Sunday, June 22, 2008

Vertigo

Is it bad when you wake up two days in a row with vertigo?

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Fortieth of One Hundredred Twenty Seven

Six and a half hours of playing two or three games for a half hour each, then a ten minute break. Lasting longer than over eighty other HORSE players is a good thing, but only the top sixteen are getting paid to play. We were eight to a table, of sixteen tables. I so wanted to be one of them. Met a few globe troting pros during the breaks, and they were kind enough to listen to me for a minute or so. Recognized many local pros too. And my luck hung in there several times when I was all-in and waiting on a wonderful river card in stud, razz or omaha. A few exciting moments during all those hours of folding. I started at table 14 for the first five hours or so, then I got moved and immediately lost a big hand at the new table in hold'em. The guy the crippled me got knocked out a few hands later and they finally broke that table up. Good, I was getting out drawed on the three hands I did play that hour there. The table I broke into wasn't much better. They had tens of thousands of chips and I was down to my last few thousand. My last hand was in the big blind which was half my stack. 7,9,10,Jack and the board comes King,6,3. Excellent, all I need is an eight or a queen and then a duplicate of my 9,10 or Jack for a straight to get at least the high portion of the main pot. Boy, what a fool I was pushing in the last of my chips and getting two callers, only to have them dividing up the pot between them and me being left with nothing. How could I risk my tournament knowing I needed two cards to get with two cards coming to the board? Tired and hungry. Yeah that's it. Hadn't eaten anything since the pizza at the bar at Dodger Stadium earlier in the day. My skills were at an all time low on that hand. Time for some endurance training for these big live events. Cya

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Another Hundred Grand in Play Money

After Monday night's performance of being knocked out twenty second' of fifty four, I was not a happy poker player. I did not show it either. I did have fun knocking out a know-it-all yankee when he didn't think I had anything and went all in with his king-queen and I called with ace-king. Board came up all rags, but before that, he exploded out of his chair saying 'Oh my god, you have a hand!' I just tilted my head under my cap and stared at the table as the dealer finished his job and pushed thirty thousand in tournament chips my way. That was the last pot I won that night. Some were having fun giving each other false advice and I was smirking as I listened to it. If I would have followed the advice of never folding queen-rag hands, I may have picked up a few more pots, but I also would have lost a lot of chips. Just now, I finished an online 25000 play money HORSE tournament on PokerStars. Just for grins, I called down to the river with queen-rag and won a pot from a guy who considered it bad play. Well, it was a bad play, but instead of admitting that, I made a side bet offer of 100 grand in play money, that I would outlast him in this play money tournament. A minute later he comes back and asks if it was directed at him. I confirm it, and he accepts. Cool, all I have to do is outlast this guy [named belgum] and I would collect the same as first place in this little tournament. It got down to the last two players, and who do you think they were? Yup, him and me. He did admit to respecting my play to that point, but when the game came around to hold-em again, and I held queen-rag, we re-raised each other all we could and I crippled his chip stack after getting queens full of sixes. Poor guy could only type 'wtf'. The chips did pass back and forth between us for a few hands until I did not raise with queen-rag again but called him until he was all-in on a queen-eight-seven flop. He was holding king-jack, the better hand before the flop, but I out flopped him and won the tournament for a hundred grand of play money chips, and he took sixty thousand for second place. I'm still waiting for his transfer of another hundred thousand as the conclusion to our side bet. If he transfers it, great. If he doesn't, then he's just another up and coming bum. Hear that belgum? Pay up! There is a live HORSE tournament this Saturday at a large local card room for less than a couple of hundred bucks to enter. A number of local pros who are not at the world series of poker in Las Vegas this month will be there. I may practice with a few more of these and see how I fare, and may even enter this Saturday. Wish me luck!
**The five games of poker in HORSE are:
Hold-em, Omaha high/low, Razz, Stud high, and Stud high/Eight or better for low.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Wordle.net

Take any text file, upload it, see the picture it makes. Like this:

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Eleventh of Fifty

First hour was wild as ever. Folk playing any two cards and flopping two pair against pairs of aces or kings. After the re-buy period ended, so did most of the wildness, and that's when I started to knock out a few players and aquire enough chips to make it to the last two tables. After getting moved to table two, ran into a bully of a chip leader who was calling, and winning races against every small stack he went up against. The heavy action never swung my way at that table, and I was out in eleventh place. Fair, but not in the money. Maybe next time.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Beware of Grandfather's Telling Stories

Yesterday, I was buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for Athena (my wonder dog) at Wal-Mart and was in the check out line.
A woman behind me asked if I had a dog. What did she think I had, an elephant? So since I'm retired, with little to do, on impulse, I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, and that I was starting the Purina Diet again. I probably shouldn't, I continued, because I'd ended up in the hospital last time. I awoke in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. However, I did lose 40 pounds on the diet, so I was giving it another go.
I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is you load your pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete and I needed to lose a few more pounds. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was, by now, enthralled with my story.)
Horrified, this woman asked if I ended up in intensive care because I'd been poisoned by the dog food. I told her no, it happened because I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter's ass and a car hit both of us.
I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard!
WAL-MART won't let me shop there anymore

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Backup News Truck


Had a couple of hours after work Friday afternoon before the gates at the stadium would open, so I started cruising through hollywood looking for dinner. Noticed that the mini was low on petrol, so cruised into a station that was empty save for a news truck. Started to think that this can not be good, then saw another news truck parked behind the station. Apparently the prices were a little higher than average here, and it was a good back drop to their story for the four PM news broadcast. Other customers started to arrive after I started filling up, and I started to feel safe enough that this was not a robbery investigation, except maybe for the prices. Took a snap on my way out of their microwave setup and a short video clip whilst filling up.