Lots of stuff going on...

So, there's a lot of stuff going on. We are perched on the edge of the extended holiday season, what with Thanksgiving being next Thursday. (I swear the day after Halloween I walked into K-Mart and they already had their Christmas MUZAK tracks going.) What the hell! I hadn't even stolen all of the Reese's Cups out of Cole's Trick or Treat bag yet, and I'm listening to the sounds of Christmas already!?! C'mon people, this is nuts. So, there's Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and don't forget the Christmas shopping. I'm really contemplating this being the year of me shopping ONLY online! Why not, anything I buy, will likely be returned anyway. (Sorry Big Red, had to throw that out there!) : P

Then, don't forget work. It seems that "everything" gets put off until the end of the year at work to be accomplished. Right at the time, that everything else has to be done, and when everyone is trying to use the remainder of their "Use or Lose" leave balance and taking extra time off from work to spend time with their family and friends. I try to be a decent lead to my team and not hog the days surrounding the holidays. I like to think I'm pretty decent in that respect.

Also, there are a lot of poker games going on. Shuman is having another cash game on Friday. JR is hosting on Sunday at the Eagles our latest NDPT tournament. Then, December hits and we will be trying to fit in another regular season tournament for the NDPT, and then the follow-up Year End $50 tournament. Also, the Yanok's will have their December Qualifier on the 12th, to be followed the next day by their Year End Game, which is a freebie to all who have contributed throughout the year to the pot and scored a win/points. The prize pool will very likely be $1,000 for a max of like 16-18 people playing! Not too shabby!

And, don't forget Big Red's 40th Birthday Party on November 29th to be held in the Eagles banquet room, with JINX'D performing and kegs... Then, I have Whitney turning Sweet 16 on December 2nd. I think she'll be demanding to take her driving test that day too. Hello insurance rate increase!

Cole, is also trying to get in on the busier side of life. He's trying out for the basketball team at his Elementary School. He attended the clinic, and now he is in tryouts for going on the 3rd night tonight. The field has been narrowed from 33 kids to 17 now, and the coach is keeping 12. Keep your fingers crossed for the little guy, he's been hustling his little heart out! He told me last night, that if he didn't make it he'd be "crushed" and that's a quote! I let him know to do his best, but that if it didn't work out, we'd keep working through the off-season and keep on trying.

And speaking of basketball, now that football cheering season is over, basketball cheering season begins. And it's no secret they play a helluva lot more basketball than football games. Who needs a life anyway.

Finally, to help put me in a festive state of mind, I had a "run-in" phone conversation with the high school principal, complaining about how Geometry is going. Not just whining for my daughter, but this seems a problem apparent for almost all the kids in the class. I'm sure there's bound to be a chess geek in there who's getting it all, and bored, but he's not my problem, and will likely never get laid anyway. : ) The principal and I were doomed never to see eye to eye when during the course of the conversation he brought up the ole standby analogy of the Bell Curve. I immediately shut down. He might as well have cracked my Aces, with a 7-2os. I despise the utter concept of the Bell Curve. The idea that curriculum cannot be taught and some will excel, some will fail and the majority will exist in the curve of mediocrity. Well, fuck that! I don't subscribe to your point of view. To quote Stand and Deliver "...the students will rise to the expectation of the teacher!" However, the teacher MUST get the point across. I don't completely fault the teacher though, but the methodology and curriculum itself. There is no discovery in the methods of many of the subjects being taught today in our schools. Learning based on raw memorization of facts, and in the case of Geometry of postulates, and theorems, provides no means for discovery and understanding of concept. They preach logic, but do not teach logical thinking. You cannot read about it... you must experience it and also learn by 'great' example. There's got to be a better way, than how it is being done today, and how they were doing it nearly 25 years ago for me. Man... I feel old. But I'll stop on the GEO rant now! Before my blood pressure caps.

As you can see there's a lot going on, and I know there are some things I've left out. I'll try to keep up with the blog, and hope you keep stopping by to see what's up. But let me apologize in advance for my potential failure.

See several of you tonight at the Eagles. I'm in need of a little liquid sanity!

Regards,

cheer_dad

Staying busy

The week has luckily flown by. The week following a long vacation is generally sheer drudgery, but this one has gone quickly. I'd like to say it had gone smooth, but that'd be a stretch. It hasn't been a walk in the park dealing with all of the inventory and configuration management woes (real or imagined.) Unreasonable expectations and lofty, idealistic goals by upper management have been a common theme throughout the week. Of course "they're" doing it for our own good, and we should thank them. NOT! Anyway, I think we have made some headway in our efforts, not just in fixing what they said was broken, but instead in making them understand that what they are asking for isn't as easy as they seem to think. Tools designed for a Windows-centric infrastructure do not port well over to the Unix flavors. For that matter, once you throw in virtualization options into any platform, you could actually pitch the whole management tool. But as usual I digress.

Let's see what's up for the weekend...

Cash game night on Friday at my buddy Shuman's house. Looks like a crew of all the usual degenerates. Depending on how things shake out Big Red and I may make it over for a few hands at some point. Now that baseball season is over, well our calendar isn't so full. Cole is also going to a local production of The Wizard of Oz with his Mamaw, so that leaves only Whitney to deal with, and she's normally all too eager to ditch us.

On Saturday night, which we had already committed to earlier in the week, is the Yanok tournament. Game #1 of the night will be the monthly qualifier. Big Red still hangs on to quite a nice little sum in that race. He runs it a bit differently than the NDPT points system. He collects $5 from everyone at every game to make up the total pot for the year end game. The total accumulated points you gather for the year, equate to your starting chipstack for the last game. This adds some interesting twists to an already highly competitive group of players.

So, despite all that's been happening in the 9 to 5 world, everything's actually okay. I'm good. Despite tough times there's always the fantastic network of friends that I have. Thanks all for being there, and for listening and/or reading from time-to-time. Since I tend to treat the blog as a bit of therapy for my mental well-being, there's probably more than a few of you who'd like me to get the hell off the couch already.

I'll see some of you this evening for the drawing at the Eagles, or if not there then one of the games I mentioned above. Bring lots of money! : ) You'll be needing it. : P

Regards,

cheer_dad

Weekend WSOP update, and Shuman recap

Somewhere along the line I neglected to report anything about Event 9 $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em / Six-Handed. Sorry kids, it wasn't intentional. The field of 1,236 was finally narrowed down to its last man standing and Rep Porter walked away with the WSOP bracelet and $372,929. Congratulations!

Event 10 - $2,500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better reached its final yesterday as well and found Farzad Rouhani on top. He pocketed the $232,911 for his trouble along with the WSOP bracelet. Others recognizable in the field were John Cernuto, Michael Mizrachi, and Hoyt Corkins among others.

Event 11 - $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em Shootout is still underway. Only the final table remains, with six players battling it out. We'll have to continue watching this one. The only real notable still in the running is Greg Mueller. We'll have to wait and see.

Event 12 - $1,500 Limit Hold'em has entered Day 3 with only 18 of the original 880 remaining. Currently Vinny Vinh is at the top of the pack, with over 330,000 in chips. But Erick Lindgren is still in the running on this one too. Obviously I'd like to see him pick up another bracelet! Whoever finally takes it down will have the $257,105 waiting for them.

Event 13 - $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em is still under way and will work its way down to the final 9 before calling it a night. Still among the field are Theo Tran, Lee Watkinson, and Liz Lieu (yum.)

Event 14 - $10,000 Seven-Card Stud World Championship has whittled the original 158 down to 72 as of the time I'm writing this. Only the top 10 will get paid for their time and effort. Still in the running... Daniel Negreanu, Cyndi Violette, Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, Greg Raymer, David Benyamine, Annie Duke, Phil Ivey, and Scotty Nguyen. Okay so there's still a lot of 'em.

Event 15 - $1,000 Ladies No-Limit Hold'em World Championship. Only 3 1/2 rounds into the event and the field of 1,190 has already been thinned down to 550. These ladies mean business!

Event 16 - $2,000 Omaha Hi/Lo doesn't get under way until 5:00pm PDT, but is expected to be a very popular event. For coverage of this and all the other events please point your browser to http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/. Or I'll have it out here eventually to the faithful among you.

As promised I want to go over some of the details of the game at Shuman's house. I think, without a doubt that the BIG WINNER of the night was none other than Steve "All-In" Allman, who cashed out for a whopping $365 having bought in 2 times during the night ($20 each.) I caused one of those feltings during an Omaha hand. Unfortunately, for Steve we both flopped a full house, I just happened to have the BIGGER one, with Q's full of 10's! If I recall I really only hit 2 good hands the whole time, but in this crowd and the pots they play. That can be enough. I more than tripled up which is a big accomplishment for me in the cash game. The other hand that I recall was a hold'em hand that bot me really kick started. From late position I looked down at Kh-10h. I ended up trying to limp, but got raised by the guy after me, to $2 total. Most others jumped out, but I decided ehhh, I'll give it a shot this time. All night I'd been seeing raises from a lot of guys with absolute trash hands. I had no way of knowing whether this was good or bad. Anyway, the flop came out Ah Jh 4c. I checked it, and it goes back to the intial bettor. He bets out a meager $3. I do a quick count of my outs. Nut flush draw, gut shot straight draw, AND the elusive Royal draw among that as well! The thing that made it really interesting is that he was so excited about his hand, that he thought he'd shoved everyone out and flipped over his SET of JACKS at that point. I said regardless I'm making the call. The turn was a blank... BUT again, he only bet $3. The River showed me the heart I needed. I shove all in... and he still calls!!! Whatever, ship it! He was a little miffed at me for a while, saying I should have told him I saw his hand, and should have let him take back his bet. AHHH, NO! Sorry, thank you, come again. Big Red also had a helluva night! She cashed out for like $125 after buying in for a total of $40. I'm sure there were bigger winners than the two of us, but for once it was nice to have a good/quick session at the tables. JR commented later about the night telling all about Steve's incredible run of luck. He said they played on until 4:00am at which time, Allman treated JR and Russell to breakfast. JR, said he'd never seen anything like Steve's run of cards, and the beat downs he was putting on people. Congrats Steve, now I'll expect you to lose some of that back this weekend. : )

Hope to see many of you this weekend for NDPT Tournament #8! As always the WSOP recaps will continue.

Regards,

cheer_dad

More WSOP, props to Otis, and a little local content too!

My hat's off to all the players who've been thus far enduring the long hours of poker play at the WSOP 2008. And at this point we're only in to Event #4! In addition to the players don't forget the staff and the bloggers and reporters doing the job that allows us all to live vicariously through their words. For a blow-by-blow of the action, head on over to http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/ and pick the event which strikes your fancy and read away. For a quick down and dirty, let me help you out just a bit though. Yeah, I'll take the hit and have management track the fact that I was surfing for poker related content yet again on the company's dime. I'm kinda like the guy who finds the cop for all the other speeders. Anyway, Event #2 $1,500 NLHE is now down to 18 of the original 3,929, and thankfully for all involved is currently on break and will recommence today at 2:00pm PST.
Event #3 $1,500 PLHE as well went into the wee hours of the morning and is down to 63 of the original 713. It would appear that the action continued on until around 4:00am-ish PST, and thankfully they won't get to it again until 2:00pm today as well.
The heart of my post is focused on Event #4 $5,000 Mixed Hold'em (Limit/No Limit.) I've been following along with the progress courtesy of Shamus and shorton. It would appear, that they loosely alternated adding posts up to the Live Blog as the action unfolded. When play starts back up today at 3:00pm PST there will be 91 of the original 332 player field. But the comments which told the story I've found very informative, but more so entertaining. The post titles as the hour blurred from "it's late" to "omg, it's early" were great! Here are a few of the example title posts and snippets of the action that gave me a chuckle while drinking my morning coffee:

"11 hours 39 minutes ago Posted by Shamus, Chiu Takes Bite from Opponent's Stack"

"Devilfish Attack"

"9 hours 16 minutes ago Posted by shorton, E-Dog Always Lurking...Lindgren wins the pot. "I'm always lurking," Lindgren says. Lindgren turns to the PokerNews reporter. "Don't write that up! That's a boring hand.""

"7 hours 30 minutes ago Posted by shorton Bride of Chucked" ~Recapping of course the demise of Ms. Tilly.

"Lederer Slays the Dragon" ~sounds better than Howard vs David

"Hellmuth on a Rampage" ~which involved the brat "...kicking over his chair."

"3 hours 47 minutes ago Posted by Shamus, No Shooting Stars . . . Yet, the fun continues over at Hellmuth's table. After the verbal sparring between him and another player had gone on for a while longer, Marcel Luske had an idea. Luske got up and went over to ask the security guard if he had a gun with which he could shoot them both. Not sure what the guard responded, but it seems to have quieted down over there." ~My favorite post and best idea of the night.

Oh and how many more puns can you guys come up with along the lines of "Hungry Like de Wolfe." : )

Ultimately, the top spot in this event will pay out a cool $374,505. A quick scan of those remaining brought instant recognition of all of the following names, at least to me:

David Williams, Gavin Griffin, Maria Ho, Barry Shulman, Ted Forrest, Roland de Wolfe, Andy Bloch, Howard Lederer, Josh Arieh, Antonio Esfandiari, Patrik Antonius, Michael Craig, David Grey, Marcel Luske, Jeff Shulman, Hoyt Corkins, David Benyamine, and Erick Lindgren

Thanks all for the coverage. Shamus looks to me as if your doing just fine! The rest of your co-horts as well! Looking forward to all the rest squashing what little bit of work productivity that I generally contribute.

Among other news which caught my eye in Google Reader this morning I submit http://www.upforanything.net/poker/archives/gambling-holes.html posted up by "Otis" chronicling an adventure by he and "G-Rob" which found them in quite the "drinking establishment." I can't elaborate, you'll just have to read it yourself. But as a "suburban father with mortgage..." myself I feel like I was almost there myself. Thanks for the post Otis!

Here on the local scene, this Friday "Shuman" will be playing host to his all-too-familiar cash game already teaming with all the usual suspects, some of whom with loose play and money to burn, that have me salivating like Pavlov's dog.

I really should get some work done.

Regards,

cheer_dad

WTF kinda week

Somebody 'splain it all to me. Really! I mean there is the brink of insanity and then, there is, the ABYSS!

The workplace has just given me SOOO many WTF moments this week. Conflict among the team, personal attacks, some downright hateful things said to people face to face. I just don't get it. Being nice I recognize can be a chore, but how about some common friggin' courteousy, and if that's too much how 'bout just not being mean. Is that too much to ask... in the WORKPLACE.

At some point I'm sure one or more people looked down at their WWJD bracelets and decided the answer was... " Oh yeah, it's go time! Yer goin' down!" I really wish I could go into more detail about it all, but somehow, somewhere I'm sure it wouldn't be ethical. Besides it's not nice to talk about STUPID people.

All I know is that I would love to be at the poker table with a few of these guys right now. Soon whatever chips they had would be in front of me. I believe they would reach new heights of "tilt." Oh while I'm on the subject of poker I'll mention the two games I know about that are coming up in the very near future. TONIGHT, is cash game night at the Shumans. And next Saturday April 19th, is the next NDPT tournament being hosted by the Wolfe's. Yes there will be howling at the moon. I may even redeclare my war on the accursed Jack Daniels.

It's been the kind of week I'd just like to take off for Wheeling or better yet Vegas right now. Just cram a wad of cash in my pocket and away I'd go. Probably just as well though, I'd likely bleed off my stack, to some ass hat.

Well be kind to one another this weekend and beyond.

Regards,

cheer_dad

Allman's gauntlet

And just in time for the weekend we've got RAIN, to go along with our nosebleed high GAS PRICES! But there are some rays of sunshine in an otherwise joyless world. Tonight's the Yanok's Poker Tournament (March qualifier.) And others among the greater NDPT collective will as well be joining Shuman for his cash game extravaganza. The bad beats and gnashing of teeth will be heard all over town. : ) That's the story for tonight, so yes I'll be playing poker tonight. BUT tomorrow night's where the story will be. I'm hosting NDPT #3-ish. Yes, boys and girls this is a points qualifying game, and YES that is MY NAME currently listed on top of the LEADER BOARD. (Pauses briefly to toot own horn...) I received a smack talk email earlier from one "All-In" Allman informing everyone that he was gunning for me. According to Frank, "The gauntlet has been thrown." So, oh yeah... it's go time baby! I absolutely love the sentiment as Steve put it though:

"GOOD LUCK TO ALL!! (not really its just something you say.)"

Great insight in those words...yeah, it's gonna be a real shame when I send you to the rail tomorrow night.

If anyone has difficulty in finding me this weekend, I'll be the one crawling into the bottle of Jack Daniels. Time to drown some more of those demons and let the battle rage on. See some of you tonight, the rest tomorrow.

Regards,

cheer_dad

Pick a card, draw a straw...

Whatever floats your boat (or in this case my boat) there are A LOT of great choices for me to choose from to play poker. So many so, that my online play has all but disappeared, although last night I dropped .15 on PokerStars when my frackin' Suddenlink modem decided to drop me! Suddenlink, much like Charter before them sucks! But I digress. Anyway back to the options of poker play. Of course as regular readers here some of you will already have read about my adventures in Donk-Dom (a.k.a. Wheeling Island.) So, as always that's a casino just a short drive up I-77/70. But this months options have really exploded. Friday night I have two great options to pick from. Juicy cash game at my good friend Shuman's house or head over to another great Yanok's qualifier tournament. Saturday is spoken for by me, as I'll be hosting the NDPT 3-ish tournament of the year. To further complicate things, Matt called last night saying that Bob was hosting a cash game (that night.) It was later when I got in, I was tired and didn't go. Besides I've already committed and overextended myself on playing lately. But I'm not even done with the options available to me for the month. The following weekend some of us will likely be playing while the ladies are attending a PartyLite party. They'll of course invade after the orders and invoices have been signed. And then finally we round out the month on the 29th, with the game at JR's for a little BIGGER than usual game. He'll be hosting a $100 tourney, for a single full table game. I feel my bankroll withering or growing exponentially as I type this. Eventually though I do want to get back to the bigger game, and take another shot. Granted it ain't 3 stacks of high society, but it'll have to do!

Thanks to Del for getting "us" access to the "TwoPlusTwoForums" through the proxy again!!! Now if I can resist the urge to be out there reading all the time and get some actual work done! :) Can't say as I've actually succeeded in the effort today! Also, last night my new CardPlayer magazine showed up in the mail, but I may never get the chance to even read it. On the cover this month is none other than Patrik Antonius and my wife immediately seized the magazine to commit some tawdry act I'm sure! Yeah Big Red likes her some of that man candy!!!

At any rate, hope all is well with each of you out there toiling away in the blogosphere. Keep grinding it out!

Regards,

cheer_dad