Thursday, August 31, 2006

# chown {your name here} allmychips

Assuming you're logged in as root, you should be able to do this, and save yourself the time of taking my chips from me a few at a time on Nine.com. Okay, so now I'm offering up UNIX commands to the competition to take my money away from me. Not that they needed any help last night! I'm still up on the site...to the tune of $120 total. I'm still about 1,200 points shy of my 150% bonus being awarded, which would translate to $150. So the question is, do I continue to play only to the point that I lose back to my initial investment of $100, or continue to play on, in hopes that my cold cards will eventually warm back up...or if not that I get the remaining points required to get awarded the $150 thus putting myself back on top again? I'm irritated by the last couple of days, but not dead yet. It is just frustrating to think back and realize that I was over $200 not a week ago. Poker does have an ebb and flow. It could be worse, and I could be playing for no bonus $'s at a brick and mortar, or at some lesser online room. No, I'm not going broke...I'm still at around $1,100 online total...it's just spread out around several different rooms online. I think I'll push on and go for the $150. Hopefully, I'll never dip below the $100 mark, and this whole line of thought will be a moot point.

In other news JJ has once again left the gambling fold! At least "live games." He's still "allowed" to play online from time-to-time. At least his wife says so for now. So, I guess I should just drop him from the NDPT Points Standings, what does everyone think!? :)

I realized this morning that I missed a freeroll on PokerRoom, last night, courtesy of PokerSourceOnline.com I thought it was tonight! I would have served myself better to have played in that instead of on Nine.com.

I'm currently reading Doyle Brunson's Super System...for the first time! Believe it or not! It is actually an interesting read. Following this book I still have my sites set on reading Caro's Book of Tells. I think it will prove to be an invaluable aid in my poker journey! Following that, I'm thinking Zen and the Art of Poker.

Sort of dreary here today, lots of rain. I'm actually more awake today than I have been in several days now, but I could really use a truly relaxing vacation. But the likelihood of that is VERY SLIM!

Whenever I do finally finish up the promo on Nine.com I think I'm going to move back over to PSO, to complete PokerShare. I still have 1,250 points on PSO, and if I do the promo for PokerShare I can get 6,000 more. Which would give me more than enough for a roll of 100 25 cent Nevada Jacks chips. These would be VERY nice for a cash game along with the 300 multi denominations that I currently have. The problem was that the smallest denomination I had was $1.00, and I as well as many of my fellow NDPT'ers are cheapskates. Yeah, you know who you are!

After finishing that I think I'll move immediately back to Savvy where I think I've found a home.

It is official now too, that Big Red and I will be returning to Las Vegas the last week of October. Which by the way will coincide with our 15th Anniversary! Yippee for us!

That's all I've got for now...

Regards,

cheer_dad

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Recovery and Spaniards

I managed to rack up in the neighborhood of 50+ points last night on the Nine.com site, to put me over 700 points toward the goal of 2270, for my bonus level. And was able to regain some of what I had lost the previous night. In fact over $40 back of the $60, I'd dropped. So that was a considerable relief to me. AND, what made it even better, at least in my mind, was that two of the guys at last night's table, were the same two from the night before, who seemed to be sucking out more often than not. Tonight, it looked a little more like they were getting the worst end of it, all around. I think I was even getting under their skin a little with my check raising against them repeatedly when I was isolated with them in a hand. My cards just kept hitting against them...and I have to admit, it was very satisfying. Anyway, I had speculated that the two of them were "working" together. Which I don't know that for a fact, but they were both from Spain...and in fact were chatting in Spanish while at the table. No one else at the table seemed to raise any complaints about it...so I stayed out of it as well. Whatever they were chit-chatting about, wasn't helping their game any, as far as I could see. :)

Big Red is planning another Labor Day get-together, although would prefer to have the cookout/games/gathering on either Saturday or Sunday instead of on Monday, since it seems that we're rushing around on a Monday, and then we are worn out on Tuesday at work! Also, she shocked me when she said that if we have it on Sat/Sun then we could have a card game later on in the evening! I think I've created a MONSTER! What's next, is she going to start playing on line?

The kids had their first day of school yesterday. Everything sounded really positive from them both. Both like their teachers...and there were no complaints about anything that I recall.

I see on my calendar that there's an HPT freeroll tonight. I wonder if Big Red's going to let me play this one? Guess I better turn on the charm! :)

Time to turn my attention elsewhere.

Regards,

cheer_dad

Monday, August 28, 2006

A little bad...a lot good

Friday and Saturday were tournament nights this past weekend.
Friday night at the Yanok's for 2 tournaments, due to quick blind escalation. The wife actually came along with me this time. (Lately she's been showing a great deal of interest in this little game!) Actually that night, we just broke even. In the second tourney, Julie and I chopped the prize pool, since it was late...and she was my ride home. :) That put us at $80 each. So, since the evening cost very little from that perspective(I won back both of our buy-ins from both tourneys, Big Red decided that the Saturday game at Shuman's was a "go" as well! We bought in for $26 each there, including the "bad beat" pot. Out of the 19 who showed, I finished in 2nd place and took down $145. Big Red nearly made it to the final table...so she did quite well. She enjoyed the game there too! So the weekend showed a tidy profit of $93 in my little world of poker, since I was supporting the buy-ins of two people. "Technically" I was up $159...but I didn't want to state that too strongly...I was just glad to get to play!
That was the "a lot good" part...

A little bad, followed the next morning (Sunday.) Recall that I'm still finishing up the bonus points at Nine Poker (Nine.com.) I still need to crank out about 37 points per day for the next 45 days or so, to complete and claim an additional $150 bonus. I bought in on 2 tables ($1/$2 Limit) for $50 each. Nearly bled to death over a couple of hands in particular. First my set of Queens that I hit on the flop got spanked by a straight on the river, which cost me a huge chunk, since the bet was getting capped. That one really hurt. Second, was the river brought me my straight to the King, only to be greeted by the Nut Flush, when the guy caught his runner/runner for his backdoor flush draw. I think I could have saved a few bucks if I'd left then and there...but you all know how hard that is, when you feel you can still turn it around. I probably could have walked at that point I merely been down $50, but I opted to stay to finish out my 37 points for the day...but kept going beyond that out of frustration (yes, they call that TILT!!!) Anyway, when the dust finally settled I dropped about $65 on that site during the session. However, I'm still up $35 from my initial deposit there, not counting the extra $100 I got from PokerSavvy in a gift card for promo-ing the site. So, I guess there's still a silver lining. The sucky part is that I had just broke the $200 mark on the site. But that's poker I suppose. So, depending on perspective I'm up $28 -OR- $94 for the weekend. I'll let you all decide! :) I'll play again this evening on Nine.com to put in my 37 points again, but I'm going to pull the plug on the whole site if I drop the last $35 back to my initial buy-in. At which point I'll just cash out completely, and move on to greener pastures. Their bonus clears horribly slow...and I'm not getting much extra for my play time there. Other sites have much more attractive bonuses for me at much more comfortable "limits" to me. I'm not a big fan of limit hold 'em in the first place.
I am beginning to recognize the make up of a table when I'm playing limit. There are some tell tale signs that point to an "unprofitable" table for me, though some might disagree with me. The table will see approximately 5-6 people to the flop every single time. At least two people at the table will be at $60+. Someone in late position...every single time will make it $2 to see the flop, and nearly everyone will call this raise. And, finally at least two guys at the table will seem to be from the same geographical spot in the world. I'm not particularly saying that there's cheating afoot, but I don't rule that out. No, what I'm beginning to see is a couple of friends just jockeying at the table for dominance, and the rest of us are just along for the ride. You will see lots of suckouts...lots of any two will do players, crap cards hitting flushes and straights, your good hands meeting monsters, and just generally a bad time for you! Sometimes though, you find the berry patch table, the planets align, and lady luck plants a big wet one on you...and all of a sudden you can do no wrong. Ride that...briefly, and then walk away and count your bankroll and be happy. You will need these sessions to counter-balance those spank sessions, I've laid out above. Getting this all off my chest, will let me move beyond this now, because I can sense that the losing session was still on my mind, and would affect my game. So, now I've let myself have the little pity party I had coming to me, and now it's back to the game plan. Tight/Agressive...lather/rinse/repeat. Nuff Said.

Regards,

cheer_dad

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

WOW, am I delinquent or what?!?

My apologies to cyberspace, for not staying up with the blog. Work just really has a way of bogging down the day, and really taking the life out of you some days. It's been that way now, for well over a month now! Frankly, I see no end in sight, which really sucks. Well let's recap the important stuff. The 2006 WSOP has crowned its champion Jamie Gold, after he won the 12 Million Dollar prize in the Main Event. But now, I see today, thanks to my RSS feeds on My Yahoo page that he is now being sued for half!!! Here's the story: http://www.pokernews.com/news/2006/8/price-fame-gold-sued.htm Is nothing sacred?

Another tournament for the NDPT was held on August 18th...and no I didn't win, but TJ and I are now neck and neck in the points race. Okay, maybe not so close as that, but only 7 points separates us. There's only 14 points between 1st and 3rd, who is none other than Matt B. I'm really glad that I implemented the points standings for this year...it has really added a lot of extra excitement to the game in my opinion. If you don't like it, say so...but really that's just TOUGH! In my online exploits...I've finished another PokerSavvy promo on Nine.com, which put me over the top again, and I've already snatched up another PartyPoker gift card for my trouble. I took a bit of a beating one night to really diminish my funds on Nine.com, BUT as of last night, I'm back baby! My initial deposit of $100, had capsized at one point to $30, when Big Slick, and Rockets were getting consistently cracked! But I got back up to $132 last night. So I'm good to go again for quite a while. I'm doubtful that I'll be able to earn the requisite Nine.com player points within the 60 days to get my 150% bonus. Their points are pretty tought to get at my levels of play. I'm just not going to go chasing the bonus dollars anymore...it just leads to trouble. I nearly let it cost me everything on this site. Thankfully, I got out while I was still solvent.
School will be starting up for the kids, and actually I think they're going to be ready to go back. I think they've had enough of summer. Of course they'll think differently after about a week or so. Also, I think Teresa is considering a Vegas trip for us, for our Anniversary. Yes, October 26th, will be 15 years for me and Big Red. One of these days, she's going to wake up and realize she's just too good for me, but so far, she's stuck it out with me. And, despite all my b.s....I'm very happily married to a wonderful woman. Sheesh...where'd that come from!?! Anyway, that'll have to tide you over until next time, I just promise that I won't wait nearly a month, before posting to the blog again!

Regards, cheer_dad