Summer's Last Breath

Date: Tue, Aug 26, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

I can tell summer is just about over. The Minnesota State Fair is underway and my oldest daughter is anxious to get back to school. This leaves precious little time to enjoy our short season...and thus, sacrifices are made.

I haven't been playing a lot of poker. A few sit-n-gos here and there and my favorite blogger tournament, The Friday Night Donkament and that's about it. We had a blast last week as usual. Bdidde and I chopped first and second place. Seems we both had a good return on that tournament. I bought in for ~$8. Just wish that once and a while, I'd make the cut for the side bets on the winner. I seem to always be..."The Field." Funny thing...Bdidde and I were the field when the betting started. We weren't even in the win/place/show phase. Suckas! Well played to all of the final table. Some tough competition and fantastic conversation!

If you aren't playing, you really need to consider it. Bam-bam's recent post does try to describe it, but I'll add what I like about it. It's just plain fun. The chat window is usually scrolling by faster then I can read and the one liners are zinging. This is a rebuy tournament. It's fairly cheap, so the rebuys are plenty and the suck outs historic. That's the therapy. You shove it in with monster like K7o and realize that you might be ahead...only to loose to the 3 deuce on the river. After the rebuy period, you are now sitting at a deep stack table with people that know how to play cards, but don't worry, the jokes just keep coming.

Tonight, I start a new 8 week poker league. We'll see how it goes. Seems this time we are fighting out for a poker cruise. Could be fun. Could be some of the sickest poker ever played. I hope to just keep learning from it and figure out how to keep myself focused. It gets hard to stay on track when it takes 8 weeks to get to the first step in getting the prize. But hey, it's live poker.

With one more week of summer to go, I'm not really sure I'll be on the virtual felt much, but you never know. I might be tuning in to a tournament you are playing and drop you a BOOM! You just never know.

9 years ago today...

Date: Thu, Aug 21, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

Nine years ago today, a baby girl was born that changed the world for me. In that moment she was born I went from being just a guy to a father.

It was somewhere around the month of January, 1999, I was back in college working towards my BS degree and interning at a small start-up. OhCountess and I had been married for a little over 2 years.

My internship was in a city about an hour away from our home. The drive didn't bother me much, I enjoyed the quality radio time I was getting.

My life had worked itself into a nice routine. School and work kept me busy during the week and most of my weekends were free to be young. That is until I received a small box that changed it all.

On this winter day, I got home from my day like I usually did. My first order of business was to find my beautiful wife and give her a kiss. Today she wore a big smile and handed me a small box with a ribbon on it. This is weird. There is no scheduled reason for this present.

I could never let a box like this last too long with opening it. I pulled the tail on the ribbon and let if fall away. Lifting the cover off the box revealed something I never expected. Inside that box was a tiny baby bib that said 'I love my Daddy!'

Seven months later, my lovely bride was walking a tightrope. She has a preexisting condition that when mixed with a growing fetus was causing her to battle for her life while nurturing our unborn baby. We even had a talk that no young husband ever wants to hear.

The team of doctors looking out for my wife were fighting a battle. Everyone was playing this sick game of chicken. Keeping the pregnancy going long enough for our baby while watching my wife's health deteriorate. I like to gamble, but this was sick.

With 5 weeks to go in the pregnancy, the doctors looking out for my wife pulled the plug and said it was time, either we induce now, or we risk the mother. The baby doctors agreed that the baby should be big enough to be out of the woods. I chimed and said "Just get it done. I want the jackpot...I want both of them!"

9 years ago today, I became a father. I held her in my arms and for the first time in my life, I was filled with a love like I had never known.

I love you OhPrincess - Happy Birthday!!!

Enough already - two posts in one day

Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

Remember, how I was impressed with Erick Lindrgren's bracelet victory, the class, the sportsmanship. Wow...Scotty Nugyen took a dump on the memory of Chip Reece. Yikes!

Apparently, there is no hope of ESPN making the Prince of Pukers look good...I saw this on Wicked Chops Poker and just had to share it.

Here are the High(low)lights of the final table of the $50k HORSE tournament...

Ha! Here's my TPS report sans-coversheet - bastages!

Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

My poker blog has been so silent lately. That's funny, cause I haven't really been playing that much poker either. Well, that's not entirely true, but I haven't been playing that much notable poker lately. Even my poker blog reading has been slacking lately. Did anyone look at the calendar? For the love of Pete, where did the summer go?

As Drizz posted about just the other day, here in God's country, we are about to start up a tradition like no other: The Minnesota State Fair. For all you poor suckers that have never been to our little shindig, it's unlike any other state fair anywhere. You see, ours is HUGE. Not just big, no HUGE. To top off it's ginormous size, it's got everything you've ever eaten deep fried and on a stick. Where else can you get a BUCKET of chocolate chip cookies and then go find the all-you-can-drink milk stand.

Drizz...our plan is to be there Sunday (this coming weekend). I'll be the middle-aged guy with two kids, wife and eating something that will make my cardiologists eyes light up with anticipation for a huge payday. If are going to be there...let me know!

Bourbonators was this past Wednesday. I was super tired and played supre bad.

The bar I normally play poker league at has hosted the last two Fridays with a $50 payout for first the last two weeks. Decided to see what if felt like to play 85% of the hands. It felt like a rollercoaster. Going home early was nice.

My online bankroll is sitting at a level I've never been to before. Which will be great when I actually have time to play for more than an hour and a half in one day while not folding laundry, cleaning the kitchen AND tucking the kids into bed. I'd be looking for me to hit the bigger buy-in tournaments soon. I has tokens and I ain'ts afraid to use them.

I have been catching up on my poker TV divoing. I was really excited to see Erick Lindgren win his first bracelet. His play was fantastic and the table didn't seem to have too many soft spots. I was most impressed at his ability to stay focused and get maximum value for his hands every time. In the end when he won, his sincerity was apparent. That man really just wanted to win a bracelet. Congrats to him. He was about as gracias a winner as I've ever seen.



Hope to see you on the felt, or at the fair!

Poker Tracker 3 - Buyer beware

Date: Tue, Aug 12, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

I'm a sucker. I'll admit it. I dished out real cheddar and bought Poker Tracker 3. If you are a predominately a SNG or tournament player, save your cash and wait for something much better to come along. This product is NOT ready for prime time.

The UI looks kind of cool and the reporting has great potential but it is lacking some very important features for tournament players.

It currently does not support importing of manually entered tournament results from Poker Tracker 2. That is correct, if you have spent the last few years grinding it out at Full Tilt Poker playing SNGs and making money, your results history is gone. Kaput. Fin. Without hope.

I tried the beta version out and noticed this right away. I even opened a ticket at their support site. At first, I was told that that feature would be in the paid version so to get it, all I'd need to do was buy Poker Track 3 - the full version (giggle) and my tournament summaries would be converted. Well, they didn't. Sure, they now support converting the Summary file created by the Full Tilt program, but anything prior to the start of that feature (April of 2008) in the FT software is still missing.

This whole process started for me on May 16th. As of today, here is the latest from their support:

Message left on Aug 12, 2008 09:28AM:

Hello,

Let me see, I just got brought in on this and am a little confused. That manually entered tournament results doesn't get converted in the PT2 -> PT3 conversion process is a known issue and it will be fixed in a future release. However, are you saying that your tournaments didn't get converted either?

If so, you could go to Utilities -> Export hand histories to file in PT2 and click the "Tourney hands / Summaries" tab and make sure to export these tournaments to a folder of your choice. Now you can manually import these into PT3, but unfortunately you will for now have to manually enter the results by going Tournaments -> Enter Results in PT3. Hope this helps.

Best Regards,
David Nilsson

by Peligroso [PokerTracker Support]

That didn't help. I'm a degenerate poker player. That's literally thousands of SNG tournaments. There is no way in hell I'm gonna find the time to hand enter in two years worth of SNG histories.

This current version of the Poker Tracker 3 software is really nothing more then beta code that you are paying for the privilege of testing and commenting on. I probably should have spoke up sooner then this, but I sincerely wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. I really liked PT2. I could follow my results in different types of tournaments and spot trends in my game. All that information is gone.

There still may be hope for this product. They have made some significant strides in the UI over version 2. Another feature that is missing is that you can no longer delete a tournament from the history. I've noticed a few free roll or play money tournaments making it into the import. Once they are in...you are stuck with them forever. This gets to be really confusing when you play a HORSE tournament. It will import all the hands from the hold 'em rounds and then exclude everything else. I'd like to be able to delete these since they aren't reflective of a whole tournament.

The other thing I've noticed is that this program is really slow unless you filter your data. This could be the product of the DBMS (database management system) they are using, but it could also be from poorly written SQL or my guess is that they query each stat for each column separately from each other rather then building a cross column query that would find the results in a single query. I'm thinking like a programmer again...sorry.

If you have the cash and want to participate in this ground floor experiment, go ahead. I wish I could get my money back. I miss my money. I feel cheated and taken advantage of. Maybe this post and anyone that reads it, will make a difference to this company. My 3 months spent on this has been a waste of my time.

Thus concludes my rant for the day. Questions or comments?

From meh to meme

Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

I've been memed. According to Zooks, I need to bend over and take it like a man. Yikes, that sounds like fun.

Da rules:

The Rules: Rules are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their names. Then the player goes to each of the “named” people’s blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. If you’ve been tagged, you do the same, letting the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer. They, in turn, answer the following questions.

Sounds like fun...umm...yeah. What are these questions?

1. What was I doing 10 years ago: Ten years ago, I was still childless, married and beginning a career in IT, aka - I still had hope in my eyes.
   
2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today:
   
   • Reply to this meme.
   • Eat gourmet marshmellows
   • watch 5 year-old play t-ball for the first time
   • enjoy ice cream after t-ball
   • work on software to scrape and store all of the internet's porn
     
3. Snacks I enjoy: dry roasted peanuts, fritos, prime rib
   
4. Places I've lived: Southeastern Minnesota, South Central Minnesota...I don't get out much.
   
5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: (stolen shamelessly from zooks)Buy all my degenerate poker playing friends a trip to Vegas to play in the World Series of Poker Main Event (and all the lap dances they could stand); laptops and internet for everyone, well everyone I like; build a pool for my neighborhood; have Brad Pitt's baby; date and then dump Viggo Mortensen; grow an ass like Kim Kardashian & buy boobs to match. I'm such a philanthropist. Being a billionaire, I could also afford to by the best baseball team in the work, the Minnesota Twins...just in time to see them in the new stadium, thus given Drizz, Bodie25, PokerFool a pass to my luxury box. Numbbono would have to get on bended knee to enter the box. Of course, all of this would have to wait until after all the debt is gone, the college funds are secured and I've upgraded the camera equipment.
   

Soo....who gets tagged from here...I'm guessing I will pick 5 people that have no desire to play this game...not because I'm good at that kind of thing, but because hell, no one likes doing these thing...do they?

JamyHawk
Joanada
Poker Fool
NumbBono
Gentleman Jim

Now let's play along cause summer ain't quite fun enough :-D

How many of you have cashed in the LPR Tour?

Date: Tue, Aug 5, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

Tonight was the inaugural Live Poker Radio Tour tournament on Full Tilt. 42 runners came out and your's truly joined the elite list of cashers in the event (there are 5 of us and I know who you are). Quite the star studded final table. I felt quite honored to be playing with them.


But in the end, the cardrack LJ was too much for me. My KJ ran into her AJ and she turns it into Broadway.

Congrats to Two Black Aces for taking it all down. Well done sir!

I'm tired, it's time for bed. Good night all.

My first pimp only post!

Date: Fri, Aug 1, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

The fine folks at LivePokerRadio approached me with an offer I couldn't refuse. We only needed to negotiate the size of the truckload of money they would drive up to OhCaptain Poker (my daughter's Littlest Pet Shop oy fell on the truck and crushed it...damn it!). I've agreed to pimp the beginning of a new Monday tradition...the beginning of a legend. Without further adieu:

LivePokerRadio would like to invite you to join us on Monday's as we fill the void left by the departure of the MATH. We would like to thank Hoyazo for the two years he dedicated to Monday's At The Hoy.

The LivePokerRadio Tour will be offering many new opportunities for you to not only donk it up, but win. Come along for the ride. Everyone says they want to be there for the first.

You want the details? Let's get you all of them:

Date: Monday's starting August 4th
Time : 10 P.M. ET Full Tilt Poker
Buy In: $10 + $1 (May change due to special events)
Format : NLHE Single Stacks(May change due to special events)
Password : Boom

Seeing the future

Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

One of the things I love about live poker that you don't get in online poker is all the damn information. People just tell you what they have. It's true.

When I'm playing really well on the real felt quite often I just know what two cards people have. I'm not a psychic and I'm not Daniel Negraneau, but I spent years working in food service, retail and bar tending and I've learned to notice the little things that many people never see. I've also learned at the poker table to notice betting patterns that certain types of players do in only certain situations.

Last night at poker league was almost one of those nights. My reads were dead on.

Poker league can be a great place to practice reading people for that extra information. Now be very careful, you have to spot strength and weakness and apply a filter to it. People at poker league will think A3o is a monster. So be careful and figure out what range THEY think are monsters. Weak is good to know because weak means lay down or fear. Works the same for a pushmonkeys as it does for a top pro. It's strong that you need to figure out.

I had weak down pat last night. A couple of players I even had call-a-flop weak figured out so that I could steal on the turn (I love the extra bets you get with this one). I was a stealing, value betting machine last night. It was sweet and with extra chips just accumulating in front of me, poker was fun.

At one point, the guy on my right did a few things that caught my attention. He's a very quiet fella, he's patient and knows enough about poker to usually capitalize on people's mistakes. He's one guy that you can move off a pot when he's marginally weak. With the right bets, he will call with a middle pair, but he will definitely fold to pressure. Last night, I finally figured something out, he shoves all in when and only when he has the nuts. He over bets for value when he knows he can't be beat.

Having all of this extra information is only good if you use it in your decision process. There in lies my leak. This guy moves all in with the nuts. He over bets for value when he knows he can't be beat.

The blinds are 150/300. I'm in the BB with the 63c, he is in my LB. The table walks to him and he just calls and I check. We see the flop - A96 rainbow. I've hit bottom pair. He min raises. I call. The turn - 3. He know bets 300. I raise to 600. He thinks for few seconds and says "I'm all-in". Without hesitation or even the slightest bit of thought I call. He turns over AA.

How do you remember to not call that shove? Can you not call that bet?

Tilt Control - Understanding the nature of fault tolerance

Date: Tue, Jul 29, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

In my last post, I highlighted a need to do something different. Today, rather than bore you with the fact that I'm rocking the $5 6 person NLHE SNGs on Full Tilt or that I played live poker with the Bourbonators gang and was completely card dead while simultaneously playing strategically bad poker, I'm going to talk about what I consider my most important factor for playing good - to great poker, Tilt Control.

As many of you have probably already figured out, I'm an opinionated SOB and a dad. That's a dangerous combination when you realize that to be both, there needs to be a mom. Thankfully, we've found common ground in that we both strive for our kids to well adjusted grownups. One lesson that is vital to this goal is the idea of understanding fault.

If you have kids, I guarantee you've heard this

"It's not my fault, [insert sibling name] made me do it!"

As parents we know this is a complete pile of BS and most parents will not tolerate that for one second.

"No. [insert sibling name] did not make you do it. You chose to do it and now the consequences are [insert punishment dejour]."

I'm just as guilty as Hoy about complaining about the reason I lost was some donkey did something stupid and now I'm out. But isn't that the same thing we punish our kids for? We aren't taking responsibility for our own failings in the situation.

It is often said that poker winnings are the sum/difference in mistakes your opponents mistakes and your own. Failing to spot a situation that could cost you is your mistake, not your opponent's. If you are playing a wild monkey jackass, is his fault that he busted your AQo with 73o? As much as we would like to believe it, 73o isn't drawing dead to AQo, in fact AQo is only a 2:1 favorite. It will lose 1 out of ever 3 times it's played vs. this junk.

The lesson we need to be learning is how to look at these situations, not with tilt, but with proper mental attitude. The fault for losing this hand isn't in the dumb ass playing 73o, its in ours. We chose to play a hand that we knew to only be a slight favorite in a huge pot. It's our fault for doing something that stupid. If I want to be a better player, I need to remember that and learn to never do it again.

I really believe that in poker, as in life, we can make the right decision if we just do our part. We will be wrong and lose. When playing an idiot with chips, its good strategy to not mix it up with crappy hands but wait for them to make a mistake when we have the goods. We also really need to understand the opposition. Are they an idiot playing ATCs or did they get hit with the deck or worse...both?

Life is about our choices and what we chose to do. We are the grown-ups and I'd like to someday be thought of as a damn good poker player. Time for me to quit complaining and make better decisions.

How about you? Can you make the right decision? Is there a time when we can really blame others for our mistakes?

Holy crap! Did you see this?

Date: Wed, Jul 23, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

Dr. Pauly is putting on a 5th blogabirthday party like no other!

Details here!

I still need to get some sleep. No Mookie tonight. Who needs drugs when you can be this sleep deprived? Dude...I can't possibly drink another bottle of Diet Pepsi Max.

Blogging Meh - Becoming a Phoenix

Date: Wed, Jul 23, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

Kajaguru & JJOK posted recently about a general feeling of meh in the blogasphere lately. I've kind of noticed a decline in the general enjoyment I get from my Google Reader each day. Seems all of us have been a little lacking in the excitement department.

At first, I chalked this up to summer. I gotta tell ya, the urge to spend to many of these summer days sitting around typing tales of indoor poker has been pretty low for me. Most of the Midwest bloggers will back me up on this, summer is too short and too precious to just blow off.

Personally, I think we are just getting stale. Granted, Julius taking a hiatus was a huge hit to the level of writing we are used to and the Vegas crew's out put during the recent WSOP has been fantastic yet the volume was at times, a bit overwhelming. (For links click here, here, here, and here - there's more but Christ...I'm sick of pasting.)

BBT3 for all of its upside really burned out many of the poker bloggers, both financially and mentally. It was grueling. I've read your blogs and noticed the decay in enthusiasm.

So, you say. Why I am suddenly mister state the f'ing obvious? I have some ideas. I do. The guy that won the Mookie back in ought 7 and is too afraid to play move up the pay grades for reason only he and his inner demons can explain.

I'm sick to death of posted hand histories. Yes, we can cut and paste them so easily, but unless your annotation is clever, useful, funny or has any redeeming value, they just take up space. My biggest problem with them is I barely learn anything from them. Poker isn't just about the current hand, bet or card. Poker is so much more. What's the back story? Has the guy said, done or otherwise been noticeable before this hand? How are you the poker player doing? You have a story to tell?

I used to think that Fuel55 was funny, but after 147 posts about the value of the pocket 5's and over/value bets in action post...I'm done learning those concepts. No don't get me wrong that I am in any way diminishing his skills, his talent or think for one second that he doesn't know how to play poker. I'm just saying...the shtick is getting old.

And in this lies the problem. We are getting stale. Heck, if I read another post about how great Hoy thinks his play is and that everyone else just sucks, I might just puke a little in my mouth. He still offers much value deep down inside those tomes, but again, the shtick is getting old.

The drama in the world of poker bloggers also took a turn for the worse. This hasn't helped. I think the idea that somehow, this little world was different and a little better then the, [clearing throat] "Real World" is very appealing, but maybe a bit naive. How can any community exist in which all members live in harmony? [I took absolutely way to many philosophy classes in college]

I've caught the Twitter bug. It's fun. It's like microblogging. Sort of like the poker I play, but it's also just a lot more noise in my life. I've had to learn to timeslice it.

So, what's the Phoenix reference about? My personal goal is to not just think about this blog as a place to post hand histories. I want to start telling more stories. I also want to talk more about general strategy, not just how do you play AKo UTG+2 with a avg stack in a MTT. Useful, but when that's all that gets talked about, I miss the whole idea that the guy in the corner...that old guy with the fishing hat...he just sat up. Screw the book. Old fart's got a hand. Now what do we do?

It could be the cumulative 12 hours of sleep I've gotten in the last 3 days. Hell, last night at poker league I called a guy, I called his hand. I couldn't beat it, but I could call it. I put all my chips in anyways cause I really just wanted to go to bed.

Here's what I like in blogs that I read. I like to laugh, I like to cry (I know that's ghey, but I softy for a really good story of human conflict overcome, kids, births and Daddy moments - get over it), I like to think, I like to get mad...I like blogs that are more then just hand histories and the obligatory I just won/lost the [insert tournament/table name] that have no story, no heart or any meat. Astin's cooking posts...they make me hungry...that's very good :-)

Drizz has been upping the bar lately. He's been putting up some really funny stuff. Kaja...I miss you finding the Worst Fight Scene ever. Dude...I almost wet myself here laughing so hard.

I'm definitely not Dr. Pauly when it comes to my writing prowess. I don't think my blog is all that and a bag of chips. I write this thing cause I like to. Notice all the ads? Yeah, Google Adsense has made me about $4 in 2 years. I can't even collect until it reaches $100. I dawned on me that I might just be the only blogger paying his way by winning poker tournaments...lol. Yeah...nice...grinding it out on the $2 tables, but I do do this for the fun of it. (You can send me ad offers if you want - I'm not getting rich on the $2 tables)

I have 3 blogs (besides here, try here and here). I'm an idiot and an Übergeek. I also really like each blog for different reasons. They allow me to express myself in the many different facettes that make up OhCaptain. I'm a poker degenerate, a father, husband and a photographer. Hopefully I can express myself in ways that other find interesting. If I suck...let me know. Personal improvement is cool, but don't expect me to change right away. I just turned 39. I'm facing the big 40 with the heart and mind of a 20 year old.

How frick'in long is this post? You still here? Never, I mean never hand me the mic when I'm over tired.

Here's a little bit about me to help you understand me and this post. I have a BS degree in Computer Science. I was DJ in meat market bar that everyone went to to get drunk and laid. How many ENTP computer programmers do you know? I'm listening to the Love & Rockets on headphones while wearing a tie.

What are you doing?

Vacation is over, time for the welcome home party

Date: Sat, Jul 19, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

It is good to be home. You know that your vacation was full and complete when everyone is excited to see their own beds. Even my kids were glad to finally sleep in a familiar room. I've been posting the latest pictures on my photoblog. Hopefully you find them not to be just your ordinary vacation snapshots.
.
I did play some poker on vacation, nothing live, but every hotel we stayed at was serving up the free wi-fi. For the most part, being on the east coast was horrible on the ROI. I don't think I won or even cashed in a single SNG. The sheer volume of coolers I was taking caused me more then once to consider the nuclear option and send my laptop into the wall.

The whole family was exhausted from a day of travels and the change of time zones allowed me to play the Mookie on Wednesday. I played two hands. I raised it up from UTG with KK and you lucky scumbags mucked, mucked, mucked, mucked, mucked, mucked, mucked, mucked and mucked. Dear God! Its a donkament and not one of you could call a standard raise! Not that this last long. I got moved to a new table and shortly after that played AA. Got called. Got it all in on a 9 high board and only to realize that I was up against a flopped set of 4s. Sigh.

As any good Minnesotan will tell you, summer is a hectic time of the year. We are jamming as much activity into 3 months as most of you do all year. With vacation, the return to work and my last birthday as a 30 something all occurring this last week, it was nice to finally relax in the Friday Night Donkament host by the lovely Kat.

The Donkament continued my frustration in poker lately. Seems if there is a way for someone to catch up in a hand, the will, or if I have someone dominated, there is a gurantee that they will hit their bottom pair. I was catching cards, I got KK and JJ 3 times a piece. Each failed miserably. With 5 minutes left to go in the rebuy period, I rebought one more time. Thankfully, I was able to triple up just before the break. Not where I like to be in the big stack portion of the night but I'll take it.

I'll need to go through the hand histories to figure out just exactly what happened, but somehow, I was able to take my meager little stack and put myself towards the top of the leader board. JJOK and Easycure had made an insane amount of chips during the rebuy period. If memory serves, JJOK had 10 times as many chips as me. No matter. For the first time in a long time, my hands started holding up, I was hitting my sets and some how, some way, my reads were correct AND the other player didn't hit two miracle cards to still win the hand.



And shortly there after, we lost JJOK.

We got heads up, and Easycure offers me the chop. I had over 100,000 in chips and he was hovering around 70,000. I just didn't feel like I needed to chop. I was in a good position to win this thing and I love HU poker. These next two hands pretty much sealed my fate.





Well fought game boys. After the rebuy period, I would have just been happy to cash, but building my stack to chipleader but a bunch, losing pretty much blew. I did probably overplay my ace in that first hand, oh well. It was nice to finally cash again. Hopefully this means the tide is turning.

I'm working on a post about Poker Tracker 3. Let's just say, I'm not very happy right now and that product isn't even close to ready for primetime.

Let's blow the whole wad!

Date: Mon, Jul 7, 2008 Internet Live Tournament

I'm blowing the whole wad of vacation time that is. We are packing up the kids and loading them into a flying tin can. MSP to ATL to RIC. This will be the kid's first "airplane vacation." I have 47 hours of vacation save up and we are using 40 of them in the next week.

I would seriously doubt I'll play the Mookie, the Dookie, Riverchasers or the Donkament this week. The wife gets a little peeved if I play too much poker on vacation.

Are there any home games/casinos/bar poker in the Virginia/Maryland area any ways? If there are (4dbirds(katiemother), CEMFredMD) let me know!

I hope everyone has fun in Okie Vegas. Really wish I could be there, but I'll probably have a blast taking my daughter on the lazy river again at Water Country USA.

Be sure to cheer on the remaining bloggers in the WSOP ME. What's the latest? Iggy & Loretta8 are still with chips and a chair!

If you see me on the tables of Full Tilt this week, drop by and say hi before the wife finds out I logged on and shuts of the laptop. Hehe!

Cya on the felt!