Poker Coin

A while back I placed an order from PokerCoin and I did a little review of the products I received. I had ordered a card protector and a keychain, you can see the card protector here. It's the one in the middle.

In my review, I said I was kind of disappointed in the card protector because it only has content on one side, and I wished it was more like the keychain.

Lo and behold, Brian at PokerCoin read my review and wrote me an email saying he wished I had ordered a different coin. He carries some coins for resale, but he also makes his own. The one I didn't like was one he resells, and he wanted to get my impression of the ones he makes.

For free, he sent me two more coins, ones that he made and they are FAR superior to the "I'm not Bluffing - Read 'em and Weep" coin that I bought from him.



The one on the left comes in many colors, so I requested "Hot Pink." It's pretty pink, although it looks more red in this photo and in the dark most people think it's red. It came in an airtight case, but can be easily removed.

The true star of the show is the one on the right in the picture. It's larger and has a lot more detail. There are holes surrounding the main design in the middle, and it is numbered because it is a limited edition. The detail on the engraving is incredible, you really have to feel this one to get a true appreciation of it, especially the shark on the back. It came in a jewelry type case, perfect for gift giving. If any poker wives see this post, this is a fantastic present to suprise your husband with, and vice versa. The big one is only $20 plus shipping, which is reasonable. I just checked the web site, and they are selling this card protector for $15 now.

Obviously the service is beyond compare. I didn't even complain directly to them about my purchase, and they made it right just from an offhand mention that one of the coins I ordered didn't quite live up to expectations. I suspect if anyone ordered something and wasn't happy with the quality, it would be quickly replaced or easily returned.

I will be taking both of these coins to Las Vegas with me to show to Mike Jackness from PokerSourceOnline. Hopefully he will start carrying them in the PSO store so people with around 2500 pso points from rakeback or promotions can order them. I think they would be a real hit. They are extravagant pieces, almost artwork. I've used them in two different casinos now, and everyone who asks to see them goes "WOW."

Meanest Poker Blog

I've had the distinct pleasure of being mentioned in other people's blogs, both me personally, and this here blog, Go Be Rude. While some people dance around the subject, the conclusion I draw is that this blog is perceived as being MEAN.

I think that's because this blog IS MEAN!

I'm a pretty mean person. I don't hide behind euphamisms like "I tell it like it is," or "I'm just being honest." Bullshit. I take pleasure in insulting people. I love taking people down a peg. Almost everyone I have ever met isn't as smart as they think they are, or at least not as smart as they want us to think they are.

When I insult someone, I almost always get the same response. I say "You're an idiot," and their reply inevitably comes "You're a bigger idiot." That is a logical fallacy, and a poor argument. It may be so that I'm an idiot, but that doesn't stop you from being an idiot.

OF COURSE I'm an idiot. We're all fricking idiots. I do idiotic things all the time, and I don't mind at all when someone points it out to me. MY INEVITABLE response, if I in fact acted like an idiot, is "You're right, that was pretty stupid." If I don't feel I was acting like an idiot, I'll defend my action. I will NEVER just attack back and call them a bigger idiot.

Everyone does stupid things, and the ability to laugh at yourself, even when someone is laughing at you, is a fine quality. Even admirable, because a lot of people don't have it.

The other thing that always happens when you have a little spat with another poker player is that they will challenge you to a heads-up poker game. This somehow PROVES something to them. "If I can beat you in poker, that means I'm smarter than you, and therefore not an idiot like you said." Again, logical fallacy, but now magnified by the fact that a heads-up game doesn't prove anything.

I was involved in one of these "I'm smarter than you" dick-measuring challenge arguments recently at PSO. Some guy gave out poor advice, then set about calling everyone that disagreed with his assertion that you should "Always play A5o to a raise" an inferior poker player to himself. I never even addressed his poker advice, which was atrocious. I just pointed to another thread where said "Poker Expert" was begging for money because he was completely broke. My insult, which was really more of a joke at his expense, was that nobody should take poker advice from someone who can't rub two quarters together. (The other essential element to a good insult is that it be FUNNY.)

This guy went completly crazy, posting IQ scores and demanding I meet him for a live poker game for $500. I proposed some alternate solutions, then let him off the hook when he admitted he didn't have the money for the contest. He should have known better than to bluff a poker player.

My conclusion is that I think most people misunderstand the meanness of this blog. Primarily they misunderstand that when I insult someone, I am not claiming any kind of superiority to them, mental or otherwise. I don't claim to be smarter than everyone I insult, and I certainly don't claim to be a better poker player than everyone I insult. But I still think everyone, without exception, can be taken down a peg or two.

Especially if done so in a funny way.

Domination

King Lucky called me to take this one over with 12,000 in chips, so he could go eat dinner. This is when I went to bed.

Poker Comic #22

To show or not to show.

Double As posted in his blog about a hand where he semi-bluffed with a king kicker with two pair on the board against a very LAGgy player. At the end of the hand he showed his cards.

Someone named Pete Birks posted this in comments:

Ask yourself this question.

Why do you really think you elected to show your opponent your hole cards after winning this pot?

Was it:

a) a rational play that could well put him or her on tilt.

b) something that made you feel good because it showed the rest of the table how you had outplayed your opponent.

If (a), did you subsequently check to see whether it had the desired effect?

If (b), you should have no need to shout "look how good I am!" Winning the money is proof enough.

I never show cards, whether I have a hand or I do not, because I usually find that information that another player gives me that he does not have to disclose (usually a good hand in a freeze-out and a poor hand in a cash game) is useful ammunition for when at a later date the player does not disclose his hand.

BTW, my usual comment when someone shows cards as in the above situation is "you just couldn't resist showing it, could you? ". Alternatively, I may say "you were winning" (whether this is true or not).

Tends to turn any intended tilt back on the card shower, and I haven't had to disclose any cards to do it.

I took issue with this comment, for several reasons.

The number one reason is that this is strippers argument. Anytime someone says that a certain move in poker, whether it be playing 72o or showing cards is ALWAYS wrong, they are full of shit.

Some people will not grasp the fact that there is never a play that is "always right no matter what the circumstances are."

But number two, this guys contention seems to be "The only reason people show cards on a bluff is because they are assholes."

This is naive, not to mention pointless. Not only is putting people on tilt possible, with a LAGgy player to begin with it is PROBABLE.

Showing a bluff gives information, yes. But showing bluffs causes people to make adjustments. When people make adjustments, you are taking them out of their game. Like Mike Tyson says "Everyone has a plan until they get hit." Showing a bluff is a hit. It's an assault on a person's ego.


But what if he is only doing it to "make himself feel good." So the fuck what? If it is successful in making the other player look like a fool, what is so wrong with that?

It's healthy to be exposed as a fool sometimes, especially when you ARE a fool, but even when you are just acting like one.

P.S. EVERYBODY says "you were winning" when a bluff is shown. This guy has a HUGE talent for stating the obvious. Everybody knows that when you talk about your cards without showing them, YOU ARE LYING. Get over yourself, you can't put someone on tilt this way.


P.P.S. Don't go read this guy's blog unless you want to know what movies he watches and what he eats for dinner. GOD DAMN I fucking hate blogs that are nothing but narcissistic bullshit. I know I think a lot of myself, but even I'm not so self-centered that I think everybody wants to know what color my shit is.

Zero Shanna Hiatt hits!

The best thing about adding StatCounter is that you can be constantly entertained by what google searches end up hitting your blog. It seems pretty dependent on what you use for your Blog Title and your Post Title.

This is the first day since I added StatCounter that I didn't see a single hit on a Shanna Hiatt search. There have been days where the searches were only for Shawna Hyatt, or Shana Hyat, but today there isn't even a misspelling. She quits the WPT and BANG, she quits getting me hits from internet perverts.

Anyway, there are still some funny search hits in todays Recent Keyword Activity...

Free Rude Cards

I don't know if this guy is looking for playing cards with naked ladies on them or what. I think my dad had a set of those in 1975. Now they make them with Osama Bin Laden on them instead. 1975 was better.

dealing with a bunch of old rude people

I sure hope my blog helped this guy. Excessive use of the word "fuck" may have done the trick.

don't play poker with people named after cities

Kind of ironic, since my username at Party Poker is OklahomaDug....not really named after a city, but a state. Maybe I should have gone with OklahomaCityDug to REALLY intimidate people. I more likely would have chosen OakCityDug though.

rude comics

Getting closer....Shit I haven't done a comic yet this week. I'll need to log on and listen closely....it will happen, it usually doesn't take very long. Or I can just rip off something I read in another blog. That works especially well.

Fuck Oklahoma

BINGO! I knew someone would get it exactly right! I hope he was upset AT Oklahoma, and not looking for some kind of tourism organization for sleazy tours of the beautiful countryside with Oklahoma women.....or Oklahoma livestock. Ewwww.

Table Selection

You know, I'm an idiot.

I don't think I learn things traditionally. Or I don't understand what learning things traditionally really means. Because I don't just gather information. It always comes over me like a revalation. And I always, without fail, say "Damn, it's so fricking obvious!"

I always thought I practiced good table selection. I would observe tables before I sat, check out table statistics and only play in games I thought were good. What never occurred to me is that table selection also means, "LEAVE THE TABLE WHEN THE GAME GETS BAD." If you had asked me a week ago if table selection included leaving the table when you know it's not good anymore, I'd have had no idea what you are talking about. (Incidentally, I wish you had asked me that a long time ago, so I would have thought about it.)

When a table gets "Bad" it usually means some players have arrived that are either playing a style that I'm not comfortable with, or have figured out how I am playing and have a good strategy against my plays. For every type of play there is an optimum strategy to defeat that style. Instead of leaving, I'd try to adjust my game to beat them.

That's not table selection. That's EGO. I think I can beat anyone, no matter how good they are or how they are playing. I even feel ridiculous saying that, because it's obviously NOT true. If it were I'd be playing for a living. And even if I could, why should I? There are plenty of other games out there, why not just find more fishies?

Single Table Tournaments (SNGs) might be exacerbating the problem. You can't practice table selection at a SNG, you have to beat the players that are there. But there's usually not eight sharks at a SNG, especially the low leves that I play. So you beat the fishies to make the money, and by then the blinds have gotten so high that it becomes enough of a crapshoot that only the most inexperienced players will be put at a disadvantage. I may not be a great player, but I know how to even the odds at an all-in crapshoot.

So you get used to adjusting your game (shifting gears) late in a SNG to push for the big win, and you think you can make adjustments on the fly at a cash game the same way. You're used to playing at least half-decent players at the end of SNGs and you usually do pretty well against them, so you should be able to beat them in a ring game, right? WRONG. The blinds put a completely different kind of pressure on you in tournament games. There is no pressure in a cash game.

So here's the revalation part. Being good at Table selection really means OVERCOMING YOUR EGO. If the nature of the table changes, don't muscle up and try to beat the game. GET YOUR ASS UP AND FIND A BETTER GAME.

"Damn, it's so fricking obvious."

Kevin Smith plays at UB

On top of the poker obsession, I am a HUGE Kevin Smith fan. For those who don't know, Kevin Smith is a writer and director of films such as Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jersey Girl. He also appears in all of those films (except Jersey Girl) as Silent Bob. I might be more of a fan of the man than I am of his work.

The first film I saw was Dogma, which I loved for obvious reasons. From there I saw Mall Rats, Clerks and Chasing Amy. Since then, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Jersey Girl have been released. The audio commentaries are fantastic, the DVDs of his college talks "An Evening with Kevin Smith" are hilarious and very insightful of the Hollywood process from an outsider's perspective.

I even bought his book "Silent Bob Speaks." It's a collection of magazine and webzine articles he's written over the last couple of years. Smith is the kind of writer I aspire to be someday. He's witty and vulgar, harsh and warm at the same time. He doesn't shy away from difficult subjects, but never takes anything too seriously. His retort to those who called "Dogma" sacreligious is often "The movie with the rubber poop monster?"

I was reading his Blog and he mentioned a night he spent responding to critics of his review of the latest Star Wars film on some internet site where people insult moviemakers. So I checked out the place called "Rotten Tomatoes." It's the kind of site that is lampooned very effectively in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." He posted over a 12 hour period, mixing it up with assholes and ass lickers. Around 3:00 AM his time, after responding for hours and hours, he writes this:

This place has become like UltimateBet.com: I know I should call it a night, but I keep thinking that good hand is right around the corner.

Holy shit! He plays online poker too....I wonder what his UB username is?

Everybody Hates Raymond

I had fun watching the last half of the Blogger/Reader Tourney last night, those railbirds are so rambunctious. Congrats to JoeSpeaker, well done.

I sweated a buddy of mine in the PSO FREEWSOP tournament last night and he beat 54 players to win a seat and a trip to the WSOP Main event. Congrats Zagnut! I've never seen a guy in so much shock after winning. For a $110 buy in that you can actually earn for free by doing a poker room promotion, that's the best deal in WSOP qualifiers if you ask me. There's a ton of overlay, and most of the players are REALLY BAD, because they got their entry chip for free. I would play but the seats are not tranferrable or saleable, and I just cannot play in the Main Event. I will be playing in the event on June 22, and I am happy with that.

And tonight is the last episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Wow, it's fashionable to say bad things about this show isn't it? What all those people neglect to mention is that the show is funny. It's not the funniest show in the history of television, and a lot of people have their underpants in a wad because of how much money it generates, but the show is, at times, DAMN funny.

I always appreciated the show because it's about a couple with kids, but the show is NOT ABOUT HAVING KIDS. I can't think of another show on television where it's a family with kids and having kids was not the focus of the show. Even shows like that horrible Paul Reiser/Helen Hunt show that wasn't about kids eventually became OBSESSED with children. But Everybody Loves Raymond said specifically at the beginning that it's not really about the kids.

And I appreciated that, because "Family" television pisses me off. I have a "Family." My "Family" doesn't happen to include children. But "Family" television is really a euphamism for CHILDREN'S TELEVISION. So am I to assume this means there's something WRONG with my family because it doesn't include CHILDREN?

I never went out of my way to watch Everybody Loves Raymond, but I never turned it off if it was on. Many times the show spoke to me, especially when the show concerned dealing with In-Laws.

But the PMS episode of Everybody Loves Raymond is one of the funniest things I have ever seen on television. First of all they do the cool Seinfeld thing where they don't actually SAY that they are talking about PMS, they just assume you know what they are talking about. They don't even euphamise "Masturbation" with "Master of your Domain." They just talk around the actual name, because that's the way people are when you talk about Menstruation.

I espeically liked the inside dig that Ray Romano was respoding to in a comedy bit that Rick Sheidner did about how to treat your wife when she has PMS. Sheidner says "Just give them a hug and tell them that you love them." In Ray's show his wife suggests this too. Raymond's response is "It's hard to hug someone when they are TRYING TO KILL YOU!"

He also says one of the funniest visual lines I've ever heard, and I've stolen it many times for my own purposes. Ray responds to his wife's denial that she has PMS by saying that she, for no real reason "Rips into him like a monkey on a cupcake." That is GODDAMN funny, especially when you picture it.

Ray tries everything he can to alleviate the problems he has dealing with his wife's PMS. He tries to get her to take some medication. He asks his friends if the drugstore has anything for it, and they reply "The drugstore has an entire WING devoted to that." His wife, of course, is offended by the assertion that her being upset is irrational, and he wants to keep her drugged up so he doesn't have to deal with her.

So Ray tracks her cycle on a calendar, and tape records her during one of her PMS tirades, and plays it back later when she insists that she was not PMSing. This, of course, only makes things worse.

They arrive at no solutions on the show, and there is no way to make things better. All we are left with is the realization that this is how things are going to be, and this is what we will have to deal with. It's our cross to bear. There's no easy solution, no magic pill, no magic incantation we can say to make PMS go away. The subject was dealt with in an adult, mature and yet HILARIOUS manner.

Everybody Loves Raymond always gave its viewers that type of respect. The jokes were never condescending and the situations were often very real, especially to married people who have to deal with their spouses parents. I understand why many people never got the show, because if you're not married or don't have to deal with exasperating In-Laws, you might not understand some of the issues the show used for its comedy. But those of us that do understand, will miss it.

Problems with my solution

Alan brings up some excellent points:

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this for me:

1. I already have an Absolute account.
2. Their software sucks so much I can't even stand to play there. When betting in NL, I can't select the amount and start typing - I have to hit BACKSPACE on the default number that shows up in the box before typing a new one.

1) Rumor has it (2+2, so take it with a grain of salt) that you can easily convince customer service at Absolute Poker to cancel your current account and begin a new one with a new affiliate. Even if you tell them that it's just so you can get on a rakeback program. One poster even claims that they added some bonus cash to his account to make up for the absolute points he would be losing. Absolute is having a BIG push right now, I bet you can do it.

2) Yes, the software is a resource hog, and is at times laggy. But once you adjust to it, it's not really that bad. They have even improved it lately so it's not nearly as slow as it used to be.

I never type the dollar amount in at NL tables, and I never use the slider. I always click on the bar to the left or the right of the slider, and it adjusts the amount up or down the value of the minimum bet. So if the min bet is $20, and you click to the right of the slider 4 times, it goes right to $100. Learned that trick from King Lucky, so thank him when you use it. And you will use it. EVERYWHERE.

Another benefit to Absolute is the SNGs, while they don't earn you rakeback or bonus points, they are REALLY juicy. The players are awful and you can just wait them out because you start with T1500 and the blinds go super slow. I know I've said this over and over, but it's true. It feels like free money.

Empire Building

The Problem

Empire Poker seems to have pissed a lot of people off. Well, not people specifically, but bonus whores. Seems there was an abundance of people who ONLY played at Empire when they were working on a bonus, and played a different Party Poker skin when they weren't. Empire was unhappy with those people, and unceremoniously BANNED them from playing at Empire Poker ever again.

The arguments over whether this is a fair move or not are pointless. The T&C dictate that it was LEGAL, and therefore fairness doesn't enter into the equation. Was it a good business move? Some say yes, some say no. Party and her skins do not have a reputation for good customer service in the first place, so it's not like they are going to take a CS rating hit. They are pissing off players that they never made money on in the first place, so there's no downside there.

What makes it seem unfair is that these people were only following policies that Empire Poker established themselves. Rather than alter the policy so that people cannot take advantage of the site, Empire decided to eliminate the people who were taking advantage. I fear they are not looking at the bonus offerings as a whole, instead to look at each individual customer on a case-by-case basis. If the policy, looked at as a whole, was making money for Empire, then it is a good policy and should have stood. If the policy, looked at as a whole was losing money for Empire, the policy should be changed. They should not examine individual cases of how the policy affects certain players, because if they lost money on 10% and made money on 90%, then it would be silly to change the policy.

This is probably the case, and Empire simply wants to lower that percentage. But if it makes people afraid of using Empire bonuses for fear of getting banned, this could have a backlash effect on Empire that they hadn't counted on.

The net effect is that cyberspace is FILLED with people looking to replace Empire as their bonus whore site of choice.

The Solution

I propose Absolute Poker. They offer up to 50% match bonus up to $500 for the first deposit through neteller, but that's immaterial because they offer 20% bonuses FOUR DAYS A WEEK. You can ALWAYS be working on a bonus at Absolute. Just deposit your bankroll and withdraw it three days later. Then work on your bonus, which is released into your account $10 at a time every 100 hands, unlike Empire who required you to unlock the entire bonus at the same time, usually THOUSANDS of hands.

So you will make $.10 per hand just playing at Absolute Poker.

Not good enough?

Okay, how about 27.5% of your rake back? And unlike EVERY OTHER RAKEBACK DEAL I HAVE EVER HEARD OF, you can generate rakeback AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU WORK ON YOUR BONUS. So if you generate $100 in rake while earning $100 in bonus, you will have made $127 in 1000 hands.

If you are a bonus whore, you should have just said "HOLY SHIT!" Because that is the best deal in online poker, BAR NONE. Because you make more money per hand at any level, and this deal NEVER ENDS. If you are playing poker somewhere else and not getting paid for it, you are a CHUMP.

To do this deal, go sign up at FrequentFlopper.com. Use referral code DuggleBogey and your beloved author will receive $5 for his troubles. That is all I have to gain from sharing this valuable information with you.

Stolen Content

I too, am a victim of content thievery. It happens to us all. Even my profanity laden missives have been absconded with.

The perpetrators, in my case, were www.poker.lt, whatever that is. On advice of The Poker Geek I employed CopyScape. Their protection graphic can be seen at the right of the page.

And wonder of wonders, after I added the "DO NOT COPY" graphic to my page, my content was removed from the offending website. I can't even get to that site anymore, it looks like they are having "issues." Let that be a lesson, don't fuck with The Geek.

I unfortunately didn't get the opportunity to threaten any thieves with physical violence. Rest assured, I would have. My favorite part is when they claim to call the cops. They are dealing with POKER bloggers here. We can spot a bad bluff all the way from South Dakota. I can hear the police dispatcher now..."Some anonymous person you stole from threatened you over the internet? I'll call the SWAT team right away..."

Poker Comic #21

Overlay

Man, I love overlay. There was a time when I wouldn't play any MTTs online unless there was overlay. Many times I joined a tournament early when it looked like there was going to be overlay, just to have a ton of people join at the last minute to ruin it.

For those who don't know, overlay is money on top of the prize pool contributed by the players. Usually in online tournaments these are guaranteed prize pools, and they only come into effect when not enough people sign up for the tourney. If there's a $2000 guaranteed tournament that has a $20 buy in, if there's less than 100 people in the tourney, there's overlay.

This thing The Online Series of Poker has a TON of overlay.

There's 10 tournaments, and all the prize money, minus the fees, goes into the prize pool. Then there's $10,500 for the tournament leader board....that's overlay. Then there's a $100,000 prize added and a free trip for the 10 winners to Atlantic City from anywhere in the world.

The buy-ins are steep but reasonable. Five online poker rooms will host two tournaments each, $100+9 and $250+20. I don't see how they will make up enough in fees to pay for the overlay, but I guess they figure it's worth it to get customers to sign up for all five rooms. The ten winners get the free trip to the Taj to play in a STT, even the last place player gets $5000....HUGE overlay.

Even cooler, all five rooms have promotions available via Poker Source Online So you can do the promotions at PSO at all these rooms, and THEN sign up for this thing. (Use referral code DuggleBogey at PSO if you sign up there.)

I will probably play in the $100+9 tourneys at Absolute and Party Poker, I'm not sure about the $250+20s. Although if the field size is a lot smaller, it might be a better idea to do those instead of the $109s. If I join any of the other rooms before their events, I might play those too.

This could be a really big deal in the Online Poker world. One of the reasons live poker is attracting me less and less is because Online Poker is offering more and more.

Great Comments

I can't believe all the great comments, and so quickly...

I'll respond to a few:

You need to be very diligent about protecting your rights at the table. No one should have been allowed to sit behind you for hours, nor should you have allowed him to see your hole cards. Learn to protect your hand better.
Felicia

He absolutely did not get to see my hole cards, at least intentionally. He might have had an angle because he was in a wheelchair. If someone was leaning that height or sitting in a chair in that spot, I would have protested, but the guy was in a wheelchair, for christ's sake. I'm an asshole but I'm not THAT much of an asshole. I just thought that since he watched me play for 2 hours and then was taking notes in a notepad on every hand when he sat, I should have stood up. But my ego got in the way. I need to work on that.

Posting when sitting is actually pretty common. I am surprised when I don't have to post before the BB. Granted, if they just changed it I can understand the confusion.
Chris Halverson

The worst of it was every time someone sat down, there was a 5 minute argument about whether he should have to post, or if he would be smarter to wait, or what posting meant....it slowed an already interminable game down.

Duggle, I could be wrong, but shouldn't someone whose blog is called "Go Be Rude" be unconcerned about pissing people off with a river check-raise? :)
StudioGlyphic

Normally I love to make idiots leave by pissing them off. Hell, I busted this one guy who had one earphone in his ear all night, and played like a COMPLETE TOOL. I celebrated busting that guy, and then he rebought. TWICE! It's one of the joys of live poker. I'm not sure why it bothered me with the other guy. Maybe it was because his wife stayed. She was ten times the player he was, and was a very distinguished and classy old lady. But he kept coming back to the table and standing behind her and kind of leering at me. I didn't enjoy that.

I haven't experienced the laundry list of problems you did, save for some dealer mistakes and lack of enforcement of rules - mainly people removing their chips from the table. I've spoken up about that, as have others when it happens.

I've never had to wait more than 30 - 45 minutes for a table... I usually get there between 5:30 and 6:30.
Maudie

The wait didn't bother me, I really like the 100 Play video poker they have there, I just wish they had more than two of them. Watching the rednecks lose at tic-tac-toe to a chicken was fun too. You know out of all the people I watched, I only saw one draw! The problems are the problems....they will get worked out eventually if they can keep a staff around....but the slowness of the game was unreal. The floor should have sat behind our table to save him steps.

I might be talking out of my ass when I say I won't play at the TBird again. But I think I will move up to $4/$8 to try and make up for some of the slowness. Or try the NL game, it looked very juicy.

Quitting Poker

SirWiffleWaffle quit poker this weekend.

I thought about quitting this weekend too. It looks like SirF is quitting because he is losing. I might be the only person who thinks about quitting after winning.

When people ask me if they should quit poker, I have almost the exact same reaction as I have when people ask me if I think they should start playing poker. It's a tough question that I have no answer for. If you think you should start, you probably should. If you think you should quit, you probably should. Other that, you're pretty much on your own. People never take advice about things like that anyway.

Of course there are certain personality types that absolutely should not play poker. If you are prone to fits from frustration, or likely to become a degenerate gambler, then of course, you should not play poker. But the former should be obvious after the first couple of bad beats, and the latter will never be stopped anyways.

I thought about quitting after playing at the TBird on Friday. (Yes I saw Maudie, no, I didn't say hello.) I might just quit live poker, and almost certainly quit playing at the TBird.

I was playing $3/$6. I arrived around 7:00pm and didn't get seated until after 8:00. No big deal. When I got seated the table was full of fishies. If I were to describe the table in Maudie fashion, I'd have to say Seat 9 was a moron, seat 8 was a moron, seat 7 was a moron, seat 6 was a moron....you get the picture.

I wasn't catching any big hands at all....it makes it tougher to beat the fishies when they catch all manner of goofiness, but I was still beating these idiots. Betting every pair, betting two pair like is the absolute nuts and not understanding why trips beats their two pair.

Here's the hand that bothered me so much. I had J9s in middle position. The flop is J7J. Idiot in 9 seat bets, I raise in the 2 seat, Idiot in 7 seat calls, 9 seat calls. Turn is a K. 9 seat checks, I check, 7 seat bets, 9 seat calls, I call. River is a 3. 9 Seat checks, I check, 7 seat bets, 9 seat calls, I raise, 7 calls, 9 folds.

7 seat shows King Trey. I show my J9, Clueless Dealer (don't get me started on these winners) shoves my money toward 7 seat. Someone at the table corrects the dealer (for the zillionth time tonight) and he pushes the money to me. Idiot in 7 seat stands and gets upset. He still thinks he had the best hand. Someone explains to him that he lost, and he is so mad at me for check raising him that he collets his money, which is a HUGE stack because this moron played every hand and hit two pair EVERY TIME, and leaves the table up a TON, very disgusted with me.

This is how I play limit poker. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY I CAN SEE HOW TO WIN AT LIMIT POKER. When you have the best of it and you KNOW YOU HAVE THE BEST OF IT, whether it's because you have a monster or you know your opponents are idiots, you have to get EVERY EXTRA BET YOU CAN. That is the GAME. You don't leak extra bets, and you generate extra bets where you can. You didn't have to bet the river idiot. You didn't even have to call my check raise. If you even understood that you were counterfeited, you wouldn't have.

I bet a chased four people from the table the same way that night. And I wasn't doing very well, I was only up about $100.

This wouldn't have ordinarily have bothered me, but there were aggravating circumstances.

The table eventually got bad. I knew this, but I still couldn't leave. I lost a lot of my meager winnings playing short handed against players that I shouldn't have. One sat behind me for about 2 hours and watched every hand I played. He was in a wheelchair and was buddies with the guy next to me. I didn't see the harm until his name got called and he refused to play any other table. But I still played. I played until 5am. When I finally left there were SIX messages on my phone (which got no signal in the casino) from Mrs. Bogey, who was getting more and more PISSED OFF with every message.

Add to this that the TBird, which already takes an outrageous rake, forces you to post when you sit, or wait for the BB. The list is a mile long, but you still have to post. How retarded is that? It caught everyone off guard because they just changed the rule in the past week. Seats were constantly empty, even though the list was miles long. It took 20 minutes for them to fill a seat. The hands per hour rate is atrocious. There was one time when the dealer, who counts the cards after the river is dealt, started counting the cards out after the turn was dealt. "FLOOR!" That took 15 minutes to resolve.

And my favorite. Capped pre-flop by a half dozen players. Flop is Ace-Three-Three. Turn is a king. Capped the whole way and winner turns over KK, for the turned boat. Nice Hand. Right? After this hand there is a dealer change, and the new dealer counts the cards. 53.....There were five threes in the deck. "FLOOR!" I don't even know what should have been done in this situation....Felicia? Little help? I do know what they did....nothing.

So, since I can't seem to play a reasonable amount of time, I can't leave when the table gets bad, the rake is outrageous, the dealers are incompetent, and I piss off too many people when I play there, I don't think I will be patronizing the TBird again.

Least Heterosexual Poker Room

And the winners of the least heterosexual Poker Room contest goes to:

Poker Comic #19

I don't think he knew....

I was playing in a SNG at Absolute Poker yesterday to kill some time while I was running some jobs on my computer at home. I had a big stack after taking a player out early when I misread him for a bluff when I raised with AQs and the player after me IMMEDIATELY went all in over the top. He was playing a lot of hands very aggressively so I immediately put him on a weak hand. I called quickly and he showed QQ. Flop had an ace and Mr aggressive was down to $100. He said "nh" and I said "got lucky" and he said something that might have been innocent and might have been rude. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn't tell him that going all-in with QQ in the SB for T1600 chips when there's less than T100 in the pot is a DUMB ASS play, especially if someone has raised in front of you. He was out soon anyway.

Several hands later I was in the SB with 98o and completed for some ridiculously small amount. The flop was AQJ two hearts. I figured my hand was dead and checked. It checked around and the turn was an offsuit 10. I checked again, which I think is the right play. It checked around again and the river was the third heart, a deuce. I checked my straight and someone bet T25. I called and took the hand down with my straight when the bettor showed QT for two pair.

Some poker genius said this "I don't think he knew he had a straight."

Well, I already felt like I'd been insulted by a previous player and let that slide. I wasn't going to let this one slide. "What?" I replied. "I had the butt end of the straight and any King had me dead." "Any two hearts also killed me."

From yet another genius (genius number two), "I'll bet the butt end of a straight any time." I responded, "You must win a lot of money at this game." That got a bunch of "LOLs" from the table. "Why risk it this early in a tournament?" I continued. "You can't win it now, but you sure can lose it."

Genius number one says "Good point." Genius number two says "You're an idiot." His avatar was Beavis and Butthead, incidentally.

What if I had bet my straight when there was a one card higher straight out there, like Butthead would have? I mean, this is online poker, where people hold on to aces and kings NO MATTER WHAT THEIR OTHER CARD IS. If an ace or a king can beat me on a hand, I always assume there is one out there. I was pretty sure there wasn't one out there on this hand, but I wasn't going to risk my whole tournament on it. I am betting first here being the small blind, so if I bet out, someone could raise me. Then what do I do? I CANNOT call a raise with this hand. Too many hands beat me. I figured I'd check and happily lay down the best hand to a big bet. But the bet was small so why not trust my read and call? Had I raised, he could come over the top and I'd still HAVE TO FOLD. Call is the only decent move I see here, other than fold.

I see this as a fundamental difference between bad and good tournament players. A bad player is unwilling to lay down what might be the best hand if he thinks he might be beat and the tournament is on the line. A good player happily releases the best hand, waiting for a time where the risk makes a lot more sense.

Final results of the SNG? After a fierce heads up battle, I took second in the tournament. Genius number one finished seventh, and genius number two bubbled out in fourth. It kind of felt like.............Justice.

Excitable Boy, They All Said

I have been getting absolutely KILLED at work. New server, same old piece of crap application, with an upgrade!!! New and different problems....grumble grumble. Didn't fix the old problems either.....I hate software upgrades. I blame Microsoft. If they wouldn't discontinue support for NT4, I never would have had to go through this madness.

Anyway, BEFORE the insanity started, I finished my required hands at Bodog. I decided to play NLHE Ring games, instead of Tournaments. Here's what I was thinking...Find a table that has an average pot over $5 at the $.10/$.25 NL game. Then limp whenever you can, only calling raises with premium hands. Limp with ANYTHING in early position. Fold if it is raised more than double the blind (min raises make baby Jesus cry, ya know) and see what happens. Do this until the rest of the table figures out what you are doing, then switch tables.

What Happened, you ask? I caught INSANE flushes and straights. I quadrupled up my $25 buy in, and the table NEVER caught on. I guess I looked like a fish who plays every hand, because I always got called when I hit a big hand. ALWAYS. Nut straight with 75o, all-in, FOUR CALLERS. They were all small stacks, but still, the nuts is the nuts. Nobody was raising their premium hands pre-flop. I was on a bit of a roller-coaster, but the downs were slow and small, and the ups were HUGE and FAST. I may need to rethink my NL ring game strategy. There was some card rushing going on, but it was fun playing so loose pre-flop.

So that finished my PokerSourceOnline promotion at Bodog Poker. It was okay, nothing really special. The software is relatively cool, but the cards in your hand were too small. The community cards were perfect size. I didn't like having to type your password in every time you entered, like Pacific. If anyone ever says "like Pacific" when referring to your software FIX IT IMMEDIATELY. The cashier sucks. The lobby tells you how much you have in your bankroll, but doesn't refresh unless you close the software and re-start it. Lame. If there's a way to refresh it otherwise, it wasn't very intuitive. Or I'm an idiot. Whichever. I made money with the promotion, plus the bonus dollars, so I can't really complain.

Speaking of PSO, my one-year anniversary of joining the forum was today. I left a post thanking them for the year, and it really is unbelievable how much free stuff I have gotten from them. The value is in the THOUSANDS of dollars. Most of this was the free poker cruise they gave me, but I got a ton of stuff from points, freerolls and league events. I only lost money completing a promotion once, and that was the second one I did at Aztec Riches Poker. I lost $13 of my buy-in, and got a $60 set of poker chips, which I gave away. That's one of FIVE poker chipsets I received, two table tops, DVDs, Books, Polo Shirts and a bunch of poker supplies.

I got some more stuff from PokerCoin.com in the mail yesterday, so I will have pictures and a comprehensive review coming up. For now, I gotta say the stuff is AWESOME. I can't wait to try it out in a poker room.

I bought this shirt

You should buy one too!
You know you want to.
Cause they're kewl.

Welcome to Oklahoma, Land of Intolerance

Yesterday started out so nicely. I took the morning off from work so I could finish some articles that I promised to have done LAST MONDAY. They were coming along smoothly and effectively. They really are more propaganda than literature, but hey, that's what they are paying for. I got two-thirds of the way through what I needed when I got beeped on my nextel from my customer. Turns out all hell is breaking loose at work, so I need to head in immediately. It's noon and I still haven't eaten yet, so I'm desperate for some food. I drive by a BK, and bang, they've closed down the joint. I go another block to McD and there's a line around the fricking block. I don't have that kind of time, so I head to the office.

My coworkers are droning around in their usual zombie-like state. "Do you guys realize the network is down?" I ask. "Somebody's working on it," they reply. Great. Why am I the only one who has the customer ripping into me like a monkey on a cupcake? So after "somebody" gets nowhere, I dive in, basically cracking the whip on those who are supposed to care and don't. And after seven hours of troubleshooting, the problem is essentially solved. All except for the system of one guy who has turned off every phone he owns because he doesn't want to get called on his Birthday. Selfish prick.

I've got the low blood sugar shakes at this point, so I stop in a regional fast food chain to get a burger. The guy waiting for his food before me has his back to the wall, so I don't see his shirt until he takes his seat in a nearby booth facing away from me. His shirt PUBLICLY RIDICULES my beliefs. What a fucking shithead. To actually BUY A SHIRT that ridicules what someone believes. He is so fucking insecure in his faith that he has to declare anyone that believes differently a "fool." If he's so FUCKING SURE he's right about his religion, then WHY THE FUCK is it called "faith?"

I'm not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure if I wore a T-shirt that ridiculed his faith, I'd be shot by one of these fundamentalist motherfuckers with a deer rifle.

When I left the restaurant, thoroughly pissed off, he looked at me through the window and I shot him the bird. I'm sure he had no idea why. Stupid self-righteous fuck.

The only thing I am intolerant about is intolerance. I am an absolute moral relativist. The only people I think are immoral are moralizers. Fuck them. Their shit is just as fucked up as everyone else's, they just think something or someone gives them the right to tell everyone else they're fucked up.

Especially those religious fuckers. That's why the world loves it when Jimmy Swaggert gets busted with another hooker, and Jim Bakker gets exposed as a total scumbag. Because DEEP DOWN we KNOW they are fuckers, and it's nice to be proven right once in a while.

Poker Comic #18

Go Be Rude Grows Some More

Email received:

Your site has been added to our new *quality* poker links page, which can be found at www.Gutshot.co.uk/poker-links. We would be grateful if you could you reciprocate this, and link back to www.Gutshot.co.uk.

I like Gutshot a lot. I must have looked at their site 20 times a day last year to get their coverage of the WSOP. It was the only site that had hourly updates on the progress, and really candid stuff. It was fricking great.

I will check out their site for any cool graphics or banners and probably put it up. I'm pretty much a whore for anything including compliments.

Whoring Bodog

I decided to start a Poker Source Online promotion at Bodog Poker last night. It's a pretty good deal. Deposit a minimum of $50, get a 20% deposit bonus and earn 150 Bodog Points and you get $60 worth of credit in PSO points, good for chipsets, books, DVDs, poker tables or gift cards. The only catch in this deal is that you have to contribute to the pot to get a Bodog Point, and how much the pot is raked determines how much of a point you get.

I started out playing 6 max $1/$2 Limit Hold Em. I was killing that table and was up about 12 BBs when the table broke up. The only other table going was a full ring, so I jumped in there and proceded to lose my profit and another 11 BBs. I just could not hit any of my draws, and I was probably playing looser than normal because of the bonus requirements. It also could have been the semi-aggressiveness from the 6 max game putting me on a bit of tilt. At the same time I played three $10+1 SNGs. I took third in two of them for a $7 profit, plus 6 Bodog Points for each one. Both third place finishes were horrendous beats. My A9 lost to K9 and my 88 lost to A8 when he caught the wheel on the river. The other was a 4th place finish. Then I went to 5 card stud. Bad idea. I dropped $15 and only earned about 5 points before running for my life. I made a few bucks back playing Omaha Hi/Lo with some absolute donkeys. The tendency for Omaha HL players to see a flop with any four cards really helps when you need the pot to get raked at least a dollar.

I made 100+ points in one evening, which isn't too bad. I deposited $400 so I got a deposit bonus of $80 so I am still ahead, once I collet 240 Bodog Points. The $10 SNGs are very juicy, and I enjoyed them the most of any game I played there. I could pull a Poker Nerd and play 3 at a time SNGs until I get enough points, but I only need 9 SNGs to finish the promo, but 24 to finish the bonus. Maybe a combination of SNGs and Omaha HL will do the trick.

The PSO points should give me enough for an Ipod Mini, which I want to use while playing at the T-Bird. I think I'm going to go with a Rio Carbon via Amazon Gift Card instead though. I just hate how "hip" the Ipods are.

Nice Turn

This one started good and got better:

#Game No : 1952291372
***** Hand History for Game 1952291372 *****
NL Hold'em Trny:11634406 Level:2 Blinds (10/20) - Monday, April 25, 20:26:42 EDT 2005
Table $100 Freeroll(313139) Table #2 (Real Money)
Seat 10 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: GiantHammer ( $960 )
Seat 3: RobNovice ( $1110 )
Seat 4: Walli_man ( $4770 )
Seat 5: ALICE496 ( $1445 )
Seat 6: DuggleBogey ( $2455 )
Seat 7: random1182 ( $920 )
Seat 8: AMB74241 ( $945 )
Seat 9: MEMPHISTRUE ( $890 )
Seat 2: PATRI961 ( $840 )
Seat 10: MALIZIA ( $770 )
Trny:11634406 Level:2
Blinds (10/20)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ Jd Qd ]
RobNovice calls [20].
Walli_man calls [20].
ALICE496 folds.
DuggleBogey calls [20].
random1182 folds.
AMB74241 folds.
MEMPHISTRUE folds.
MALIZIA folds.
GiantHammer raises [75].
PATRI961 folds.
RobNovice calls [65].
Walli_man calls [65].
DuggleBogey calls [65].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Td, 2d, Kd ]
GiantHammer bets [30].
RobNovice calls [30].
Walli_man folds.
DuggleBogey calls [30].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Ad ]
GiantHammer bets [45].
RobNovice folds.
DuggleBogey calls [45].
** Dealing River ** [ Jc ]
GiantHammer bets [60].
DuggleBogey raises [300].
GiantHammer folds.
DuggleBogey shows [ Jd, Qd ] Royal Flush.
DuggleBogey wins 900 chips from the main pot with Royal Flush.

Missed it!

Well I'm an idiot. I missed Maudie at the T-Bird on Friday night. When the friend I brought busted out and mysterously disappeared, I got up and wandered around the tables looking for someone that matched her description. What I didn't do was check the table that my friend was actually sitting at, because she was there! I knew it when she described him as "BIG GUY." My friend is HUGE. He's a former boxer and weighs in at 420 lbs. I was praying there would be a fight, because I always want there to be a fight when I have a man-mountain covering my back.

The game at the T-Bird was good. Almost all newbies and you could read everyone all the time. If you raise them, they shrink. They still call, but you could buy the bet every time. If you get re-raised, RUN! I easily took control of the table when I wanted it, and still got people to lead out when I wanted them to. And of course, plenty of people calling with absurd hands. Counterfeited pairs, straights with 4 flush cards on the board. You know. Donkey Poker.

The thing about donkey poker is that it can really frustrate better players. Especially NL and tourney players. You CANNOT just play super-tight at these games. You end up leaking money from calling with decent hands that don't hit and paying the blinds. You have to speculate a lot and put players to the test with sub-optimal hands. If one of the donkeys catches his miracles, you're screwed. I think that's what happened to the BIG GUY. The donkeys were catching, and he was going down in flames.

If you can adjust your game to donkey poker, there's a lot of money to be made there. You can just sit and count the extra bets that players are pissing away. "That was a dumb call. That was a dumb call. That was a dumb call," goes over and over in your head. They wear their tells like cheap OU shirts. They give away the strength of their hand with every grunt groan or mutter under their breath.

I'm sure there are sharks there. I'm sure Maudie, if she hasn't already, will adjust to the donkeys and start hauling money out of that place. So the most important skill you can have at these live tables is to figure out who the good players are. At the table I occupied for 3.5 hours and $157, there were none to find.

OK poker

I am going to give Oklahoma Poker a try tonight. I'll be headed to the Thunderbird Wild Wild West Casino around 4 or 5:00 this evening.

Maybe Maudie will be there! I'll be wearing a red golf shirt and tan jeans, using a gold "Bad Beat" card protector. Say hi to Duggle if you see me!

Two on One

I played another Sit N Go at Absolute Poker yesterday. These things seem almost foolproof. I haven't finished worse than fourth, EVER. Yesterday's was an adventure, however.

I did my standard fold fold fold after just stealing the blinds and a limp when I raised with QQ pre-flop. The routine idiots busted out early, and we stayed at six players for a long long time. Eventually I got down but doubled back to the starting amount, and eventually we were down to three. I hadn't been paying a lot of attention, so I didn't realize until I got the hand history that these two players never once played against each other. Even when they were both blinds, the blinds would be folded. So it was actually the two of them against me. One was a very small stack, but since he never had to pay his big blind and always got the small blind from the big stack, he was never in any jeopardy.

I finally got all in with my AT vs the small stack's A3, who had overtaken me without winning a single showdown. I got a Ten on the turn, but Four hearts came and he had the Ace of hearts so I was gone. Then the small stack went all in with garbage cards and the big stack called with slightly better garbage and the game was over. One hand after playing as tight as humanly possible.

On Absolute they don't kick you out of the room when the tourney is over, you can sit down again and join the next tourney starting at the same table. Both of them sat right down again. I asked them if they knew each other, and they didn't respond. When I said "I'm submitting this history to be reviewed for collusion," they both disappeared. They didn't go to another tourney either, I did a search for them. I wonder if Absolute support will do anything with the hand history I sent them?

$500 Deposit Bonus

Well, Poker Source Online jumped the MayDay gun and opened the Noble Poker deal today.

100% Match Bonus up to $500.

You put in $500, you get $500 in bonus money to work off $10 at a time. You have 60 days (TWO MONTHS!) to work off this bonus. You get $10 for every 125 crowns you earn. For every raked hand at $.25/$.50 you get one crown. For $.50/$1.00 you get two crowns, for $1/$2 and up you get three crowns. So that's 2084 hands to make $500.

There are conflicting reports but it looks like any hand you receive cards in that gets raked counts as a raked hand. Some are saying that you have to contribute to the pot, but one person I trust who has started this already is saying that he is getting crowns for every hand, if he contributes to the rake or not.

To do this deal you have to be a member at Poker Source Online and go through their process to sign up at Noble Poker. DO NOT GO DIRECTLY TO NOBLE and try to get this bonus. Their standard bonus is $300 for $300. If you go through Poker Source Online please use the links on this page or put "dugglebogey" in as your referral. When I get paid for your referral I will paypal you half of what I get if you let me know in comments.

Insanity

Things are completely insane at work as we are upgrading servers and trying to get our old ass applications to upgrade to the newest and lamest versions. It sucks ass and it is taking all my time at work, which is when I usually blog. Sucks for me, sucks for you.

The Kansas City trip was great as usual. I lost at everything except poker, which begs the question, why play anything except poker? Not so for King Lucky, who WON at everything except poker and Wild Aruba Stud. I frigging hate that Wild Aruba Stud game. The goddamn dealer never qualifies when you have a decent hand. KL hit it big on a slot machine and turned it into a mountain at craps. Then he put the snowcap on the mountain at video poker. If there is such a thing as a video poker shark. He's the guy. Way to turn $.50 into nearly $2000.

There are some HUGE things happening over at Poker Source Online in May. A bunch of new promotions, including the possiblity of a 100% match up to $500 at a new site. Check there or back here on Mayday for more details.


Felicia IM'd me last night to tell me she's still alive. Unfortunately I wasn't online to catch her, but it's good to see she is actually in good enough spirits to risk another conversation with me. That HAS to be a good sign!

Ides...continued

I see that part of Iggy's uber post of the day is about taxes and I want to be sure he doesn't think I'm talking about his post here. He actually gives one of the reasons for NOT evading what taxes you can, the fact that you might get anally raped in an audit.

No, I'm referring to the self-righteous 2+2ers out there, one of which he quoted in his blog who is the perfect example

People properly avoiding taxes and using a place like Antigua to do it usually deal in the millions of dollars and have better structures set up than this. Even if they're caught, they have plenty of legal outs. You have none, no excuse except greediness.

Wanting to keep the money you earned is "greedy?"

The GOVERNMENT are the greedy motherfuckers here. It's not like they are going to use the money for anything USEFUL. They are going to piss it away on some shit pork barrel project that is really just a kickback to someone in their district or fucking FAMILY.

Paying your taxes doesn't make you a GOOD PERSON. It makes you a FUCKING SAP. If you have a surefire way of avoiding them, you're a DUMBASS if you don't. I wish I did.

P.S. Martha Stewart got FUCKED. And she will come out smelling like a rose anyway.

The Ides of April

Tax day seems to be a day of moralizing by poker players.

One of the great things about poker and the poker community is the "outlaw image" associated with it. Players tend not to get very self-righteous about moral issues, since the game they are dealing with it has some connection to illegality in most places, especially Internet poker players.

But then bring up the subject of paying taxes on your poker winnings, and suddenly all these lowlife alcoholic scumbags get all ethical about how you should stop being greedy and "do your duty" by paying your taxes.

Bullshit. Keep your fucking selective morals to yourself.

There is ONE and ONLY ONE reason to pay your taxes. TO KEEP FROM GETTING YOUR ASS THROWN IN JAIL. Or to keep the mafia Government from forcibly taking more from you at a later date.

Voluntarily giving your money to the government is like giving a bottle of liquor to a homeless person based on his promise to sell it and buy a meal. It's not going to happen, and you must be FUCKING HIGH to believe it will. The governemnt is an addict, and YOU are the enabler. It's a codependant relationships, and you are as much to blame as the government is.

I don't like to get policital in this blog, but reading all these fucking assholes who would check raise their grandmother to get another big bet out of her moralize about how people who want to avoid paying taxes are "greedy" makes me ill.

Poker Comic #17

Thunderbird....it's not just for drinking

Maudie tells me that Central Oklahoma finally has an operating Poker Room at the Thuderbird Wild Wild West Casino. That's a mouthful, and every time you type it, Microsoft Word hates you for using a repeated word. I'll have to talk to Richard Brodie about it. Anyway, Maudie wants to go on Friday but I am headed to Kansas City so I'll try to put her off by a week.

I went to Thunderbird once in June of 2003. I just got my job in OKC and was living in Corporate Housing and wanted to check out the local "action." Or lack thereof. All they had at the time was slot machines, bingo and OTB. I did win $100 in a slot machine in the 10 minutes I was there, but never expected to go back. They had blackjack tables set up, but there were signs on them that said they were shut down by some state organization and that I should write my congressman about it.

Now their web page says they are offering both BJ and Poker. Hold Em, Stud and Omaha. But that's it for the details on the web site. No idea on what limits they spread, what the rake structure is like or anything. It does say they take a $.50 commission from every $50 bet in Blackjack, so I fear for the rake structure. You never know though, they might be okay. There's a phone number to call for details, so I may call today and get the 411. [/ebonics]

WSOP

I found out yesterday if I can get myself to Vegas on June 22nd, I can get half my entry into the $1,500 NLHE event in the WSOP paid for. So I can play for $750. Not a bad deal. I was planning on being in Vegas from June 16-20, so I would have to alter those plans to make it. Maybe if I crank up the serious sit n goes on Party Poker, I can afford it.

Speaking of Sit N Goes...

I played in the oddest sit n go yesterday on Party. I didn't play a hand outside the blinds for the first 4 rounds. That's pretty much 40 straight folds. But when I shifted gears and started going all-in with any face card, my opponents had no idea what to do. Usually they folded to the unexpected aggression, because I was not low enough for desperation and picked opponents that my stack could still hurt.

I think this is the ideal way to play sit n goes, especially if you are cold decked for the whole thing. The maniacs who call anything have been long since knocked out, and the players left might have an idea about fold equity.

I took second when the chip leader had a 500 chip lead on me and my KK got cracked by his AT. Had the kings held up I would have had a 7500 to 500 chip adavantage, having seen less than 4 showdowns in the entire game.

Snoooooch

Not much action yesterday. I was playing $1/$2 at Absolute yesterday, which was totally retarded because I'm not working on a bonus there, and anyone playing at Absolute that isn't working on a bonus is a CHUMP.

But, I was waiting for someone to IM me back, which he didn't do until a couple of hours after I left.....quite frustrating.

I was getting destroyed on the river with every big pair I held. Some idiot would bluff the whole way with ace high and catch the wheel on fifth street. It was very ugly. What sucks about limit poker is it is hard to make up for a lot of losses in one hand...unless...

That's right, about 7 people came along with my Jack-Nine of diamonds. The flop held a Queen of diamonds and the Eight of diamonds. Turn was the nine of hearts and I was betting out, hoping one of my zillion outs would come. The beautiful blue TEN came on the river (four-color deck is an addiction) and suddenly I was ahead for the day. I guess someone had a suited ace of diamonds because they took me to the cap, and another person came along for the ride. A 28 BB pot.

I requested the history from Absolute, but it never came. I wish I had gotten a screenshot. I haven't had a straight flush get paid off outside of Omaha in a LONG ass time.

Fuck Me Running

I arrived at work today to a fucking disaster. My company has finally blocked access to PokerSourceOnline and their forum through the firewall.

If anyone out there knows any way to penetrate a corporate firewall, I'm all ears. I'm a geek, but not that much of a geek. I haven't started searching the net yet...I guess it depends on how desperate I get.

Update: I can read the forums through a web proxy, but I can't post. I will try to set up an HTTP host from my home computer tonight and try to use it tomorrow. Isn't the Internet wonderful for education on illegal information?

The worst part about learning as a poker player is that you know how you screwed up. I played in an Absolute tournament yesterday and while I'm not good enough to keep from making mistakes, I'm good enough to realize after that fact what a huge blunder I made. I guess it's part of the process, but I really beat myself up about it. It's way too easy to say "I know this is the wrong move, but I am going to do it anyway, because these guys are such idiots I can get away with it."

Yesterday's Absolute tournament was a joke. I am going to save the hand history, because I swear to God every STUPID NEWBIE mistake was made at my table. I could write a book called "The Top 100 STUPID Mistakes new poker players make" based on the play of a couple of complete idiots at the table. One of them named "Mouser" pissed away his chips with one HUGE mistake after the other. The other made almost the same mistakes but built up a huge stack with suckouts and poor play by his opponents.

Here's an example: I make the nut flush on the turn in the BB and slow play to the river. The pot is already HUGE and I'm pretty confident the better who has been throwing T250 into the pot on every street is going to continue his dumb bets on the river so I check. But he CHECKS! But I get lucky and this aformentioned "Mouser" is in position and min bets...T20 into a pot over T1000, and reopens the betting for me. This is such a monstrously dumb move. Is it a bluff? T20 into a pot of a thousand won't even bluff jack high out of the hand. Did he really have a hand? If so it had to be worth more than T20, didn't it? I cannot even fathom what motivated this bet, other than sheer stupidity.

The cover of the movie "The Sting" (Best Picture, 1973)has a picture of Paul Newman lighting a cigar with paper money. I'd say Paul got more value for his money than this guy.

Poker Comic #16

AP Contest

About a week ago I got an email from Absolute Poker telling me about all the tournaments they run, and deposit bonuses available. Kind of a weekly newsletter. Part of the email told about a contest of sorts they were running. Submit "the funniest thing you ever heard at a poker table" to a certain email address, and if it is selected you win a prize.

I submitted the joke from the very first Poker Comic, but I didn't like my chances because I got an automated reply that said "We're sorry for your problems, a support person will review your case and get back to you as soon as possible."

But lo and behold, in the next week's email, I read this:

Congratulations to the following winners of the DVD promotion. Your DVD has been shipped!
• JwlD1
• Scotsman65
• DuggleBogey
• Ciaobby
• Mongoose

Based on a true story, High Roller is a hard-edged drama about legendary card prodigy Stu Ungar, one of the youngest players ever to win Las Vegas’ World Series of Poker. Stu (Emmy Award-winner Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos) had a meteoric rise through the back-room card parlors of New York City to the glamorous casinos of Las Vegas. A life of promise was quickly wasted as his greed and obsession paved the way to a stunning downward spiral into drugs, womanizing and high-stakes gambling.

I haven't heard very much positive about the movie, but I think that's just from disappointed poker junkies who wanted a hand by hand portrayal of his life. I really appreciate films like "Wonderland" and other films about people who acheived some fame but self destructed in a blaze of glory. Anyway, I was going to rent it from Netflix, but now it's free!

Man I love free shit.

Apparently, 74o makes you a homosexual

I was playing in a SitnGo at Absolute yesterday when I learned I was a homosexual. While I previously thought that having sex with your same gender made you a homosexual, apparently sucking out on someone with 74o also qualifies you for this distinction that our society values SO much.

We're down to three. I'm in the small blind with 74o and the dealer folds. I call, and the BB checks. The flop is 872, and I wish for a moment that I was holding the hammer. I wish even more when I check and the BB puts me all in. I thought for a moment, not long enough apparently, and called, figuring him for a bluff. I was dead wrong, as he flipped T8 for the top pair. A four on the river and I am chip leader while he is crippled.

I say "Sorry, that was gross," and he replies with "fag."

My fear is that he knows whereof he speaks, after all HE has a picture of TOM CRUISE as his avatar. What is more homosexual than that? I'm going to hate to break this news to my wife. She will be heartbroken, if not ASTOUNDED.

Crunch Time

I'm playing in an MTT with more than 900 of my closest friends. Pays at 70. There are 72 people left in the tournament. I have T4800 and I'm in the small blind with A5o. It's folded around to me and the Big Blind, who has T7600 and is already in for T600.

I complete, tossing another T300 into the pot. King Lucky says "Slow down, even if you lose this hand, if you take enough time two people will go out and you will make the money."

The big blind pops it, but only for another T600. I call. "Take more time," King Lucky says.

Flop comes 467, two spades. I check, hoping for a freebie to complete my straight. BB will have none of it, and bets T1200. I look at the pot, figuring I need at least T3600 in the pot to call it. My T1200 would make it T4800, I call.

Turn is an offsuit 3. My joker. I check. I figure if he really has that flush draw, he will pop it again, continuing the semi-bluff. Then I can come over the top and put him to a decision. To my suprise, he checks.

River is the 9 of spades. I bet T1200, he goes all in over the top.

What do I do? There are still two places to the money. Cashing isn't the biggest deal in the world, but it is three times my buy-in amount. If I fold, I will make the money, but I won't make it any farther without a miracle comeback.

More importantly, do I trust my read? I was sure the guy would pop the turn if he had a flush draw, but now he is representing one. Or the guy could have 85 and have slow played the turn. But I seriously doubt he would have doubled the big blind pre-flop with 85. A bluff would have been more than T600.

I trust my read, and he shows an offsuit KQ. "You'll make the money now," says King Lucky.

I ended up in 33rd place after calling off most of my chips with an OESD after 5 people limped on my big blind. Odds were easily there. I missed the straight but hit top pair, losing to a pocket pair of nines. I did get six times my buy in, so I wasn't unhappy with the outcome.

Random hammer victims

This was randomly posted at the PSO forums, and I had to laugh.

Hey, to everyone who's sick from a bad beat...remember that in Hold 'Em, ANY TWO CARDS CAN WIN!!!!!!!! AA isn't worth the cards they're printed on if the board comes 7772 and someone cold-called your raises with 72o. Get used to it, get over it, and move on.
rhys

Gotta love it.

Who did it? Fess up!

Quality writing is a gift that shouldn't be taken for granted

I really appreciate bloggers, more than ever. Why? Because most of them can WRITE. Ugh.

I am currently employed as a computer progammer specializing in Factory Automation software. Slow manufacturing is my genre. But it wasn't always so.

When I was young and deluded, I wanted to be a journalist. Even before college I wanted to be in newspapers. I begged a job as a sports photographer at a local newspaper in my hometown when I was still in high school. When I went to college the first time, I learned something about how to write, and when I quit, I became a "journalist." Specifically a sports journalist. I prided myself on being able to photograph and write about a sports event.

When I got turned down for a staff position on that newspaper because of a lack of a certain piece of paper, I decided I should get my degree. My first year of classes for my communications degree told me that I would learn nothing practical from the school of communications. It was truly pointless.

So I went a different direction, towards something that was far more interesting and more challenging. I got my degree in Philosophy. Believe it or not, there's not a lot of call for Philosophers these days. The school I attended actively encouraged Philosophy students to double major in something slightly more....marketable. I noticed that a lot of logic classes could be used for math in computer science classes.

I had been interested in computer programming as a hobby, but never thought I had the patience to actually earn a degree in computer science. The obvious compromise; I got my double major in Philosopy and Management Information Science. And what did I do with these expensive skills of Philosophizing and Computerizing? I got a job working at a newspaper, of course.

Full time sportswriter, this time. I worked my way up from a small weekly to a small daily newspaper. It's a crazy world. You work basically 16-18 hour days, and get paid almost nothing. You bust your ass to fill a daily piece of fish wrap with decent content, and get to watch the ad salespeople get rich off your labor. It's not exacly hard work, because basically all you do is go around and talk to people or call them on the phone, then write something about it. But it is awfully time consuming. And awfully NOT rewarding. I don't believe I ever actually earned above minimum wage if you counted my actual hours versus what I got paid. Newspaper publishers are very creative in getting around labor laws and overtime pay. I was ALWAYS broke.

Here's an extreme example of a pretty often occuring day at my old newspaper job. I would get up at 4am on a Friday morning and develop film for the morning paper. I would select pictures based on the editors requirements print them, then go out and finish my story for the Friday afternoon edition. Deadline was 10am. Then I would make some phone calls and arrange my stringers for the Friday night football games. There were 12 games to cover, so I would go to one featured game and send 11 "stringers" out to the other games to take pictures and take notes. By 5pm I was on the road to some podunk town to try and locate the high school. Game time was 7pm, and I would take pictures and notes of the game. After assaulting the coaches post game with questions, I would rush back to the newspaper and write my game story. While that was going on my stringers would wander in around 10pm with their film and notes. I would call the coaches from those games at home and write a game story for all 11 games, based on the notes from my stringers. Then I would do the layout for the sports section after developing the film from the stringers and my own game. Eight to ten pages of photos, copy and ads. Done by a deadline of 2am.

For all this, I got paid about $60 a day. Before taxes. If that. It might have been less. Fortunately I escaped this world of low level pointlessness and servitude for the greener pastures of more pointlessness and servitude in the IT world.

Anyway, all this is to show that I used to be a writer (among many other things) for a living, and that I used to write stuff based on the notes/writings of others.

Flash to present day. PokerSourceOnline is having a contest of sorts where readers can submit articles to be published on the site. If your article gets published, you get a free 300 piece poker chip set. (If anyone reading is interested, go to PSO and submit some ideas for articles.) I volunteered to edit the articles, because of my background in writing and editing. I am sort of the unofficial staff writer for PSO. If they need something written for the website, they call me first. I have somewhat of a stake in the quality of the articles, since I have written a lot of the stuff on the site. I don't want to see a lot of CRAP published next to mine, making mine look bad.

I have gotten more than a dozen submissions so far, and most of them have been HORRIBLE. The ideas are okay, and some of them are even trying to get good ideas through, but they cannot penetrate the inability to convey a decent idea through words and phrases. They are submitted via Microsoft Word, so the spelling has been adequate, but the writing is just HORRENDOUS. Every other sentence is a cliche, every lead is buried, and the use of punctuation is ridiculous. WHEN YOU GET TO THE ELEVENTH COMMA IN A SENTENCE, IT MAY BE TIME FOR A PERIOD.

I read your blogs, and I see the ability to form cogent sentences. Thoughts are expressed and ideas are transferred. It's a beautiful thing. I think we all take for granted the amount of good writing that is out there.

Card Protectors

I decided to start collecting card protectors a while ago, and placed an order for some from places I found on the Internet. I had some money in my PayPal account from referrals at PokerSourceOnline, so I figured this was the best way to blow it on useless poker crap.



The picture is of the three most recent additions to the collection. I put a quarter on there so you could get a better idea of the size of these things.

The first one says "All-In" on the front and "Bite Me" on the back. People usually laugh when they see it, so it's worth it for a giggle. I got it from www.holdemmarkers.com for $9 plus shipping.

The middle one came from www.PokerCoin.com and says "I'm not bluffing, read em and weep" on it. The back is completely blank, which is kind of disappointing. It was $18.95. I also got a Hold Em keychain there that costs $10.95. The keychain is much cooler than the card protector, and all you would have to do is remove the chain to use it as a card protector.

The third one is the nicest one. I got it on the Poker Cruise in December for $15 from a player there who was selling them. There were all kinds of varieties, but I liked the "Bad Beat" one the best. I also got one that had "Ladies" on it for King Lucky, since his worst beats always seem to come with queens. It came in a hard plastic case but I like it better outside of the case. Anyone who wants one can find them easily on Ebay or by doing a google search.

For you online only players, Card Protectors are especially important when you play in a casino and you sit in the one or ten seat. If you don't protect your cards by putting something on them, the dealer can accidentally take them, or another player could accidentally think your cards are the muck pile and send his cards into yours. Once your cards touch other muck cards, your hand, if not protected, is dead. Even if you had AA, and even though it's not your fault.

Other than that they are just for fun, they start converstations at a poker table.

StatCounter is cool

StatCounter really is a cool tool. Whoever told me about it, thanks! I just spent the last hour or so reading my own blog because of StatCounter. They recently changed their keyword analysis to show you exactly when the searches were entered into whichever search engine, calling it "Recent Keyword Activity." I was browsing the searches that hit me, and then reading the pages that those people would get. I have pretty much forgotten everything I wrote before the beginning of the year, and some of it is really good stuff! I might hurt my arm patting myself on the back like that, but I really am impressed by some of the stuff. Things like this from a post called I'm not a very good poker player:

How do I make money even though I'm not good? Because being at a poker table is like being in a group of guys being chased by a bear. You don't have to be the fastest guy in the group, you just can't be the slowest.

If it weren't for StatCounter I never would have gone back and read through some of that stuff. Just like in poker, if you want to improve your blogging you have to analyze your history. See what you did right and do more of it, see what you did wrong and try to avoid it. It's easier to be more objective about your writing after so much time has passed.

***********************************************************

I missed the WPBT event last night. I planned on playing, even looked forward to it. But I had to play in a Bar Tourney instead. I know that sounds fishy, but really I had to go, for political reasons.

First, let me explain what a Bar Tourney is. It's free poker for no money. Sounds like shit, right? Yeah, pretty much.

Poker is still illegal outside of Indian Reservations in Oklahoma. So if you want to play Hold Em, all you can do is play in these "Amateur Poker Leagues." Here's the deal. A group of people, I hesitate to call it a "business" but I guess that's technically what it is, organize these free poker tournaments in bars. For the bar, it's like having a band, and they pay these people the same as what they'd pay a band.

You go to the bar and they give you 3000 chips. If you buy a meal at the restaurant, you get another 1000 chips. For every beer you buy, you get another 200 chips. If your table "tips" the organizers of the tournament the most, everyone at the table gets another 1000 chips. If you bring a guest, both you and the guest get an extra 1000 chips.

I was new, so I started with 4000 chips. The guy that brought me started with about 8600, because he brought me, another guest, bought a meal, his table tipped the highest and he bought a few beers. Nothing like starting in a hole.

Then there's the opponents. Here's a direct quote:

I've never played against people before, not even on the internet. I saw it on the TV and played some hands against my husband, so I thought I would come out and give it a try. Why not, it's free!

Ugh. In the first hand I decided I would try to convice the table I was a "crazy player" and I bluffed with ten-high. Of course I got called, which I expected. What I didn't expect was that I bluffed with the BEST HAND. Yes, I bluffed with ten-high and got called by NINE-HIGH. Oh the humanity.

The top two players get points. Those points get you into other tournaments....somewhere down the line there is a prize. A trip to Vegas or something....sorry, I really wasn't paying attention.

So now you know about Bar Tourneys (I have a hard time even calling it "poker") I'll explain why I had to go.

I recently lost by boss and my best friend in Oklahoma. The bastard moved back to Kansas City. When I lived in KC I worked with him there. He moved to OKC and offered me a job at his new place. I accepted and moved down here to work for him. Then he got another job back in KC! So HIS boss is now MY boss until they fill his position, which isn't clear if they will do that or not. His boss knows I am sorta (!) into poker, so he said I HAD to be his guest at the Bar Tourney last night. It would have been a bad career move for me to say no, so there I was swimming with the fishes for two hours on a Wednesday night.

So all this is one big excuse on why I missed the Blogger Tourney last night. I did watch Iggy's table for the last two hours though. I stayed up nearly to midnight when my alarm goes off at 4:30am...shouldn't that be worth something. Naw, probably not.

Like I told Felicia when I got there, I didn't play. I suck.

Poker Comic #15

God Bless the UAW

God Bless the UAW. They may be ruining the company and thereby ruining the country, but I damn sure enjoyed the four day weekend they just forced me to take with pay. I did nearly nothing on the weekend, I needed time to decompress from all the weekend trips and goings on around here.

I really only played poker yesterday. I think I played a lot on Thursday and maybe some more on Friday, but it's all a blur now anyway. Yesterday was a joke. I started the day with a $5+1 MTT on Absolute. I was cruising along fine until I made two bad, bad, BAD plays in a row that I know better than to make. My excuse is that I was on the phone and got distracted, but that's bullshit. I made a fish mistake, and paid for it.

Yesterday was poker on the cheap day. I figured I could play nothing but freerolls and tournaments that used player points. Huge mistake. I played in these things for hours and didn't see a scrap of poker played all day. Assholes playing any two cards and catching lightning, all the while criticizing others for being bad players. People who wouldn't know poker if it crawled up their rectum and spawned, being table coaches to even worse players.

Saturday was the Poker Forum Challenge hosted by Royal Vegas poker. There were a dozen or two of us representing PokerSourceOnline and about a dozen who spent the tournament in the PSO chat area. I swear, the chat was more fun than the tourney. Out of nearly 1400 contestants, all the PSOers in chat finished in the top 100, but none of us made the money that started at 30. If you were in the chat, thanks for making an otherwise routine tournament more fun.

Oh yeah! I remember what I did on Thursday now...I played in a WSOP qualifier where the top 9 players get a chance to win a trip to the WSOP. Not an entry, mind you, just the trip. Gotta love Absolute Poker. We won't give away "The Ultimate Prize" we'll give away something that looks sorta like it. A trip to go WATCH the WSOP. Not even the whole thing, just a few days worth. Absolute Poker is the Chinese Knock-Off of the poker world. They kinda look a little like Paradise Poker, but can't pull it off without being a total resource hog. They wanna be Pardise so bad, they can taste it.

This ridiculous joke of a tourney took six and a half hours, and that was just to get down to the final table. Since all nine got the same prize, everybody (except for one asshole, there's always one) went all in on the next hand.

Anyway, I finished in the top 9 out of 1500 players to get a shot at the trip. That tourney is Thursday. There's a blogger tournament on Wednesday (see Iggy's for details) and a $5000 freeroll sponsored by PokerSourceOnline on Friday.

Two of those tournaments are worth more than $1000 for first place, yet if I were forced to choose, I'd rather win the one on Wednesday.

Poker on TV turns a corner

I just watched the WPT event that I recorded from Wednesday night, and I have heard a lot of comments about the new graphics and the changes that the WPT made this season. I haven't seen anybody mention the most impressive change.

They don't explain the rules of hold em anymore.

That's right. They assume if you're watching, you've seen the game before and know how it works. The ESPECIALLY don't explain what hand beats what anymore. MAYBE there were people seeing that and going "WOW, a full house beats a flush?" But I doubt it.

It always bugged me. I would be watching the 18th broadcast of the WSOP and here comes the little video presentation teaching us how the betting works in Texas Hold Em. Or a WPT event with Mike Sexton calling it "The Caddilac of Poker" for the umpteenth time.

No more. When you watch a baseball game, they don't take time out in the beginning to tell you that four balls make a walk. They don't start hockey games early to explain what icing is, even though I think more people understand hold em than understand offsides in a hockey or soccer game.

The game is growing up. This is a HUGE step for the ligitimacy of televised poker.

Now back to watching college basketball. I have Louisville in my pool, so I'm looking good for at least a profit. What does that arc on the court mean again?

Yankee Fans

If you are a Yankee fan, and maybe even if you're not, you should be reading this guy:

The Pinstripe Bible

Sometimes you will read a history of World War II that argues there was a racial component to the American decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. It was never strongly suggested, this argument goes, that the bomb should be used on Germany. This may be true, but it is equally true that the A-bomb was not ready to be dropped until after the Germans had surrendered. For Harry Truman to drop the big one on the Rhine in August of 1945, three months after V-E Day, would have been, at the very least, impolite. Bringing a closer in to protect a three-run lead in the ninth is the same thing. It’s like nuking the enemy after the war is over.

The writer is Steve Goldman, and he knows his shit about baseball, and is entertaining as hell.

Search Engine Abuse - Shanna Hiatt Nude

I'm starting to feel bad about all the search engine abuse I've been doing by posting titles like Naked Pictures of Shanna Hiatt, or Shanna Hiatt nude. Maybe even misspellings, like Shana Hyatt or something.

So, as a reward for all you perverts who found my page looking for Shanna Hiatt's naked body, here you go.

Shanna Hiatt Nude Pictures

Pics provided by Poker Source Online, remember to use referral ID "dugglebogey" when you sign up after you are.......done.

Thanks for all of your kind emails.....

Thanks for all of your kind emails.....

I had a great weekend that started on Friday night Online and continued through the weekend in Kansas City.

But first, I gotta mention stupid coozebag stripper's latest "insult disguised as a compliment." Apparently she heard about Felicia's diagnosis, but instead of just being nice decent HUMAN, she takes a shot at her. If anything like that happened to you, you'd be throwing the biggest pity party seen by mankind.

I realize that being a stripper doesn't require any advanced degrees, but LOOK DUMBASS, Felicia never referred to you as a hooker. She hasn't referred to you AT ALL lately, you self-centered moron. She was playing a tournament and making a joke about the winner getting a free hooker. NOT YOU, DIPSHIT. If someone told you she did, you're a fucking fool for believing it.

For anyone who is still reading Strippers useless site, I'll wrap up every post she has done in the last couple of months, and likely every post she will do for the rest of her pointless blogs.

"Thanks for all the nice emails"---This is where she lies and tries to convince anyone still reading her crap that someone out there still likes her, and that they aren't just your standard internet geeks who kiss her ass because she claims to be "hot."

"I made enough money to maintain the country of Bulgaria for a week."----Here's where she tries to convince readers that she's a FANTASTIC poker PROFESSIONAL, although she has never posted one IOTA of poker advice that would suggest that it's true.

"My military boyfriend is dreamy, although every other woman he has ever met is inferior to me."----the only thing I can imagine she is trying to do here is make people VOMIT. Her contribution to fighting the obesity problem, maybe?

"Here's something I saw on TV or on the Internet that made me stop and think for a second, and came to a COMPLETELY STUPID CONCLUSION."----This is actually almost entertaining, because she is so daft her conclusions are hilarious.

And that's pretty much all you are going to get from reading that site. Aren't you happy I could save you all that time?

*************************************************************************************

Anyway, Friday night was just one of those nights where you can do no wrong. I played through my bonus at Absolute Poker and doubled my buy-in. It makes a lousy $100 in bonus money look like crap when you win $500 just trying to clear it. Not that I will ever turn down free money. How do I add that $100 into Poker Tracker? I wish there was a guide or something for that program.

It was one of those nights where every pre-flop hand held up, and every beat was held to a reasonable level. I'd say the best example is when I called a pre-flop raise with 99 in position, and flopped A95. Turn was a 5 and I raised, got called by the initial pre-flop raiser. I bet the blank on the river and got check-raised by the pre-flop raiser, and JUST CALLED his wired Aces. Ordinarily that hand is a big loser for me, but I only dropped one extra bet when he raised me on the river. Second nut is usually a hand I'll push, but I smelled a rat.

So while all this bonus clearing was going on, my friend KingLucky calls me from Kansas City and tells me he is playing a tournament and he wants to go to a movie with his son and would I take it over? I said no problem since I was playing anyways. I logged on as him and he had a pretty nice stack of 11,000 or so with about 200 left of the original 450 players. I made a few plays, trying not to get fancy and got to the lead fairly quickly. The final table was achieved with ease and I pushed them all around and eventually won it. KingLucky and I split the first place prize when I got to his house Saturday for his monthly home game. After killing the home game for like the third time in a row we took our stake to the Ameristar and KingLucky taught me his super secret Video Poker Strategy.

Okay, so there's no secret, we just play that when we can't handle the card-catchers up in the poker room anymore. But he did walk me through a lot of plays that I wasn't making optimally, and I won a LOT of money I wouldn't have. If you mix that in with the comps you get at a ridiculous rate when playing 100 play, it's really a very good system.

Poker went like hell at Ameristar when this indian dude across the table caught cards on me EVERY FRICKING HAND. Well, he played every fricking hand, so whenever I was in, he was in. I held AT and the flop was T88? He held T8. I held JJ, re-raised and the flop was T22? He held K2. There he was, betting the wrong amount on every street, with his wife, dot on her forehead and everything, planted on his shoulder like a parrot. Driving me and everyone else at the table crazy, and catching cards like a motherfucker.

I left before the damage got too bad, and the Video Poker winnings made up for it and then some. I think the real house edge in 100 Play Video Poker is in the mistakes the players make. Since VP is all about playing for the big hand, and you get 100 times as many shots at the big hand, the game seems very beatable. I have limited experience, but so far so good.

After the home game that started at 6pm on Saturday, we played from 2am to about 7pm on Sunday, which was nice because of all the basketball on TV, and the comped meals at the restaurants. I didn't like seing the UAB loss to Arizona on the bottom of the screen about 10,000 times, but that's a cross I will have to bear.

Slept Sunday night and drove 5 hours back to OKC on Monday. Getting up for work at 5am after skipping a night of sleep is always difficult, but I'll probably recover by tomorrow.

Poker Comic #14

Full Tilt Poker

Iggy needs a HUMONGOUS kickback from Full Tilt Poker. Apparently nobody amongst bloggers was playing there until they all bought in for the HORSE tourney on Sunday. Now they are ALL playing there FULL TIME, and blogging about it. It seems like every blog I've read since Sunday has been about the ring games at Full Tilt, the SNGs at Full Tilt or the NL games at Full Tilt. Or a full site review of Full Tilt.

That's more press than Nixon got when he opened relations with China. All because of a $5 HORSE tourney that most people were afraid to play in the first place.