Wow...can't believe it's Friday and the last full week of August has passed us by. Amazing how time flies.
Actually played some poker last night...was able to steal a couple of pots from weak players and then have my hands hold up when they hit...walked with a tidy $194 in profit, which seriously helped the bankroll. No hands to speak of, but my AA held up when I slowplayed to a pre-flop raise (cold call in late position) to see a ragged flop of low cards...pre-flop raiser (UTG) fired, 2 players folded and I cold call again. Second club hits the turn and I re-raise his bet. Third club hits the river (I had Ace of clubs) and he check-calls my river bet, turning over 9-9 to my AA...he did have a gutshot straight draw on the river but missed and then paid me off with his mid-pair, which I was thankful for.
My only suck-out of the session was hanging around for no reason with AKs on a missed flop and turn, calling min bets in a multi-way flop and catching a K on the river to win the pot against QQ that had been leading the betting....any shows of strength and I would have been gone, but with 4 people calling down the pot, it was too good to let it go...donkey poker, I know, but sometimes it pays off.
Best hand of the session, came when I get to see a free flop with 4 limpers with 62 suited...flop comes down 3-2-2 and I'm figuring I'm in good shape. I check from the BB and call the single bet (as do the 3 others). Turn brings another 3 and now I'm in great shape, barring a A3 or something like that...not putting anyone on 33 at this point, although it is a possibility. I check, MP bets, 1 fold, a call and I raise. MP calls and LP folds. The poker gods smile on me and deliver the case 2 on the river, putting a boat on the board, but giving me quads....I bet, MP raises, I reraise and he caps the pot, showing his slowplayed AA and rivered boat and watching me rake the pot with quads from my monster 62s. He pretty much melted down at the table, and i reminded him that he limped with his AA and let me see the flop for free, after which, he was behind the entire hand. He shut up after that and soon left the table. Slow playing AA is nothing but trouble.
Not sure if I'll get any poker time in over the weekend...Jen is working tonight and tomorrow night, so I'll be managing the kids for the evening. Bath night tonight should be a fun time, as Alan has developed a healthy fear of bath time for some reason. At least the girls are used to the routine, and Danielle is almost completly on her own in the bath now, so that will help out. Not to mention balancing time with WoW after the kids go to bed....anyway, time to run.
not much to report...played some poker over the weekend with positive results...picked up about $80 in the one session I was able to squeeze in between travelling to Toledo for my cousin's wedding.
Spent the past two days in Chicago....no poker from there thanks to the lockdown on the company laptops keeping me from installing UB anymore...sigh. Going to be pretty busy over the coming weeks, so updates may be pretty sporadic.
Not much to note today on the poker front...haven't had the time or desire to play over the last couple of days. With the new desk purchase, we've been working to rearrange furniture and such between the new upstairs office space and the kids area in the basement. Still need to carry some pieces of furniture upstaris from the basement, but that will probably have to wait for the weekend.
Had the opportunity to meet up with my good friend Jason last night, as was in the area interviewing for a new job over in Minster, Ohio today. Good luck with the interview Jason...we're all pulling for you!!!!! Spent the evening with Jason and the family at a Bob Evans over in Springfield. Was a nice time, but the kids had a tendency to dominate the activity, between entertaining Jason to Alan getting fussy...had hoped to be able to talk more one-on-one with Jason, but just didn't pan out. Hopefully he'll get the job and we'll be able to see more of him and his family in the near future.
Anyway, got home, got the kids off to bed and thought about playing some poker. Decided I was tired and not focused enough for a session and opted for WoW for a couple of hours. Hooked up with some guys to complete a minor quest, which we did after recruiting a couple of other guys...so that was a nice bonus for the evening...pushed me to level 19, so I should have no trouble hitting 20 by the end of the weekend to hook up with Burton when he comes back from his vacation. Did some additional character clean-up this morning....buying and selling, auctions, etc, then headed off to complete a couple of delivery quests before coming into work this morning. Nothing much to note.
Should be a pretty laid back day here....we're having a 'Field Day' today during lunch and ealry afternoon....not sure what they have planned, but there are tents and such set up outside, and the weather is perfect, so we'll see what they have in store for us.
Well...pretty quiet weekend. Jen worked Friday and Sat evenings, and then opened on Sunday for a short shift (9-1). This left me with some time to play poker and WoW after making sure the kids were down for the night.
Pretty much stuck with WoW for the majority of the weekend. Hit level 17 yesterday and started to upgrade my armor and such...finally. Not sure where this dude is headed overall, probably a tank/healer as that seems to be what I'm focuing on now. I REALLY wish he had a ranged attack, as I tend to run into most of my problems when I'm trying to fight one dude and 1-2 more show up....one-on-one I'm in pretty good shape, but I can't manage the multiple opponents. Would be nice to target and drag each guy out to me and then deal with him, rather than having to wade in and take on all comers. Oh well. Making some friends and such in the game, so that has upped the fun level.
Played 2 freerolls and 3 cash table sessions over the weekend. $5/10 cash table sessions posted a +$180 for the weekend. Nothing to speak of, other than one hand that cost me some initial profit that I had to fight back for....
me - AQh on the button. One EP player limped in pre-flop and I bump. SB folds, BB calls, EP also calls. Flop - 6-Q-Q rainbow (so I flop trips with the A kicker....nice). Check to me...I bet, BB calls, EP raises(?), I reraise, BB folds, EP caps(???) and I call. At this point, I had him on either Qx or AA/KK....all of which I beat at this point, so I feel I'm golden for a nice pot. Turn adds a 7 to the board. EP bets and I call. River adds a 10...no flush and only a weak straight draw. EP checks, I bet, EP raises and I call to see him flip over 66 for a flopped full boat. Ugh. At that point in the session, all the profits I had accumulated were gone and I had to start to rebuild. Luckily, the cards continued to run well and I was soon back up $80 before having to quit the session.
Also played some nickle/dime no limit on Titan, after they gave me a free $5 to mess with again...I have that up to $12 now....will see how far I can run it up in no-limit play.
The two tourneys were nothing to speak of....busted early in the Cardplayer.com freeroll on UB...late in the first hour and I get QQ, only to run into AKs that flops an A and IGHN.
Also played in a 100k qualifier on bodog.com. Started with about 60 players and we were down to 30 and into the second hour. I was sitting in the top 10 in chips with about 8k and was one of 2 chip leaders at the table. Blinds 100-200 (I think)....
2 players limp and I see 55 on the button. I decided to raise the pot and see where everyone is, so I drop 800 into the pot...blinds both fold, EP limper folds, LP to my immediate right calls.
Flop: 10-10-7 rainbow. LP checks and I put in a pot size bet (1000 into a 1300 pot)...he reraises me an extra 500. I found this an odd reraise, as we had comparable stacks. If he has a 10, then he smooth calls and tries to milk me on the turn and/or river. Same for a draw or overpair...I don't put him on a straight draw, so he either has an overpair (which I doubt from his pre-flop play)....anyway, I don't want any additional cards to fall if he has AK or somthing, so I push all in...he hesitates for a second and then calls with AhJh?????? WTF?????
He calls all his chips with a missed flop and needing a runner-runner draw. Of course, he catches a heart on the turn to make it interesting before spiking a J on the river to send me to the rail. I ask him how he made that call with nothing but overcards to the board and he says..."I don't know".
If anyone reading this can give me some insight on how I should have played the hand differently (outside of not committing all my chips with 55) please let me know...I think I had the right read on the situations and just got really unlucky to not be the chip leader after this hand.
One last thing...purchased the new computer desk (thank you poker.com) on Saturday. Looks really nice...I'll post pics tonight of the new set-up.
Well....coffee in hand and only 4 hours to put in at the office today...wheeeee. Was a gorgeous drive into work today, had the windows down, about 70 degrees. Perfect.
Started the day off with a nice session on UB....Played for about 20 minutes on a shorthanded $5/10 table and walked with $100 in profit. During the time on the table, had JJ, KK, AK and A-10 all hit or hold up to win pots, so that was nice to see for a change after getting quality hands decimiated during the session the other day. always nice to start the day with a boost to the bankroll.
On a different note, I'm considering a lawsuit against the Ohio Lottery Commission. I had received a coupon in the mail for a free $2 scratch off when I buy a $5 scratch off...so when i stopped yesterday to get the MegaMillions tickets, I snagged a WPT (World Poker Tour) scratch-off and a generic $2 dollar ticket. Didn't hit on the $2, so started scratching the WPT ticket. First hand, I hold JJ against the house 7s8s....start scratching and see the board come J, J, 9, 10.....so I think I have a winner and scratch the prize to see $150,000.....I about pass out and I think I had a heart palpitation....I look closer at the numbers and realize that I do indeed have Quad Jacks, but that the house has 7-8-9-10-Js for a straight flush and I loose. I showed the ticket to Jen and she had to look at it twice to see the same thing...I wonder if I could get anything for the 5 minutes of mental anguish??????
Anyway, Jen's scheduled to work all weekend at B&N, so i doubt I'll get much poker or WoW time in until the evening after the kids all crash.
Congrats to Pauly and the gang for making it through another WSOP...great job guys. Hope to see you all there next year.
Hello all. How about a quick Thursday update while I'm working on my fre cup of coffee this morning? Work has been fueling the masses with free coffee, donuts and fruit all week in an effort to boost morale and reward everyone for the hard work going into the SAP implementation that we've been working on. everyone seems to enjoy it, but for the carb counters, donuts and fruit don't work that well, so I just suck down some coffee all morning....free is good.
Anyway, here's a quick run down of what has been going on this past week.....
Monday - stayed up way too late with a long poker session and then a longer WoW session. Poker was a disappointment, as I had my first significant loss (~$200) in awhile at the $5/10 tables. The table had a few maniacs on it, playing 50-60% of the hands dealt and taking down huge pot after pot with premium hands like J6os, 92s, Q3os, etc. My pocket pairs were getting cracked like nobodies business and I struggeled for about 2 hours to try and play tight and make up the loss....was as close to even as -$75 and then lost a $100+ pot with AKs when I flopped the spade draw and a pair of Kings, only to miss the flush draw and loose to a flopped set of 2s....sigh.
Monday ended (or is it Tuesday began) with a WoW session until about 3am. I'm working on getting my Paladin up to a level that I can quest with Burton and Wood (they're both up around 22)...I'm at 13 right now after playing last night. Anyway, I'm pretty addicted to the game right now and enjoying the time away from poker.
Tuesday - sepnt the day at the Ohio State Fair with the family and mike and Leah. The girls had a great time (pictures coming tonight), as they're now tall enough to ride alot of the kids rides by themselves and they loved it. They even mastered the giant slide (the one with the burlap sacks). It was a perfect day, we ate way too much fair food (one day off the diet won;t hurt....and the fair fries are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good). Alan was great all day, and even seemed to prefer hanging with me rather than Jen, which was a first, as he usually prefers clinging to her.
We did have a repeat showing on the house Tuesday evening, but apparently the couple has moved us from their "top 1-2" house to "out of the top 3" house, so it looks like we're staying here through the winter. Jen is a bit depressed about the whole thing, as now we're staring the adjustable rate ARM in the face for next June. Short of winning the lottery, we'll have the house on the market in April and try to unload it next spring as quickly as possible. Let's just hope the Fed doesn't raise the rates again.
Wednesday - nothing of note yesterday....played a bit of WoW yesterday evening with Burton. He helped me complete a couple of very tough quests and level up to 13 in the process. I'm finally getting some quality items to outfit my dude with, so that's pretty cool. Watched the Mythbusters dudes play with Mentos and diet coke, so that was pretty cool as well.
Last thing to comment about is the WSOP....The final table has been set as follows (snagged the data from Pauly at Tao of Poker...thanks Pauly)....
Chipcounts courtesy of PokerWire: 1 Jamie Gold 26.5M 2 Allen Cunningham 17.7M 3 Richard Lee 11.82M 4 Erik Friberg 9.725M 5 Paul Wasicka 7.97M 6 Doug Kim 6.77M 7 Rhett Butler 4.815M 8 Michael Binger 3.14M 9 Dan Nassif 2.84M
Allen C. is the only 'named pro' left in the event and has a good shot at taking the bracelt and $12 million. Now, the interesting thing is the story that broke yesterday regarding Jamie Gold on ESPN.com. In short, it looks like the guy may play for second place as opposed to winning the whole thing, as he has expressed that he doesn't want the spotlight and attention that winning the hole event brings.....now, this may be true, or could be a psychological ploy against his opponents to get them to play more hands against him, thinking that he is dumping chips. Will be interesting to see how things unfold today. Regardless, everyone on the list above is guaranteed more than $1.5 million....sigh.
Anyway, coffee is getting cold and I need to get some work done now. ttfn.
I think I mentioned in a previous post that I had found a potential car for my mid-life crisis in 2 years (when the van gets paid off and I can upgrade from the Ford Focus)....here is the link for anyone interested....
Anyway...the local paper ran a nice article about the car...only problem is the production model (due in 2007) was running a base proce of $80,000. Now, if we're concerned about the environment and foreign oil...why produce a state of the art electric car that no one can really afford? I mean I know they want to make money on the car, but bloody hell...I can't afford $80k on a car, no matter what the mileage. Too bad too, as it sounds like a very nice vehicle.
Didn't play much poker over the weekend....2 short sessions (+$72 and +$12). Instead played a ton of World of Warcraft. I'm now the proud owner of a level 11 Paladin (Martello) hanging around Goldshire on the Emerald Isle server. Drop me a note if you see me online. Have some work to do to catch up with Burton and the gang (all currently level 20+), but it's a fun game and much more action oriented.
Ugh...what a week....the temp and humidity finally broke last night....actually was able to drive into work with the windows down for the first time in 2 weeks.
Doctor confirmed the poison ivy on my neck and face, so I'm hopped up on roids for the next week. Good thing I'm not a professional athlete or anything....lol.
Played a quick bit of poker last night on BoDog....I'm not a fan of their site layout....buttons seem small and action is pretty slow. But as long as I'm freerolling in some tourneys, I'll make do. Played in another 10k qualifier last night...was doing well...top 10 in chips early on when I ran into the following hand....
Blinds $10/20 - I'm on the button with KK, 8 players at the table. I have about 3k in chips
Two mid position players limp...guy to my right limps (tilted luckbox) , I pop the pot to $200 to weed out the table and/or collect the limp-ins....BB calls me (2.2k) and luckbox calls.
*** side note...Luckbox had just lost about 1/2 his stack to a guy that busted his set of aces with a rivered straight, so he was on a bit of tilt.***
Flop comes 2-A-4 rainbow....the A scares me a bit, but both players check to me and I put out a 1/2 pot continuation bet to see what happens...they both call and I gain little information on where my KK stands....I'm slightly worried about Ax at this point, but the table had been fairly tight/ABC poker, so the $200 preflop bet should have scared Ax off.
Turn adds a 5 to the mix....so a straight is now possible...so if anyone stayed in with 33 at this point, I'm toast. Checked to me again and I have to make a decision....I either check and relenquish control over the hand, or bet out again and continue to show strength. I push another 1/2 pot bet into the table....BB folds and I get another call from the luckbox. A J falls on the river, prompting a min bet from the luckbox ($20 into a pot of $800????). I reraise him, putting him all in and he gladly calls, showing his J4 suited for 2 pair.
I proceed to call him a huge donky for playing the J4 suited into a $200 pre-flop raise...he said that the $200 raise wasn't that much (WTF - at 10/20 blinds....10x BB raise isn't too much????). He then states that it was a tilt call and chase to the river...then calls me out for not being scared of the A on the flop. I end up loosing about 1/2 of my stack on the hand and get put on tilt for a few hands.
I rebuild my stack over a few hands until I push too hard with A9os and run into a slow played AJ on a A-5-7 flop...he cold calls my late position raise pre-flop and pot sized bet post flop. He check on the turn (10 I believe) and I push to try and chase him off the pot....he hesitates for about a minute before making the call....I don't improve on the river and am left with about $300 in chips with blinds at $30/60....I double up once with AK and then steal some blinds to get back up to around $900 in chips....I push all-in pre-flop with 33 from late position and get called by AK....he flops a K and I'm busted in 17th place. In hindsight, I should have slowed down on the A9 hand, but the guy had been playing pretty weak the entire tourney and had folded to aggressive bets in previous hands...guess he was willing to risk it all with AJ.
Didn't play any $5/10 last night or this morning...watched 'Failure to Launch' with Jen last night (good movie, although I could have done without the naked scene with Terry Bradshaw...ugh)and then grabbed a couple of extra snoozes on the alarm this morning before coming into work. Probably no poker tonight, as Mike and Leah are coming over for some steaks and such. Should be a fun time as always with them. Hopefully will play some poker over the weekend...but will be installing World of Warcraft tonight with Mike, so I may spend some time exploring that game during my 10 day freee trial.
One last thing...if anyone reading this is on UB, please drop me a comment with your screen name. I had to recently re-install Ultimate Buddy and lost all of my old contacts, as then new install didn't carry over any of the names/notes from the previous version....ugh. For anyone that gives me a screen name, I'll respond with the fish list I've accumulated over the last couple of weeks if you're interested.
As I mentioned below, I had a nice run of positive session to finish July and eat into the hole I had dug early in the month. August had started out well, with the positive session on Tuesday evening. The run of 8 positive sessions in a row ended yesterday afternoon when I sat down at the computer to do some bills and play a quick session...ended up at a full table of some of the loosest and craziest poker players on the planet....players capping pots with 58os and flopping straights, AA and KK getting cracked constantly, flush chasers galore...seemed like the table had alot of international players (which is unusual for UB) and they were all playing hyper aggressive. I tightened up my play, but had AA and KK cracked by crap hands and then I tilted into playing crap hands as well....lost one medium sized pot with Q9 when the flop came Q high and I bet down to the river to loose to a slowplayed AQ.....then two of the loosest players on the table decide to berate me on my hand choice as they scoop pots with 10-4os and such...crazy. Anyway, I ended that session down $170, breaking my string of positive finishes at the tables.
So as of 7pm last night, I was -$70 or so for the month.
Fixed that last night and this morning...hitting a more normal table last night for +$125 and then a super quick session this morning before work for +$72. So I'm back to +$130 for the month and on a two session streak again.
Not much else to speak of....fantasy football is gearing up again. I'm organizing a league here at work and have drafted into some free ones on ESPN.com and such to see how the players are getting drafted. Nothing too exciting so far.
Getting ready for dinner and such with Mike and Leah tomorrow night, looking forward to steaks on the grill.
Have to call the doctor this morning and try and sneak in real quick...seems like something I pulled out of the flower bed over the weekend may have been of the poison variety, as I have developed an itchy rash on my wrist and neck...time for a steroid shot I guess.
Well...wasn't able to get in another poker session on Monday evening to try and get even for the month, so ended up posting -$230 for the month of July. Not terrible, concidering I was down almost $800 at one point...and that does not account for the $$$ from the poker.com tourney over the fourth of July weekend. So, it was a positve month overall.
I did get August started off on a good note last night with a +100 session on UB. Sat down at a full table with 3 other players, so the varience was pretty big early on...once the table filled up, I was able to hit some hands and get paid off to post a positive session. So I'm very happy about that. Did ID two more players that love to play A-rag and chase to the river, so I'll be looking for them as well in future sessions.
Also found out something pretty cool last night....I had played in the CardPlayer.com freeroll early in July and made the final table...as part of the winnings, I won $60 in tourney entry cash on Bodog.com that I was unaware of until I was registering for the August Cardplayer.com freeroll and fired up the Bodog site to verify my screen name. So, it looks like I'll be playing some tourneys on bodog.com in the near future. I'll probably try and take some shots at their 100K guarantee tourney qualifiers and see if I can hit a nice payday on the site.
Nothing much else to report. Working on some travel for work at the moment...August is going to be busy.
