Another weekend ramble

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was busy. The weekend started off on Friday night with some live pokery goodness at my house. We ended up with 30 people for the first tourney and played another one that started at midnight with 16.

I died in 10th in the first one and we were paying the top 5 spots. I never really found a groove and the blinds were starting to kill me. I finally had to push with K10o and was called by pocket 7’s. I lost the coinflip and that was that. The most interesting hand of that tourney came at the final table. I think we were already ITM, down to 5 when the short stack SB had 6K left and the blinds at 2k/4k. It folded to him and he pushed to make it 2k additional for the BB. But he folded. He probably only had about 7k left himself, but didn’t he have the pot odds to call that with any 2 cards? The SB went on to win the whole thing of course.

A couple side games went on while I watched the final table action. Everyone got done at about the same time so we decided to do one more for the diehards. We didn’t want it to last until 3am though so we decided to do a turbo. 5 minute blind levels and it went fast.

We were probably only getting about 2 hands in per level because of shuffling etc. On the first hand, I doubled up when I pushed with a flush draw after the button bet out a good amount on the flop. My flush came on the turn. I also had another big hand a while later which pushed me into the chip lead at the time. Again, I lose the specifics but I ended up in 3rd when I went out against pocket 7s again to the then chip leader. All in all, I broke even for the night.

After everyone left, being the shrewd bankroll manager that I am, I logged onto Full Tilt. I don’t around in some low limit Razz and lost about $15 in a half hour. I went to bed at around 2am.

The next morning, my buddy who is doing the work on my son’s new bedroom in the walkup attic (not sure I have talked about it but whatever, we are finishing off that space as a bedroom and office) came by at 7:30am with the blueboard. We had to bring it up to the attic which was no easy feat. Because of the turns in the hallway, we had to actually walk each sheet out the second floor window to make the swing. We finished that just in time to get to my 5 yr old’s t-ball game. We labored through that (just kidding, although my son took a ball to the eye before the game started and decided to get sympathy from mom rather than play until the last inning). Anyway, after that one was over, we had my 9 yr old’s game. He did great, getting a couple more nice hits and they won their 4th straight. Playoffs start Wednesday.

Saturday afternoon was spent at the bro-in-law’s. It was a nice hot day so we chilled in the backyard while the kids ran through the sprinkler and slid on the slip and slide. Four or five lemonade and jack’s later, we went home so I could lose more money online. Actually, I broke even. I lost $25 in a NL game on Stars but made it back with a little interest actually at Doyle’s room. I do love Doyle’s room for the donkilicious action. It makes me feel like I know what I am doing. At Doyle’s, I actually happened to sit at the table randomly and saw a name that looked familiar. I hadn’t read him much before but pokeramarama was to my immediate right. Rather than blow his cover, I typed in a simple “blogs are ghey” in the chat. I went to his blog and saw that he was blogging his night at the tables. I left a quick comment saying I was at his table and he replied with another comment immediately about how bad a certain player was. We stayed out of each others way and I was getting some cards and picking up some pots. Chad eventually took off and I logged off shortly after that myself. It is always nice to come across someone you recognize and know that there is someone at the table that you can play actual poker with, rather than a complete table of donkeys. Anyway, I have a new addition to my blogroll. Many actually, but more on that later.

On Sunday, I finally got out on the links for the first time this year. I played 9 holes in the morning with my father in law, brother in law, and a buddy of ours. It was nice to get out. I really don’t play much anymore because it is hard to justify spending 5 hours on a weekend day chasing the little white ball around. I had a good time though and played pretty well. Especially for being my only time out this year. I got a sweet new driver last year for Father’s day and I was rocking the Cobra 460 yesterday. The course isn’t the most difficult in the world either. Actually, it is a pretty easy course if you can hit it straight at all. I birdied 2 holes. One was a 285 yd par 4 which I drove to the back of the green and 2 putted from there. That one felt pretty good. The second bird was a 100 yd par 3 which is a highly elevated green. I cut a sand wedge and it fired into the face of the hill and popped up onto the green. It stopped about 6 inches from the cup, which we couldn’t see until we walked up to the green. Better to lucky than good is what I say.

I grabbed the kids and we met my father for lunch, then back to the house for some waffle ball, family style. The wife and 5 yr old beat me and the 9 yr old (don’t ask). By that time it was time for the Stars Blogger freeroll.

I had talked to jjok about this last week and we were both complaining, as I am sure plenty of you did about the timing of this one. The late afternoon on father’s day is probably not the best time to hold this. Again, tough to justify sitting there for hours on end starting at 4pm EST. We both said we would play it ultra aggressive. I decided against playing Jordanesque but wasn’t going to mess around. I got my stack up to a little over 3k from the starting 2k when I met my demise about 45 minutes into the thing. I had the tourist in MP and the flop came down J 7 J. The BB bet out a small amount and I raised it and he called. The turn was an A and when he bet, I pushed and prayed that he didn’t have the A but knowing that he really probably did. I can’t remember who it was, but he had it and I was gone. Again, I pretty much knew I was beat, but didn’t want to toil away and took the shot. I probably should have just skipped the whole thing. I told my wife that I was out and she was surprised. I also told her it would probably be a 6 hour thing since there were 2200 people in.

We made dinner and ate out on the back deck with the kids. After that, I checked in with the tourney and in the hour that we had taken to each, the tourney was down to 450 people! I started to think I made a mistake and this could be over in 3 and a half hours but I was wrong. I started railing everyone that was still in and kept finding more people. People that were still in at that point were Tripjax, Surflexus, Jules, Smokkee, dnasty13 and Roccoboxer. I also saw some others that I hadn’t talked to much in the past, but I knew them from the WWdN and the Mookie so I started railing them too. I had a bunch of windows open and it was hard to keep track actually. Pretty much as soon as I saw Trip’s table, he went out on the next hand. Surf, Smokkee, and Jules went out over time. Rocco came pretty close to the money but went out in the 60s I think.

I then started focusing on Hacker59, Yestbay1, Doubleuwhy, and studioglypic. I have seen them all play in the blogger events that I like and was hoping to see them go far. They all played great and finished in the prizes, actually going deep into the prizes. It was fun to rail them with others like Ingoal and Frankl66. I saw each of them go on huge runs. Dave was the first of the four to go out but collected an ipod for his troubles. I think it was Hacker59 who went out next, getting sooooo close to a WSOP seat when he went out in 15th. Doubleuwhy was next at 14th. They both won a seat in the Stars 100 (or is it 150) seat guarantee tourney so they have another chance to win a seat. I hope to be able to rail them during their run. Best of luck to you both. The last of the group to go was studioglyphic. He made a great run and got his seat in the $1500 WSOP tourney. I thought he was going to win the whole thing. There were lots of people pulling for him and it was fun to watch.

By the final table, the chat was unbelievable. Fast and furious and a lot of funny things being said. Oh, and I almost forgot. I got in trouble in chat. I was at Hacker59’s table and these guys kept going on and on in Spanish. No big deal to me but the admin kept telling them to stop. They must have been asked 10 times. I was going from table to table though and apparently, the admin had asked one of the guys in the tourney still to help him tell his railers to speak English only. I said something about a hand that Hacker was in and the next thing I know, the dude is telling me English only. I thought he was being a donk so I typed in “b.ite me” and then, “is that English enough for you?”

The next thing I see is a red admin chat…”Drew?” Oops. I apologized and Hacker’s railers laughed at me. It was pretty funny.

Anyway, congrats to all those that won prizes last night. Well played. I enjoyed watching the action and I now have some additional material to read through bloglines.

See you all at the WWdN and the Mookie this week. Also, come out tonight for Mondays at the Hoy. This is a new tourney set up by the world famous Hammer player. Give it a try.

EDIT: Sorry, I just realized after posting how long and boring this was. Sorry, it's Monday!