Blogger Table

As a function of my vacation and the ability to stay up late (thank god I don't have to hear the alarm go off at 5am every morning) I actually got a chance to play at a blogger table last night.

I was playing at an Intertops Freeroll around 10:00 and I thought about the blogger table. I knew SirFWALman always played at these things and always with his actual name, so I searched for him. Sure enough, he was at a table full of bloggers. When otis took off it opened up a spot for me.

How was the table? BRUTAL with a capital BRUTAL. 98% of hands were raised pre-flop. Even more flops were bet. A huge number of bluffs, and an even larger number of suck-outs. AA was garbage (except when I raise into it with my 72.)

My ONE goal for the night was to win a hand with 72. I bet I raised with it 6 times, and finally won a hand with it when I raised to $3 pre-flop and bet $10 on the flop. This hardly makes up for the time I spiked a 7 high flop and called the $10 bet against AA. Ugly. Fortunately I won the buff against the same guy, so it was a big like rubbing it in his face. For my own money.

Two hands were particularly brutal. On one I made my flush on the turn with K6 of spades but only called a $6 river raise to see Ace-Ten of spades. I was very suprised to see someone play Ace-Ten of spades without a pre-flop raise at this table. Way to NOT protect a good hand. I guess it was the flush or nothing for that guy.

The other was my final hand for the night. My Ace-Five of spades was all in when I got my flush on the turn. There was a pair of Tens on the board so my nut-flush wasn't a sure thing. Especially when moron calls me with a pair of sevens and spikes a seven on the river. Nice call shit-bag.

I do not reccomend the blogger table, unless you just want to show off and have fun. The blogger tourneys are a better idea. I'm not sure why they don't play a weekly league or something, if all of them show up so regularly every night. There was Iggy, Pauly, Otis, Poker Prof, Maudie, the aforementioned SirF, and a bunch of others I can't remember. All funny guys, but playing at these small stakes makes them pretty crazy.

In honor of the bloggers

Hold'em Trny:8203408 Level:2 Stakes (20/40) - Monday, December 27, 21:22:41 EDT 2004
Table $2500 Guarantee (182715) Table #18 (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 2: DuggleBogey ( $1515 )
Seat 3: CDF_99 ( $2205 )
Seat 4: RTD2ROY ( $920 )
Seat 5: JTB_21 ( $915 )
Seat 6: Luucas24 ( $915 )
Seat 7: FredGarvin99 ( $915 )
Seat 8: ALE47491 ( $925 )
Seat 9: Jimbo1998 ( $980 )
Seat 10: Shockey_80 ( $710 )
Trny:8203408 Level:2
Stakes (20/40)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ 2d 7c ]
Shockey_80 folds.
DuggleBogey raises [40].
CDF_99 calls [40].
RTD2ROY folds.
JTB_21 folds.
Luucas24 folds.
FredGarvin99 folds.
ALE47491 folds.
Jimbo1998 calls [20].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9s, 3h, Qc ]
Jimbo1998 checks.
DuggleBogey bets [20].
CDF_99 calls [20].
Jimbo1998 calls [20].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6h ]
Jimbo1998 checks.
DuggleBogey bets [40].
CDF_99 folds.
Jimbo1998 calls [40].
** Dealing River ** [ Kc ]
Jimbo1998 checks.
DuggleBogey bets [40].
Jimbo1998 folds.
DuggleBogey shows [ 2d, 7c ] high card king.
DuggleBogey wins 310 chips from the main pot with high card king.

Yes I showed....I love how the table reacts after that play.

Predictable is the best

I trust everyone had a safe and pleaseant Xmas. I only call it Xmas because it pisses off the "super-christian" folk I work with. Otherwise I would just say "holiday." Go be rude, eh?

I have only been able to play a few hands so far at my in-laws, playing on dial up is like torture. Slow torture. I actually tried to download a file and play at the same time. BIG mistake. The one-meg file took forever, and poker was almost completely halted. I bet my table-mates loved that it took 20 seconds for every fold or call.

Here is my favorite hand so far, however:


***** Hand History for Game 1354429425 *****
$25 PL Hold'em - Monday, December 27, 13:36:48 EDT 2004
Table Do the freak (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 5: davekf123 ( $36.55 )
Seat 9: flatrate ( $44.88 )
Seat 10: itsonyou22 ( $24.8 )
Seat 4: DuggleBogey ( $15.95 )
Seat 3: rwcapitol ( $32.85 )
Seat 8: transito ( $13.05 )
Seat 2: Madbax01 ( $27.65 )
Seat 1: FRALES ( $24 )
Seat 7: coach1 ( $4.5 )
Seat 6: cbmertz ( $13 )
rwcapitol posts small blind [$0.25].
DuggleBogey posts big blind [$0.5].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ 3s 2d ]
davekf123 folds.
cbmertz folds.
coach1 folds.
transito calls [$0.5].
flatrate folds.
itsonyou22 folds.
Madbax01 raises [$1].
rwcapitol calls [$0.75].
DuggleBogey raises [$4].
transito folds.
Madbax01 calls [$3.5].
rwcapitol folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6h, 8h, Js ]
DuggleBogey bets [$10].
Madbax01 folds.
DuggleBogey shows [ 3s, 2d ] high card jack.

Yes I showed. Madbax01 had done that STUPID .50 raise pre-flop for all of the 6 hands he had played so far. I pledged to raise him on the next hand, which happened to be my big blind. I did it anyway, even though I only got 23o. Predictably, he called my raise and folded on the flop. I should rise his BB .50 every time now, but I'm not that rude.

I'm off

Some people will tell you I've been off for a while...

But I'm off to Jacksonville. Be back next year. Hopefully there will be an update before then, but you never know...

MERRY CHRISTMAS CHARLIE BROWN!

New Personal Record

I haven't posted for a while again, because I've been out of town so much. One week on the Poker Cruise, a long weekend in Kansas City and I leave Thursday for Jacksonville Fla. for the rest of the year. I will be able to post from there, but I probably won't be playing any poker so I don't know what I will write about. I heard they have poker at the racetrack (greyhound) so I might check that out sometime and blog about it.

The weekend in Kansas City was fun. Not profitable but still a blast. I won at nearly every game I played in the casino EXCEPT for poker, the game I usually win at to finance all my other games. I won money at Craps, Let it Ride, Video Poker, Roulette, something new called "Texas Shootout" and Pai Gow Poker. I think I dropped $5 into a quarter slot machine while King Lucky was in the restroom. I didn't win at that, and what's worse it took me so long to get my money in there that just as I pressed the button for the first spin, KL was already finished in the restroom.

The new personal record was hours spent gambling. I left OKC at noon on Saturday, arrived at King Lucky's house at 5:00 and we started playing poker around 6:00 PM. We played until midnight, and I got my ass kicked. I think Omaha did the most damage, but I did win a pretty big pot in Screw Your Neighbor and made a late comeback to preserve my dignity. Straight from that game to the Casino, and straight to the poker room. I sat at a completely silly table where guys were raising blind hands and hitting unreal hands. Like raising blind on every street and flipping your cards to find a straight flush. That kind of silly. After that moron hit that, he raised almost every time the action came to him, no matter what he had. He acted right after me, so it was very frustrating. After the fourth time he limp-reraised, I said "Fuck it" and stood up and left. I took a little bit of pleasure in leaving on my big blind, so it screwed up the blinds something fierce. I moved to the table that King Lucky was playing at, and I immediately busted out for the rest of my buy in. I re-bought and immediately won my first buy-in back. Even got quad nines. Checking after flopping three 9s was absolutely the right play. We left the poker room and I felt tremendously lucky to be even.

From there I caught up with KL and we went to Craps and all the other games. I took a pretty healthy profit back to the poker room, where I gave it all back and then some. I gave up after raising with AK and hitting a king, but getting beat by two pair 5s and 7s, by a guy that acted AFTER me. If a raise can't get 57 out at this table, then it is pointless to raise unless you are holding the nuts. KL and I ate a nice comped breakfast around 9:00 AM and we went back to the casino tables. We played a good long time at Crapless Craps and video poker. Eventually we went to the Steakhouse for a good comped dinner of Prime Rib. After a bit more action we left and got back to KLs house around 11:00 PM. I crashed and headed back to OKC the next morning after doing some shopping in an Outlet Mall in Olathe Kansas for Xmas presents.

Twenty-Eight straight hours of gambling is a new best for me. I haven't even played that long in a row when I went to Vegas. I came out -$150 but had a fun time.

Check out the new animated PokerSourceOnline link to the right. It now includes an automatic referral for me. If you click on it and I get some referral cash out of your account, let me know in the comments or via email (dugglebogey@casinomail.com) and I'll send half the referral bonus to you via PayPal.

What's your Name?

Poker Tables are kind of funny about names. You never really learn the names of the people you play with live in a casino. They always end up in blogs with descriptions instead, like "Creepy guy with bad hair," or "Mr. Raises Every Pot Pre-Flop."

On the poker cruise, however, we were required to wear nametags. Seems kind of juvenile, but apparently CardPlayer (the company sponsoring the cruise) didn't want to let non-members into the card rooms. There were 1300 people on the cruise, but only 400 were part of the CardPlayer group. Since there were usually lists for every game, they didn't want non-members keeping members from playing. So they issued nametags, and requested people wear them whenever in the poker room. It was kind of nice. I liked being able to refer to someone by their name, and I liked people knowing my name. Since my real name is fairly unique, everyone quickly knew me, or at least heard about me. That might have something to do with how I played, but maybe it was just the name. The tags also said where you were from, which was also nice.

Some people just flatly refused. Maybe they figured they were "too good" to wear a nametag. I guess only people who listen for the fry machine to beep wear nametags. But that was also helpful, because anyone who refused to wear a nametag ended up being a jerk. It was nice to have the advance notice.

One such lady was absolutely unbearable to play with. I was sitting at a table and the floor seated her just across from me. After about four hands the table began to break, and she called the floor over and completely berated him about always putting her in games that are about to break up. I had to laugh and tell a fellow player that had previously taken her to task for abusing a dealer. He laughed and said "Some people can't see the forest because of all the trees." This lady was a witch with a capital "B."

But for the most part the people playing poker there were great. The aforementioned fellow, named "Kirby" was a barrel of laughs. We sat together at $4/$8 tables consistently until he gave up hold 'em for Omaha. I think it was after I cracked his aces with 89s. I flopped the open ended straight-flush draw, and caught an offsuit 10 on the river to take down a considerable pot. I also met another player from Oklahoma. He was glad to see me because a previous player from L.A. had told him that nobody was on the cruise from Oklahoma because nobody LIVED in Oklahoma. He dragged me over to her table to prove her wrong.

There were plenty of fish on board, most of them older people who were just learning to play. At the lower limits you kind of feel bad taking so much money from them, like you are fleecing grandma for her dead husband's insurance money or something. But when they catch an incredible two-outer on the river, all that guilt goes away. One little old lady went all in against me but forgot she had a chip protecting her cards. "What about that $1 chip there on your cards," I asked, and she tossed it in the pot. After I won the hand, she said "He even had to go after my last dollar!"

Sadly Ecstatic

I'll paraphrase the response that the PSO poster had to my posting:

"I know I can't play this way in bigger games, but I have no interest in playing in bigger games."

I just don't get this. Why would you never want to play in bigger games? Why would you be content to only being able to beat bad players?

I guess the poker explosion has spoiled a lot of people. There is a seemingly endless supply of horrid players out there to fleece. I guess if you always look for the right table and the right situation you can always find one where the play is bad enough that you can win playing the same tight game raising only with Aces or Kings every time. They need to be pretty bad, because they need to be completely oblivious that you are only playing nut hands.

But even then it's no excuse. If you are getting 10 to 1 pot odds on a hand but you still lay it down because your cards don't fit into your predetermined set of "acceptable starting hands" you are costing yourself money. And why would you be resistant to a play that is proven by SIMPLE MATH is the right thing to do? To preserve table image? You have already put yourself into a situation where table image MUST be meaningless because you only play nut hands. To get any action at all, people need to be pretty ignorant of your image.

I don't get it. But what really bugs me is when they comment on other people's play and assume they are a fish because they won a hand with less than a top ten starting hand? "How could he have stayed with Jack-Three? Please tell me his name so I can add him to my buddy list." It never even occurs to them that playing Jack-Three might have been a perfectly acceptable play. And after flopping quad threes, all that's left is the complaining.

When we were playing on the cruise, Krager and I overheard from some random table yeller that "Half of poker is complaining," or some such comment. I wish I could remember the actual quote, because both of us thought the same thing at the same time, that has to go on the list of funny comments heard at the poker table.

Please people. Don't be satisfied by the fact that you make money playing poker. Always be trying to get better. Always be working towards playing in BETTER games and beating BETTER opponents.

Anyway, I added some folks to my blogroll at the right.

SirFWGALMan is the most prolific blogger in the universe. He rambles on and on, even when he's taking a poker hiatus. But it's usually pretty fun and funny stuff.

Felicia is a must read for anyone. If you're reading this, there's a pretty good chance you've read her blog. She's taken comments off her blog because she has been getting rude comments. She needs to know that the HUGE majority of people that read her love her and her commentary. She's highly critical of the poker industry, and that's a GOOD THING. Too many people just go along and take abuse from every direction. Felicia stands up for poker players. If I were to start a Poker Association that represented players, I'd make Felicia the leader WITHOUT HESITATION, except that I think the job might kill her. Felicia, you are one of the good guys. (A certain STRIPPER can shove her twentysomething know-it-all attitude up her ass.)

Life's A Grind was on the PSO Cruise. He's a good ring player and a great tourney player. Also a really great guy who knows how to have fun at a poker table.

Tight Limit Players

Posted by a very prolific member of Poker Source Online's forums (he's almost caught me in posts!)

I play both limit and no limit and have found both to be very profitable. I'm just picky about the cards I play. Doesn't matter if it's no limit, or limit, I don't see that many flops usually. I've sat at limit tables for over an hour without calling the blinds a single time. I just don't play the dink cards, any two suited, connectors, or any of that kind of thing. I need two paint (suited or not), a/? suited, or a pocket pair to see a flop. Aces are where I'm currently tweaking. Ace/Facecard is an easy call. Ace/8-Ace/9 I'll call the blinds most of the time Ace/5 or less is a toss hand for me most of the time. A/6-A/7 is what I'm tweaking right now. So yes, I'm very picky about the cards I play, but I have the time to be picky. It works for me and I have no complaints . Of course, like anyone else, I might play something like 10/9 suited if I just get bored or want to change it up a bit, but it doesn't happen often.

My response:

Again, I am not trying to insult you.

But I LOVE playing against people like you at limit poker. Tight players that only play certain hands are the easiest to beat, and you can ask Lifesagrind or Krager, I EAT YOUR TYPE OF PLAYER FOR LUNCH at limit poker. They have experienced it first hand.

For the simple reason that I always know what you have. If I always know what you have, I always know what it takes to beat you. Sure you are going to catch a set once in a while with your pocket pair and beat me, but most of the time I can lay down a hand VERY CHEAPLY and get out of your way.

But since you are playing so few hands, you have to play them very aggressively in order to make your play worthwhile over time. I can either catch good cards to beat you, or get out of your way. But I will steal your blind every time it comes to you. You will never get to play your small blind EVER, unless it is a monster.

The best hands you make with Aces or Kings is usually top pair or a big two pair. But if you get a lot of callers, you are going to get rivered by straights and flushes constantly. And if you are in late position with your aces and kings, you are going to get lots of calls from the limpers in front of you that only have to call one more bet with their suited cards, and their unsuited connectors. And those hands, in multiples, are GREAT HANDS against TPTK or some such hand. If you are only playing Ace and a face or better, it is very easy to tell when you've hit or not. You might as well be playing your hands face up.

Your strategy of playing only the highest quality hands works great in No Limit or Pot Limit poker where you can protect your hand with a decent sized pre-flop raise. But you can't get the speculation hands to fold with a one-small-bet raise. It's just never going to happen.

If what you say is true, that you make good money playing limit this way (and I don't doubt that you do) then it is only because you routinely play profitable tables against poor opponents who call way too long with no hand and no draw. But you will NEVER be able to move up into mid or high limit poker with your style of play. The LAGs will eat you alive.

I know it sounds like I am putting you down, but I'm not. In fact, I bet you're not the rock you say you are, because I want people to THINK I'm a rock when I play, when in fact I play more like a fox. But the rock image can be valuable, if you need people to lay down hands. Conversely sometimes I show REALLY BAD cards early if I think I am going to want action. Sometimes I even raise with 7-2. Once you have shown your 7-2 after raising it and betting it the whole time, guess what? You are going to get TONS of action on your big hands. Again, ask Lifesagrind and Krager. They have seen this strategy at work.

The best part is that you are the easiest guy to spot at the table. You are the guy who folds his big blind when there are 4 players that called a raise in front of you. Or you fold your small blind when 8 players limped in front of you.

If you think everyone that calls with J3 in limit poker is an idiot, then you SIMPLY DON'T know what you are talking about. There are OFTEN times in limit poker where calling with J3 is ABSOLUTELY the right play to make.

In fact, I won a HUGE pot with J6 last week, and a guy BLEW UP at me for beating his aces with it. All I had to do was call one small bet ($4) pre-flop to get into a $40 pot from the big blind. Guess what? The flop had a J6 in it, and I let the guy with aces bet himself silly and then raised him on the river when the board didn't pair. But the trick to the hand was knowing what the guy had, and knowing what I had to beat. This guy played a hundred hands without raising. What else could he have had?

Everyone learns to play tight. Against bad players, it may be the only way to win. I think playing tight is a necessary part of the progression to becoming a better poker player. But at some point you have to progress past the point of playing tight aggressive poker. One thing about being GOOD tight player is knowing when someone is playing a good loose aggressive game, or if he is just a wild maniac playing everything and catching cards like crazy. Because if you do it right, it's not so easy to tell.

The Cruise

I need to start writing about the cruise, but you can expect a few posts on the topic. I'll write what I think of, but I can assure you I will think of other things later. I will keep posting them, because so many really hilarious things happened, I'm sure I will not be able to get them all in one post.

The Cruise was really a blast. I'm not sure that much poker in one week is healthy, but when is an opportunity like that going to happen again? We arrived in San Diego on Saturday afternoon and got right on the ship. Mike had warned me that the line for getting on board can be long and boring, but we walked right on. After checking out our room, we met all the PSO folks at a party hosted by CardPlayer Magazine, the folks that sponsor the cruise. On a ship of nearly 1300 people, about 400 were there as part of CardPlayer Cruises' package. I got to meet Mike, Peter, Steve, Travis, John, Tom and Travis. We had a few free drinks and found out that the poker room opened at 7:00 that night.

I started out playing $4/$8 Limit. They spread a lot of different levels, but the only games in town were Hold Em and Omaha. The lowest level that wasn't a beginner game was $2/$4, and the highest I saw was $10/$20. There was an NL $200 buy-in game that I only tried once.

I quickly learned that this was going to be a profitable cruise for me. The play at the $4/$8 game was very tight so there were pots to be had if you had the guts to make a move on them. I played until around midnight on Saturday and wound up ahead almost $200.

Again on Sunday I played $4/$8 most of the day and broke even, until an amazing rush late that night put me ahead more than $100.

But Monday, I made a mistake, and the cruise would never be the same for me after that. I sat down at a table and received my cards. I put out $4 to play, and heard the dealer say "Raise." Uh-oh. I had accidentally sat at a $2/$4 table, thinking it was a $4/$8. I tried the $2/$4 table the day before but quickly gave it up when I got called down to the river by UNIMAGINABLE hands. There was just no way to make a good hand stand up when people were drawing to and hitting any possible outs, no matter how slim. That time I returned to my $4/$8 game where I was comfortable. This time I looked around for an easy escape route from $2/$4 hell. But I saw Tom (Lifesagrind) was at this table, and he was getting pretty chatty with some folks at his end of the table. So I stuck around for a while and things really started to happen. I was really having fun. Tom raised a hand, and I said to the table "I have the hand to crack those aces." I didn't crack them, but sure enough, Tom had aces. Then I got Ace King and the flop had an Ace and a Queen. An absolute ROCK had raised pre-flop so I put him on queens and played cautiously. I announced to the table that I was only calling the flop because I was up against a set of queens. When another queen hit the table on the turn I folded my Aces and Queens with top kicker and said "I can't beat four queens." Another poor soul held on with his Aces, showing aces full of queens to get bad beat by FOUR QUEENS and the table looked my way in amazement.

I soon realized that I knew exactly what everyone at this table was holding at all times. I knew when I was beat, and I knew when I had the best hand. Tom adjusted pretty well, because I was basically telling everyone what they were holding before they showed it, but the rest of the table continued their rocky behavior. I decided that if I was really going to make a difference in this game, I was going to have to get a little crazy. And I went VERY crazy, BLOGGER style. That's right, 7-2 meant raise, EVERY TIME. The HAMMER plays folks, and the hammer WINS.

The first time I raised with 7-2, I got called all the way to the river by AA. And she almost folded it too. I proudly showed my 72 and the whole table laughed. The winner was Jennifer, a Prosecutor from San Diego.

The second time I raised the 7-2, the flop was 7-7-2 and the whole table exploded. "Wow, I bet you wished you had 7-2 this time!!" they all cackled. Everyone folded on my river bet and I showed the 7-2 and I had them rolling on the floor.

After that the table changed completely. No raise got any respect. Nearly every player at the table raised with 7-2 at least once. One player named George didn't seem to be having a good time, but it was difficult to tell. Sometimes he seemed downright grumpy, and I couldn't tell if he was enjoying himself or not. On the second to the last hand of the night, he raised pre-flop with his 7-2 and I knew, he was having a ball.

At one point I had won a pretty big pot and was busy stacking my chips. I pulled one to give to the dealer when I realized there was a dealer change between the hands, and a brand new dealer named Keith had just sat down. I tipped him anyway and announced to the table "This is the trick to getting good hands, toke the dealer before he even does anything." He had a quizzical look on his face until I said that, to which he agreed completely. He dealt me a monster 9-3 offsuit. I considered folding it but told myself "You gotta have faith," and opened for $2. The flop? 8-3-3. Keith smiled when I raked the pot, and Tom sent a toke his way for the next hand. Which Tom won.

That was probably the most fun night of poker I have ever had. I bought in for $50 and rebought for $100, and ended the night with exactly $150. I was dead even, but I felt way ahead because my sides hurt from laughing that much. Maybe it was because I had been playing poker for about 15 hours that day and it was 5:00 AM Central Time when they kicked us all out of the poker room.

My routine became playing $4/$8 early in the day or evening to get ahead, and playing $2/$4 with the same riotous crowd until they forced us to leave every night. The main cast was always the same: Tom, Travis, Ray (An ex NFL football player), Jennifer the Prosecutor, and Me, along with a few innocent bystanders who had no idea what they had gotten into. We laughed and carried on like we were drunk, but I don't think any of us were actually drinking. At least we weren't until we went up to the Crow's Nest bar with all the dealers after the Card Room closed. Those folks are off-the-hook.

Funny little weirdness.

First I want to pimp another blog, from my buddy Lifesagrind at http://lifesagrind.blogspot.com/ . I will be meeting him on the PSO cruise tomorrow afternoon. Check his blog if you want to find out whether he is as excited as I am.

Last night I was packing clothes and generally getting ready to go, since I knew I would be busy tonight playing in the final night of the PSO poker league. (Currently in 10th place.) I heard chips flying around. At first I thought Mrs. Bogey was in there playing poker, which would be odd since she has never played online poker and I believe she is completely terrified of the idea. Then I remembered that I had signed up for a freeroll at Intertops.com the previous day and had left the software running earlier that day. I looked at the clock and it was 50 minutes past the hour. "Perfect," I thought to myself. "You can come in when the blinds have gotten to a decent level and really start playing." WRONGO! It had been running for An HOUR and 50 minutes. I was at a table where every player had more than 9000 chips and I had .....45. Yes, that's forty-five chips. Oh well, it's a freeroll. Doubled up UTG. Quadrupled up on the BB. Doubled up again. Quadrupled up when I caught a Flush when I called all in pre-flop with K8d.

Holy crap! I have the tournament average! Sweet, I'm almost in the money!

Well, I finished 18th when my Aces got cracked by a pair of 8s who caught a set on the river. But I made the money, since the tourney paid through 30 places. I bet I made more money per hour than the winner did.

Funny, funny stuff.

Poker Cruise

I leave Saturday morning for the Poker Cruise I won from Poker Source Online . I got the details in the mail yesterday, and it looks like a pretty sweet deal. My flight arrives in San Diego at 1:00pm and Mrs Bogey and I will take a cab to the dock. The ship cruises at 5:00pm and the card room opens Sunday morning.

There will be three tournaments, on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. The first is a limit tournament with $150 buy-in. I may buy into this one, as I have had particular success playing limit tourneys lately. The only trick I know is extreme patience, and I plan on having a very relaxing trip, so patience should be aplenty. The next one is No Limit, and Poker Source Online is paying the entry fee for this one, another $150. If I cash in either one of these two, I will buy into the $230 main event, another NL tourney.

Otherwise the card rooms are open from 9:00am to 3:00am whenever we are not in port. There are three ports of call, and I will spend that time with Mrs. Bogey. I have warned her there will be lots of poker on this trip, and she is prepared for a week of relaxing and saloning.

I will be bringing a $2000 bankroll, so we will see how I do at the tables. They claim they will spread whatever games are requested, and there should be a couple of hundred card players on board, if you believe their advertising. I expect plenty of low limit and no limit tables. There is also a poker seminar scheduled, I expect I will attend that. Anyone who reads the forums at PSO knows I love to talk about poker theory.

The ship returns on Saturday morning. I expect to be exhausted and rich. Then only ten more days of work and I am off to Jacksonville for Christmas with Mrs. Bogey's family.

There is an internet cafe on the ship, so depending on availability and pricing, look for some posts from the ship!