack. Flop top two and found I was sucking hind tit but not until after blowing off that third. Bet the flop and got two callers. Bet the turn and next guy shoves, he was sitting on about a half stack and then the third player in the pot also shoves and he has me covered. Ut-oh, this don’t look good. I figure one of them has me beat but which one? The wrong guess and I’m out. Even the right guess and I only really get back what I bet so far and maybe a couple hundred more. And what if they both have me beat? Decide that the old saw about discretion and all that jazz is one to follow here and I bail out. As it was the big stack has a set so I guessed right but the shorty has an OESD which he then proceeds to river. Lost a good amount but it could be worse. Blinds still low enough to make a recovery. Let the game go on. Got a few chips back when I pull K-K with a raise in front. I reraise, get a caller and first raiser goes away. Flop is draw heavy so I don’t play around and shove as the other guy has position and he goes away and I pick up a few more hundred though I’m still below the starting stack. First break and I’m sitting with about 40 BBs. Not great but playable for awhile yet. A double up would be nice but except for the Ks and an A-Q in the sb that got no action cards have been scarce. Intelligent character just tried to bluff me off a hand with an all in and got rewarded for it. Guy all in and I’m sitting with nut straight and flush draws and check the flop. Other player checks and the turn comes out a blank and I check again. This time he pots and I call. River bricks for me, a 5 and wouldn’t you know the asshole has a 4-5. It’s this morning all over. The fools are being rewarded.

Ok, can breathe a bit easier. Was short stacked and almost shoved in a few places but hung on till the last minute and finally shoved with a Q-T with a couple others in the pot figuring if I hit I got some chips. Big stack to my left isolates with an A-7 and I hit the 10 on the flop and double up plus. Very next hand I pull A-K with 2 limpers in front and I shove again and the big stack again calls. This time he has 7-7 but I hit the K and I am breathing. Two hands later I catch Q-Q and this time the limper to my right calls my preflop raise. Flop comes 7-5-3, he checks and I pot it and he calls. Turn a blank and again he checks, I shove and he calls. He has K-7 and says he thought I might be pushing A-K again. He obviously doesn’t know me well. So I go into the second break with some breathing room and about 50 BBs. Seems I now have an image. Catch K-K in BB and have raiser in front. I repop and after thinking about it he folds. Have now raised 3 more pots and no action. That’s fine because the blinds are big enough that the limpers are adding to the stack although I did lose a few when I caught a mediocre top pair on the flop from the sb and chased 3 of the 4 limpers with bets on the flop and turn but I gave it up on the river and the guy bet ¾ pot. Think I was played but didn’t feel like throwing chips away after just getting them. Being oop sucks big time.

Hey, collected a bounty, first one. Forgot all about them been so wrapped up in staying alive. Had K-T suited in bb and knew I was going to get shoved on. Luckily the guy shoving only had about 2 K with blinds at 150/300. Figure him for a loose range and call. He had A-9 off, sort of where I put him, and flop snaps off a K. For a minute I thought he runner, runnered a 4 flush board but then the screen pops up informing me of the bounty and I saw I misread a card. So I am in positive territory as I won the entry to this game. While I’m folding my third 3-4 in a row here I just thought of a sick hand that hit earlier in the game when I had chips. Had J-9 suited and called a 3 times raise from late position and one of the blinds reraises. First raiser bangs it again, I get out of the way and it winds up all in the middle with A-A vs. K-K. Flop comes J-J-x and I’m bitching but do realize I couldn’t have played there. Turn brings a K and I’m now grateful that I got out of the way. River comes an ace and all I can think of is, sick. And while writing this another hand just brought that to mind. Two guys after a raise and call and flop comes 3 low. First to act bets, other shoves and first snap calls. Guy shoved A-T into a pair of pocket Ks Final two cards brings a board straight and a chop. Guy with the Ks has to be fuming. Just added a few chips. A-K in the BB and folds to SB who raises. I call and flop hits A-x-Q. SB bets about the pot and I shove. He tanks but eventually folds. Just gave some of those chips elsewhere. Early position raises a bit more than minimum and I actually have a made hand with 8-8. B-B shoves for about 2/3 my stack however and EP folds and after some thought so do I. Not really thinking of calling off that much with 8s since the blinds are only 250/500 and figuring that anyone shoving about 50 BBs has me in a race at best. Have tight image right now and cultivating it in case I make it to bubble time.

How come every time I add chips I give some away right away? 7-7 in the BB got me some chips when a mid position player raises a bit more than minimum. Flop brings me a set with no draws and a J high. I check thinking maybe he’ll c-bet. No such luck but the turn brings an A so I check again figuring now he will bet which he does. I check raise and he folds showing A-9. Should have tried to milk some more. Turn around and catch K-T otb 2 hands later and it folds to me. Against the blinds I think I’m good so I raise. The SB thinks a bit and reraises over half my stack. I have the feeling that he thinks I’m playing him with a button raise and he’s playing back at me but the amount is too much for me to chance.

Should have chanced it, I’m out 10 from the money. A-J in position and a bit more than min raise in front. I call and flop comes low giving me inside straight draw. Player bets about half pot which I call thinking it’s a c-bet and he missed the flop. Turn gives me nut flush draw in addition to the gutter ball and he checks and I bet thinking maybe I can represent the flush and take it down there. He comes back with a shove and I’m already committed, probably should have shoved there instead of just potting, so I call figuring I’m beat but hoping I have outs. I did as he turns A-A but they didn’t hit and I’m gone.

Thus endeth a lousy day of poker though I got farther in that sniper than I figured I would a couple of hours ago. Thanks for the listen.

The BBT is back

2010-04-17T20:53:00.000-04:00

Al’s at it again. No, not destroying some bar’s supply of SoCo but organizing the BBT., the Battle of the Bloggers, a set of tournyes over the next few weeks that offer a great set of prizes, courtesy of Full Tilt and Al’s effort. Full details can be found on Al’s site here. Come out and trash talk your favorite bloggers and see if they are as good, or bad, as they think they are. The BBT starts tomorrow, Sub., April 17th with The Invitational, an event I am only going to be able to rail as I am a mere Z-list blogger but I will be participating in some of the opens on Mon and Wed as long as my senility doesn’t kick in and make me forget starting times. Will probably rail tomorrow nights Invitational for a while to see who is playing but I have 2 fairly big tourneys on the personal calendar for tomorrow, the forum wars I have discussed in previous posts and a 35K guarantee sniper that I won an entry to last month, both on AP, so I will be a bit distracted,. Hopefully I last log enough that is. So, see you at the BBT. Thanks Al.

It's not all gambling the GOP hates

2010-04-17T13:57:00.004-04:00

Was reading the newspaper yesterday and came across an article where Mitch MCConnell and the GOP senators were trashing the new banking reform bill, not to mention the distortions and lies he was spreading about it. Weren't these the same characters that had no problem passing a financial bill that basically blocks US banks from dealing with online poker rooms and casinos thereby making it more difficult and expensive for us players to deposit and withdrawal from these sites? Seems the GOP doesn't mind the banks and Wall Street gambling with our money but have a problem with us doing so. Something to think about.

A shave, a shave, my kingdom for a shave

2010-04-16T01:11:00.004-04:00

Gonna do a bit of a rant here. I’m sure it will be nothing on the order of a Waffles tantrum but I’ll do what I can.

Does anyone really buy the bullshit that the grooming industry has been shoveling for years now about how more is better? Yes, I said bullshit and not bs or bullshyt or any other euphemism. This is an issue that has bugged me for years and I finally decided to let it out.

When I started shaving you had 3 basic ways of scraping your chin, or elsewhere in the case of the women out there. (This is an equal opportunity rant). You had, in ascending order of comfort, the double edge, the single edge and the injector razors. Oh alright, some of us also had the option of a straight razor but that is something I would prefer to leave in the hands of an expert. None of them was failsafe and you could expect to need a styptic or roll of tp somewhere along the line to take care of the inevitable nicks that would occur. You got a pretty damned good shave however. I finally settled on the injector and found myself a couple of decent razors that actually had small grips on the ends of the blade to cover up the sharp corners and cut down on the blood. The one I started with left the ends open and was good for at least two nicks a week. I can’t say I enjoyed those razors, who actually enjoys shaving, but they were good razors and did the job they were designed for.

Then about 40 years ago some bright genius at Gillette was probably the first person to come up with if x is good then more x is better philosophy of marketing that has since permeated the entire system. He came up with a double bladed, not double edged, razor and lots of fancy animations that showed how one blade stretched a whisker while cutting it and the second one cut it even closer. Damn, it actually made sense and while I didn’t rush right out and buy one I eventually succumbed and got one after they had been on the market for awhile. It was something I regretted the first time I tried it. How close a shave can one get with a razor that you can drag all over your face at all angles and not see a drop of red? Then an even bigger problem presented itself. I’m not the type that needs to shave every day, especially back then. My beard came in light and my hair is fine so I could go a day or two between shaves as it just wasn’t notable. The first time I shaved after letting it slide a day or two I noticed that the damned blades clogged up and they wouldn’t clean out for love or money. I soon used up my supply of blades, as much as I hated them they were too expensive to just toss, and then tossed the razor and went back to injectors. Someone must have noticed the clogging problem as I remember a twin blade cartridge that had a little plastic gizmo that you pressed on and it slide between the blades to try and clear them. As far as I was concerned it didn’t make a difference, I had my injectors and all was right with the world.

Somewhere along the line someone continued the thought that if one was good and two was better then 3 was fantastic and now it started to affect me. Not that I was rushing out to buy one of the new 3 bladed monstrosities but because of the profit involved in the proprietary cartridges needed it made finding cheap injector blades tough. A lot of stores stopped carrying them and I was forced to search, and occasionally resort to the Net, to find blades. Then disaster struck. My last razor broke. Try finding an injector razor anywhere. Yea, you can find used ones on E Bay but while I didn’t mind inheriting one from a family member I really don’t feel like using a stranger’s old razor. Found new ones listed but found some reviews which said they were Chinese knock offs and that the blades wobbled so much in them that you might as well cut your throat. So now I’m stuck, I’ve got to use one of those abominations that get passed of as razors, either that or go electric which I’ve never cared for. I decided to go the 3 bladed route as they at least opened the back of the cartridge so you can try to run water through it to clear the blades. Not that it does much good, no sink faucet has rthat much pressure, but it’s better than nothing. Sitting here writing I feel my latest shave, I was ambitious today, and wonder why I bothered. If it was the army I’d be on KP for standing too far away from the razor.

Yet somehow they’ve continued adding blades to the cartridges and dollars to the price. So far they’ve gone with 4 and 5 blades and I’m surprised they haven’t quit making the 3 bladed gizmos. I can picture some marketing executive in the offices of Gillette or Shick rubbing his hands together and wondering how many more blades they can push on us before someone decides that they should be used to cut something other than whiskers. Not that it would do much good though.

All I want is a good, reasonably priced shave. If I was younger I’d reconsider the straight razor. My father has a very good German one I could steal. However I’m too old to learn now and besides, the stroke has thrown my balance off just enough that I’d probably look like a very poor grade of hamburger if I tried. I can still find injector blades if I try but if anyone knows where a razor can be located I would appreciate it If I can’t find one I’m going to have to think about becoming a member of the ZZ Top fan club because what passes for a razor these days is about as useful as teats on a boar hog.

OK, that’s it for know. Thanks for the listen.

Alas poor Donovan, I knew him Horatio

2010-04-15T12:11:00.001-04:00

OK, sitting here this morning waiting for a seat to open up so I figure I’d throw in my 2 cents on the McNabb trade. Basically the Birds were caught in a bit of a squeeze; they had 3 quarterbacks whose contracts were expiring at the same time, 2 with fairly big names and none who wanted to be back up. They were going to lose 2 of them somewhere along the line. If they extended McNabb someone was going to offer Kolb a chance and Vick was definitely testing the market. So what to do? Me, as much as I like McNabb and would have liked to see him get a ring in an Eagles uni I think the Eagles took the course they needed to take.

If they extended McNabb they lose the other QBs unless they can get some kind of trade value for them and it didn’t look like anyone was knocking really hard. By trading McNabb they are going to see if their judgment in taking Kolb was correct. He showed flashes of the necessary skills when McNabb was out last year but many a back up has shown great presence when stepping up for an injured starter only to fail when they get the job outright. So now Kolb is in the pressure cooker. If he handles it he keeps the job, Vick goes his way and whomever the Birds acquire this year becomes the backup. If Kolb fails the Birds offer Vick the job for a few years and start looking for their next starter. It had to be done. If the Eagles had kept McNabb they were going to have to draft another potential starting qb so that they had time to prepare him which meant there was going to be a fire sale for someone. Also this way if Kolb does turn out to be the qb they think he is you have him and his talented corp of receivers having quite a number of years together. If McNabb had stayed he would be retiring long before his receivers.

Obviously the Eagles do not think McNabb has the ability to win games on his own any more as the traded him to a team in their own division., a team they feel that might benefit from McNabb’s presence but doesn’t have the weapons to seriously challenge just yet and that by the time they acquire those weapons McNabb’s skills will have deteriorated even more. McNabb’s passing has always been erratic. Some days he could fire lasers in to his receivers while on others they were too low or behind them. His saving grace was the fact that on all except his really bad days his passing could be good enough and his legs were worth a couple of first downs. Even when he didn’t run the mere threat of it was enough to pull defenders towards him and away from his receivers. Age however has diminished that threat. Add in the fact that it’s been a rare season lately that he doesn’t get injured and the qb situation in Philadelphia left McNabb the odd man out.

So now starts the Kevin Kolb era in Philadelphia. He seems more a pure passer than McNabb so the excitement that Donovan brought to the game probably won’t be there. Reid may feel that he can fit into his pass happy offense better. We’ll see. One thing Kolb had better get used to, many of the fans that yelled for him the past few years will now turn on him and yell for his back up unless he wins that ring, and soon. The honeymoon will be short and the funeral brutal if he doesn’t win right away. It’s the nature of the beast. No Philly QB was ever good enough when he was playing. Everyone loves Jaworski these days but in his playing days the criticism was brutal. It was Vermeil, Montgomery and the D that were considered the heroes at the time. McNabb, for all the grief he took while here will be fondly remembered as time passes and if Kolb fails it won’t be a lot of time. So here is hoping that Reid is right, right in drafting Kolb when he did and right in going down this path. The games with Washington have always been tough and he just made them a lot tougher.

On a final note I do wish to say that I think McNabb got a bit of a raw deal here. The fans we all know about but management did it too. Andy Reid runs a pass happy offense yet in all the years he was here McNabb never had a talented receiving corp to work with. Oh there were some individuals at times, Chad Lewis at tight end for a couple of years and Owens at wide out for a short time but the Birds never gathered a complete set the way they have now and now he is gone. And for all those idiots who keep claiming that T.O. got the Eagles to the Super Bowl remember, he never played a playoff game. He was the cause of them getting a lot of regular season wins but the team got over the championship game hump without his help yet McNabb never gets the credit for that either. It is always T.O. that got them to the Bowl, not McNabb. So Donovan I wish you well in the time you have left in the league and hope you get the recognition you deserve. Just don’t do it against the Eagles.

Thanks for the listen.

A good month so far

2010-04-12T15:14:00.000-04:00

It’s been a hot couple of weeks on the poker front. As stated earlier I won the Buy in league I play which brought a couple of nice bennies although AP has reduced the guarantee from 40K to 35K on the tourney entry I won. Now that my daughter has gone back home I plan on playing it next Sunday night. Looks like they get somewhere around 350 players so should be interesting. It’s on AP so that’s a plus for me. Prefer the structure on the AP/UB sites to any I’ve played. There was a 30K deep stack listed that I inquired about as I much prefer a deep stack to a sniper but alas, it seems the agreement is for a sniper. I can change to the 25K on a Sat. but no deep stack.

Speaking of AP, this month’s GFN war games are being held on that site. A godsend considering Power Poker last month. The structure allows you to play some poker and even make a mistake or two rather than turning into a bingo fest after an hour or so. I prefer it as I said and so far it shows. I duplicated my showing of the first game last month by finishing fourth but in last night’s second game I followed it up with a second place finish last night which put me in a tie for first overall in the player standings. Should have taken first as I had a huge advantage going heads up but a misread or two, a change in my opponent’s style and a bit of luck on his part and I was vanquished. The change was a good move on his part as it caught me off guard but it was risky and that was where the luck came in. He caught when he had made a few questionable calls but I can’t blame him for the plays as earlier I had been forcing him off a lot of hands so he had to start playing some or get bled to death. It’s funny that the luck was on his side at the end because I hit a run of it earlier. It seemed the deck had come up and slapped me in the face as I seemed to win almost every race and even squirmed out of a few dominated situations. I was even being referred to as the luckiest guy online by some people. Yea, I’ll admit I was lucky, you have to be to go deep in tourneys but it wasn’t the kind of luck where you call a raise with 4-9 sooooted but the luck of winning the coin flips and the occasional suckout in a dominated situation but if people want to think it’s all luck hey, go ahead. I’ll happily take the second place as I was down to 400 chips at one point in the game. That’s one of the things I like about AP, I was able to wait a bit for a decent hand to make my play. At Power I would have been forced in to an atc shove almost as soon as I had hit the 400 chip mark. Two more games to go in this month’s wars. Hoping to keep myself near the top of the rankings.

Speaking of the top of the rankings and Power I got a pleasant surprise this week. I’ve been playing these games mainly for bragging rights and the freerolls the forum gets, never thought about personal prizes outside the tourney payouts. Given that I really didn’t care for Power Poker didn’t think I would be seeing much of the site. Reading the forum posts however I saw that the top 9 finishers received $111 and the rest of the participants got a $10 tourney coupon. So I go in to Power figuring I’ll check out this coupon thing and blow it on a quick tourney. Imagine my surprise that while I’m looking for the coupon I run across $111 in my account. Top 9? I hit the top 9? Except for that fourth place finish I thought my game sucked. Went to the results site and there it was, a tie for ninth. How the hell did that happen? Not going to complain though. While I might not like their tourney structure there seems to be a bunch of crazies at the Limit HE and PLO tables so I’ll work on my ring game with the money. So far I’ve added another $50 to the bankroll there. Another reason I wish to stay near the top of the rankings is that while last month the top 9 got the same payout this month it’s a graduated payout on the order of a final table.

Well, we’ll let it go for awhile. Still itching for some live play but with my foot still screwed up an AC trip ain’t happening for awhile unless I get someone to drive. Might give my opinion on the McNabb trade as if anyone gives a damn but for now, thanks for the listen.

How's come

2010-04-09T18:02:00.000-04:00

Is it just me and my tastes that are so far out of line with the great unwashed or do companies go out of their way just to piss me off?

The above thought occurred to me on the homeward leg of my journey to take my daughter back to her mother. For those of you who are uninformed my daughter lives with her mother in upstate NY so that visitations mean we have to meet at a halfway point on both ends of the visit. This means a spot about 15-20 miles south of the Pa/NY border which means about a 5-6 hour drive roundtrip. My daughter’s spring visit was over today which is why I was driving and I had my father in the navigator’s seat providing company for the drive. Since my stroke last year my family doesn’t like me driving long distances without a passenger. They mean well but it can be a pain in the ass at times. Anywhoo, back to the subject. On the return trip my father was feeling a bit puckish so we pulled off the Turnpike and into an Arby’s at the exit. Besides the roast beef there are two things that take me to Arby’s, jamocha shakes and their potato cakes. Well at least they left the shakes alone. Now the potato cakes were great, basically an extra thick hash brown with a crunchy outside and soft inside. Main drawback to them is that they usually had to cook them fresh; unlike fries they didn’t seem to handle the heat lamps well. This meant you had to wait for them but it was worth it, nice change from the standard fry. I got an inkling of trouble when I ordered the potato cake and the girl at the counter calls out for a side of bites. Bites??? WTF is this bites shit. I look up at the board and see the familiar triangle shape under the name potato bites so I think, OK, maybe they just changed the name. Then she goes over to the fry station and opens a warmer drawer and starts taking out these smaller triangles. Ut-oh, this can’t be good. Looks like they made them smaller but never saw them in a warmer before. I worked for a year or so in an Arby’s many moons ago so I know a bit of the routine, warmers drawers weren’t part of it. So I get my order and reach in to grab the potato and take a bite. Another WTF moment. These ain’t potato cakes, smaller or otherwise. I look and the damned things are orange in the middle. Obviously it’s supposed to be cheesy but it don’t taste like cheese. There is also some other kind of flavors in there but whatever they are they ain’t meshing well. Damn things are disgusting as far as I am concerned. I wonder what happened to my potato cakes. After I finish the sandwich my father is cleaning up the mess and finds a container of ranch dipping sauce in the bag. Ain’t gonna help them IMHO. They suck plain and simple. So on the rest of the ride I start wondering how comes things I like always seem to either vanish or become “new and improved” which usually means that they now suck also.

The first Chunky soup that hit the market in our area was a chicken noodle soup. It had a good flavor, those soft, slurpy noodles, kind of like the ones in Campbell’s regular chicken noodle but wider and mushrooms. That one has disappeared in favor of a home-style chicken noodle which has no mushrooms, a lighter broth, bigger hunks of carrots and such and the noodles are the type you buy in bags at the store, hard, and boil up like pasta. I abhor those things. As this has taken the place of the old soup it seems my tastes are out of touch with the masses.

Another item was the potato salad one of the grocery chains around here used to carry in their deli dept. It had a touch of celery seed in it which gave it an interesting taste. For years I went and got it when having a picnic style dinner or sometimes for lunch. Then one day I went in and ordered it and the woman behind the counter tells me they have a new home-style (why does everyone think home-style makes things better) potato salad and wouldn’t I like to try that. No, I say, I want what I ordered. She was persistent trying to peddle the new stuff and I was just as adamant telling her no. I finally got what I wanted but within 6 months my favorite was gone, replaced by the new stuff. Another item I enjoy down the drain. Chunky peanut butter fell prey to the conjecture that if something is good, more of something is better. If chunky was good, extra or super chunky had to be better. Ever wonder if anyone ever realized that adding that extra also made the peanut butter extra dry. First time I tried it I wondered if I could ever get it down my throat. Finally switched to creamy until I found a honey roast chunky I liked, without the extra or super. These are only a few things I can put down. If I really wanted to I’m sure I could run on and bore you for hours and pages here but I think one gets my idea. Is it just my tastes that are out of whack and people prefer these things or is it just that most people don’t care or bother and take what comes along?

Not a great rant I’ll give ya but thanks for the listen.

Why?

2010-04-02T20:25:00.004-04:00

Has anyone but me ever wondered why people drink Bud Light? Watching their commercials it's obvious that Anheuser-Busch thinks that Bud Light drinkers are a bunch of idiots yet people flock to the brew. I sure as hell wouldn't support a company that viewed me that way.

Shortest post you'll ever see me write. Thanks for the listen

Finally

2010-03-31T11:50:00.002-04:00

Went out looking for a walking boot (cast). Hit a couple of major pharmacy chains, only type around here any more. While on my trek I actually noticed something I’ve obviously seen many times before. While supposedly people are mainly going to a drug store for drugs or something in that area because they are sick, the large chains put their pharmacy counters as far away from the front door as possible making sick people walk the maximum amount through their stores. Obviously a marketing deal from the looks of all the crap they have in there any more. It’s that crap that prompts this little spiel. After walking through the whole store on a bad foot, 2 stores actually, I get to the pharmacy counter and inquire about the boot. I received the same answer at both stores, they don’t carry such things. Now I didn’t expect them to have such a thing in inventory, too many sizes and models to carry, but I did think they would be able to order one. No they said they don’t even bother with such stuff. Oh, they can carry toaster ovens and alarm clocks, spearmint leaves and laundry detergent but god forbid they actually carry something that deals with an illness. There are two more chains in the area but figured I would hear the same from them so decided to save myself the walk and take a chance ordering online and hoping I got the right thing. With drugstores trying to become supermarkets and supermarkets adding pharmacy counters the lines are getting blurred. The supermarkets are winning the battle though as you can get cheaper generics in the supermarkets.

Back to some poker. End of the month has arrived and with it the final game of the Buy in league. I started off hot winning the first two games then tapered off a bit but still scoring in 3 of the next 5 games. I dnp in one and sat out one as I had no money on the site. Normally that would have been good enough but a late addition to the league arrived in the 3rd game and decided to put some pressure on. I had a chance to lock it up earlier when he stumbled and a win would have put it out of his reach but alas, I only got a 5th which enlarged my lead but not significantly. If he won last night he won it all. If he finished between 2nd and 4th I had to do no worse than two spots behind him to preserve my win. To further complicate matters a third contender had thrown herself in the mix but while a very good player she still needed to win and hope the two of us did not point to take it down so she was an outside shot. As it was she ran into some problems and couldn’t make the game which left it a two man race.

Game started and I knew right away the poker gods were pissed at me. In addition to there being a slightly bigger field than usual making it tougher to win obviously I find my main opposition two seats to my left. In addition to my immediate left is the league moderator who has already told me she planned on taking me out and making me sweat the finish. Nothing comes easy. Further proof of the ire of the gods was the fact that I was wishing I was playing acey-deucey for the first hour to 90 minutes instead of NLHE. They even teased me a bit as Venti, table name of my main opponent, lost a couple of decent pots early and was a bit short for awhile. He was able to build his stack back up however before they grabbed him and moved him to another table. At least he wasn’t on my left any more. In the meantime I was just folding along. Couldn’t even make a play with my garbage as the table was aggressive and there was usually a raise before my turn when I had position. All in all maybe a good thing as it kept me in the game even though my stack was slowly dwindling. It seemed my luck changed all at once, as if the poker gods got tired of their game and said enough. I had just won a big pot, doubling me up when Venti showed up in the chat box congratulating me, saying he was out of the game, meaning I had the league won for the month no matter what. It was nice but I still didn’t want just the back door, I wanted to finish with a bang. I finally started to catch some cards and as the blinds went up the aggressiveness seemed to slack off and I was able to make a few plays and somehow found myself reaching the final table with a reasonable stack. Needed more than that as only top 5 got points and as I already had my 5 scores for the month so needed a 4th or better to improve my total. Play went on and I played solid but not spectacular and took out a few players and made it to 4 handed with the second stack. Then we were 3 and it got interesting. Top stack was an unknown to me but had over double my stack. I was 2 with a couple thousand more than the third place player, who I knew was a good one. The leader played excellent big stack poker; either that or the deck had jumped up and spanked him. I know there was a lot of stealing going on. Finally slowed it down a bit when I caught a big hand the same time the chip leader did. Mine was bigger and he doubled me up and even though he remained in first he was only a few thousand ahead. It was a tight 3 way and I lost a few chips back to the leader. Stayed that way until he took out the 3rd place player and had a good sized stack on me again as we entered heads up. I was able to get him to double me up and even out the stacks a bit but was never really able to overcome that lead and got a bit frisky and made a play at the wrong time and wound up in second place. Oh well, while a win would have been nice I can’t complain about 2nd. Kept me from feeling I got in the back door for the league win.

As for that win I got myself an entry into AP’s 40K Sniper some Sunday and 10 bucks a month for a year added to my account on Reefer. That’s nice as it will keep me in the league games on Reefer for a year. Add in winnings on Cake and AP and UB and I’m covered for league games on those sites for a couple months. Two sites for the league have no funds so will have to debate about what to do with them. As for the Sniper that’s going to have to wait awhile as my daughter is on her way down this Friday for spring break visit and while I play some when she is down here I won’t be able to give that game the attention it needs while she is here so it will wait until she goes home. It also gives me a seat on the forum team for the Forum War games. Wanted that as I had a lackluster showing in this month's games. The structure on the site sucked as I think I have mentioned before. April's games are on AP with a better structure and will hopefully allow me to redeem myself.

OK, that’s about it for now. Thanks for the listen.

A bit of poker

2010-03-22T17:39:00.001-04:00

A bit of poker as I haven’t mentioned it in awhile except in my pet peeves. Played the AP 5K GTD, $1.10 entry, $1 rebuys, turbo. Sheesh, talk about your donkaments. Had one guy going all in with anything and double rebuying if, or more likely when, he lost. Wonder why he just didn’t enter a $20 or $30 buy in? I was blessed with a rash of good hands early and went in to the regular portion the chip leader by a decent margin especially thanks to that gentleman. If I had followed my instincts just a tad better I would have had double the chips as a couple marginal but playable hands against some of these donks would have hit big time. An A-9 suited would have flopped nut flush and a K-Q suited would have flopped TP2K, turned trips and boated on the river just to mention a couple. There were 3 all ins on both these hands so I would have really chipped up. My problem was that I had such a large stack by then and the rebuy period was close to ending that with 3 all ins I figured I really wasn’t that good and didn’t see any sense in endangering the stack as at least one of the players had a decent enough stack to hurt if I lost. Should have remembered the turbo however and taken the risks. I realized why I hate turbos. After the rebut period my cards went further south than Argentina and some of these guys were still playing like it was rebuy time so that the occasional steal attempt was about as useful as my cards. With the accelerating blinds and the decelerating cards my stack shriveled like a pecker in a cold lake. I made the money but not a whole lot. Counting the starting rebuy and the add on I got back my buyin plus another. Next time, if there is a next time, I go with the instincts.

Also played a couple of freerolls while waiting for my daughter to call me this afternoon. One, a gigantic 1K GTD on Tilt I won a seat through a smaller FR that I had popped up to occupy myself during another tourney last week. I usually play some kind of cheapie tourney when playing a more important on as a way to keep from being bored and donking off chips by playing hands I shouldn’t through boredom. The other was a $500 GTD with a pro bounty on Ziggy on Power Poker. Didn’t last long on either. The one on Tilt was reasonable as far as freerolls go, cards just sucked. The Power Poker one was almost as big a donk fest as the 5K GTD described above. 354 runners and over 80 of then out within the first 5 hands. Had a couple of the all in kiddies at the table and got smoked when my A-A got cracked by a K-8 and a 4 card straight board. Actually thought I might have had a chance as there were only 2 callers and they were K-8 off and 3-3. Oh well, gotta expect such things, especially in a freeroll. Now waiting for the third game of the forum war to start.

Forum war started and looks like an early exit again. This site and its structure sucks. Unless you have won a big pot or two you are in shove or fold mode by the third level. Beginning to wonder if I have some kind of tell. When I make a c bet or any type of play lately I’m getting called with garbage but better garbage than I have yet when I score a monster everyone folds up quicker than a cheap umbrella in a windstorm. Today no different. Three times I raise preflop, A-8, A-Q and A-T. With the Ace-Q and A- T I miss the flop and shoot out a C-bet when the caller checks to me and both times I get called. With the A-Q I even fire a second bullet and called again. Both times they have a better ace than I do. The A-8 I caught my ace and got raised when I bet out so figured at best I was out kicked and dumped it. Twice in the same period I’m on the button and flop the joint, including one pot with 5 players and it winds up checked to me on flop and turn and when I finally bet the turn everyone disappears. Must have a tell. Wound up hanging on till middle of the pack. Might have lasted longer but hit A-J just before blinds hit and being shorter than I anticipated due to a move that ran me threw the blinds twice in 5 hands I shoved and met up with A-Q and a board that didn’t go higher than 8. And so it goes. One more game next Sunday. I need to win our Buy in league even more than ever now. I want a seat on next month’s games on AP where you at least get a chance to play some sort of poker rather than bingo. Need to redeem my honor. As for the forum we came in second, again. That’s three seconds out of three games. Might not be so bad except that the team that came in first the first two games did so again. Have an outside chance of taking first but it looks like they are going to win this month. Just have to come back strong this last game and next month.

Finally I would like to say good bye to fellow forum member and poker player Bernard “Bernie” Warycha aka NY_Villain. Bernie passed away a couple of weeks ago though we just found out recently. We hadn’t seen him posting on the forum for awhile and thought he might be sick as he had some medical issues recently but when one of the other forum moderators tried to get in touch with him they discovered the bad news. Though never having met him personally from my online experiences with him the name Villain could not be further from the truth. Bernie was always one of the first to pen words of welcome to new forum members, had an upbeat attitude and was a font of friendly table chatter during games. Even though I knew of his medical problems and the fact he had spent time in the hospital because of them I had no idea they were that serious because he really never let on. He was one of the good guys in this world and was way too young to have had to cash out of the game so soon. Condolences to his family. Cya Villain.

On that note it seems appropriate to end this and thanks for the listen.

Third, and maybe final, trip to Krondor

2010-03-21T15:44:00.002-04:00

Finished the third, and possibly the last, of Feist’s Riftwar Legacy books or as I refer to them as the Krondor books. This one, Tear of the Gods, is supposed to be the mid book of the series with two more to follow. According to his website however there are unresolved issues with the producers of the video games linked with these books and so they are on hold until if/when they are resolved. He does state that there may be a non-traditional project to the series but since it ain’t books it is no good to me. Speaking of unresolved issues, though Feist gives satisfaction in bringing the arc of the book itself to a conclusion there are still issues of the overriding arc concerning the series, or sagas as he calls them, that are left hanging. In fact the proposed 4th book was to be titled Krondor: The Crawler, The Crawler being a mysterious character that is mentioned in the first two books but never actually takes the stage, yet is a major player in all the chaos that is going on.

With Krondor III Feist has again written a good fantasy novel that both stands on its own well and yet ties in to a much larger story. A number of familiar characters are back and a new one, at least to this saga, introduced. She comes to take her place in the Prince’s Court as his advisor on things magical, except in religion. Her name had been bandied about in the previous books as the Prince, Arutha, debated on whether he needed such an advisor and later, who would take the post but she finally makes an appearance here. She is an interesting introduction because of a number of factors. She is a woman and until recently women were not supposed to be trained as magicians. She is from a neighboring kingdom, Greater Kesh, one which isn’t always eye to eye with the Kingdom of the Isles. Both of which make many suspicious of her. Even better she is related to the royal family of said kingdom and her great uncle is the ambassador to the Royal Court and who just happens to be the head of Kesh’s intelligence service. Throw in the fact that she’s the former lover of the son of the Duke of Stardock, the magician’s city, and top magician around, and that said son is a member of Arutha’s household guards, and his family by adoption, makes for fertile ground for plot threads both current and future.

Again while titled Krondor a lot of the action takes place in the hinterlands though the first part of the action does take place in the city. The main plot revolves around a missing magical artifact, the Tear of the Gods of the title. Seems that this artifact, which is renewed every ten years, is the object of a bit of piracy at the start of the book. The piracy goes awry and the object sinks into the sea and the race is on to recover it. It seems if the Tear isn’t where it belongs before the old one’s lifespan is over the consequences range from disaster at best to destruction if the bad guys get their hands on it. Can you say demon fodder? The consequences are not only to the Kingdom either; it seems the whole world is in danger even though most of the world doesn’t even know about it. Seems the power of this thing is a closely kept secret among some of the religious orders, a few of the royals and nobles and now the people sent to recover it including the new court magician and our old friend Jimmy the Hand. Also a new character is brought on stage whether just a minor one to further this story or to play a major role in the overriding arc. We also find out about the differences in magic in Feist’s world. It’s not really explained but it seems there are two branches of magic among magicians themselves, Greater and Lesser Paths as they are called. Then it seems that priests of the various temples, of which there are a damn lot, also practice forms of magic that don’t seem to be within the purview of the magicians. Then there are the women involved with magic. If they mix up a few potions and they are generally considered benign then they are village wise women. If they actually show signs of power it seems there is a prejudice against them, the power must come from making a deal with some dark power and so are witches. Why men can practice magic but women can’t is never really explained. Pug, the most powerful magician in the land is doing his part to combat the prejudice, witness the Prince’s new advisor, but the notion isn’t making a lot of headway among the masses.

In addition to the main plot the saga arc is also advanced in this book. The piracy of the Tear is part of the plot to advance the fortunes of the bad guys though this book makes it a bit more apparent that the bad guys aren’t really all n the same page. There is a lot of jealousy among the ones working for the main goal and a number of others who have joined with them in a marriage of convenience to further their own ends and still others in this marriage we still don’t know exactly what their purpose is. Suffice to say it’s all enough to be a giant pain in the arse to Arutha and his principality.

Speaking of pains in the arse the biggest one is the fact that this series may not be completed. Sure the books are good stand alone stories and the plot of the saga itself is there but not so overbearing so as to be what your mind keeps dwelling on but it is still there and there are still unresolved issues you really want to know about, at least I do. Who is the Crawler and how does he benefit from all the chaos he’s unleashing in Krondor? Is he in league with the some of the other villains because he’s a believer in their cause or is it for personal reasons, like taking over the city? Who is the dark magician who seems to be behind most of the mischief going on and what is the power he serves? Is this new power that is introduced just a plot device for this book or is it to play a larger part in the overall story as seems likely? I just hate loose ends. It’s been a decade since this book was written; you would think they could have settled their differences by now.

Ok, we’ll give you a rest from mr Feist’s books for awhile though I’m now reading the original saga in the series. Library books I am afraid as I can’t afford them just now for my collection. Thanks for the listen.

Pet peeves and irritants

2010-03-18T21:15:00.001-04:00

On Friday we’re subjected to that upbeat Canuck and his optimism and those posts that cheer everyone up so I figured, being the grouchy bastard that I am I’d subject everyone to a bit of a downer so you don’t get to upbeat tomorrow morning upon reading him. It’s Lent you know and time for some sackcloth and ashes, especially on Fridays

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Is it just me or is anyone else out there disgusted by some of commercials out there for munchables and potables? Those yogurt commercials where the woman sticks her snout in the container like a frikkin pig? Or the candy where everyone is snapping and chomping? Sounds of people munching or slurping their food or drink in commercials has always been a pet peeve of mine but the noise in that one is particularly foul. Or even those stupid rum commercials with the idiots doing stupid things to pick up chicks? Only good one in that series is the one where every one turns in their keys before partying. Ready to go back to drinking Myers full time again.

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Politician hollering that there is a budget shortfall so they need to raise taxes to make it up. Excuse me but are they even thinking? There are two problems with this. The first and more obvious one, I first thought about a few recessions back. The second never really dawned on me until the one ten years ago and many may not think it obvious but a little thought can bring it to light. The first problem is the timing of the tax increase. Yes they are proposed at a time it is necessary but the reason it is necessary is because the people that most of these taxes fall heaviest upon are also in the same straits as the government, they don’t have enough money either. So how is taking more from them at this time supposed to help? The second part of the equation isn’t as apparent but one just need dwell on it and the light should shine. The main question is how come government didn’t need all these increases and extra taxes years ago and got along just fine. True, there have been additional mandates that require some additional monies but there is another bug in the system. In depressed times taxes are raised to meet shortfalls but what happens when the economy swings upwards again? Are these taxes lowered as good times start to bring in revenue windfalls? In some cases certain percentages may be lowered but never back to their original levels. And a lot of other nuisance type taxes such as the one proposed on sugar added drinks in Philly these days usually stay there. Hell, there is still a tax on booze in PA for Johnstown flood relief. No, not that Johnstown flood, but one almost as bad and still quite awhile ago, 1936 to be exact. So these taxes help governments get over shortfalls but create windfalls when the economy booms again and instead of repealing the new taxes or at least setting aside extra funds for the next recession that everyone knows is inevitable, they go and spend the money by setting up additional services. What the hell, we got the money, we can do it. So now what happens when that inevitable recession hits again? N Now you not only have all the old programs that were out there but you have all these nice shiny new ones too. And you just know that the beneficiaries of all these programs that didn’t exist all that long ago are going to bitch as loud and long as those of programs started decades earlier about not getting anything cut. So now you have even bigger budget shortfalls. And the solution? Yup, you guessed it, new taxes. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. New programs, new taxes, new programs, etc., the serpent eats his own tail until he destroys the world. Doesn’t anyone ever remember the old adage that it is easier to refuse in the first place than it is to take back later?

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From something that affects us all to the insignificant but still a peeve. People who have to be the friend of everyone by getting them into events that are restricted to certain people or groups. In college it was the guy trying to get everyone past the door men in to the floor parties in the dorms. As you grow older you found them in other situations. The reason I bring this up is because a poker forum I belong to has been having a problem with gatecrashers in its freeroll league. Now I may go into more about the forum and its purpose and leagues in a later post but suffice to say they have a freeroll league in which the games are restricted to members who meet certain qualifications. For the most part the qualifications aren’t that tough and were put in place to make the games someplace where those wishing to could work upon their game without having to put up with the several thousand man donkfests full of people who just jump from freeroll to freeroll shoving everything hoping to get lucky and make a few dollars. It was formed back when the sites were looking for players and were more generous with their funds. In any case you were talking about somewhere between 50 to 100 runners instead of the giant minefields in the daily open freebies the sites put on. Now for various reasons both the prizes and fields have dropped but you can still get a few bucks to try and start bankroll building on sites you might not ordinarily deposit on. However it seems a person or two has decided that once he qualified for the passwords to the games he just had to inform some friends and occasionally someone would even post the password somewhere. Never seemed to occur to them that the prize in a freeroll is fixed and that unlike a buy in, where more players only increase the pot, here they only make it harder to cash, especially the run of the mill freeroll donk. Not to mention it screws it up for those new players that are hoping to learn something about the game, besides how to get sucked out on that is. Personally it doesn’t affect me much as I still play these games more to be sociable than anything but the fact that people do what needs to be done to qualify and maintain their right to play these games and some peckerwood is screwing things up pisses me off.

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Road crews n Pa and NJ. Why do the crews in these states need to block off miles of road while only working on a section of a few yards? Once in NJ I was tuck in a 2 ½ hour, 17 mile bottleneck while 3 guys patched potholes in the last 50 yards of the work area. WTF? A trip to North Carolina a couple years ago proved that that entire blockage isn’t necessary. There the road crews seemed to operate just find by starting the cones about a hundred yards or maybe two in front of their work area and opening them up about the same distance past. Keeps traffic flowing a lot faster.

Also the communication between some road crews and the traveling public. They have been doing work on a major highway in this area, one originally designed as a bypass to the former route that ran through the towns. This means that although the highway is faster there still a major road that can get you where you need to go without too much trouble. It seems the road crews working on this highway don’t really give a damn about relieving traffic however as, instead of posting the work ahead notices in front of the exits the wait until you drive by them to see they are working in the area. Even worse they don’t even post signs at the top of the on ramps so that people that can take another route would do so instead of adding to already backed up traffic. You might think they like having a bunch of pissed off drivers and giant traffic jams.

Now the biggee though I can’t include NJ in this one. Don’t know if it’s the road crews or the higher ups in the DOT who is responsible either but I would love to know what genius is responsible for deciding that while they are working on one major route and have it half, or even totally, shut down it would be a good time to start construction on the major alternate route or one of the feeders to it. That one is a sign of total genius and I have seen it happen 3 years running during the construction season in this area alone not to mention having run across it in other parts of the state at other times. May have to put the blame here on those intellectual giants in Harrisburg for these situations.

OK, enough of the irritants of life. Thanks for the listen.

Inane ramblings because I have nothing better to do

2010-03-13T22:53:00.001-05:00

Definitely too much time on my hands. Reading at a greater pace than even I used to. Buying books at an unprecedented rate, Thanks to ABE and EBay. Playing a lot more poker than normal and now that I’ve returned to writing the dreck that fills this blog I’m pushing out as much crap as an overfed goose. If you aren’t sure how much that is go take a walk around one of those small ponds where the lazy ass birds have set up year round residency rather than migrate. Then go throw away your shoes. If you don’t have one of those handy then think of this; a county park in this area had to close down its lake to swimming a few years ago because of the bacteria count in the lake due to the goose population. Now that’s a lot of shit, almost as much as I shovel. Maybe I should hook up the nurses at the rehab hospital I spent some time in with a flock of geese. That should make them, the nurses, happy.

No book review today. Reading Clavell’s Tai Pan which I had first read in my college years. My copy had fallen apart and so hadn’t read it in many moons but found a copy sitting on the shelves of a used bookstore I was checking out last week. Not a great copy but for two bucks who can complain. Besides, I wanted to stay on the good side of the proprietor so figured buying something would help that. The store deals in used paperbacks and while I deal mainly in hardcover these days there are some books that never made it past paperback stage that I collect and wanted him to keep an eye out for me if any came in. Have another store I want to check out soon but don’t know when I’ll get there.

Not a good morning on Friday. Doctor visit and a funeral. Funeral was for my uncle even though I find it strange to call him that. First, he was only a few years older than I. Second, he was related through marriage being wed to my father’s youngest sister who grew up with a group of us cousins who we never really viewed as an aunt either. She was always Pat as opposed to Aunt Pat and he became just Bill. Bill has had lung problems for a couple of years and last year was finally put on the list for a transplant and was called to the hospital in the middle of the night last Dec. Everything seemed to go well and the doctors were optimistic that he would be out of the hospital soon. After the usual time he was moved from ICU to a regular room. That’s when the roller coaster started. As they were getting him ready to leave he caught an infection and then spent the next few weeks in and out of ICU. Doctors still thought they would get him through it but earlier this week he finally succumbed. The last thing he said was that he was tired. Guess he just couldn’t fight any more. What is ironic is that I heard the doctors said the transplant had been good and the lungs were in good shape. It was the infection that finally got him. Even more ironic was that the day after he passed there was a big article in the Philadelphia paper on a push by local hospitals to take steps to try and cut down on infections as they were causing too many problems and deaths. I just want to say again to his family that I’m sorry for your loss. He was much too young.

Could not stay for the memorial service as I had an appointment with the podiatrist also this morning. Might have canceled but it took me two weeks to get the appt. and another month and a half to get the name of the podiatrist to make it. Needed the visit because I have a wound on the bottom of my toe that just won’t heal. Being diabetic that’s a bad sign. Problem was a strange peculiarity of my health insurance, provided by Aetna. While it’s an HMO and I have a primary I can usually find a specialist that I like provided they are willing to take the HMO. For some strange reason this does not apply to podiatrists. It seems they link a podiatrist to the primary and you are required to see that podiatrist. Ran in to this same situation when I went for out patient rehab after the stroke. (What was that you said about the government health plan restricting choices if it passes?) Why they have these restrictions on certain specialties I have no idea. Be that as it may I had run in to some problems with the podiatrist assigned to my primary a few years back and he did not inspire a whole lot of confidence in me thanks to that situation. Other members of my family had found a podiatrist they liked whom my primary had recommended to them but when I checked him out his office rates were not something I could afford without insurance, especially in my current situation. A couple of my aunts had a podiatrist that they liked and seemed to have reasonable rates but getting his name was a struggle in itself. I don’t have a lot of contact with my aunts so I asked my mother to find out who this doctor was as she speaks with her sisters on a regular basis and I speak with her. However every time I would ask my mother if she got the name it was “I forgot to ask”. After a few weeks her memory improved and I finally got the name and then it was another week and a half before I could get an appt. Popular doctor.

So I get in the chair, slide off the boots and wait for the doctor when in marches an army. Seems I’m there on guinea pig day. In addition to the doc are 3 budding doctors, med school students in podiatry on the verge of graduation. So the doctor is asking them questions and letting them do the routine work while he supervises. All 4 of them were very personable and the doctor seems pretty knowledgeable. He inquires about my stroke and how it affected me and after I answer him he asks the students how they could have guessed my answer before I gave it. When they couldn’t answer he said to study my feet, that it was apparent that I was placing more pressure on my right so that it had to be my left side affected. Hell, even I didn’t realize I was still favoring my left leg when I walked. This is what is leading to my problem. When I damaged my toe most of it healed except for this one small spot. Since that spot is where you put the most pressure on your toe when you walk, and I’m putting more pressure there than I should anyway, I’m not giving it a chance to heal. He has a student do a bit of trimming around the spot, looks at it and says it looks well taken care of, no sign of infection but unless I can get off it, it ain’t gonna heal. So I ask him about a walking cast, an idea that came to me about two weeks ago and he says good idea. Also asked a couple other questions and found he agreed with what I was doing except I was using the wrong type of bandage. I was using a non stick telfa which I had been told to use when I had screwed up my toe in a similar fashion years ago. Good for that purpose he said but with this small little spot it was no good because the non stick bandage keeps in moisture which won’t allow it to heal and promotes infection. Who knew? Plain gauze from now on. As he was called away for a minute one of the students made a remark about my knowledge of certain medical facts and procedures. I tell her that when you are the genetic train wreck I am you kind of pick it up as you go through life and they all laugh. Doctor comes back, gives me some scripts including one for the walking cast and some x-rays and says come back I two weeks. I say ok and wish the students good luck in their future practices. If they keep their “bedside” manner the way it is now the patients they see will consider themselves lucky as long as the have the knowledge necessary which they did seem to have, at least as far as the routine care went. Only problem materialized when I got home. Tried reading the script for the cast to see if I could price them online before hitting a pharmacy or medical supply house and discovered what they say about doctor’s penmanship is true. At least this doctor’s. And I have plenty of practice trying to read my own chicken scratch. Well, we’ll figure something out.

OK, enough about my problems. We’ll let you go for now. Thanks for the listen.

Not quite another trip to Krondor

2010-03-12T17:12:00.002-05:00

Title of this post is because, while the name of the book is Krondor: The Betrayal very little of it takes place in the city of Krondor. Most of it is situated in the outlands of the Western Kingdom. Betrayal is the first book of the Legacy sub series of Riftwar. The second book I talked about in the previous post and I enjoyed it so I figured to get the other books in the set. While Squire James is also one of the main characters in this book he shares more of the spotlight in this one with a much larger cast of characters. There is his friend, and fellow squire, Locklear, A Dark Elf chieftain Gorath, Owyn, a younger son of lesser nobility studying to be a magician, Pug, the pre-eminent magician of his time and the character who seems to have started the whole over arcing cycle and Patrus, a highly entertaining old coot and lesser magician.

The book starts with the coming of Gorath, a moredhel or dark elf, to a town on the Northern Borders of the Western Kingdom from the icy lands north of the mountains where most of his race has been forced due to the coming of humans. Needless to say the moredhel aren’t really fond of humans and due to a war or two between them, or at least where they were on opposite sides, most humans aren’t exactly willing to clasp them to their bosoms. That being said Gorath has decided to make common cause with the humans to save his people from what he considers a bigger danger and so comes out of the North bearing a warning for the Prince of Krondor. He comes across Squire Locklear of the Royal Court, who has been banished to the godforsaken locality to serve the local noble because of some dalliance with the wrong woman. Locklear decides that getting Gorath to the prince is worth risking his wrath at leaving the exile decreed for him. And off we go on another adventure in the Kingdom of the Isles. BTW, although there is a Kingdom of the Isles with a king and other nobles to go with it, it seems, at least in these books, that most of the fighting is done by the Western half of the kingdom and its ruling prince. The Eastern half seems to sit on its ass a lot. The book covers the various travels and travails of the squires, magicians and Gorath in one set of groups or another as they combat the danger that the moredhel saw threatening his folk and the humans. As in Assassins the adventure, and story, are fairly straightforward though Feist throws in a few twists and turns you might not see coming.

One wonders if Betrayal originally started out to be the beginning of a new sub series. It stands on its own even more than Assassins does as there is no previous story to refer back to the way Assassins sometimes does other than general references to the cycle as a whole and there is no lead in to future stories as there is at the end of Assassins. It makes a good start if one would like to start any of Feist’s books as it has a satisfactory conclusion and one wouldn’t know it was part of a series if one didn’t know any better.

All in all another good book by Feist and enough to have me looking for other books in the Riftwar Cycle as I have already ordered the third book of this subset, Krondor: Tear of the Gods. Right now I have my eye on the Serpent War saga, a set of 4 books set in Riftwar universe. Really would like to read the original Riftwar saga but still searching for a fairly good copy of the first novel, Magician. Seems that either there aren’t a whole lot of them around or people don’t wish to part with them.

Beginning to think that the stroke was a bigger problem than I thought it would be. Having not done much reading for over a year just because of the sheer difficulty of it with an arm that wouldn’t grip a book properly and having a lot of time on my hands owing to being without gainful employment because of it, I am back to reading with a vengeance. I always was a big reader but my forays to the bookstore occurred a couple times a year at which times I would load up on a hundred or so dollars worth of books, mainly paperbacks with the occasional hardback. When I started collecting I usually saved my money for purchasing early books, hardcover, of those authors I enjoyed and was collecting, some of which were not cheap, and spending my time doing a lot of rereading of books I had. Now, with time on my hands and the discovery of a few new authors I enjoy, my book collection is again expanding rapidly. For example Mr. Feist has published approximately 30 novels in the Riftwar cycle. I have 2 at present which means another 28 books, give or take, will be heading for my shelves depending on various factors. Not to mention there are still some books by those authors I am already collecting that I still do not have. Some, such as Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight and Dragonquest I may never own due to scarcity and cost, though I do have a signed copy of White Dragon. Others though are within my means, or were not too long ago, if I can just find the right copy. Be that as it may I seem to be buying books at a far greater pace than ever before and if I’m not careful I may soon be buried in them.

Hokay, enough for now. I hope my humble opinion was of some use to someone somewhere. I try not to go too far about the plot or scenes in the book as so not to spoil anything for the potential reader. If I should ever go too far just slap me. Thanks for the listen.

A trip to Krondor

2010-03-11T16:23:00.001-05:00

Finished another book the other day, Krondor: The Assassins, a fantasy novel by Raymond Feist. Actually I finished 3 books but the other two were rereads. I picked up this book years ago on the bargain shelf when I couldn’t find anything else worth reading and it looked like something I might be interested in. However it took a number of false starts before I finally got into it. The dust jacket isn’t exactly designed to catch your eye as it is just a field of red with the title on it. Actually there is a background of two crossed swords but they don’t exactly jump out at you. Could have been one reason it subconsciously prejudiced me, dull looking dj, dull book. Finally decided to give it another go and I found I enjoyed it.

Assassins is the second book of Feist’s Riftwar Legacy series, itself a sub series of his Riftwar novels. Actually Riftwar is a series of three books but it was the beginning of the whole shebang which amounts to about 20 or so novels in a bunch of sub series all taking place with the same background. In addition the Riftwar Legacy books are based on a computer game which in turn was based on the original series. I hate starting a series in the middle but considering the problems I had starting this book I wasn’t rushing out to buy the first one so I guess I had to live with it. Wasn’t too bad as the story can stand on its own. There is some back story to it in the first book, indeed in all the previous books dealing with Riftwar, but except for references here and there in the story and a bit of a lead in to the rest of the series at the end you can read this on its own though you probably won’t. This is actually a good thing because, while three books have been published, five books seem to have been planned but due to some kind of dispute between Mr. Feist and the game company the last two might never be published. I hate when I get left hanging.

As I mentioned in my earlier review of Parker here is another author whose strong suit is characters and he has a raft of them. Only time I’ve seen such a large list of characters sharing the stage has been in shared universe type books where different authors set their own characters amid those of other authors. Here one man is responsible for them all. The main protagonist of Assassins is Squire James, aka Jimmy the Hand, a thief who has risen to Court rank somewhere in previous books. It is set mainly in the city of Krondor, the capital city of the Western half of the Kingdom of the Isles, which in turn is set on the world of Midkemia. Being a fantasy there are magicians, royalty, mercenaries, elves, trolls, thieves, assassins and so on and so forth all over the place. Assassins, as the name says, deals mainly with the fact that someone, or something, is wiping out a good portion of certain classes of citizens in the city of Krondor. The prince of the city, having a number of other problems on his hands, needs to find out who is responsible and why and puts the problem in the capable hands of Squire James, who once roamed the disreputable highways of the city’s underworld as the young thief Jimmy the Hand. This is a mixed blessing for while James knows his way around and still has the abilities and contacts from his former way of life; he also has a death mark upon him from the Thief’s Guild for breaking faith with them when he joined the royal Court. Of course the Guild has some problems of its own as they are one of the groups the killers are picking off. Complicating matters on the other side of the scale, the prince, in addition to the problems in his city, has some visiting nobility from another kingdom who seem bent on pursuing dangerous pastimes. So the story follows James as he winds his way through the sewers and over the rooftops of Krondor as he tries to solve the mystery of the whys and wherefores of the city’s killings and the adventures of his friend William who has just become a member of the Prince’s guard and is given the mission of protecting the visiting nobility, no small task.

Feist writes a straightforward, easy to read story. While his world may have as many different races and religions as Tolkein’s he doesn’t carry the development of the mythos to the extremes Tolkein did. You don’t need all the appendices and concordances to get all the nuances in his stories. While reading his books in some kind of order would probably give a bit more understanding he does explain enough in the stories themselves to get you by with what you need to know without going into excessive back story. I found myself reading the novel in about 2 days which might translate to 3-5 days for the average Joe given that I am a fairly fast reader who doesn’t need to worry about getting up for work in the morning. I mention that because Feist knows how to keep your attention so that you really don’t wish to put the book down even at the end of a chapter and so I went a bit later in to the night than I really wished to. So if you are in to fantasy novels I can recommend Raymond Feist’s Krondor The Assassins though you might want to start with Krondor The Betrayal, the first book in the sub series. As I enjoyed Assassins I went and found me copies of the other two books in the series and am in the middle of the first one now. The third one I ordered but it seems the store had sold their copy so had to do some searching for another one. These are first editions of the hardcovers as I am a bit of a collector of authors I enjoy. Paperback copies are readily available online.

If my opinion of the book helps I’m glad to have been of service. Thanks for the listen.

PS

While I didn't get my threefer at last night's BL game I did get 5th which put a few more points on the scoreboard.

On a roll

2010-03-10T14:14:00.000-05:00

Made a quick recovery it seems. League buy-in game Monday night after a long weekend of poker and wasn’t quite up to playing but as I won the first match of the month I didn’t want to handicap myself by missing the game. Have my sights set on winning the league this month and no sense trying to do it with one hand behind my back. Too many good players to give them a handicap. This game was at UB, an interface I don’t feel I’m fighting all the time so down I sat.

Grabbed a few chips early on and was doing fairly well when I made a stupid mistake. Somehow I hit the call button instead of the fold when preflop raise was made and I was holding 6-7. Kind of ironic considering my previous statement about the interface although I think this was more due to my touchpad than that. Anyway the flop came Q-x-6 and the raiser checked so I threw out a tester of about 1/3 the pot and was called. Turn brought a 7 and another check and another bet, a bit stronger this time and a check raise. Should have known better and dumped the hand, especially as this guy had my number the previous night, but kind of hard to turn loose of two pair so I called. Either I was slightly ahead to an A-Q or way behind to a set and the bet wasn’t big enough to cause me to turn loose. The river a blank and he bets and I call and he was sitting on a set of queens. So I make a dumb mistake that is compounded by actually getting a hand and still get smoked for not quite half my chips. It’s still early however and I still have more than the starting stack. After that though I went in to a stall, card wise. Deadly as the table turned aggressive and I was getting a run of 8-2 or 9-4s. Blinds started to hurt as I couldn’t even risk defending. Fold followed fold. Every so often I’d throw out a raise and steal some chips but that wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Went on like that until it folds to me in the SB and I’m sitting with K-4 suited so I figure against the BB it’s time to raise. I do, he calls. UH-oh, not good, need a flop. It don’t help, A-x-5, rainbow. I throw out a c-bet anyway and he raises. Guy has had my number for two days now. About ready to fold and then I figure what the hell. Those bets have hurt my dwindling stack even more and maybe this guy is thinking c-bet and trying to push me off. WTF, all in. Now he is chip leader with about twice my stack but a call can hurt him as the two others are on his heels and there aren’t a lot of chips in play due to a small field. He thinks for a bit and mucks showing Aces up. Aces up? He folded aces up? I didn’t think any one folded aces up at this level. Have to keep my eye on this guy in future games. Anyway I breathed a sigh of relief and it was like the damn had broken. I started to finally catch some cards. This allowed me to win a few pots showing good cards which, in addition to rising blinds, allowed a bit more stealing until we got down to 3 and I was decent position chip wise. A good read on catching someone with his hand in the cookie jar doubled me up and gave me a massive lead. All downhill after that and I score back to back wins in the buy in league. Was just trying to get some points to keep my lead but I can’t complain about winning. Gives me some more cash on UB and a pretty good sized BL lead. It’s early yet however and still a number of games to go so I can’t rest on my laurels yet. I might however be able to skip the games on those sites where I have no funds, think there are 2 of them. Of course I can try and cash a freeroll league game on those sites to give me something to play with. Or I can go for the threefor since the next game is on AP tonight. If I can grab some points there I’ll be in pretty good shape. If I win the war is over, call in the boats and piss on the admiral. I’m gunning for the win.

Despite my big poker weekend I am slightly depressed. Been reading all the blog posts about Mastodon weekend and sounds like another great time has passed me by. One of these days I’m going to be able to get to these things. Glad you folks had a great time.

Thanks for the listen.

It was a long weekend

2010-03-08T12:47:00.001-05:00

Ok, hurdle 2 down, home game done. Turned out to be a decent night though it didn’t start that way. Was down a buck in the first 90 minutes. I rarely go down that much the whole night unless I get coolered a time or two. After all it’s only a quarter/half game. This time it was mainly bleeding though I did payout a few bucks I shouldn’t have. Twice I had the nuts on the flop only to have a guy catch up on the turn and both times I knew he had. Not just knew it in the sense that I figured it by the call and the card that hit but literally knew it because he telegraphed it when it did hit. Tells aren’t my strong suit but a blind man could have seen these. On one he literally jumped when it hit the board.

Took a time out to slip in a political commentary. Usually avoid such, mainly because they do no good any more. Not going to enlighten anyone, they already know every thing, so why bother. This time however after listening to all the bullshit about healthcare lately my ire was sent over the top by an email I received from a good friend, passing on some ridiculous bit of propaganda, supposedly based on something from a FOX News commentator and full of half truths and distortions, I just had to vent. My friend, whom I love like a brother even if we don’t quite see eye to eye on our political views, has the habit, as do a lot of folks, of passing on email that fits his preconceived notions without checking to see if they are factual or not. Most times I don’t worry about it, maybe send back a link debugging the myth if it is such or maybe a chuckle if what he sent was true and I enjoyed it but this one, on top of the other crap just made me have to vent. So I did. Now back to poker.

What part of turbo don’t people seem to understand? Normally I don’t play turbo. While I play quickly I don’t like to be rushed and I’m much more comfortable with longer levels. I’m not an action junkie so I don’t need the rush but these things are popular so I guess a lot of folks are. Sites must love them as they clear tables quicker. Anyway somehow I got persuaded to play the mini-FTOPS on Tilt for a buck with the 5 minute blinds. You would think people would kind of move along but most of them just mosey along as if there was all the time in the world. So why play turbo if you are going to play at snail’s pace? Just another reason I don’t like turbos. Just got knocked out. Won $6 so it wasn’t a bad ROI although that 9 grand first would have a lot nicer. Considering it was a drop down to an all in situation, double up and play some more the whole time I was in it I guess I can’t complain. Still in the OFC which started while the mini FTOPS was underway.

Started the OFC fast then rode the rollercoaster for a couple hours. Made the money but not a whole lot. Wound up in the 3rd level of the cash but again I couldn’t get much traction after the first couple of levels. The weak aces killed me. People just won’t let them go but they are afraid to bet them also. They kill me in these low limit buy ins. I bleed chips betting second pairs when everyone checks around.

Finished up a long weekend of poker with the first game of GFN’s forum wars. As I stated earlier I made the team as a result of the staff vote so didn’t want to fall flat on my face here. Wanted a decent showing if for no other reason than to prove they didn’t make a mistake in thinking I was good enough to help the team. This month’s games are played on Power Poker and boy was it an experience. Again I got off to a hot start which should have been hotter. Third or fourth hand I turned the nuts and check raised my opponent. I then value bet the river when it showed a blank and got called. If I had known he was holding second nuts I would have shoved. Could have used the extra chips. Added a few chips here and there and was chip leader early on. Disaster hit in the form of a bad card when my K-K ran in to A-K and the A hit the turn. Left me very short just as the tourney took a crazy turn. The blind structure of this tourney was ridiculous. Once past the third level it became a lottery. One guy remarked he was in the top 5 and had only 17 BBs. Not a good time to be a short stack. For me it became a game of wait for the moment and shove and then cross your fingers. Somehow I crawled out of the hole and got myself back up to the chip leaders by doing a good Greg Raymer imitation winning almost every race that came down the pike. The few I lost weren’t major so I stayed among the leaders and when I got lucky by sucking out of a dominated position I hit the final table in good position. Looked good for the forum I was playing for as we had 3 runners at the final and when we got down to the last 4 it was two from our forum and two from another. To cut it short the other forum went 1-2. I wound up 4th. Tried to get tricky with small pockets and made a misread and wound up donking most of my stack to a slightly higher pocket pair. Was left with a couple hundred chips with humongous blinds but actually doubled up 4 straight times before finally meeting my fate. As a capper to a long weekend of poker it was a rush. Congratulations to the members of the Suited Pockets forum for the 1-2 finish. Good game.

Can’t say I like that 4th place finish but guess I can’t complain too loudly either considering that this game took me entirely out of my comfort zone. I prefer to grind my way through a tourney rather than go for the quick kill. With this structure though that wasn’t happening. I found myself shoving hands that I would normally take my time with. The 8-8 was my friend yesterday. I shoved that combo at least 7 times yesterday counting all the tourneys and it came through every time. Add in the fact I was very short at level 3 and I guess I’ll have to live with the 4th and plan to do better in the next 3 tourneys. It’s gonna get interesting.

Well I never thought the day would come when I would say these words but after a long weekend of the game I am finally pokered out. It was hectic to say the least and I have to recover quickly as there is another buy in league game tonight. Normally I might pass on the game to catch a breath but right now I have a lead to protect. Guess I’ll relax with a book for awhile. Thanks for the listen.

A Political Interlude

2010-03-07T10:56:00.004-05:00

Time Out for a political moment. Usually avoid these, which is strange as I was a Poly Sci major, but was listening to the news and hear where the GOP thinks the health care bill is too big and expensive and says they should start all over. Yea, sure, right. Where have they been for the past year? Maybe if they had seriously worked on getting a proper bill written from the beginning instead of spreading misinformation, trying to scare people and just generally being obstructionist something decent might be ready to go instead of this abomination that is out there. Actually I don’t think the Republicans seriously want to start over anyway. They are just anticipating on making big gains in the off year elections and figure if they can delay they will be able to kill any bill next year.

FYI for all you people who might read this who have bought into the scare tactics. Not being able to choose your own doctor? Most can’t do that anyway. Hell, that went out the window as soon as HMOs became widespread so what’s the difference between the government or an insurance company restricting your choices? Socialism and government run medicine? Does that mean you are willing to give up your Medicare benefits or VA care for those eligible for those in the name of capitalism? Get healthcare at work? What happens if/when you become unemployed? Or maybe if your employer decides he can’t afford the cost any more? How many of you know that not only does your employer have to pay the insurance premium but he also pays a broker to deal with the insurance companies for him and that his commission his based on the amount paid to the insurance companies? Not a lot of incentive to keep the insurance costs down now is there? Sure the big companies have the wherewithal to keep an eye on their broker and to switch if they feel he isn’t doing his job properly but how about the smaller ones? The ones who don’t know if that 10% increase they are being told is necessary is a hard or soft increase, one that can be negotiated down. Many small companies rely on their broker and in many cases their broker might be a friend or just someone they have grown comfortable with and they aren’t really ready to go shopping around for a new broker. Considering that small companies are the most likely to pass increases on through to their workers and, as we are constantly being told, small companies are the ones that employ the majority of workers in this country where is this going to leave a lot of people in the near future if something isn’t done about the current situation?

That’s all I’m going to say about the situation for the moment except for this reminder since there seems to be a lot of short memories out there. The current administration is under fire for not solving a lot of problems especially the economic situation. It’s like everyone expected Obama to take the Oath, bend over, pull a magic wand out of his ass and make everything better. The previous admin had 8 years to screw the situation up with all the dismantling of the regulations that kept companies from doing the things they did to cause this situation. This admin has been in office slightly over a year. They may not have turned things around just yet, don’t even know if the will, but they have stopped the hemorrhaging. Are we so ready to tear off the bandages and give power back to the group that caused this situation in the first place? I’m not enamored of this admin as of right now but I’m at least willing to give it some time. Problem is we’ve become a country of instant gratification and if something doesn’t work in 5 minutes were ready to jump to something else.

That’s all I have to say about the situation for now. Thanks for the listen

More poker

2010-03-06T16:07:00.002-05:00

Sitting here waiting for the OFC at Tilt to start wishing I had gone to G-Vegas. Would love to meet a number of people who I’ve enjoyed knowing through their posts and their support of mine. Would also love to find a shuflleboard table and renew my honor, and get my money back from the Black Widow since she was going to be there. Course it could be I might contribute to her bankroll. She’s good. Since a small medical matter and a prior commitment on Sunday made it impractical to make the trip I decided what better way to spend the weekend than playing poker.
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Started last night with the game for the buy in league at Poker Analysis. Was only a $3 buy in, most of the league games are either $3 or $5 but we got about 50 runners plus the added to put the first place payout around $55. I like these games. You get a good mix of very good players, good players who think they are better than they are because they are extremely lucky and donks. Basically the same mix you get at your live buy ins in AC so it’s good practice. In fact the leagues, actually the board itself, was originally designed as a place to not only chat about poker but to help improve your game. Their freeroll games, unlike a lot of sites, required a time period between joining the board and playing the games plus a decent contribution to the boards themselves. You also had to remain somewhat active on the boards to continue to play. Needless to say a number of people have, and are still trying to improve their game while others just roll along in blissful ignorance. To make a long story short, I won. Actually I steamrollered through most of the game. Both the cards and my game were on. That’s a tough combo to beat. The early game was a grind, mainly collecting blinds and the occasional limper. In fact that’s how most of the game went except for the times I caught a hand and someone in front decided to go all in. The boards were kind and I wish it had been a sniper game with the number of takeouts I had. I was big chip leader by the time the final table hit and I had double the chips of the other three when we got down to the final four. Heads up was a real bitch because it was against one of the better league players and he had a nose for the trap. I had gone from aggressive to trapping mode trying to sucker him in as he can get aggressive at times but he seemed to smell every one but the last when he actually made a hand also. Well played David, especially as I had you out chipped by a wide margin. So I match my win from last month but this time I get to sit atop the leader board. Won the first game lat month but forgot to register my table name for the sight so while I got the money I received no league points. Silly me.

So I started off with a bang. Now it’s time for the OFC freeroll at Tilt. For some strange reason I registered under RPT instead of PA as I usually do for these things. Let’s see how I do. If I do well I’ll probably hear about it on the boards, especially as the staff voted me on the team for this months Forum Wars. Oh well, I registered for the OFC before they gave me that honor. Don’t even know why I used the RPT listing as I haven’t played one of their games in months. Not being able to shuffle does put a kink in games where I need to deal but I’m probably the only one registered under them and I always did like to be the odd ball.

After the OFC it’s off to a live game at palatial Snakster Manor. It’s a fun game though not now what it once was. I met Snakster, Ron, through playing RPT games and heard about the games he held at his house. At that time they were fairly filled and people wrangled for an invite. Somehow I got myself one. It’s a fun game; people are good and fairly serious players. Ron himself is a very good player and also a very good judge of bourbon. Another reason the game is so good is that you get some excellent bourbon or rye if that’s your tipple. Ron also has a chip fetish. The cards and chips for the game are top of the line or damned close to it but Ron will get himself a nice set of chips and grow bored with them after a while and go looking for something new. He will talk all night about chips if you get him started. A good man to consult though if you are looking to get a good set of chips. One problem with the game is it is erratic. He used to hold it around once a month, maybe 6 weeks. Now you never know when he might text, game on. Don’t think his wife is sympathetic to us poker players even though her father sits in for a couple hours at the start of the game. “Pops” is a great guy though when he’s in a hand one never knows whether he has bottom pair or the stone cold nuts. Unpredictable he is. The other problem is you never know who is going to show up anymore. Since seating is limited only so many invites go out and lately a number of people say yes and then never show and by that time it’s hard to get someone to fill the seat. By then most off the fish you might call to donate have found another pond to swim in. Ah well, he’s called a game for tonight and that satisfies an urge that has been building since I haven’t been able to get to AC. Gonna go play some cards, drink some bourbon and hopefully have a good enough night to cover the chiropractor’s visit and dinner from yesterday.

Interlude here. Not enough guts to fire a third bullet costs me. Flop open ended with a flush draw in the OFC. Fire on flop and turn but give up on river. Character was chasing a gutter ball and his crap was higher than mine.

Ok, back to the story. As if this isn’t enough poker Sunday is also filled with it. In the afternoon I’m in for the buy-in part of the OFC followed by the GFN’s Forum Wars game in the evening. Was voted on to the team by the staff of PA so hope to make a good showing. First game is a freeroll so don’t know what to expect. Will they play decently as they are representing something or will it be the old hell it’s a freeroll mentality? Guess we’ll find out.

Well, as I finish this, and my plate of Singapore noodles, it seems I also finish in the OFC a very lackluster 2500 and something, or thereabouts. My short stack shove with 9-9 met a pair of tens and the board did no help. Hopefully my luck is better tonight. Will bore you with those details later. Thanks for the ear.

Book report

2010-03-04T12:38:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading Split Image by Robert B. Parker. Regret it’s going to be one of the last of his I will read as Mr. Parker passed on in January. Think there is one more Spenser novel in the pipeline for later this year and there are still 2 or 3 of his early ones I don’t have but it looks like finis for another of my favorite authors. Another sign you are growing old is when the authors you have enjoyed for 30-40 years start disappearing. Going to have to start looking for some new ones to follow.

Split Image was the 9th Jesse Stone novel. For those who don’t follow, Jesse Stone was an L.A. homicide cop whose ex-wife drove him to drink and he wound up as a police chief in a small coast Mass. Town. Lotta crime for such a small town. The book is enjoyable as are all of Parker’s works but it’s not one of his best. It’s not one I would recommend that a newcomer to his works start with.

Parker is not a convoluted plotter such as Agatha Christie or Dick Francis. His strength is in how his stories flow along and especially in his characterizations and in his characters interactions with each other. His most notable creations, Spenser and Hawk have some of the best patter going between them I have read. That being said I think the plot here is a bit weaker than usual. In fact there are two plots here because it seems that Parker was on the path towards combining the characters from two of his series, Stone and Sunny Randall, a Boston P.I. She had her own series of about 6 books but there hasn’t been one lately and while she has appeared in the Jesse Stone books before she takes up a large part of this one. So while the book is about the same length as the others there are two plots running and except for the interaction of the characters, they’re sleeping together, there is no real link to the stories. Basically it’s like two novellas combined to form a novel.

All that being said it’s still a good read if you like Parker and I think almost anyone would like Parker if they start somewhere else. If they start here they may think him a bit weak and just brush him off. Any of the Spenser books would be a good start or if interested in Stone the first one, Night Passage gives the basic back story. Parker reads fairly straightforward, no pausing to try and remember some small thing that happened way back in the first chapter or trying to figure out 6 degrees of relationships. I stumbled across him one day when I was bored and the store had nothing that that tickled my fancy. I took a chance on a Spenser novel of Parker’s called Potshot and I’m glad I did. Started me reading, and then collecting his books. A shame there won’t be many more too enjoy.

On that note I’ll wrap this up and thank you for listening. Keep reading

Some quickies

2010-03-03T18:59:00.001-05:00

Just some fast and furious nuggets.

Sitting here playing some poker and looking over the blogs I’ve not been reading and notice that I’m not the only one who has taken a hiatus from writing. Either that links to those sites have been broken. Going to have to check to see if some folks actually quit or if they just upgraded their sites.

Reading about Mastodon Weekend. Shows how much I’ve aged and what the stroke took out of me. Time was I would think nothing of hopping in the car and driving through the night. Only thing to stop me would have been thoughts of work. Now there is no work to hold me back but as much as I would love to make the trip I’m not sure I want to make that drive alone. This from a guy who used to travel to Chicago by car by his lonesome a couple times a year. Not that I can’t make this trip, just the fact that I’m even thinking and rethinking it worries me. I’m getting old, no two ways about it.

Back at the limit at Cake. My hot streak seems to have ended today. The suckouts are coming fast and furious. Got guys not only calling me but raising with nothing but then catching on the river. Had one guy cap every round with a K-Q off against my set of tens and hit the gutter ball on the river. I could have done the same thing a few times but I’ve got the sense to bail when I have squat. Of course the squat turned into the nuts by river time. Looks like the bear is having a nice lunch.

I’ve got to get my library database finished. Seems I just wasted money on a book I already have. Was reading the summary and knew I hadn’t read it before so I ordered it. Got here today and I went to enter it in the database and lo and behold, it’s already listed. Purchase date on it is the week right before the stroke. Must have been in a batch of books I bought just before the stroke and never got around to reading. They were some of the first I tried to catalog a couple months back when I first started the project and then I packed them away to get them out of my bedroom. O well, only an EBay purchase for about $5-6 including shipping. Just as well too as I’m not really happy about the purchase. Book not quite up to the description Not real bad, just not something I would add to my collection unless it was a scarce commodity, which this one isn’t. More fodder for the e-store if I ever go that route.

Speaking of libraries, I was reading in their latest newsletter that they offer different kinds of classes and training, both classes and one on one session, through volunteers. Thinking I might go down and offer my services with computers. Not the greatest teacher on a group starting from scratch basis, not really patient enough, but if someone has an idea of what they want to do I can usually explain that to them. So maybe I’ll head down and see if they can use my services. Who knows, may make some useful contacts.

Well, time to get some things done before the poker league game tonight so I guess this trip to the land of boredom is over for now. Thanks for the listen.

Poker already

2010-02-28T15:24:00.003-05:00

The other night I started playing some .10-.20 limit on Cake poker. Not exactly enamored of the Cake interface but it’s a site that my online leagues use so I play it every now and then. Somewhere along the line I must have cashed a league freeroll because a couple of weeks ago, when signing up for a league game, I found 20 bucks sitting there. Thanks to a combination of the live play I had been doing and the funk I had been in I hadn’t played too many league games so who knows how long that money was there. Point is, it was and the other night I was bored and so decided to go looking for a place to play. Decided to check out Cake and found, to my surprise, there were actually some limit games running.

Yes, I know, all you hot shot players look down your nose at limit. It’s NL for hold em and PL for Omaha. Can’t make money at limit. Can’t bet people off their draws in limit, get too many people chasing. Yup, you’re right, got those problems with limit. Of course they are considered problems only because most players view limit poker with a no limit mentality. Limit can be a gold mine if approached the right way, at least at lower levels. The NL mentality combined with the propensity of people not only to chase but to chase bad draws can make it profitable. People think I’m lying when I’ve said I’ve cashed out $500-600 after a night of 2-4 or 3-6 limit but I’ve done it on more than one occasion. It’s not common but it’s happened. A trip to Vegas a few years back I was up $1500 my first two days playing between 2-4 and 4-8 limit and $200 to $300 is not uncommon after a night of 3-6 in AC. I’ve been asked why even play NL if I can do so well playing limit. Hey, I like all the games, except maybe Badugi, and need to keep my hand in. Besides, never said NL was unprofitable. Maybe more on my limit philosophy another time. Back to Cake.

As I said, I saw the limit games and decided, what the hell, let’s see how they are. Was going to sit at a penny table and decided, why bother, if I lose my money here it’s not a great site for me anywho so who cares and went to a .10-.20 table and realized I walked in to a limit player’s dream. There was a character there who raised almost every hand preflop, rarely folding, and who would just keep firing bullets after the flop. No one gets that many good hands which usually means they think they scare people out or they just don’t give a damn. Works for them a lot of times but it also means that you can pull some money in on decent hands and really get paid off on your monsters, which is where it’s at in limit. You need those big pots on monsters to offset those payoffs on the suckouts and these are the kind of people who make sure those big pots are there. Watched the action for awhile and noticed some really weak hands winning on fairly strong boards even though there were pre and post flop raises and very little checking. The one guy was pushing the action and one or two people had caught on to him and would call him down to the river if they caught a pair even if it wasn’t all that big. Many times it was big enough. So I jump in to the action but my luck at the beginning ain’t so hot. I catch a number of hands of the kind I like to play in limit but the flops are unkind and those preflop raises are making the bite a bit bigger than it normally would be. I finally start to catch some cards and now it’s worth playing. Another crazy has sat down and between the two of them willing to bet with nothing and the natural calling stations that gravitate to limit games I wind up over 3 times my buy in. I like this. Returned the next night and did even better since a couple of the same people were sitting at the tables. Looking things over it seems they people are also multi tabling. Considering the way they are playing and the money they are tossing around you would think they would just play a more solid game at better stakes but who am I to argue if they want to hand over their money. It ain’t a whole lot but it will keep me in league buy in games, around 3 or 5 dollars a pop, for a month or so. It was interesting to note that one of the crazies eventually wised up a bit. I started noticing some checks and folds from him, at least the hands I was in, instead of the constant firing. Sat down for a third time later that day but the crazies weren’t there and the table was considerably tighter. Dropped a few bucks there as the cards sucked and there was no one paying off the decent hands and the monsters weren’t bringing the payouts to offset the suckouts. Left fairly quickly as soon as I realized that it wasn’t the kind of table to suit my play. I’m not looking for action the way some of these folks seem to be, I’m just looking for a way to relieve the boredom while adding some funds to the bankroll. Sitting here playing some as I type this. Table not to my total liking but cards are hitting when I play and enough calling stations to keep my head above water so far. Won’t be hard to leave if things go south however. Can’t stay at it too long anyway as have to do some running around shortly.

Well, ran my errands. Left the table after tripling the buy in. Might have stayed longer but one of the places I had to get to closes early today and since I was getting dinner fixins couldn’t afford to get there too late. After 3 days I’ve doubled the bankroll on Cake. Now that I’ve stated that fact I’ll probably donk it all off in the next few days. In regards to donking someone left me a text about a PLO game last night with a possible NLHE table going also. Too bad my phone was on charge and I didn’t see it until I picked it up before I went out today. PLO is always good for donking off some chips and I’ve been dying for some live play. Been 2 months since I’ve hit AC and even longer since we had a local game.

Speaking of poker and Cake in particular, it seems the staff of the poker forum I frequent has voted me to the forum team that plays in the forum wars sponsored by the Gaming Forum Network. It’s a monthly series of 4 games, a freeroll and 3 small buy ins in which the members of GFN put up a team of about 15 players each. In addition to the prizes for the game there are individual prizes for cumulative best showing and the winning forum gets a freeroll for its members. Of course the March games are being played at Power Poker, where I currently have no account and no money. That’s not a big problem as I already said that I would play if I made the team and would sign up if so. The problem with the situation is that Power is part of the Cake network. Problem with networked sites is that everyone has different rules on joining sister sites and no one ever seems to put these rules where they are readily available. Some networks want you to use the same account logon but different screen names. Some do it in reverse. Others tell you to open up brand new accounts from the word go. Of course nothing usually comes of violating these rules except every so often you hear the horror stories of someone hitting big and trying to cash and then find their account locked because they violated the rules by having 2 accounts on the same network. Does make you wonder if there is a reason the network rules are not positioned front and center. They make it sound so easy to sign up and no where, at least in all those sign up instructions, is there any clue as to what to do if you already have an account on the network. Might be buried somewhere in the TOS but that ain’t exactly front and center, more like the fine print. And it is not just the Cake network, it’s most of them. So caveat emptor for those signing on to new sites, check to see if they are part of a network and then find the network rules.

Damn, look at this. Said I wasn’t going to talk as much poker and here I am doing it on my 3rd post back. Of course discussing online poker is a lot easier for me as I can type while playing rather than trying to remember my live sessions after I get back from AC. So we wind up boring you about poker once again and it ain’t really about decent money either. Oh well, Thanks for the listen anyhow.

Should I open a library

2010-02-26T21:53:00.002-05:00

Been spending the last couple weeks cataloging the personal library. Something I’ve been wanting to do for years and occasionally actually started but never continued with. Lets face it data entry is boring as hell but with time on my hands I decided to use such time to start practice working with Access, when I thought I might still be able to reenter the IT world, and to try and get a listing of my books as I lose track of what I have at times. I also hope to use it as a stepping stone to inventorying all items of value in the house in case of disaster striking the premises. My movie collection is almost as big as my book one though not as valuable. Need to design some new tables and forms for that though,

Always been a reader and discovered the world of paperbacks in a big way in my high school years. Still have a lot of those books around, though a number of them wound up destroyed during a move back home after college. In college I discovered that hardbacks last longer and book club editions weren’t that expensive. Somewhere along the line though I started collecting and found out that book club editions or BCE as they can be termed don’t really have much value except as reading material, so I moved into acquiring American first editions of the authors I liked, mainly in sf and mystery. All this is to explain the cataloging job. One, I have a lot of books and two, I need to keep track because I don’t really need to spend money on copies of something that is already in the collection or, if I am going to buy another copy, to make sure it is an upgrade to the one I have. Hence my brand new database and my project.

So far I’ve entered 380 books and haven’t really even started on the shelves yet. These are the ones just lying around in the den or the living room or wherever. The bedroom has yielded over 100 volumes alone. When the weather breaks and allows me to enter and sort through my shed I know there are 3-4 Rubbermaid containers out there containing paperbacks. Ever since the debacle of my return from college I no longer use cardboard to store books. Looking at some of the prices my old paperbacks from back in my high school days are fetching these days (no remarks about sheer age adding to the value either) that episode cost me a pretty penny in investment value in addition to the reading material. Not that I ever thought in terms of paperbacks becoming worth money. Just found that out as I was cataloging and decided to see what it would take to replace some missing volumes in the series I once collected. Found one sf/fantasy series I used to read in high school and college selling for $800 to $1000 for the complete 26 book set in firsts. This for a bunch of paperbacks that cost from $.75 to $2.95 when they came out. Guess what I’m sitting on? Yup, all 26 of them, first printings and most in mint condition. Problem is can I bear to part with them? Collectors just hate to sell unless it’s a duplicate copy of something.

Another reason for the cataloging is that I have been thinking of opening up an e store dealing in books. As I’m not going to be able to return to work in the foreseeable future, if ever, I’m going to need something to give me some income so it’s either enhance my poker skills tremendously or think of something else. Since books and computers are the things I know best the e store seems to be the path to investigate. Anyone with any knowledge or insights to this endeavor please feel free to comment. Any and all advice highly appreciated. We’ll see how this works out. Actually owning a bookstore always had been a dream of mine but in those days it was the B&M type. Who knows, there is still a chance. Would love to have something to pass on to my daughter as her love of books rivals mine.

Speaking of books and my daughter, I was digging around in an old magazine rack last night and came across a book whose disappearance has puzzled me for at least 10 years. It’s a copy of H. Beam Piper’s The Fuzzy Papers that I got through the Science Fiction Book Club way back in my college years. I have always enjoyed Piper’s work and I went looking for this one way back when. It interested me at the time as it works on many levels. It’s a nice, good read which is the main thing. Piper was a good story teller and his tales are good even if you don’t like material with messages in them. It can be cute enough for kids, in fact I think they have brought out an illustrated kid’s version of the story. I mean with a character called Little Fuzzy with all its connotations how can it not appeal to kids? This is the reason I went searching for it years ago. I came across the dust jacket lying in a drawer and thought that it would have been an interesting story to read to my daughter when she was younger. I went searching, figuring that book had to be somewhere but never could find it even though I would go looking every couple of months. Finally it works on the adult level of being a story involving an issue that might not be exactly black and white and that how one sees something may depend entirely on where one is standing and how shifting one’s viewpoint can help understand where the other guy is coming from and possibly reach an accord with them rather than bashing each other’s brains out. Daughter is now too old to sit in my lap and have me read to her but hopefully she’ll read and enjoy it on her own now that I’ve unearthed it. Now I just have to figure out where I put the damned dust jacket.

Well we’ve gotten wordy as usual but we have nothing but time on our hands these days so it don’t bother me and hope it doesn’t bother you either. Of course if it does you’ll probably just ignore me anyway. Enjoy or not but Thanks for the visit

What the hell

2010-02-25T13:53:00.001-05:00

Hello folks, been awhile. Number of issues have kept me away and may do so again but some folks persuaded me to write again so I thought I might try. We’ll see what happens.

Snowing out there right now, it’s been that kind of winter, and the snow has just highlighted one of the reasons I’ve been gone. It just rubs my face in to the fact I fell helpless at times. Though I’ve recovered some use of my arm after the stroke it’s still weaker than I thought it would be now. Add in some lingering weakness in my leg and just some general all around lousy conditioning thanks to a couple of other problems that have kept me from the gym the last few months and I can’t do a frikkin thing about all this snow on the ground. Hell I can’t even lace up my boots properly without a struggle. While never the most ambitious of persons I never had to rely on others to do my work for me. It’s enough to drive anyone into a blue funk. We’ll see if we can keep from diving back in.

Speaking of work I finally convinced myself that I wasn’t going to make it back into the workforce in any foreseeable future. I knew I was out of back up options due to the fact I can’t really walk for more than a block at one time, and still need my cane, nor even stand up for any extended period. Always thought that I could get myself back in the IT field however, no great need for physical labor there as long as you can get someone to carry the equipment when needed. My hand however, has decided to disabuse me of those notions. When I first started getting the use of it back it came along so fast that I thought that I’d be up and running by January. Last January that is. Then I figured maybe by October that made it a year. Well, October has come and gone and I’m still typing one handed. Don’t get me wrong, it has improved, slowly, but it’s still not nimble enough to work a keyboard the way it needs to be massaged nor to work with the small bits and connectors that make up the hardware of a computer. Adding insult to injury my arthritis, a bane for over 30 years, has finally decided to start playing hell with my good hand. Basically what all this adds up to is that I finally let myself be convinced to file for disability. It’s not something I really wanted to do. Not only does the government put you through hell, or so I’m told, to qualify but it forces on you a realization that you are no longer a productive member of society. You can’t even support yourself let alone those that depend on you. You now depend on others. . Unemployment was bad enough. There’s always the feeling that you’ll get back in there on day, just need a break. Disability is permanent. It’s a scary feeling.

So, we’re back and we’ll see where it goes. Will probably be less poker discussed, though still some, as when I’m in poker playing moods I kind of forget about other things and so I can never really get to the keyboard while things are fresh in my memory. Probably be more on books, movies, my doings in the garden (right now I have two willow trees that I forgot to get in the ground last fall growing in pots in my basement) and other assorted things. I am reading at a greater rate than I had been as the arm has gotten strong enough to hold up a hardback for a decent length of time though nothing compared to my former days. Turning pages can still be a bitch though with my recalcitrant fingers. I may have to go looking for my old keyboards also for my desktop computers as the split boards I have come to love so much over the last few years just aren’t made for one handed work. Well it feels good to be back, now at least, and we’ll try and keep you informed of my trials and tribulations with good old Uncle as I wind my way through the disability tango.

Thanks for those of you who have come back to read this and Thanks to those of you who encouraged me to return.

Mini vacation

2009-08-01T22:14:00.000-04:00

The combination of my daughter finally coming for a summer visit and the fact my brother got us a room for a few days at the Shore got my interest level a bit elevated and me back at the poker tables. My father had been telling me that the Taj had been offering him a couple of nights and reminding him he had $78 in comps and since he hadn’t been going to AC told me he would let me use them as we both have the same name but even that hadn’t been able to get my ass in gear to do anything. Getting things with my daughter’s visit straightened out and a few days at the Shore with the family got me moving however. Plans were to head down Sunday night after my brother got off work but I decided to head down in my own car earlier figuring to play a little poker before we met at the hotel. My plans were beach during the day, poker at night though things didn’t quite work out that way. Spent the drive down talking to my daughter. Driving is a great time to talk to her. Gives her a couple hours to yak without interruption. Bluetooth headphones are the greatest thing since sliced bread.

So I get to Ballys and on a $1-3 NL table and get a call, it’s the family, they are on the road 3 hours earlier than scheduled. There goes my afternoon of poker; I now have about 90 min to 2 hours. It was an insignificant table, no really big stacks, no really notable style of play. Given some time I think I could probably have bled a few bucks out of it as it suited my style, mostly post flop play with a lot of loose calls to average sized bets post but folding to any real aggression. It was grinder’s heaven. Unfortunately time is what I didn’t have and when I left about 2 hours later I was about even, maybe down a few dollars. Not a notable afternoon. Only hand that sticks out is one I didn’t play because of a mistake. Last hand I played I was sitting OTB with a medium ace, suited, and decided that if it limped to me I was going to play it for about a 3-4xs raise. Unfortunately as it turned out a guy in mid position threw in 3 reds instead of 3 whites as if by accident and the dealer called it his bet and it had to stand. I was tempted to play because I didn’t think he was doing an acting job but decided not to because that weak ace could get me into trouble if he actually was so I folded and waited to color up as I planned to return later that weekend so easier to get chips rather than cash. As it turned out I would have hit nut flush on the flop and the accidental raiser hit top 2. Probably would have made a few bucks on that hand. As I later told him his accident probably saved him a few bucks he said it was an accident and as he played a J-9 off and given how he was playing I was inclined to believe him. Ah well, such is poker, a vast wasteland of missed opportunities. So I colored up and went to meet the family at the hotel.

Get to the hotel and the family was getting cleaned up and planning their evening. Plan was to go to the Taj and eat there using Dad’s comps up and then spend a few hours at the casino. Everyone expects me to take my own car as I’m usually out to the wee hours at the poker tables but I surprise them as I want to do some drinking plus they are talking about an early beach trip the next day and I figure some sun couldn’t hurt. So we head over to Taj and everyone stops to check their comps but me. Last time I was in Taj poker comps didn’t show up on the kiosks, you had to check in the poker room. Who knows what I have anyway as I hardly ever used them except for an occasional meal in the snack bar. Note, if anyone ever goes to the Taj the poker room snack bar has the best food in the place. It ain’t fancy but what they serve is cooked fresh and served hot, can’t beat it. So while they are checking the comps I hear Dad arguing with Mom and while me, the brother and nephew start looking for a place to eat we see the folks headed down on the escalator. WTF, don’t tell me they can’t refrain from hitting the casino before food. When they come back we find out that Dad had no comps on his card and the card center said, nope, got no record of any and Dad’s getting hot. While we decide on the place to eat, we decide on the place right next to us called Plate, my nephew chimes in that maybe the comps were mine. I never thought about it because, as a poker player, I never get mailings from the casinos. That’s for slots players, or was obviously, because I head down to the poker room and ask if there are any comps on my card. Yes I’m told, $78. Bingo! All month my father has been offering me what was rightfully mine to begin with. May have to get those names changed for the mailing list if poker players are going to get come ons. Cripes, I actually had a room offer and didn’t use it. 2 nites at that. So I head back upstairs and meet everyone at the restaurant and tell them “yup, my comps” so it looks like dinner is on me. As I said we were at a place called Plate and I had a bad feeling looking at the table settings and menus. I got the impression that trying to create an impression through fancy items and presentation was more important than the food itself. As far as I was concerned the impression was right. I ordered something called Not Quite Surf and Turf, supposedly a crab cake and a chopped steak made from Kobe beef. Not really what I was looking for that night but none of their other selections really moved me. Could have really gone for a good salad on the order of a Chef’s or something with chicken in it but the salads listed were all some variation of Caesar, had seafood in them and all were made with the fancy ass greens that remind me of weeds in my front lawn so that idea went down the drain. Ordered my chopped steak medium rare and started in on the bread they brought. That gave me some hope as it was sourdough and tasty. The drink wasn’t bad either. It only raised my hopes just to dash them totally. The meal came and it wound up worse than I feared. The crab cake was reasonably sized but covered in, and surrounded by, corn. No tartar sauce apparent. The “chopped Kobe steak” was no bigger than the crab cake, about the size and shape of one of my mother’s homemade homburgs. Overall mom’s burgers were better First; it was overcooked, well done instead of medium rare. Second I always thought Kobe beef was exceptionally fatty to make it tender. This thing was dry as dust, no juice whatsoever. Chopped Kobe steak didn’t have the flavor of a BK burger. Yes I could probably have complained about the well done but I waited long enough for that meal that I wasn’t going to wait longer while they tried to fix it. My poker night was going to be short enough since I wasn’t driving. I also tried some of the corn surrounding the crab cake and it was cold. Not cold as in it lost temp but cold as in just out of the fridge so obviously not a veggie but some sort of presentation dressing for the crab cake. It sucked and the crab cake not much better. While almost no filler it had a very fishy taste to it. I had some crab imperial the next night and it didn’t have half the strong taste that this thing did. All in all Plate is not a place I’m recommending to anyone even though I was later told, at the poker table, that they serve a pretty good breakfast. I don’t mind buying dinner but I do wish I could enjoy it when I do.

So dinners over and I head to the poker table and they have a seat at a 3-6 open so I head there. Bally’s rarely has 3-6, just 2-4 or 1-3 NL. 3-6 and 4-8 are my comfort zones. I’m a better limit than NL player and the play at those games is a bit better than that at 2-4 tables. Right away I realize what I’ve been missing. The players here are here to play poker, not kill time and hope to hit the bad beat. The words raise and reraise are not strangers to them. Betting rounds are getting capped, something I have seen rarely in limit at Ballys. Don’t get me wrong, there re your share of donkeys at the table but you don’t have 8 to the flop, increasing the chances of suckouts on the good players plus the donkeys are calling the 3 and 4 bets which means that your monsters are getting paid off. You can make up in a good hand all those flops you might miss with A-K or all those turn flushes that crack your straight or pp aces. When people do know more than call your raise when they have a strong hand the pots never get strong enough when you do get that nut flush or full boat to make up for all the bad beats. But when people are willing to reraise you figuring their flush is good even with the paired board then your night can be worthwhile. Sorry to say mine really wasn’t as there was one guy who had my number, and everyone else’s. That deck just up and smacked him in the chops. He’s an ATM when he’s off, he sees 90% of flops and chases down 8 hi flushes but when it’s favorable to him, as that night, there is no stopping him. Once I thought I was going to get paid off when I flopped trip Ks and turned quads and he was calling me down and the river put the potential flush out there but he was straight chasing instead and folded on the river. Ah well. As it was I wound up playing 3-4 hours and won $6. I was down about $100 early thanks to him but after he left I was able to come back and might have actually turned a bit of profit if the ride home wasn’t ready to pull out. But it was and I had to leave just as things were getting good. On a bad note when I got back to the hotel I found all the walking around had torn the skin off my toe on my left foot. It’s happened before and I actually have a kit I’ve prepared to take care of it but of course it’s been awhile since I did it so I didn’t pack the kit this trip. Wound up making my day at the beach screwed up but that’s for later.

Thank you for your time and attention. More later, I hope

Alive, maybe, sort of, hopefully

2009-07-28T13:28:00.000-04:00

Haven’t been too many entries lately, in fact none for over a month. It’s kind of hard to write when you feel everything is useless anyway. You lose interest when you can’t even tell what day is which without really thinking about it and no matter what you do things never seem to improve and the ground just keeps crumbling beneath your feet. You start to lose interest in everything and when you don’t even feel like playing poker you know you have hit rock bottom and writing is the last thing on your mind. If this sounds like the makings of a pity party with yours truly as the guest of honor you can fucking forget it. Just an explanation as to why there haven’t been any words of wisdom from this direction lately. No idle ramblings or useless verbiage either so you probably consider yourself blessed. I also apologize because while my writing has been scarce so has my reading and so I have no idea how things are going with the rest of you out there, have som catching up to do. Hope everyone is well and won lots of money during the WSOP.

Part of the reason I have felt in a blue funk is that I have not seen my daughter since Easter and and my anticipation in seeing her for the summer got dashed due to a combination of circumstances and miscommunications. It was just the cherry on top of a pile of circumstances that were acting as the hammer with me as nail. For those interested the stroke recovery seems to still be progressing albeit very slowly. Another obstacle seems to have arisen however. For some reason my right leg has decided it does not wish to work according to the manual. Walking more than 50 feet brings shooting pains down the leg from butt to ankle. Part of it probably due to the excess weight I’m carrying around, more excess than the usual excess I have but only partly. Again the problem is, like the stroke, they can’t figure out the problem. One doctor thinks it might be circulatory while another says that, while possible, she’s getting strong pulses in my ankles and feet which makes that unlikely. Her opinion is that it’s nerve related and could be a spreading of my arthritis to my lower back. Anyway they want me to schedule a whole new series of tests and x-rays to try and get an idea of what is going on. I’m beginning to feel like one of those cheap, off brand devices where you can’t find a manual and no one knows what is wrong when it doesn’t work let alone how to fix it.

It’s funny. One of the reasons I’m coming out of my funk is that I finally get to see my daughter. I say funny because, while giving me a lift and making me start take some interest again, her visit is going to kill any poker playing until after Labor Day. Great, I get an interest in the game again and now can’t indulge. Un-freaking-real. No matter, the Scoot is finally getting down here and I anticipate a lot of pool time. She’s a water rat and social butterfly and loves going to Y to swim and play with the other kids. May even be able to get some gym time in before the pool opens. My leg and general malaise has kept me from the gym over the last month or two. Docs are bitching at me but didn’t really give a damn. You know, I never thought I would want to get back to work but right now it’s killing me that I’m not at a desk somewhere. Hell, I could even get back into loading trucks again though that ain’t going to happen anytime soon. Right now though the forced unemployment works out as it gives me time with my daughter. Only problem is that I have to make a 5-6 hour trip to go pick her up in upstate NY because she really, really, really wants me to see her in her play. Practices of which are one of the reasons she hasn’t made it down until now. The drive isn’t the problem even though the only motel in the area is a fleabag. The problem is the play is Peter Pan and I hate Peter Pan. Ahh, the things I do for my daughter. The only other problem is that it looks like no Shore trip this year. While my daughter is a bigger fan of chlorine rather than salt, another trait she shares with her father, she does enjoy a trip to the beach and a day on the boardwalk. Trying to find a way to get a couple of days down there but it ain’t looking good. My cousin has a house for a week and told us we were welcome but that week happens to be the week of Peter Pan. Damn that green clad rugrat, another reason to dislike that play. Oh well, with the impending visit of my daughter my attitude is brightening and hopefully I can keep it out of the gutter after she leaves. Some work, even something part time for awhile wouldn’t hurt. So would a fix on this damned leg. We’ll see. Anyway my daughter has already paid dividends for both her and me. Me because of my renewed interest in doing things. Her because, in addition to her new game for her Wii that I promised her after my nice day at Ballys a month or so ago, my renewed interest in poker led me down to AC yesterday and I spent the 2 hour drive talking to her. She loves those drives as she can talk my ear off and knows she has all that time and somewhere along the way she got a commitment to a new Webkinz if Dad had a good day. Well it wasn’t a great day, and looked like it was going to be miserable one when I got coolered for most of my buy in within 5 min at the table, nut flush against straight flush but we came back enough to be able to put a Webkinz or two on the shopping list. Who knows, I may even get a poker trip in while my daughter is down. She informed me on that drive that she found a place in an AC casino that sold all kinds of Webkinsz. She wondered why a casino would have Webkinz. Kind of makes the birds and the bees seem easy.

OK, if anyone out there actually found this after so long a break and if they are still awake after all the rambling I appreciate your attention for a few minutes. Thank You and hopefully I can keep my attention span on life focused for awhile and I’ll see you later.

Crubs don't come, beautiful crubs.

2009-06-11T17:56:00.003-04:00

Warning, exceptionally long, even for me.

So I head out at 9 yesterday morning to see if Bally’s got things fixed on my hours and I’m in that tourney and to try to get over to the Borgata to check out the Summer Open. A lot of negativity wound up accompanying both those propositions.

I get to Bally’s about 30 min. before the tourney and go to the desk to check. Nope, not on the list and the guy there checks my hours and tells me they have me for 48. WTF??? I ask him what the hell is going on as I calculate 62-63 and last week they told me 57 and now it’s 48? Where did 9 hours go in the space of a week? The floor was great though and he got the room manager and between them the got my name on the list and so I was in the tourney. I do have to say the room manager is a pretty nice guy. I’m really liking this room more and more people wise. Dealers and floor persons are, for the most part, friendly and helpful. I wish they would get a more varied crowd so that their range of games would open up. Right now it’s basically 2-4 limit and 1-3 NL with a table or 2 of 2-5 NL and 1-5 stud. Wouldn’t mind trying to drum up some interest in 3-6 or 4-8 limit game. If I keep my face in the place I’m at least going to try and see if I can get them to put a kill button on a 2-4 table. Problem is, too many of their limit players are just there to put in hours and to try and catch a part of the bad beat jackpot. They come in and play a little then go wandering for awhile, the play, then wander. When they do play they really aren’t interested in the play itself as many don’t even raise or reraise even when holding the nuts. The room is trying to pull more people. They were the first in AC to move their bad beat to quads over quads minimum to build the jackpot and it worked for awhile but a few other rooms followed suit and things leveled out. They are the only room to pay the room, at least the hold’em tables, instead of just the table in case of the bad beat but don’t know how good an idea this was as it has lead to the situation described above. Gonna start doing some missionary work while at the limit tables to see if I can find some like minded souls to see if I can drum up interest in some slightly higher limit games. Have also inquired about mixed games as they seem to be the coming thing in Vegas but was told they tried them and found no interest. Thing is, was there no interest because it wasn’t advertised or because AC players are just provincial and prefer plain vanilla. The room seems willing to experiment, witness the bad beat rules and the fact they are the only room running 1-3 rather than 1-2 NL. Well I got time on my hands for awhile as the job hunt is slow. Have to work on this place’s image and game selection because they’re nice folks. One thing I did notice when I sat down to play cash later was that they didn’t mark the seat on the little sticky the put on your card when they seat you. They used to mark table and seat and this was the cause of a lot of the hours problems I think. If you changed seats at the table and didn’t tell the floor and they sat someone else in your old seat they clocked you out. But who tells a floor when you change seats. Tables yes but seats for Christ’s sake. So I noticed no seat on the sticky, just the table and limit and when I mentioned it the floor said they weren’t tracking the seat anymore. They’re learning. I made 3 table changes and 2 seat changes and when I checked as I left the hours were right. Good job Ari.

On to the tourney. After the fight to get in the rest was anti climactic. Couldn’t avoid the land mines in this on. Cards mainly sucked and mostly folded the first couple of levels. A few preflop raises got me some blinds and an occasional limper but lost most of those on a hand when my pre flop raise and C-bet on the flop were called by a guy playing 7-9 off and caught bottom pair and couldn’t let it go to a ¾ pot bet on the flop. As I said, minefield. Watched guys call pot sized bets chasing down mid range flushes and call preflop raise and reraise with hands like K-J. Bar style poker at its best. At the first break I’m sitting up about 200 in chips. Not good for this style game. You need some early chip ups to be competitive or you at the mercy of lady luck and she wasn’t riding with me just yet. Wound up going out at the 500-1000 level. Sitting with about 12k and OTB with pp6s. Folds to the hijack and he goes 3000. Cutoff folds and I call. So does the SB. Flop comes Q-4-8 and SB and hijack both check. Damn, both missed? 6s good? What the hell, I shove and SB beats me in the pot. Hijack folds and I figure I got suckered, he had to have smacked a set. Turn the cards and he shows A-Q. We had been chatting through most of the tourney so I ask him what he’s doing slow playing top, top. He tells me that since the other guy raised he wanted to see what he was going to do. Huh? I’m biting my tongue but I’m dying to ask him why. Is he going to fold if the guy bets? What does checking tell you if he does bet? I called the raise and he beats me in the pot when I shoved so it looks like he’s going all the way with that hand regardless so I have no idea what he’s looking for there. Oh well, I’m out and it’s time for some cash. One other thing, they announced the next freeroll promotion while I was there. Instead of just being Bally’s it’s going to take place with all Harrah’s properties and it’s a double. Instead of 60 hours for the month it’s 120 hours for two, July and Aug. Get the hours and it’s an entry into a $120 or 150K freeroll, $20K for first. Guess who has got time on his hands?

I have my winnings from the week before, a buy in at the NL tables so I figure I’ll try my luck. No luck, no seats. So I sit down at a 2-4 table to kill time. No great shakes, win a few, lose a few about even. Sitting there I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to find the clean up guy. He points to the floor and there is $40 tangled up in a bit of trash paper. Problem with having limited use of my left arm is that I can only use my right pockets and so mostly everything goes in there and it can be a bitch getting one thing out without 50 others following it so I dropped the money without even noticing it. Being tangled with the paper the fellow could have swept it up and kept it with no one the wiser but he told me about it. Thanked him and gave him a $5 chip for being honest. To tell you the truth I felt for the guy as he too had a bad arm but his wasn’t going to recover. I could relate on a level. He thanked me profusely and figured it might have been the first tip the guy got in a room full of people all getting tips. As the saying goes, cast your bread upon the waters. It came back, believe me. The guy next to me thought it was a nice gesture and told me so and we started chatting. I asked him if he knew about the triple comps promotion. Harrah’s is running triple comps on weekdays but a guy last week said you had to swipe your card at the Rewards center to get them. He took a bunch of cards down there and swiped them for us as you don’t need to use your pin. I had stopped to look on my way up to the poker room but couldn’t see anything special anywhere so did nothing. So I ask the guy I’m talking to about it and he tells me that the bank of machines on the right are for that purpose so I decide to go swipe my card and take a whiz before I settle in. I grab my cane, still using one when walking any distance, kind of a security blanket rather than real need, and off I go. Gone about 15 min or so, get back to the poker room, stick my cane in the cubby hole I found to keep it out of the way, turn around and can’t find my table. Ever get that feeling of disorientation when something you know should be there isn’t? That was me. Did a slow 360 but nothing feels right but my original direction but the only thing that way is an empty table with a dealer at it. Huh? Look closer and I notice my chip stack and marker at the rail. Seems the table broke up while I was gone. As it was a full table it kind of shocked me but it was a most fortuitous circumstance. I grab my stuff and head to the desk to find a new table and notice open seating at the NL games and ask for a seat there and am directed to a table in back.

So here I am, ready to get my feet wet at the NL games again. Outside my little foray with a short buy a couple of weeks ago the only NL I’ve played in the past year have been .25/.50 home games and .05/.10 online. It’s been over a year since I’ve sat at a casino NL table. Hell, until last month it had been 8 months since I had been in a casino period outside a trip in Dec to a PA slots parlor to pick up a Christmas gift for Dad. It don’t help matters that I find myself in the 9 seat, not one of my favorites to start with, with the big stack at the table in the 10 and the second stack in the 8. Great, pass the Pepto. My $300 looks down right puny in the middle of this. On with the show. Table isn’t too bad. Standard preflop raises seem to be anywhere between 5 to 7 times the blind. None of the players really stand out except for the guy in the 4. CK’s term crasian is a pretty good description here. The table is schizoid. Sometimes a raise to 15 brings a fold around. A few hands later a 22 bet might get 5 callers. Me, I’m playing fairly cautious since it’s been awhile and with that stack to my left. I raise to 15 on a pair of 8s but the crasian goes all in for about 60 and I think about it for a bit but fold feeling I’m not quite ready to risk that much just yet. Yes, I know, overly cautious but then I’m the guy who folds A-J during the rebuy periods of tourneys, ask Falstaff. I pull Ks a bit later and my raise to 18 brings about a round of folds. That’s what overly cautious gets you, at least I hope it’s table image and not just a suck ass round of cards. Another orbit or two where I limp or play a couple of hands to small raises and miss the flop and fold when I catch A-A. My raise to 20 gets two callers, the guy in the 2 and the crasian. A couple of others have been into his pockets but I haven’t had the chance and I’m hoping that this might be it. I smack the flop with an A but there are two clubs out there. Ut-oh. Checks to me and I bet 20. Yes, small bet but I’m gambling here, looking for action and hoping the turn doesn’t bring the club or better yet that maybe someone check raises me. After all the crasian is still in. No such luck, all I get are two callers and the turn brings the third club, stupid club, and the 2 bets 25. The crasian folds and I call thinking the 2 has hit his flush but the 25 isn’t enough to keep me out as I figure I have 10 outs River brings one of those outs, pairing the board and giving me the nuts and the 2 smells something as he just checks. I throw out 50 hoping that the pot is big enough that the 2 won’t be able to resist if he has a decent flush but he decides to fold it and I get a decent pot. A few hands later the big stack picks up and leaves and the guy in the 6 gets felted and goes. I move to the 6 even though this puts the big stack in 8 to my left again but I just hate the 9. The game goes on, me playing a few hands and going nowhere mostly, winning a small pot or two. Couple of nice pots get played with the crasian getting felted twice and buying back in and showing a temper, finally being warned by both the dealer and the floor. I’m up between 100-150 in mid position and get 6-6 with a couple of limpers in. I decide to limp and cutoff does also and button raises to 15. Folds around to me and the cutoff is the big stack with about 700 or better in front of him and the button who is a recent arrival in my 9 seat with his full buy in still there so I figure it’s time to do a bit of set mining. 15 isn’t so much that I can’t get away if the flop isn’t there or if the cutoff reraises. He doesn’t and we get the flop. Hot damn, there’s a 6 there along with an A and a 3. Only problem is that there are two clubs there, damn clubs. I’m first to act and while I hate slow playing a set with a flush draw out there I figure the button is going to bet that ace giving me the chance to check raise and chase the middleman if he has the draw. Since the ace is a club I figure the button isn’t drawing. Of course I’m SOL if the button raised with a mid pair or K-Q suited. The 15 feels like A-paint however or that mid pair. A bigger pair is usually bringing a raise to 20 or better. The cutoff also checks and the button comes in, right on schedule with a close to pot sized bet of 50. That puts about 100 in the pot, give a few bucks but a pot sized reraise is only a minraise to 100 so I over bet a bit going to 125. I figure this will chase the middle man leaving the button with a decision as to whether his good A is any good to the check raise. Either way he goes is fine with me. I’ll take the action figuring I’m way ahead or I’ll take the pot. The middle man then proceeds to screw up all my carefully thought out plans by shoving. Huh???? WTF is he shoving with? Only hand that has me beat at the moment is A-A and considering the way the hand was played and that the button most likely has an ace I can’t believe that he’s holding rockets. I can believe he might have limped with A-A but I can’t believe he wouldn’t have reraised with them once the button raised. Besides he was pretty aggressive so even limping with them is a long shot. In the meantime the button decides his A is no good against this action and decides to fold leaving me with the decision. I go over the possibilities once more, figure there is no way I’m not ahead and he’s thinking that either I’m trying to buy the hand or trying to take advantage of my image and figuring I won’t risk the rest of my stack. Takes me just a couple of seconds to run through this before I say call. Yeah, I know, insta call but that’s not me, I gotta run through everything one last time, especially when it comes to putting 400+ on the turn of a card. I turn over the set and he turns over the club draw. Oh damn. Please no, no club or at least make it the 6 if it has to come. Damn 6s cost me the tourney, were they gonna cost me my stack here too? Turn a heart and river a spade and I let out my breath while the dealer starts stacking chips. Schweeeet!!!! After it settles down the game continues, the 8 decides to take a walk and the guy in the 9, the button that hand says he had A-Q and was debating a call until the 8 seat shoved. I stayed hot winning a few more bucks mostly small pots, a few semi bluffs that weren’t called, couple of top pairs that held up. This run at the table is the main reason I never made it to the Borgata to check on the Open. Who wants to leave a hot table?

Only one more hand of note before I called it a night though the crasian got felted again when his flopped 2 pair got rivered by an OESD. Was tempted to lend him my copy of the Poker Mindset. I was OTB with 4-7 suited. Was thinking about playing it to see a flop when UTG min raises and EP then goes 15. That was going to be that until 4 more players jump in. Hell, just too much money in that pot to not at least see a flop. BB and UTG join in and the flop brings x-5-6 rainbow giving me an OESD. Checks to me and I throw in a quarter and get 3 callers. Turn is a blank and it checks to me again and this time I go along. River brings me my 3 and it again checks to me. I toss in 50 and everyone folds. Talk about falling in the cesspool and coming up roses. I play a few more hands and then head for a 2-4 table. It was about 7:30 and I hadn’t eaten since 8 that morning so I decided to order some food but I wasn’t going to eat at the NL table, too distracting. So I decided to play some limit while eating then was going to pack it in after dinner and head home. Nothing much happened at the table card wise but did have a strange conversation with one of the women at the table. We were discussing the tourneys and she mentioned she loved playing the speed tourneys there, basically 12 min levels with blinds doubling each level. I stated I couldn’t stand them, that even the regular tourneys were too fast for me. Said I wish I had the money to play the deep stack, long level tourneys where the blind levels last an hour. She told me that no place has tourneys where the levels last an hour, wasn’t possible. I said huh? What do you think is going on in Vegas right now? What do you think happens during the Borgata Opens? No wonder you’re playing that 7-4 off UTG and calling 3 bets with it. Well I managed to donk off 30 during dinner and packed up a headed home with a bit of a bankroll to keep me coming back. Next trip an overnighter on Mon.. Let’s hope the good karma holds both then and on Sat at Rigg’s tourney for the posters to the RPT website. The top posters during the month of April qualified and anyone who has made it this far should realize that I have no problem being among the top even if Riggs told the official tally person to only count 1 in 10 of my posts. I am wordy if nothing else.

For those who have made it this far I Thank You for your attention and hope to see you (figuratively) again. Good luck to those playing in the WSOP events. Hope to see some of you on TV.

The good and the bad

2009-06-09T21:49:00.001-04:00

Quick one has I have to get up early and travel to Bally’s to see if I’m playing in the freeroll with the $5K first prize. That’s right; don’t know if I’m in it. Went down Thursday to check out how tourneys are played down there. Entered the $40-10 they had that afternoon. Man, it was straight out of the RPT bar games playbook. About 60 some players, almost every one of them a player of weak aces, any two suited or almost any face card. IOW, land mines galore. Add in a rapidly escalating blind structure and a prize structure heavily weighted towards the front end and it was being in the local bar. Wound up getting 3rd for about $330 by being a tad lucky. By that I mean that my good flops held up against the chasers, a couple of BB hands where I hit trips on the flop became river boats when someone else was playing the weak ace and had me out kicked until then and my one chase, near the end I had nut flush draw with only 3 BBs left and SB coming up so I shoved the draw, came through. Not bad for my first tourney there. I’ll take it.

To get back to the freeroll, while down there I checked the list for the freeroll and found my name missing. I inquired about that and was told it would be checked into and in the middle of the tourney was informed that I was 3 hours short. Not much I could do at the time but as soon as I cashed out of the tourney I went back and asked exactly where I was short as my calculations gave me 2-3 hours over. I was a bit hot. Again I was told that it would be looked into and taken care of and again no info on whether they fixed it or on my hours for each day. Problem for me was that the floor persons I was used to dealing with weren’t there that day. So tomorrow I’m headed down and checking once again. If it hasn’t been fixed I will be in high dudgeon. When I play I play anywhere from 8 hours on up at a time. I rarely leave the table except to whiz and as I have kidneys like an elephant not often for that. I’m generating rake when there unlike many low limit players who play for 15-20 min then go wandering for a half hour or more, rinse and repeat, basically at the table to be said to be sitting there if the bad beat is hit or to get comps without spending too much. They screw me up on this I’ll go back to the Taj, Harrah’s or Borgata where you can find 3-6 and 4-8 games and the pots are bankroll builders on most tables unlike the family games here. The rake is the same at all the venues so why pay if I’m not going to get something for it? Most of the dealers I’ve come to know have said that they would probably just put me on the list rather than fight about 3 hours, especially since they need players. We shall see.

After the tourney I played a bit of 2-4. Was going to try my hand at NL but no seats available and too many big stacks at the tables anyway. Even a full buy in was going to leave me open to some serious bullying. Since I was only planning on playing ring for a few hours I wasn’t too worried about it. In fact I was just planning on killing time as, if I had left after I got knocked out of the tourney I would have hit the rush hour traffic on either side of Philly and I hate that. So I put the tourney winnings aside to use next trip down for some NL and pulled a couple of $20s out of the pocket to play some limit. No limit tables were available either so I decided to try some stud. First time in a casino for that. Ehhh. Had a frikkin net in the form of the guy to my right. You name it, I needed it, he caught it. Usually I folded after 3rd or 4th street but one hand I hit a straight flush draw on the first 4 cards. Any heart or any 6 was good and the 6 of heart would have been fantastic. The guy then proceeded to catch a pair of 6s up, including the heart and told me he hit a heart on 7th street. They called my 2-4 seat soon after that and I was glad to go. The limit game was fun, family game and chatty. One peckerwood couldn’t seem to read the board as he was raising with 2 pair and trips on 4 card flush or 4 card OES boards but I couldn’t catch him to add some bucks.

We did have a few problems a little later. The table was pretty chatty and even the dealer was getting in to it. While a lot of chatter it wasn’t affecting play, slowing it down any, yet one guy had just sat down started bitching about being there to play poker, not chat. Have no idea what the problem was as the game was moving unless it was the subject matter as there was a lot of joking about college days and our partaking of pharmaceuticals. Maybe that threw him off but he stood up with a tirade about the chatter and stormed off. The worst part about it though was that a woman who had been there the whole time I had been, and chatting away with the best of us, all of a sudden decides that the guy is right, the table was for poker, not chatting, if we wanted to chat we should wander off and chat elsewhere. Even said something about the rules dealing with it. Well one guy said that as long as he was playing they couldn’t kick him off the table for talking and I remarked that if she wanted to talk rules she was folding and betting out of turn for the whole time I was there. Not only that but she had been preoccupied trying to watch the ball games earlier. After being told off she kept trying to move to the other limit table but as they had 9 and we only had 7 the floor kept telling her no way. After her 3rd or 4th time with this action I and the other guy decided we had enough and decided to pick up and leave. It was about time for me to head out anyway so what the hell. Hope I don’t run into the bitch for awhile.

OK, time to head out. Going to see if they got me in the tourney tomorrow and raise holy hell if they don’t. Probably stop over to the Borg to see Riggs and maybe make the acquaintance of anyone else that might be there and check on the Summer Open. Thanks for your attention.

Almost the end of a long weekend

2009-06-07T16:00:00.002-04:00

Let’s finish the weekend up. After a few hours sleep I went back to get my final hours in. Now I’m just looking for some fun and to kill time and that’s mostly what I did yet I did wind up in two big pots and a controversy.

First big hand was when I pulled pocket aces. Preflop it gets capped. Pair of Ks hit the board on the flop along with 2 spades. Crap, just what I needed. Someone bats and I raise just to see what’s happening because in a 2-4 game hardly anyone will bet their trips, they love to try and trap at the $4 level. Couple of limpers and the better reraises. OK, an unusual player, he bets his trips. Either that or he bets his draws like hell. A caller in front of me and with the other limpers behind me I figure I gotta see the $2 even though the As are more than likely shot at this point. Bingo, the turn is the magic A, the A of spades putting the flush draw out there but giving me second nuts. Only quad Ks have me now although the river can also put a potential royal out there. Original better bets, a caller, I raise, another guy comes along, better raises, the other caller drops out, I cap, and the third player also drops. We go to the river heads up. It’s a blank, he bets I raise, he reraises I reraise again and he goes one better. Damn, does he have the quads? He’s been with me all the way and the table murmurings make it known that most realize I have ppAs. I raise once more figuring if he reraises I’m just calling. Yes, you can’t be afraid of the quads and if the bad beat had been Aces full of paint the way it was in other Harrah’s places I would have pushed it to the moon but the had recently switched Bally’s to Quads being the minimum beat so the bad beat was not in play. Also I was just trying to kill time, not looking to clean house, though it would be nice but that’s a nice pot already so what the hell. He reraises again and I call. Should have pushed. He’s moving with the nut flush having the Q-J of spades in his hand. Almost hit his Royal but not quite. Ah well, so I missed out on maybe another $20-30 he had in front of him. Pot was nice anyway. Too bad it didn’t stick around long. Few hands later I shoved most of it over to the guy to my left when he had As full to my Ks full. Only most of it however as I realized he was sitting with A-A by the river. Easy come, easy go.

A bit later I’m in the middle of a controversy when I catch a third K on the river and call Ks at the showdown. The woman mucks her cards on the table but not in the muck pile and before the dealer can sweep them in her brother tells her she mucked the nut flush. She reaches out, turns the cads and sure enough it’s there. The dealer starts to give her the pot and I say no, she mucked. Dealer says that the cards never touched the muck pile so they are still live. I request the floor and as the dealer explains the situation to him I pull another card from the deck. Rather than go with a decision on whether the cards were mucked or not I call the one player per hand rule. She didn’t see the flush, her brother did and he isn’t even in the game, just standing behind her. If he hadn’t said anything she never would have known. The floor actually ruled in my favor on both counts. The one player per hand was a no brainer but he then said that the hand was mucked once she tossed the cards. She made a bit of a fuss but her brother got in high dudgeon and delivered a rant about what went on for a minute or two and stormed off. WTF is your problem, you aren’t even playing? The rest of the time was spent playing for fun and chatting with the couple next to me whom I had run across a couple of times over the weekend. They are one of those retired couples I mentioned earlier who come down on a regular basis to enjoy themselves. Nice people and made the afternoon enjoyable I played until I figured I had enough hours plus a couple extra. Went to the desk to try and find my hours for the month but no one could give me them. Told me to call on Mon. Told them that did me no good, I didn’t want to leave and find a was short an hour or two so that’s why I played the extra. After 2 marathon sessions, a couple of round trips to AC and only about 4 hours sleep I was ready to pack it in so when I figured I had enough plus I finally went home. Most of the day was spent either up around $30 or down about the same and I left on the down note. How down I didn’t realize but that’s another tale.

For those of you still interested in the stroke front the arm is still coming along but progress is in such small increments that I don’t really notice them until after awhile. I just noticed that I’ve lost the spastic movement in my arm when I’m startled or I sneeze or whatever. It used to just fly out of its own accord at such times but now it stays put, moving no more than usual at such times. My fingers are a tad more flexible also. I can bend my thumb to touch my ring finger without much trouble now, something that was damned near impossible a month ago. The pinkie is still out of reach however. I am also near to flipping the bird left handed now. I get about ¾ curl on the fingers and about ¾ straitening on the middle finger. It’s the ability to operate the fingers separately that brings hope. I did find out though that trying to use a bottle opener to uncap a beer is still a risky proposition. Not enough grip strength to hold the bottle down against the force of the opener. Summer’s going to be a bitch if I can’t open beers. I hate cans. Oh well, one step at a time.

Enough for now. It’s a beautiful day here and I think it’s time to go spread some Milky Spore on the lawn since it’s fresky cut and they are calling for rain again in the next day or two. Adios amigos and thanks for your attention.

Frikkin finally

2009-06-03T15:59:00.003-04:00

So I left off looking for a table change after an exceptional run of bad luck and now my bad luck holds. The table is still short, now down to about 6 players but rather than break it they keep it running. It’s been a busy Sat and I guess they feel they can fill it. Thing is, I’m not getting moved from a short table so I head back after wandering for awhile and I at least change my seat. It doesn’t really change my luck except for giving me cards I can keep folding so that helps a bit. I’ve moved to the 9 seat, yes I know, not my favorite, but it puts me to the left of the guy with the racing form and it was a good move. Two guys shortly sit down, in fact for a few minutes the table actually fills, but these two are refugees from a 1-3 NL game. With them in the game, and the 2-5 player, there is a lot of 3 betting pre and post flop. Again the pots are being built but again my cards have gone cold. I guess the way these guys are playing is getting on others nerves since it’s like a revolving door at the table for the next hour or so. The kids have mainly left, out of chips, and the older players taking their place aren’t hanging around long. Just can’t keep a full table and my chance of moving looks slim and my stack is wearing down, slowly but surely. Finally a floor comes over to me and moves me to another table and it seems I’m the subject of some controversy. I don’t know what went on but I hear the one floor mention that I had asked for a table change an hour ago. I gather one floor was going to sit someone there and the other beat him to it with me. There was still a seat or two at my old table so it couldn’t be there was no room, someone else must have wanted that table though I have no idea why. First, it was a stud table and a small one at that so hey could not fit more than 9 at it. I was at the 6 or 7 depending on your count. Most of the seats were occupied by older guys but there was an older woman in the 3 seat and a couple of younger guys with accents sitting in the 1 and 2 seats. The 1 seat was a piece of work. To me there is nothing more pretentious than sitting at a 2-4 table and wearing sunglasses. It’s a joke as far as I’m concerned. It passes beyond pretentiousness to ridiculousness when you have no idea or clue about the game and here we have the guy in the 1. He’s sitting there with his fancy sunglasses and not the foggiest. Dealer, or the table, had to keep explaining to him that it was his turn to act and what that action could be. Kept trying to bet wrong amounts, kept trying to check after there was already a bet and raise, you name it he tried to do it as long as it was wrong. His buddy in the 2 was better; I guess he brought him down for the first time. The worst part of it was though, while everyone starts out new at one time or another, and 2-4 players are usually good and patient about helping beginners most beginners start to catch on to the basics within the first hour or so. This guy however never seemed to learn. Every hand was an adventure and after I was at the table for about 2 hours, he had been there longer, a number of the players started to get pissed because he was holding up the game. We were lucky to be getting 20 hands an hour. The dealers kept a good face on it but they had to be getting pissed as he was costing them tips. My cards were no better here, looked like it was going to be one of those nights, and the game lost the woman and a guy or two and settled down into a short handed table with Frick and Frack in the first two seats, a couple of late middle aged guys next, myself, and then a couple of older guys. I was already down about $120, an amount I rarely go down in 2-4 and pull a few more twenties to stick under the few chips I got left. The guy to my right and the guy in the 10 are fairly aggressive, betting anything. The guy in about the 4 is fairly tight. Frick and Frack are calling stations, especially Frick. Frack can fold a hand once in awhile. Frick however is one of those characters Providence takes care of. He’ll call down with just an A and hit it on the river, or bottom pair and catch the second one. As I was usually the victim of this it was getting frustrating. I did seem to win a couple when he did discover the word fold in the dictionary but I was dropping chips still, though at a lower rate. The guys in the 6 and 10 also bet me off a few pots when their aggressiveness in betting middle pair on a scary board caused me to fold top pair a few times. Definitely not my night. I’m down about $160 when the low point of the night hits and I make a complete jackass move. I get A-J in position and there are 5 players to the flop. Flop comes A-Q-x, two diamonds. Checks to me and I bet with 4 callers. Turn a blank, again all checks and again I bet and I get the tight guy in the 4 and Frick. River is the K of diamonds and again it checks and so do I. The other two flip over their cards and for a moment I thought Frick had turned over a pair of Ks for a set but then I realize the second card was a J. Then I look over and see the 4 seat with Q-7 of diamonds. Just frikkin great I sigh as I toss my cards. Guy to my left, knowing I’m not betting with air, looks at me and says, “Didn’t you have the A?” Yea, I reply, so? He then proceeds to tell me that I have just mucked the winner. I look again and that red 7 was a heart, not a diamond and I had just given Frick the pot with his Ks. Yes, you heard that right, I folded the frikkin winning hand. I am way past donkey; I am now a total jackass. And of all people to give the pot to. I just wanted to shrivel up and blow away. Could it get any worse? I was so used to getting rivered that night that I made the biggest mistake you can; I didn’t double check and make sure. Yes, it wasn’t a huge pot and wasn’t going to make my night but it was the crowning achievement of a screwed up night. Insult to injury. I could only shake my head.

Thing is, after that things started to change. As if the poker gods decided that nothing they could do to me could top the way I just fucked myself I started to get some cards and they actually started to hold. Nothing major or spectacular just then but instead of bleeding chips I started to accumulate some. I had picked up about 60 or so when they decided to break the table. One of the HE tables was down to 4 so they decided to move our 6 over there. There was still one major piece of nincompoopery to come however at this new table. I wound up in the 4 seat at the new table and the 5 was occupied by my buddy with the racing form. Now that the racing was done he had his name on the 2-5 list but nothing was opening he said. He was sitting on a chip rack full of reds so I ventured a guess his night had improved after I left. He said yes and said I should have stuck around as the guy who took my seat wound up walking away up about $200. Great. Also said his horse won its race so he was having a decent night. Table was pretty good, people not afraid to bet and most new how to play. Frack had moved to the table but Frick was sitting out. My luck wasn’t great but I was winning more than losing and with the 5 occupied by my racing buddy I was playing fairly tight. About a half hour or so in two guys come to the table in the 1 and 3 seats. My buddy tells me the 1 had been at his table earlier and was a better. The 3 was a refugee from a 1-3 NL game sitting in because his girlfriend was there. Could get interesting as there was a guy down in the 9 who liked to raise. My luck is still holding and I win a few decent pots though I’m still down quite a bit. The potential to come back is there however as the guy in the one winds up winning a pot over $200 as there was a lot of raising and reraising from the “players” and a couple of calling stations tagging along. Just waiting my chance. I finally get it as a BB special. I pull A-2 suited in the BB and there is a raise down at the other end of the table but it winds up with 9 players in. Board comes A-2-x with two diamonds. I bet, gets down to the original raiser in the 8 and he raises, everyone is coming along and I reraise to 6 and my buddy in the 5 caps it. Hmmmm. Turn brings another diamond and with the amount of players I figure someone hit the flush but I bet just to see where the power lies. The 5 calls and it gets to the other end and it’s raised. Folds to me and I call and now the 5 raises. The 8 calls and so do I. River brings me the miracle A and I check, the 5 bets, the 8 calls and I raise. The 5 folds but the 8 calls with the flush and I take a sweet pot, one that actually puts me ahead for the night so far. My buddy in the 5 says he was surprised I chased the A knowing that there were 2 flushes out there as he had folded the nut flush. I said I might not have had the raise and reraise come in front of me but I was between them and the pot was too big to not call the single bet and then another single bet. I mean, by that point what was another $4 even though it wound up another $8. Wasn’t like I was exactly playing my best poker by this time. After that however my luck really picked up and the pots were pretty good sized as I approached time to leave. It was closing in on about 14 hours at the table and I wanted to get to my motel room and get a few hours of sleep in before it was time to check out. Hated to leave as I had started grabbing some chips but the time and one more hand convinced me I should, one more piece of total stupidity Again in the BB with Q-2 suited, clubs of course. Now, I still had not hot the club flush draw at Bally’s to this point. No matter how many times I had two clubs in the hole and caught two on the flop it just never came. Yet I had started keeping track and it seemed that when I wasn’t playing it and 2 clubs hit the flop that third got there about 80% of the time so CK’s on to something. There was a raise somewhere at the other end of the table and I mumble that they never come for me so I should just fold but it’s hard to fold for $2 when it looks like about a $28 or so pot preflop. I call and the flop hits and Glorioski Sandy, the clubs finally arrived. A-4-5 of clubs hit. Not only hit but only the K kills me as the A made it. I bet and there is actually a raise and I reraise and there are actually a couple of callers. Schweeet. A red card on the turn and again I bet, again a raise and a call and I reraise and two callers. I’m praying, keep it red but the 4th club hits, the 3, and I just know that the caller just has to have the K. I bet the other guy folds and the woman that had been calling raises. Damn, damn, damn I go, it had to hit. Again too much there to fold so I throw in the $4 as I say you have the K, right? She turns her cards and there’s the K and I flip my cards face up to the middle in frustration saying that I finally hit the clubs and that happened. As I’m doing this I hear the woman saying, “I knew you had that 2, I just knew it.” Huh??? Then I hear the dealer say, “straight flush wins”. Wha?????? Yep, my bone headedness for the night is complete; I almost threw away the straight flush. Luckily my frustration made me toss the cards face up instead of face down as I did earlier. I started to really kick myself as when it’s heads up in limit there is no cap on bets and I started to wonder how high it could have gone with her having the nut flush and no pair on the board, having taken it up over $40 a couple of times at the Taj when it was boat over boat, but later when I was thinking straight I realized it might not have gone far for two reasons. First, I hadn’t seen too many players at Bally’s willing to keep shoving, even when they have the nuts. Second, I’m not sure what the rule is at Bally’s for heads up uncapped. At some places it is literal, heads up and it’s uncapped but at others you have to start that street heads up for uncapped to come in to play and we had a 3rd player go to the river with us. Either way I knew it was beddy bye time when I make that goof. I decided to play to the cutoff and then leave and return the next day. As it was I wound up winning 2 of the next 3 hands, who says there is no rush, before I packed it in for the night, or morning as the case stood. I went from $180 down to cashing a bit over $400 when I left.

So, hope everyone had a good laugh at my sheer idiocy and yes, you can bust my stones for it, I only deserve it. Just know Riggs is never going to let me live this down. There’s a bit more to come as I returned again later that morning and it’s still not a normal weekend but you might have to wait a day or so for it as I am contemplating a trip down tomorrow to play some while I am rested. The freeroll period is over so this will be a regular trip and I might even be able to get some NL in. Thurs is double credit day and I’m looking to move my status up so that I can start qualifying for some freebie rooms. If I can get a few nights I can take my daughter down for a couple nights when she is down for the summer and stay there and drive down to Ocean City in the morning for the beach and boards. Thanks for you attention.

Almost but not quite

2009-06-02T18:34:00.000-04:00

Before I start I must mention that I now unofficially hold the record for the largest tips, percentage of winnings wise, in Bally’s, and maybe any poker room’s, history. I probably set it last Fri when an under the gun raise with the hammer brought all folds and I wound up winning the blinds, a whole $3. I graciously gave one to the dealer for a 33% tip. Thought that would never be topped for a total fold preflop at $2-4 limit just ain’t done. However I topped that this past Fri when, in the SB, I completed and had the BB fold his hand for a $2 win. Huh??????? How do you fold that? Hell, if I had been paying attention I would have offered the chop but you rarely see it fold to the SB to begin with but to see the BB just muck, wtf? Well, I took my winnings and again graciously offered the dealer $1 for a tip of 50%. Since I doubt I will ever see $1 winnings as they allow you to chop blinds I think the record will stand for awhile.

Sat. equaled more Bally’s. Needed a monster run of hours to get the qualifying amount for the tourney and didn’t think I was going to be able to do it and still drive home, especially since the late return Fri meant I wasn’t booking out early, so decided to make an overnighter of it. Just one of my many great moves this Sat. Planning to try and get a room down the shore on a Sat morning for Sat night now that Memorial Day has past. Not exactly great planning but that has never exactly been my strong suit. Called Bally’s to see if I could get a room at the poker rate. Do the words fat chance have any meaning? So I searched around on Priceline and Orbitz and such and found a room at the Econo Lodge in Somers Point for a reasonable amount. It wasn’t fancy but all I was looking for was a place to lay the head for a few hours and get a shower in the am. Somers Point, for those not Shore savvy, is right outside Ocean City, about 15 min drive from AC, and noted for 3 things. It has cheap, but decent, motels for those who can’t afford the rates in OC. It has a number of good restaurants right around the causeway over to OC. Third and most notably, it’s where you go to buy your liquor if you are staying in OC and didn’t bring any with you or happen to run out. Ocean City is a “family” resort, i.e. It’s dry. One of the reasons the better eating establishments are in Somers Point. So after the search and breakfast I’m again on the road to the shore. Damn, wish I had bought a place down there years ago when I had money and the prices were reasonable but who knew I’d become a poker nut and the rental prices would skyrocket.

Trip down was uneventful. I was driving down later than I usually liked. I decided to take the back, or old, way down rather than the AC Expressway. As it was late on a Sat morning I wasn’t expecting heavy traffic on the Expressway but I needed gas and a drink so I figured I’d take the scenic route. I shouldn’t be saying this as I’ll probably screw myself up in the future but the old Black Horse Pike is not a terrible drive down to the Jersey Shore and is especially great during the crowded times on the AC Expressway. There can be a lot of traffic and lights at either end as you travel through some strip mall monstrosities but most of the trip is on 4 lane highway with posted speed of 55. There are a few lights along this stretch but it’s mainly farmland, produce stands, custard stands and old auto parts places. The Atlantic Blueberry Co. has its fields along this stretch and you can stop and get flats of berries for about 2/3s the price of berries in the supermarkets during the season. Being the berry lover I am I usually make at least one trip along this route during the summer just to stop there. I “discovered” this route a couple of years ago when I was forced to leave for the Shore on a Friday evening one summer. For the uninitiated, driving to the Shore on a Friday evening between Memorial Day and Labor Day is akin to root canal. Traffic is bumper to bumper the entire length of the expressways, starting on the PA side of the river and continuing until you hit AC. If you are lucky the traffic at least moves around 40. If not, then it would be easier to hike. The same goes for the return trip on Sun night. A usual 90 min to 2 hour ride can take as long as 4-5 hours at the peak of the rush. I have found however that very few people will use the Black Horse. Even in the rush it is usually clear so while I cannot do much about the bridges over the river or the first part of expressway before and after them, I have found that traveling the back roads does make the trip smoother and faster. In fact my return trip this last weekend I saw nary a car on the road while the traffic reports were saying there was an 8 mile delay on the AC Expressway coming out of the city and around the exit for the other Shore points. Now that I’ve revealed this I’ll be all fucked up on future trips. Of course since I probably have very few readers it might not be so bad.

So, on with the tale. A page already and I ain’t even in AC, let alone playing poker. I get to Somers Point and check in to the motel. Get my key and head to AC. Wind up at the poker room in Bally’s around 2 pm and there is a short wait but I’m on a limit table within 15 min. Today I’m looking to make money and not just hours so I have a feeling I’m going to be a pain in the ass to the floor as the table is going to have to be just right. First table isn’t it. Lot of loose passive play, which builds decent pots but no aggressiveness at all, even when some on has the nuts. It’s a family table, a social event. I sit in the 9 seat to start, not my favorite, especially when I’m still a bit tired and my eyes aren’t focusing right. It’s a bitch growing old. I win my second hand at the table when no one bets me off my gutterball on the turn. I may throw $2 in on a gutshot on the flop, depending on the pot, the players and the likelihood of collecting if I hit but will rarely throw the $4 on the turn unless the turn has brought me other outs. I play river rat here though and bet my nut straight after a couple of checks and get about a $30 pot when a couple of people call, including a guy who rivered top two. If he had bet that top pair on the turn it would have been his pot. However he also didn’t raise me with top 2 on the river which saved him a few bucks. As I said, no aggressiveness. There is one older Asian gentleman in the 3 seat who was at least showing a willingness to raise pre and bet out the flop and turn when he was in the hand but not much else. A few hands later the 5 seat opens and I jump in there so I can see things better. It’s a chatty table, lot of fun if I was just killing time but I’m looking to make something today so I know I’m going to be looking for something else soon. The feeling is solidified in a few hands when I grab J-J in the BB and after a bunch of limpers the Asian gentleman raises. I only call for two reasons. I don’t like big pocket pairs in limit as they rarely hold unless you spike the set and also I don’t want to chase the rest of the limpers out if I do hit. Yes it allows more chances to suck out but I’m gambling here for a bit. I get lucky and the flop brings a J on a loose board, no straight or flush draws. I hit perfect so I just check figuring the guy in 3 will bet and I’ll get him. Instead the woman next to me bets and it limps around to me so I raise. I was just going to smooth call figuring that they turn really couldn’t hurt me and I could get the bigger bets but then I figured, what the hell, most of these people aren’t going to understand the implications and are going to throw the extra $2 in anyway, which should make up for those that wouldn’t have tossed in the $4 if the 6 or 3 seats bet. I get tie extra $2 from everyone but one guy who actually starts busting chops, in a friendly fashion, about the check raise. He obviously knew what it meant and just as apparently knew it wasn’t usually done on the type of table we were playing. I bet out the turn and river which ere both bricks, got two callers all the way and the set held against two pair. The table talk turned to joking about me check raising and “how dare I do it” and there was a lot of joking about it but that and the fact that both hands I won someone held two pair and just called, especially on very loose boards, meant that any money to be made here was going to be ground out. So I go looking for the floor and a table change to see what else is out there.

The Floor tells me I’m in luck; they are opening up a new table a bit short so I can move. The new table is the table of my wildest dreams and also my worst nightmares. We start with 7 players. I hate playing limit short handed as the pots usually aren’t there unless it’s a bunch of aggressive players. This table looks like it might have potential though. There are 4 “kids”, an older guy on my right who says he doesn’t know much about the game and a middle aged guy to my left working a racing form. I ask him a question or two about the ponies and find out that he owns a few, trotters, and has one racing that night. He says he usually plays $2-5 NL but he can’t concentrate on that and the races so he’s playing $2-4 limit until the races are over to kill time. If he’s telling the truth between him and the “kids” it could get interesting. It does. I’m sitting in the 7, the guy with the racing form the 8, the kids are in the 1, 3, 4 and 10 and the older guy in the 6. Game starts and I start to believe the guy in the 8. He rarely limps, not afraid to raise and reraise and especially not afraid to fold to raises even if he has $2 in the pot already something you rarely see at this level so he’s probably truthful about the $2-5. The pots are decent as the younger players aren’t afraid to play with this guy and my game tightens up as he’s on my left so I gotta figure that any hand could be a raised one so no dicking around. I’m doing a lot of folding as my cards suck, big time. I wouldn’t even be playing these in a family style game. No K or A suited, no suited connector or gaps, hell no connectors at all unless it’s 2-3 or such. Any paint is coming with a low card for a nice Acey-deucey hand. Finally, a table where there is money to be made and I’m stone cold. This goes on for a bit longer. Some players come, some go but the game remains the same as the movers are a all youngsters, early 20’s who play like they think they are Gus Hanson in the WPT. Guy in the 6 seems to be proving his words also, about not knowing the game as he is playing some real garbage. However it is lucky garbage as he’s sucking out enough to build his stack. Finally I get a hand, pair of ladies and raise pre. The 8 drops but the rest of the table calls. Flop comes 3 small rags, rainbow, and guy in th6 bets and I raise with a couple callers including the 6. Turn another rag and again the 6 bets and I raise and get one caller and the 6. River is a 6 which pairs the board and again the 6 bets and again I raise. Other player drops, 6 seat calls and turns over 8-6 off for trip 6s. I bite my tongue and try to go Zen so I don’t stroke out again. Nice hand some how makes it through my clenched teeth. After all, I want this guy playing those kinds of hands, that’s where money is made. He got lucky, that’s all. Game continues. Little while later I pull A-A UTG and raise. Guy in the 8 calls and guy in the 10 reraises one player at the other end calls as does the small and big blinds and I cap. The 8 seat folds and everyone else calls. Again a beautiful flop for a large pair in limit. It’s a loose, low rainbow, an 8-6-3. The SB checks and the BB bets and I raise, the 10 reraises, everyone folds to the BB, who calls, and I again cap with both guys calling. Turn a brick, BB bets, I raise, 10 just calls and so does the BB. River again pairs the board with a 6 and again the 6 bets and, remembering last time I just call as does the 10 seat. 6 seat turns over 6-4 sooooted this time and rakes a damned good pot, again. Now I’m tiliting, especially as the guy stacks his chips and leaves. If this was online at least 5 guys would be swearing the place is rigged. Maybe CK is right. Two hands later I’m in the SB and I do what I haven’t done in weeks, I complete the blind and check dark starting my move to donkery which will later move to jackassery. I’ll do this in a game where I’m playing for fun and really don’t care about winning or losing but here I’m on tilt and say wtf. The guy in the 8 seat also checks dark and we see the flop. Guy in the 10 bets and the other side of the table call so now I gotta look. Frikkin A, I got bullets again so I raise and the 8 folds and the 10 seat calls and so do a couple of others. Flop isn’t flushy though there is a straight draw. Turn bricks and it checks to me and I bet and 10 calls as does the 3, everyone else folds. River is an 8 filling in a possible straight and I bet and 10 raises and 3 folds. I figure I’m beat and it’s my fault for tilting but I just gotta know what this guy was playing so I call. He turns over 8-6 off, what again? for 2 pair. Now this is running long so I’m going to take a break here, just I was looking to do at the table. Suffice to say I played my button before walking off and wound up having K-K cracked. Yes, I know it’s limit and I expect it to happen but come on, As twice and Ks all in the space of 4 hands. Throw in the Qs the last orbit and you would think at least one hand would have held. Especially since at least two of those hands were played very aggressively by not one but two players. You would think even the biggest of guppies would realize that when two players are capping the pot at least one of them has a big hand and if the flop ain’t got no outs and it’s still being capped your chances of winning are two, slim and none. However I must have pissed someone off as slim never left town and came home to roost to mix a few metaphors. Enough is enough. I get up, go take a whiz and go looking for another table change. I like the aggressiveness here but my luck obviously sucks and I gotta do something to both change it and my mood.

So while I’m taking a break at the table I’ll also .break here to keep this at a reasonable length. More boredom and jackassery in the next installment. Thanks for your attention.

The start of a strange weekend

2009-06-01T21:51:00.002-04:00

Spent the weekend in a marathon poker session at Bally’s. While I’m always trying to make money at poker the trip, or trips as it were, was more of an attempt to pull hours to qualify for their 15K freeroll next week, first place $5K. I made about half the rated hours I needed early in the month and had plan to make weekly trips early in the month with an over nighter with my nephew getting the freebie room somewhere in the mix. Complications over the last couple weeks killed those plans so I went down the last weekend with plans to try for 31 hours of play to qualify. What followed was an experience and a half with lots of fodder for the blog.

The experience started Thurs night with an early sack time as I planned to hit the road early Fri to beat the work rush. Beat the 5 am alarm by a half hour and was on the road by 5. Quick stop at WAWA for cash, coffee and a breakfast sandwich and away I went. Traffic was light and I made it to the poker room by a few minutes before 7. Unlike most times when I was there and there was a 2-4 game running this time the only table going was 1-3 NL. As I am still on a limited bankroll NL is still a reach since I couldn’t afford the double buy in I usually prefer to have to play. Put my name on the limit list and wandered over to watch the NL. After about 30-45 min. there was still no sign of a limit game opening soon and I had gotten a good look at the NL table. Since I was looking to make hours and sitting there idle wasn’t doing it I decided to violate my rule and buy in short so I sat down.

It was a short table 6-7 players and reasonable by which I mean no heavy preflop over aggression. I prefer a post flop game so it’s the type of table I like and why I was willing to buy light. It was a good idea, hours wise, as a limit table did not open up until about 10:30. I wound up playing for a couple of hours and basically held my own. Won a couple small pots and lost a few bets. The lack of pre flop aggression probably bit me in the ass as I hit A-A twice and got no action. Once I got the blinds and once I pulled about $12 with a couple of limpers. As I only raised to $15 both times guess the cards weren’t that great. Only two really memorable hands, one I was in the other I wasn’t but the same poor son of a bitch got bit twice. Guy was to my right and was up a bit looking at his stack. First hand he raised to $15 and the SB raised all in for a buck and a quarter. Guy calls and turns over A-J vs. the SB’s A-Q. Flop hits with J-J-T and table lets out a collective exhalation. Turn however brings the K and there’s and under breath ouch from the table. River a blank and SB doubles. Few hands later same guy raises to $12 and I call with AK. Flop brings an A with two babies and he bets $20 and I just smooth call. Turn is a K and he checks and I shoved my last $45 or so. Yes, I know, I should have been all in on the flop but it ain’t the only, or the worst, mistake I made all weekend though it could have been the costliest. Guy tanks and finally calls and flips A-J and shrugs when he sees the A-K and I double up and am up a few bucks. I drop a few bucks calling preflop raises with A-paint or small pairs and folding to bad flops and they call the limit game. I wind up down about $50. Going to have to try the NL tables when I have the buy ins and am not worried about making hours.

Hit the limit table hoping to make about another 10 hours or so to give me a shot at freeroll. Also needed to stay that long to avoid the rush hour on the Sure-kill expressway between Philly and King of Prussia. Limit poker at Bally’s is an experience. You have an eclectic mix of people. There are the old guys playing hold’em until a stud seat opens up. There are the retired couples playing poker together who would probably have been playing shuffleboard in another day and age, there are the young kids who think they are playing on TV and various and sundry other types. My table was very passive but as I was going for time it really didn’t bother me. You need an aggressive table, or at least a player or two, to make money at 2-4 but at the same time it becomes riskier as the loose play leads to major suckouts. As it was it there was nothing really exceptional about the time at the table, just a lot of standard 2-4 play and fun chatter that killed the time. Only two notable incidents. One “hotshot” kid doing a stutter step check on a draw type turn card and then insisting he never checked after those following him checked and dealer turned the river, an A. While three of us insisted the kid had checked, I said he did but wasn’t in the hand, he had the dealer convinced that the dealer screwed up and the floor agreed with the dealer and the A was reshuffled in and the kid bet and the river bricked and he bet again and won with a pair of Qs. Woman in the 10 seat had the A and would have won with it if not for the controversy.

The woman in the 10 was the other thing of note. She was a poker dealer at Borgata and had been working at the time of the record craps run that just happened. We spent a while discussing that. According to the woman they were lined up 5 deep to get on that table once word of the run had started. The woman setting the record run did not come out majorly ahead and the biggest winner only hit about 25 grand. For a run that long she said the casino got off cheap considering what could have happened with a run that long and a few high rollers. As it was only a low limit table and only 16 players could fit round it at a time the low rollers had the places and probably weren’t going to give them up by the time the word of the run got out so the Borg got lucky. Made for interesting table talk. As it was I got my hours and headed home after playing all the time and breaking even. Wound up down the NL amount and planning to head back down the next day.

More on the weekend for any who can stand the boredom. I will guarantee you will get to bust my chops as I made a total ass of myself Sat night and I will, to my everlasting shame, put it up here. Thank You for your attention for now.

More Bally's

2009-05-29T22:46:00.002-04:00

FYI CK,

Bally's isn't rigged, it just hates me. 4 straight times A or K suited in crubs and flopped 2 more, nada. Next 8 times when I didn't have them but 2 crubs on flop, they got there.

Of poker and planting

2009-05-28T13:30:00.000-04:00

Been a bit of a busy Memorial Day weekend.

Made another trip to Bally’s on Friday. Yes CK, I know it’s rigged. Headed out about 5 in the a.m. to beat the work traffic and came back after 8 at night to miss the work rush the other way. Glad I wasn’t heading down Friday afternoon. With the official opening of the shore for starters and the weatherman calling for sun and temps in the 80s the rush was on. As I headed home the traffic heading down was heavy and this was late. Would have hated to be on those roads around 5-6 that day. Had actually planned a trip down Mon night for an overnighter but was reminded I had a doctor appt. on Tue so got shot down.

Still stuck on the limit tables for the time being but it looked like it was going to be a good day. Was up about $100 in the first half hour. Second hand I was there I raise with suited connectors. I flop open ended with an 8 man pot and bet and get 8 callers. I turn the flush draw and call when someone else bets out. Still 5 players. River brings me the nut straight and there’s a better and I raise. Get two callers and take it down over top pair and 2 pair. Guy with 2 pair starts mumbling about going broke chasing gut shots. I just keep my mouth shut. If he wants to think I was chasing a gutterball then who am I to abuse him of that notion. Anyone who ain’t gonna throw $4 into a $32 pot with another possible $20 behind with open ended and flush draws is more than welcome to sit down and play at my table. Took another 2-3 similar pots early on and started to think it was going to be a profitable day. Silly me. Both the pots and the cards started to dry up.

One of my buddies from my previous trip, the guy who limped and checked called with aces sat down. I eventually got a better read on him if I run across him again. Seems he never actually bets unless he has 2 pair or better. Top pair only brings check calls. Saved me a couple of bucks then and maybe more in the future. Had a couple of others like him at the table though and they cost me a few. One guy though cost me more than a few. He started off by playing passive as hell, check calling with big pairs. 3 or 4 hands I had a big pocket pair and kept betting into crappy boards only to have him turn over a bigger pocket pair. Then all of a sudden he did a complete 180. He started raising blind and throwing in raises on the flop. To make it even better one of the idiots from my last post showed up and he kept reraising and egging this guy on. Pots got big and I got a lot tighter knowing that I was going to have to play hands to 2-3 or even capped bets if I wanted to play. Unfortunately my cards sucked and I went on a folding spree. Now that wouldn’t have been so bad but the consequences of the actions of these two cost me later. While these two were one their wildman spree there was a young kid at the opposite end of the table. He’s in almost every pot with them and these guys are egging him on, trash talking and telling him he should call, or bet or raise or fold. Every time the kid would bet the one, or both, of them would raise him and then start the trash talk. Poor kid didn’t know which way was up. As it was he was making piss poor decisions. He would call a 3 bet on the turn then wind up folding to a single bet on the river and the way he was tanking on these decisions made me think he had at least some sort of hand and wasn’t just folding busted draws. Then these guys, the one in particular, would show the bluff and the kid would get razzed by the rest of the table. Got to the point were this kid became a bulldog and wouldn’t let go of his cards for anything. Actually a way to make money in the long run but became a short run killer for me as he started getting lucky as hell on the river. He’d hold on to bottom pair against my top and catch two pair or trips. He’d hit top pair against my flopped two and match his second card on the river. No matter what I did I couldn’t get him to lay it down if he hit a pair on the flop. It seems he decided he wasn’t going to be embarrassed by being bluffed again. Of course by this time Frick and Frack had left and I was paying for the shenanigans. Couple of others too although a couple of players were making out thanks to his doggedness. Guy knew he was playing bad cards too because when he was forced to show he would show his paired A or K or Q but was reluctant to show his kicker and the dealer kept telling him he had to show both. Other than the fact I couldn’t get this kid off his hands and that my cards sucked big time during the period that there was money to be made I had only one more problem at the table, the cell phone or in particular, one woman’s cell. Nice woman and decent player but she would play a hand or two and then would get up to answer her phone. She spent more time away from the table than at it. If you play low limit at a casino regularly knows that you rarely play a full table. There are always a couple of old guys who play for a while then go wandering. It’s even worse midweek as most of the players are these old guys so you are usually playing 8 handed or so. That just made this woman’s jumping up and down even more annoying. Not that I approve of what the old guys do, that also annoys the hell out of me but for some reason, disappearing every 5-10 min to answer a cell call just got to me. Turn the damned thing off will ya.

The rest of the weekend was taken up with planting. No, no more trees or fruit bushes, just plain old veggies. Seems I’m getting later each year when it comes to getting in the tomatoes. Garden also getting smaller every year. Was a time I had an asparagus patch and I put in about 36 tomatoes, an equal number of peppers of various types, couple of rows of cukes and beans and played around with pumpkins, corn, eggplants, squash, both summer and winter, radishes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce and cabbage. One year I even tried potatoes and other peanuts. Had a fair sized garden and varied success. This year however I’m down to 7 tomatoes, 4 green peppers, 4 red peppers, 4 hot longs, a cherry pepper and a fryer. One reason is that years ago we had no idea what to do with most of the stuff I was growing. Some stuff you had limited production by the nature of the veggie, like broccoli or head lettuce. Others just didn’t produce as well or were small items like radishes or beets. The mainstays however, the tomatoes, peppers, cukes and beans, you could wind up picking 2-3 grocery bags full every couple of days. Had to resort to putting a picnic table out front and a coffee can and put people on the honor system and if they weren’t honorable, who cared, the stuff was going to rot anyway so any donation was ahead of the game. Guess I did tend to overdo things. Alas those days are gone. Just hasn’t had the time, or these days the stamina, to do things like that. Have been cutting back the garden the last few years. The asparagus patch stopped producing a few years ago so we let the lawn overrun it and last year let the lawn encroach over more garden space. Last fall I took up about half the remaining space for the berry canes. Just enough room left for the planting mentioned above and a couple of rows of beans and cukes and even the cukes are getting trellised so they go up rather than out. Even this small amount of plants are a drain when you only have 1 ½ arms and you can’t get up and down on your knees to dig. Had to resort to post hole digger, my grabbing tool and a hoe. Hell of a balancing act, juggling between the three. Got everything in eventually and actually got some rain the day after I finished. Now we’ll have to see how the veggies grow. Hopefully we get some good tomatoes; I’m tired of eating flavorless, pink tennis balls from the supermarket. There was a time you could get nice Jersey tomatoes here during the summer but it seems they have even found a way to screw them up as I haven’t tasted anything good from the store in a long while. As for last fall’s work, blueberries are going great and blackberries are looking like I might get some production next year. Raspberries suck however. May have to do a replanting this fall. Or next spring. On the hole I prefer time spent at a poker table, it’s easier.

Well, time to go. Thanks for your attention.

Atlantic City, Part II

2009-05-18T16:31:00.003-04:00

Played poker on the first day of the trip until about 3 am as had to get up for the beach the next morning as that was the major reason for the trip. Fooled the hell out of my brother as he figured I was going to beg off and play poker all day as we decided to spend a second night there. We drove down to Ocean City and went to the beach at 12th Ave as there is a Mac and Manco’s right there on the boardwalk. Silly us, forgot it was Mon and that the location was only open on weekends. Had to walk down a block or so to get near the open branch. Weather was beautiful, warmer than predicted, up in the 90s but there was a nice breeze coming in off the ocean so it was comfortable. Bad leg made the walk a bit tough but I survived. Bad arm was a different story. I have a collapsible camp chair with footrest I use on the beach. Normally not a problem even though the sand isn’t exactly stable for getting in and out. With my bad arm and not being able to lever myself up and out getting out of it was a real circus. Somehow I managed with a little aid from my nephew. The bigger problem was applying sunscreen. Between the breeze and the bad arm getting sunscreen on my right side was a bitch and it showed later on. I got roasted and had a nice burn for a couple of days, not to mention the itch that accompanied the peeling skin. Scratching with a gimp arm wasn’t exactly satisfying. Overall though the enjoyment of 5-6 hours on the beach in the sun, chomping on some Mac & Manco’s, outweighed the annoyances especially since I found out we won’t be able to get the house we usually rent in Ocean City for vacation this year. Might be my only beach trip this year.

Headed back to AC for some rest and some more poker. Got back to the room and took a nap. The beach is relaxing but the sun is tiring. As a kid I never understood why my parents needed a nap when we got back from the beach when all they did was lie there the whole time. Finally caught on a couple of years ago after I started taking my own daughter there. The sun is a killer for us old farts. Got to the poker room about 6 hoping that the action was a bit more regular than the previous night. If nothing else the table was a bit more chatty and a bit more fun. Play was a bit more like I was used to but the cards sucked early on and I found myself in a hole again. Again I tried pot building when I had potential big draws but again they wouldn’t come. Did hit quads 3 more times, once during the promo time that was supposed to get me the $20 comp, but couldn’t get paid off more than minimum on them. Was down about $150 before the cards started to turn. Wound up getting most of it back eventually by the time the tables were breaking down to one at about 2:30. The final table of the night was the kind of table money could be made. You had a couple of guys playing like it was NL, trying to push people off their hands. You also had 2 idiots going to war with one another, building up the pots with nothing when both were in the same hand. Actually it wasn’t your typical $2-4 table as most of the people there knew what they were doing and with all the raising play was tighter than usual. Unfortunately my cards went further south than Tierra del Fuego. As it was I spent a few hours folding, hit a couple of medium pots and looked like I had hit a few humongous ones only to have one of the idiots catch up on the river to chop. Wound up winning a few bucks on the night and reducing my two day losses to about $40-50. Should have been better. Finally hit the sack around 5:30. Plans were to head back to Ocean City for a few hours and lunch and then head home from there.

Got up the next morning and decided I wasn’t hitting the beach. What felt like n annoying sunburn the previous night was on fire in the morning. My brother said something about leaving then but I said no, they could hit the beach; I would find something to occupy my time so we checked out and headed out to Ocean City. Somehow I got caught for a couple of room service meals that I had no part in. So much for being along for the ride. We got to Ocean City and the beach was put aside. Too much wind even though the sun was bright and the temps were high. Actually the temps went over the 80s that were predicted, up in to the 90s on both days but Tues the wind was really heavy unlike Mon when it was comfortable. So since the beach was out we decided on more pizza for lunch and picking up a few goodies on the boardwalk before we headed home. I behaved myself and refrained from loading up on taffy but was seriously jonesing for some fresh roasted peanuts. My nephew wanted some fried Oreos and caramel corn so while he headed to the junk food stand for the Oreos my brother and I headed down the boardwalk a block or two, him headed for the caramel corn place, me for what I thought was a Planter’s store. Bad move. For some reason the peanut store was no longer there and the caramel corn place, unlike the pizza place, had their year round branch open at the other end of the boardwalk. We headed back to the car. Lots of exercise for my bad leg. When we met up with my nephew he said he saw a nut store a block in the other direction so I told my brother to take the car and meet us there as we decided to walk up there. I really needed more exercise but I wanted peanuts. and my nephew said he wanted some other nuts. Well the peanut shop was right off the corner but that wasn’t were my nephew wanted to go, he wanted cashews or something and said that place was up in the next block so headed up there. I got the large economy size bag of peanuts and went to meet my brother at the car figuring my nephew would meet us there. Got there and brother asked where his son was and I explained. We waited 25 minutes for him wondering what the hell happened. When he finally shows he’s carrying a bucket of caramel corn. Peckerwood decided to walk 8 blocks up the boardwalk to the caramel corn shop without letting anyone know. What the hell did he waste $300 on an I-phone for? Would have been a lot faster if we drove up there plus I wanted to get some myself. Sometimes you just want to strangle them. Well, didn’t want to bother with the drive up the boardwalk so we hit the nearest Wawa, grabbed some beverages and headed for home so that we could beat the rush hour traffic on the Sure-Kill.

Heading home we stopped at the rest area on the AC expressway to pay the toll we missed on the way down. This is where I fucked up. Never send a boy, or a brother to do a man’s job. When we got there my brother and nephew headed off to the admin building to pay the toll while I stayed in the car. All the walking had taken its toll on my legs. They came back saying the woman there had no idea what they were talking about and that we had to call the NJ EZPass violation center and gave them a number. I had an uneasy feeling but we headed off and I dialed the number. Well, the feeling turned out to be right. After playing voicemail run around I finally got warm body and she tells me that they don’t do anything unless we have already gotten a violation notice. And that I should call PA EZPass as they issued our transponders. So I called them. They didn’t have a freaking clue as to what I was talking about and told me I should call South Jersey Transportation Authority which gets me right back to the woman they dealt with at the rest area but by this time we are almost to the bridges into Philly. I explain the whole situation, including the message you get when calling the number on billboard, etc and she’s telling me that the message, and the woman at NJ EZPass, are wrong and she’ll see what she can do about it. In the meantime this farce has taken up almost the entire 90 min trip home and nothing ever got done. Got the violation notice last week. Not only that it screwed up a relaxing couple of days just because someone has no frikkin idea about how to run their agency. All in all I will have to say that the good outweighed the bad and it was needed time away from the BS.

Enough for now. More boredom later. Thanks for the attention.

Atlantic City Trip, Part I

2009-05-17T21:28:00.002-04:00

Went to AC (Atlantic City) on an overnighter a couple of weeks ago. The main purpose of the trip was not poker but beach and sun. They were calling for temps in the 80s at the end of April so my brother and his son decided to get a room down in AC, something they seem to offer slots players that poker players don’t see much of, and then head down to Ocean City, about 15 minutes away, to spend a day sitting on the beach soaking up some sun. Ocean City is also the home of some awesome pizza by the name of Mac & Manco’s and while most of the boardwalk shops don’t open until after Memorial Day M&M keeps one place open all year not to mention opening others on weekends after Easter. My brother and nephew usually get days off weekdays, not weekends and so when things like this are planned I usually don’t get invited as I am working. Being as I am currently without employment at the time I was asked to join them and did so. As we were heading to AC poker was also on my agenda in addition to sun and sand. Water was still too cold to include surf.

We headed down on Sun evening after they both got done work. The weekend had been in the high 70s with even better weather promised so the signs were auspicious. Since the whole plan was my nephew’s I just went along for the ride. He even did the driving and we took his car, which later created a whole ‘nother clusterfuck as his is the only car without an EZPass. My brother took the pass out of his car and gave it to his son. Instead of attaching it to the windshield he tossed it in the console under the dash and of course it doesn’t register the first toll booth we go thru. There is a sign with a number to call if you think a toll wasn’t paid and I dial it up and learn that you can stop at the Transit Authority at the rest area within 48 hours, pay the toll and enclose the receipt in the envelope when the violation notice come in. As the rest area is behind us we decide we’ll stop on the way home and continue on our merry way. Made the trip home interesting.

We get to AC about 5:30-6:00 and head to Bally’s, where my nephew got the room. Get lucky at the parking garage and get a spot near the elevator. If you have never been to AC you won’t realize how rare this can be. Also important as the walk from the garage to the hotel proper is long enough, especially when you are traveling with a gimp, namely me. We get checked in although somehow my credit card winds up being used for security even though I’m only along for the ride. We get to the room and my brother, slot maniac that he is, heads right for the casino. I lay down on the bed figuring to rest a bit and watch some tube before heading to the poker room but the TV choices are very limited so I decide to grab a shower before playing some cards and my nephew heads out to find food saying he’ll meet me at the poker room later. Have never been to Bally’s before and have no idea where the poker room is other than the 6th floor. I take the elevator down, get out and see the sign for poker and ponies. I head in that direction and walk right past it. The entrance is offset at an angle in he same direction I’m walking and the ponies section is in front so I missed it completely until I felt I walked too far and turned around, then it was staring me in the face. Wandered in and wandered to the back to see what action was going.

There wasn’t a lot of action but there were a few tables running. Unlike most AC rooms which spread a $1-2 NL game Bally’s has a $1-3 and there were a few tables going. There were also a couple of $2-4 limit tables, a $1-5 stud game and an interest list for $3-6 limit. Being recently unemployed I could only afford about 2/3s a NL buy in and as I hate playing that without at least 2 buy ins let alone short I knew I was destined for the limit tables. As there weren’t enough players for $3-6 it was no fold ‘em hold ‘em for me.

I usually like limit as I usually come home winners in the 3 figure range and on bad nights my losses are usually under $50. This however was not to be a usual night. While I am used to loose, passive play at these tables I have never seen play like I did at these tables. Passive was hardly the word. I have no idea what the hell these people were even doing at the tables unless it was as my nephew said, that they were sitting there hoping to hit part of the bad beat jackpot. Bally’s bad beat doesn’t only pay the players at the table it takes place at but everyone in the room at a hold ‘em table and my nephew could have been right. These folks seemed to have no interest in winning pots. Check call was the order of the day even when someone was holding the nuts or near nuts. In one hand I flopped trip tens OTB and bet every street as it was checked to me. Had 4 callers on every bet and at showdown some woman had wound up flopping Qs full. Second nuts and this woman check called every street. Not check raise but check called. WTF? Another guy had PPAs at least 5 times and check called with them no matter what the board. No preflop raises, no bets, just checks and calls. I started to wonder what rabbit hole I had fallen down. OTOH, who says you can’t bluff at a $2-4 table. Twice I got away with bluffing with the hammer. Figured, what the hell, as strange as the night was going it couldn’t hurt to try. Won 3 times with it, 2 bluffs and a flopped 2 pair the third time. That and hitting quads were the highlight of the night however. Due to this strange play I really couldn’t make any money on my big hands and I was bleeding chips on my decent ones. Since no one would bet their hands I had to bet out my big hands and thus couldn’t get any raises or reraises in to build up pots so what normally would be big stack builders were decent pots at best. On other hands where I would flop TPTK or TP2K and it would get checked to me I would bet out every street only to have some one call me down with an over pair in the hole. Drove me frikkin nuts. Bet your damned hand will ya. Between that and my pot building bets and raises on draws that never hit I was bleeding profusely and the big hands that hit never got me the kind of pot that repairs the damage. BTW CK, the crubs never came, at least when I played them. I dropped close to $200 early on though I recovered about half of that later on. My nephew wound up doing a lot better winning close to what I lost. Never did really get a handle on the style of play though.

Another thing that puzzled the hell out of me was the play when someone would actually play a hand. I switched tables a bit in. Asked for a switch earlier but the floor seemed to forget me and it took awhile before I made the move. At the new table the play was a bit more what I was used to, though still really passive but some hands actually did get played. Now I am used to check calling at this limit as people chase but again I saw something I wasn’t really used to. You would have two or three checks to start a round then someone would bet and you would get the occasional raise and even reraise. As the action got back to the early players these people would call the 2 and 3 bets. WTF again? I understand check calling a bet but if you are going to check call 2 and 3 bets why the hell aren’t you just betting out in the first place? It’s a good thing we had a room because I don’t think I could have made it through the night without being able to drink these folks had my poor head spinning so much. At least the cocktail hostesses were prompt and friendly.

As far as the poker room at Bally’s itself goes I say it is menza menz. The room itself isn’t real large and there is nothing particularly fancy about it. It’s tucked in behind the racing book so it’s not obvious for bringing in the walk up trade. It is away from the casino floor so it’s relatively quiet though some of the NL players can get real noisy. It has a separate tourney section and runs some fairly low limit tourneys. Most of these however seem to be speed tourneys which I have no interest in playing. They are offering a $15K freeroll for those who put in at least 60 hours at the tables this month. Most of the floor persons were very friendly but I can’t judge their competence until I do some research. I’m not sure whether comps are $.50 or $1 an hour but either way I put in at least 30 hours my last two trips there. At minimum that’s $15 in comps. They also have a promotion where anyone who gets quads gets $20 in comps. I qualified for it once. However I looked at my comp account online and it seems it has only gone up $11 which means something isn’t getting reported right. I’m not that worried about the comps but I do want to make sure my hours are being reported properly in case I decide to go for the freeroll qualification. My nephew put in 10 ors at the tables our last trip down and when he asked the floor about his hours she told him 5.5. Definitely have to check up on them to see what’s going on.

Well this is getting a bit long so we’ll cut the boredom here and follow up on the beach and another night of poker n our next post. Keep those cards and letters coming and thanks for your attention.

Results from the fall

2009-05-15T13:46:00.001-04:00

Been awhile since I’ve bored ~~many~~ all two of my loyal readers, partly because I’ve been busy, partly because I’ve been lazy. Still feeling lazy but figure I have got to do something different and it’s time to try and get back into some sort of routine again so I figure I start here.

Busy is both in looking for work and clearing up the loose ends from my former place of employment. Finally got my IRAS opened up to get my 401K moved. Still dicking around with COBRA. I opted for it, with my condition I couldn’t do anything else, but I am trying to get this subsidy that came in with the stimulus package straightened out as paying only 35% of the cost right now is really necessary. They say they are working it out with the health provider and payroll company but as far as I can see that should have nothing to do with me. I read it as my part consists of filling out a form to see if I qualify and I either do or don’t and if I do I pay the 35%. Everything else has to do with the former employer and the Feds. Can’t seem to find out what’s going on either as either they aren’t responding to my emails or they are blocked. Hard to tell which. I’ve sent a number of them from both my online and Outlook accounts. About half have come back NDR, the other half, nada. Have put delivery and read receipts on the Outlook emails and those that weren’t NDR haven’t sent back a receipt so I have no idea whether I’m blocked or being ignored. Guess I may have to make a phone call next week. Still have to make a visit there since I just remembered the other day that I left a piece of equipment there and going to have to pick it up unless they feel like shipping it to me. Since everyone but the HR person has been treating me like a leper since I left it’s not a call or trip I really feel like making. The way things have gone over the last few weeks makes me think that a remark made by someone about a month before I was let go was taken very seriously. More on that later.

Busy has also been looking over the south 40 and checking out my work of last fall. Results are about 50-50. Have had a lot of rain so far this spring so I’m glad I got the plants in last fall. It was tough but this spring it would have been damn near impossible. On the bad side, the hollies didn’t make it. They were so small however I think I’m going to reorder and put them in pots for a year or two and see how they do that way. The spruces have all but given up the ghost though they went in so late I wasn’t expecting much there though one seems to be hanging on. The cherries are 50-50. The Black Tartarian is doing well but the Bing also went in late and it’s just looking like a stick. Since I already have a Bing doing at least the right one is growing since you need two different verities to get fruit. Both my walnuts look like kindling. The new one doesn’t seem to have taken; it’s the other that has me pissed. It’s about 4 years since I planted it and it was doing well, about 5 ft high and an inch around. Some buck used it as a rub and seems to have killed it. Time to get out the bow. The Japanese maples were both doing well until someone decided that since the weed trimmer was out of action they had to get real close with the lawn mower. Well the blades didn’t get it but the edge of the deck did. What’s left is still growing but if it survives it’s going to look funny with a crooked trunk. The other is doing well. The surprise is the freebie red maple that the Arbor Day Society sends with your order. Another late planting I really didn’t think it was going anywhere specially since the other red maples were leafing a month ago yet lo and behold the damn thing has put out a few leaves this week. Damn things are the Timex of the tree world. Another red maple I got years ago has been transplanted 4 times, once in the midst of summer and it thrives. Wish my walnuts were like that. This leaves the berries. The blueberries are doing well. Of the 15 planted looks like only one, so far, ain’t making. Thought it was going to be 3 but the other 2 have started kicking up new leaves from the roots. The blackberries are doing just as well. 14 of the 15 canes are sprouting. Going to have to set up the trellis soon. Raspberries are a different story. The goldens seem dead. See nothing coming up around them. The reds were about 50% but Dad went through the rows with the tiller and was a bit frisky. Looks like about 3-4 canes still surviving. Good thing I prefer blackberries. Normally I would be planning on replacements for this fall but looks like I’m going to have to wait until the financial situation straightens out.

Busy also meant a bit of poker but this has gone on long enough so I’ll discuss that in my next post. Thanks for the eyeballs.

Life's a bitch

2009-04-24T11:26:00.000-04:00

OK, time to make a little noise. I am still alive, contrary to popular opinion and/or wishful thinking. While there has been a lot going on the last month I just haven’t felt like writing about anything. As some of you might have gathered from my last post my ass is now out on the street, employment wise. After 18 years I was “restructured” to the unemployment line. The last few weeks have been given over to the general depression that follows such an event and navigating my way around the world of unemployment. Getting compensation, COBRA, finding a broker to rollover my 401K, not something I’ve been experienced with lately. Add in the regular gym trips to rehab the arm and things are a bit busy at times. The gym trips are especially important. Finding a job at my age is going to be tough, getting one with a crippled right arm is going to damn near impossible so I need to get it into working shape ASAP. Not that I wasn’t trying before, just that there is even more incentive now.

With everything else going on there hasn’t been a whole lot of time, or money, for poker so no tales to really bore you with. Right after I got canned my nephew and I made a trip to AC as I wanted to pay off my Christmas gift to him, an entry into a $100 tourney, while I still had some cash available. We wound up playing at Showboat, a place I usually do well at for tourneys but my cash play there sucks. Well, this time my tourney play also sucked. Bled chips early. I would get a small to medium pair in early to middle position an, depending on the cards and position, limp or make a 3xs raise. The guy right to my left would go on to raise. In most cases I planned to fold yet by the time it would get back to me there a 5 or 6 callers in the hand and the pot is just too big not to go set mining because the raise wasn’t that big compared to my stack size and if I do hit I’m gold. Of course I didn’t hit and as this happened about 5-6 times I bled a good bit of chips. The way these guys were calling I was just dying for pp As but no such luck there either. I went out around the 4th level when I shoved with TPTK on the flop and the caller with the pp caught his set on the turn. Ah well. The nephew did much better than I but missed the cash, going out around the bubble. As I waited I played some cash thinking that maybe since I sucked at the tourney I could do something there. So much for wishful thinking. Cash ran true to form and I sucked at the tables losing about 2/3 of my buy in. All in all a very unprofitable day.

Well, making a trip to the Shore this weekend, temps supposed to be in the 80’s. Most of the time will be spent lounging on the beach but I hope to be able to afford some poker if only 2-4 limit, which is usually pretty profitable for me. Hopefully will feel like boring you with some stories then. In the meantime, thanks for your support.

Someone's happy

2009-03-26T17:11:00.001-04:00

Another wayward vagabond is on the street

Crap cops are alive and well

2009-03-16T18:03:00.001-04:00

A break from my ~~boring~~ idle poker ramblings for a bit. First off I would rather be writing about what a wonderful time I had at Eh-Vegas. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. Not that there wasn’t a wonderful time, I’m sure there was, just that I wasn’t able to make it. When I got back behind the wheel 2-3 weeks ago I was sorely tempted to make the run. Hell it was the thought of making the trip that was one of the motivating factors to start retraining the arm that quickly. WTF, it’s only a 7 hour run, a walk in the park in my old traveling days compared to when I was nonstopping to Chicago, Sheboygan, WI, or Whitewater Lake in WI. Well this weekend showed me it was a wise decision not to attempt the trip. I’m not even ready for an AC poker run let alone a real road trip. Most of my driving since I started again has been mainly really local, to work, the store, the local RPT game, nothing really over 15 mile. While I feel the arm gaining strength there are still times I have to get it out of the way because it has grown tired or it hits me with a bit of pain. Saturday I took it up a notch. I went to a game a bit more than just a 5 min ride from the house. When I got knocked out of there early I decided I wanted to hit the farmer’s market. They have a lot of great stands there but in particular there is a dried fruit and nut stand with exceptionally cheap prices and a candy stand that is the same not to mention it is one of the only places left to buy Jujubes. They are only open on Fridays and Saturdays and I usually head up there when I am jonesing for black licorice, nuts or jerky. Saturday I was jonesing for fruit and nuts so off I went after the poker game. Well between the poker game, the trip to the farmer’s market and a few other odds and ends I wound up putting about 50-60 miles on the car and by Saturday evening my right arm, the good one was tired. So if the right arm got tired with that little bit of driving because the left on can’t spell it yet I’m definitely not ready to hit the open road. On a brighter note however I hit the gym on Sunday and was able to get in a whole raft of exercises on the arm. I’m paying for it today but it felt good.

Now here is what ~~all two~~ the throngs of my loyal readers have been waiting for. The crap cops are alive and doing well. No shit. This weekend I get a call from the rehab hospital I was in that didn’t have to do about money. Now that they are finally paid off they decided that it was OK to do a follow up study. They wanted to know how I felt about their services and how satisfied I was. In addition they did a follow up on me asking questions about my progress. How was I walking? Any problems getting in and out of the tub to shower? Was I shaving? Didn’t know how to answer this one. Shaving for me can be problematic at the best of times. I might not be shaving but it’s probably more because I’m lazy and hate to rather than any result of the stroke. Then, at the very end, they actually asked it. It shouldn’t have surprised me but it did. Out came, The Question! Was I having any problems moving my bowels? Cripes, these people just don’t give up. Couldn’t help it, I totally cracked up. Makes me wonder if I said yes if they would have Fed Exed a laxative over. It must be ingrained. I mean, I can understand them worrying about it while I’m in the hospital. They have to play CYA, make sure no one is suffering and they don’t have complications on their hands but to ask it in a follow up survey? Sheesh. It was good for a laugh though.

OK, time to wrap this one up. Will be back with more boring poker stories in the days to come now that I’m out and about. Thanks for lending me your eyeballs.