Cannonball Run

I played a new format of MTT that just cropped up on PokerRoom.com called a Cannonball. (Coincidentally, I did watch a few minutes of the movie "Cannoball Run" on CMT this weekend. Burt Reynolds has a nice home there on CMT.)

The Cannonball format is a half turbo half regular MTT. The first six levels are played at turbo speed, with new levels every three minutes. After level six, levels are increased every 12 minutes. Note that it's AFTER level six, so level seven occurs three minutes after the beginning of level six. Level seven is 150/300 Blinds.

I won a few pots early and managed to stay ahead of the turbo blinds until level seven started. On the small blind I held AT and figured I would take the big blind with an all in when it folded around to me. AT is pretty good against a random hand, right? He called with AJ and the board came 5678. I begged for a nine, ten or at least a four, but the river was a Jack, sealing my fate.

I kind of like the format. The early levels of most MTTs seem completely pointless to me, except for the few folks that donk themselves out and the others who chip up very quickly. Those that chip up inevitably go out before the money because they are way too active to survive the long haul of an MTT.

This format gets that pointless time over faster. Instead of three and a half hours to get an MTT in, you can get one over in two and a half hours.

Possible Landing Spot Identified

After a very encouraging second interview with the folks in Austin, it is looking more and more like the spot I will end up with. One of the interviewers was someone who worked in the same environment that I am currently in, so we sort of spoke the same "language." That is always nice, being more certain that you are being understood when you talk about specific technical processes. You also have the benefit of his endorsement if you consider that "he came from where I am" and if he values his own experience, he should value mine too. I guess. Hopefully he didn't work with a bunch of idiots. Based on my experience with this company, my chances are about 50-50.

I kind of feel like Antony's audience in Julius Caesar. The last one to speak has the best chance to sway my opinion. After the Lansing interview, it seemed like that was going to be my best opportunity. Since then, Austin has had two interviews and they make a very compelling argument. The extra money they are offering certainly does a lot to strengthen their position.

But still, there is no offer from Austin, although I expect one shortly. If not by Wednesday it will be considerably longer as the decision maker will be in China. Again we wait with baited breath. Here in Oklahoma, that's what you have after eating Sushi.

Link Added

Human Head Thinks Big added to the blogs I read on the right.

That shit is too damn funny not to be recognized. Plust he's in Witchita. I drive through it every month when I go to the home game in Kansas City. He gets extra points for sympathy.

Vegas for the WSOP

I want to go to Las Vegas during the WSOP again this year. Last year KingLucky and I went and it was a lot of fun.

My "situation" makes that a difficult thing to plan in advance. We do have tenative plans for the first week in July.

Right now I am looking at two very distinct "situational" possibilities.

Plan #1 involves me staying with my current company and transferring to Lansing, Mi. If that happens, I will have plenty of vacation time, and probably plenty of frequent flyer miles to make the trip. My bankroll is in good enough shape to make the trip as fun as last year.

Plan #2 involves me leaving my current company and moving myself to Austin, Tx. This is actually the preferrable option because it involves a considerable increase in pay. Very considerable. Considerable enough that it wipes out all the frequent flyer and bankroll issues totally. The problem is that I won't have enough vacation time to go the first week in July. Based on their "vacation generation" schedule (it's one of those places where you get x number of vacation minutes based on x number of hours worked.) I will be short about half a day, even with the Independence Day holiday.

I already have Job #1 in my hands. I'm even doing work for them remotely already. Job #2 isn't a done deal. I had a phone interview last Friday that I didn't think went well but they called on Tuesday and said they want to have a second phone interview. After the first interview I felt like my decision was going to be made for me, but now it looks like everything is still up in the air.

If Job #2 comes through, I hope I can work something out with them that my Vegas trip can happen. If I can't work anything out, I may have to figure something else out because Job #2 is too good to turn down. But if Job #2 doesn't come through at all, Vegas is a done deal baby.

Go Ahead, It's A Free Country

A while ago I was visiting some former coworkers and someone said "Go ahead, it's a free country." Another person said "What? When did we move to Amsterdam?"

But this is a free country. Unless you want to play poker outside an Indian Reservation. Unless you want to smoke a joint. Unless you want to smoke a cigarette indoors. Unless you want to buy a handgun today. Unless you want to buy pornography. Unless you want to marry someone of your same gender. Unless you want to buy alcohol on Sunday. And coming soon, unless you want to get an Abortion.

There is no question that the current administration is attempting to lay seige on the current freedom of a woman to have an abortion in this country. And I CANNOT WAIT for this to happen.

Frankly, I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't need, nor do I forsee a need for an abortion in my future. But what I do see a need for in my future is ENTERTAINMENT. And it will be endlessly fascinating to me when this country attempts to outlaw abortions.

Abortions aren't the kind of thing a person needs everyday. So if you're wealthy enough, the ban won't really affect you, because you can always fly to Canada or Europe to have your abortions. So basically, this is just a restriction on the poor.

The poor have always been a great weapon in the world of politics. Nobody has a use for them otherwise, but boy-oh-boy are they fun to use as a political tactic.

This should be a GOOD one.

My biggest fear is the suspicion that the right-wing nut-jobs will never come through on their promise to outlaw abortions. It has always been a tool for them to motivate their voters to come out to the polls. If they actually DID what they've been promising to do for decades, they would lose that tool. I guess there's alway's the irrational fear of gay marriages to motivate their morons, but they might not want to give up this horse the've been riding for so long.

Poker Comic #58

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PokerComix.com

The Good Folks over at PokerComix.com posted one of my poker comics and put some nice links to this site. They even pimped Instant Bankroll for me!

I love their tagline that says "...where actual artistic ability is purely optional." This could not be more true in my case.

A critic of my comics once said they are not funny. If you don't play poker I'd totally agree, they're not funny at all! Well, the sound of the jokes "wooshing" as they fly over your ignorant skull might be slightly humorous. The comics are for poker players. If you don't play poker, I doubt you'll enjoy them. Imagine a tribe of African Pygmies reading Dilbert. "Click-Pop...Oh that Wally...Pop-Smack."

He also said the art sucks. Maybe he didn't notice that IT'S THE SAME PICTURE EVERY TIME, I JUST CHANGE THE WORDS. Just when you think you've encountered the dumbest person on earth, someone comes along and proves you wrong.

I drew the picture of "Fish" and "ParPo" (yes, they actually have names!) in about 5 minutes using Microsoft Paint over a year ago. At one point my hard drive crashed and I lost the bitmap image I was using, so I just used the compressed jpeg from that point on. A bad, hastily drawn picture gets even worse! But it's not really about the drawing. I wanted people to think it's two guys talking at a poker table, and I think it does that okay. I could remake the picture, but it has a certain amount of sentimental value to me now.

People love the comic. I track when someone links to my site, and whenever someone links to my comics they almost always say nice things. I especially appreciate it when they link it, and then talk about why they think it is funny and what situation in their own lives it made them think about. I know they aren't all winners, even reading back throught them sometimes I wince and think "Wow, I really had nothing that time." Once in a while though, I think it's pretty damn funny, even if I do say so myself.

I know for a fact that poker comic has made people laugh, and if the ones I know about are the ONLY times it's happened, it's still enough to make the whole thing worthwhile.

Where will I land?

This week has been full of interviews and job possibilities. It looks like I have some stiff competition for the Austin job. I am still in the running and they might even hire more than one person, so I am still hoping that job comes through.

If not, it looks like I am Michigan bound. That is pretty much a done deal, I just have to let them get done with production here in February.

There's still a lot up in the air about how long I will be able to travel to the sites before I have to move, with both situations. I might still be in town for Okie-Vegas yet...here's hoping.

I think I will make it to the Razz Tournament on Full Tilt tonight, it sounds like a good time. I will take off for Kansas City on Saturday for what may be my last ever trip up there.


Update: It's a HORSE tournament, not a Razz tournament. It's at Full Tilt at 9:00 CST and the password is princess. That's all I know, and I wouldn't count on it being correct! Check out This Blog for the real story.

Poker Comic #57

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Freerolls are funny

Monday was an interesting day. Just after mangling my blog in the name of peace, I registered for a freeroll at PokerRoom.com. And then I immediately forgot about it. The freerolls at PokerRoom are pretty dubious anyways, because you have to generate enough points to release the money you won. You are essentially trying to win a bonus.

Anyway, I register for the freeroll because it opens for registration in the next 30 seconds, and the max of 2400 is filled in a matter of seconds, even though the tournament doesn't begin for 90 minutes. I don't see any other tournaments that tickle my fancy (and I refuse to play poker without having my fancy tickled.) So I go to my garage and start cutting up cardboard boxes for the trash. There has been a burn ban for so long in Oklahoma that I have built up quite a collection of cardboard boxes and they are beginning to take of my garage. (Recycling is evil, you heard it here first.)

Whilst taking great pleasure is razor blading the cardboard up into managabe pieces, my wife comes home and I invite her out to lunch. We head out to one of her favorite restaurants and enjoy a nice meal when I realize that I was missing my tournament! Oh dear. When we arrive back at home I check out my status. I'm still in it, but I'm under the gun with 210 chips, and the big blind is 200. I quickly go all in with my 45o and flop a five, river another and quadruple up. Three hands later I get AK and triple up. Whee!

A freeroll table coach (the WORST kind of table coach) informs me that I am a joke and that I won't be around for long. I promptly double up off him with Kings. Before long I am around the tournament average, with only 200 of the original 2400 left.

I say bye-bye to the table coach when he plays some godawful hand in a stupid situation. Of course I rub it in. Whee again!

KingLucky calls and I'm in the middle of the "miracle freeroll comeback" story when the phone cuts out. It goes through my mind...if the phone's not working, and my phone service is provided by my cable company then my cable modem might be dead too! I look at the screen and the showdown between AA and 99 is frozen in time. Crap!

I call from my cell phone and the cable company is aware of the outage. The great thing about having phone service through the cable company is that they have to restore your cable with the same haste that the phone company is responsible for restoring that public utility to service. An hour later my cable comes back and I was knocked out in 130th place with 70 still playing. "Money" started at 40.

Good thing it was a freeroll!

This Donkey rarely drew

The DADI was a blast last night. I managed to luck my way into 5th place out of 47, just behind SirWaffles and Fuh-Lee-See-Uh. I think I played pretty well in the beginning. I quartered people five times and only got quartered once. I managed to scoop a couple of times late which put me into the final table, but Jestocost had such an unweildy stack it soon became a contest for second place only.

My final hand was a blunder as I got all in with A345 with three to act behind me, and got called in two places. One was SirWaffles with an A2 and the other was ZeemJr with total garbage. Unfortunately that garbage included two clubs, and the flop came with all clubs. The only card that could save me for the low was a deuce, and that didn't come. I was left with 700 or so chips with the 1200 blind coming in two hands. ZeemJr tried to do me a favor by getting all in with crap again against the chip leader. Had he lost it would have moved me up to fourth place even though I was a sitting duck, all in on the next hand. Unfortunately ZeemJr managed to suck out again and eventually finished second.

There were some pretty horrendous plays in the tournament, but they were the exception, not the rule. And the nature of Omaha8 is fairly forgiving to those plays. It wouldn't be poker if you didn't see a painful suckout every few minutes.

The fun, of course, was harassing Felicia and GaryC all night, along with giving grief to the rest of the Poker Mafia who showed up in pretty good force, as players and railbirders. I'm anxious to hear the results of the multitude of last longer bets that seemed to be flying around.

The pain is that the tournament kept me up past 11pm and I had to get up for work at 4am this morning. After working second shift the last couple of days and sleeping in, it made me all the more miserable this morning. Ugh.

Poker Comic #56

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I don't get it

I guess I grew up very sheltered. I was at least 13 or 14 years old before I met my very first redneck.

I grew up in a Washington DC suburb, and it was a pretty racially diverse area. My block had some white people, black people, latin people and jewish people. There was even a samoan family. Nobody was really native to the area though. They were all transplanted from somewhere else.

When I had my first "redneck" experience, I was at a friend's house, to watch music videos, play video games or maybe Dungeons and Dragons. (Yeah, I played. So what?) My friend certainly wasn't a redneck. I remember he had feathered hair and liked to wear skinny ties. Very NOT redneck attire. His brothers however, had the redneck uniform. Plaid flannel shirts, sleeves torn off.

What I didn't understand about these rednecks was that they kept calling people jewish. I could tell they were trying to be insulting, because it usually came out as "You fucking jew," or "at least I'm not a fucking jew." I knew some jewish people and the only difference I noticed was that they went to temple on Saturday instead of church on Sunday. Other than that, they seemed like everyone else to me. So the insult went right over my head. What the hell is so wrong with being jewish, or in their words "A fucking jew?" Of course there isn't, it's just a display of ignorance from the insulter. I was 14, I wasn't a "fucking" anything. These dumb rednecks didn't even know what a jew was, and I'm not positive they even knew what fucking was, so their insults were completely out of context. I'm sure they heard it from their redneck friends, and they sure didn't want to be one, whatever it was.

This is kind of how I feel about constantly being called "gay" by someone recently. I may or may not be gay, but I don't get why it is an insult to be called "gay," especially by someone who has absolutely no clue what your sexual preferences is. Actually, I think this guy is too stupid to know what HIS sexual preference is! How is this an insult to me, when I don't really think it's a bad thing to be gay, or jewish for that matter? All he's doing is showing his small minded ignorance by assuming I'd be insulted by being acccused of being gay.

To me, it's as if he was trying to convince everyone I was from Mars. "He's a Martian, everybody!" He wouldn't know a Martian if one nibbled on his nutsack, but someone once accused him of being one, and he knew it was a BAD thing to be one.

I already said I'd be willing to add some gay porn to this website if that's what people were looking for, and you never know, for the right affilliate deal, I might choke down a few cocksickles. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get ahead in this world. Pun intended.

DADI

I hope like hell I can play in this.

You see, my second shift guy hurt his back. The only guy I have that can cover for either one of us has to work first shift because moving him to second shift would cause a huge series of dominos to fall that would eventually cause the universe to unravel.

I am working second shift (until 1am) tonight and tomorrow. He HOPES his back will be better by Wednesday, but if not I may have to work instead of play.

The interesting question is why do I even care about a job that goes bye-bye in a month anyhow? I could just tell them I'm not working second shift and that it's not my problem. But I'm not that guy.

But the good news is that it is ACTUALLY RAINING at my house! WooHoo! The Oklahoma Wildfires actually came within 2 miles of my house on Saturday, when I was supposed to meet with Maudie and GaryC at the Newcastle Gaming Center. Lucky for me there are some VERY EXPENSIVE houses in that two miles, so the fire fighters were VERY active in getting the fires doused. Gary called and told me about his party and I decided to stay home in case the fires got any closer. This meant totally blowing off Maudie, which was rude. In that Maudie way, she has already forgiven me.

Thanks Maudie!

No Texas....Nebraska!

I haven't played Texas Hold Em in so long, I feel like changing my banner to this:



I'm pretty much a Nut-Peddler in Omaha Hi-Lo. Which can really suck because you end up splitting every pot and making very little money. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for Party Poker and their never ending supply of Omatards. There's always a guy who pots it on every street even though his Ace-Deuce has been completely counterfeited.

I'm a Reverse Jinx

Funny, the year before I moved to Oklahoma, the Sooners won the National Championship, so I had to tolerate all the Oklahoma Football fans acting like their team could win the NFL Pro Bowl.

Now it looks like I will be moving to Austin.

Oh joy.

Poker Comic #55

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Duggle Channels Grubby

Florida was nice. It was kind of disconcerting the entire time to watch CNN and even the local news constantly talk about wild fires in Oklahoma City. They kept mentioning cities and towns right around my house, which is fairly deep in the woods. We weren't sure we'd be coming home to a house or a burnt out shell. Fortunately, the house still stands.

The trip started out on a strange note. We stopped at a Wal-Mart parking lot at 2am in between Jasper and Birmingham Alabama and someone offered to stud my dog. I don't know about you, but nobody ever offered to have sex with my Chihuahua after midnight in a parking lot in Alabama before. Mississippi, maybe.

The next day some guy in Georgia told me he liked how my Beagle looks. I was worried about his intentions too, but the gun rack in his pickup told me he wanted her for her hunting abilities. The only area my beagle hunts is my dining room table.

Speaking of Mississippi, one day I hope to have a fast food order fulfilled correctly in Mississippi. They had a half dozen opportunities on this trip, but they are still going oh-fer. There are car plants all over the south now, but not a one in Mississippi. I think I know why. If nobody in the state can get an Iced Tea order correct, do you want them building your transmission?

We did drive through Birmingham and I realized one thing about that city, something only Grubby would probably appreciate. Birmingham has the best fast food selection of anywhere in the country I've ever seen. Of course that's not saying much, as fast food is just fast food, but for a connoisseur like Grubby, Birmingham has to be the top of the heap.

Of course they have all the standard McDonalds/Wendy's/Taco Bell/Sonic/Captain D's/Chick Fil A/Arbys type restaurants you can find anywhere, but they also have some fairly unique places that I haven't seen very many other places, if anywhere else. These include:

-Milo's - Strictly Hamburgers, and very popular sweet Iced Tea
-Sneaky Pete's - Hot Dog joints....there aren't enough good hot dog places. Try the Junkyard Dog. Incredible!
-Rally's - Great Cheeseburgers, and interesting fries.
-Checkers - Kind of a Rally's wanna-be, but still very good burgers.
-Jack's - Breakfasts are outstanding.
-Jill's - Not a joke, but I'm not sure they are around any more.

If you want real restaurants, Birmingham isn't so great (but I do know of some FANTASTIC Barbeque and Rib joints) but for fast food, B'ham can't be beat!