It looked like it was going to be a bad week on the green felt but all turned out well.
Played Wednesday night, managed to lose $200 fairly quickly. Looked like I might be in for another bad week. Bought back in for another $200 and more or less stagnated around $150 in front of me for the next 2 hours or so and then bang bang bang, 3 good pots in a row and I'm back up to a little better than even on the night and decide it would be best to not tempt the poker gods anymore for the evening. $44 to the good.
Went back and played Thursday night and got off to a fast start, flopped a straight on the 3rd hand of the night to take down a fairly big kill pot that put me up close to $200. Then from there it looked like my fortunes were changing for the worst again, hand after hand I'd start with the best cards and get outdrawn. Finally I decided I'd had enough and was about to leave about $50 ahead, but then changed my minded and opted to play one last orbit. That was a good decision, as I took down the next 2 pots in a row which put me back up over $200.
Saturday, the casino was hosting a satellite tournament to win seats in their $1000 buy in event on November 12th. Buy in for the Satellite was $110. Both me and my dad played but neither of us had any luck in the tourney so it was off to the poker room for some $5/$10 action. Dad got there a while before I did and was playing when I got to the room. I only had to wait 20 minutes or so for a seat to open up. Didn't have much luck in the first seat I was in and managed to get stuck about $75 in 20 minutes or so, but then a seat opened up at the other table, where my dad was playing so I decided to see if my luck was better over there. Sure enough first hand I sit down for is a kill pot, I get dealt AJ in middle position and limp in, a couple of others limp as well and we see a flop of J73. I'm pretty happy with this flop and also happy that the guy who is first to act bets. I'm next to act and raise, one caller behind me and the original better also calls. Turn is a Q. First position checks and I bet, guy behind me raises and the guy in first position folds. Now, I've played a lot of hands with the raiser and I know that he has a tendency of overplaying a lot of marginal hands. I'm pretty sure my jacks are good here but I can't be certain that he doesn't have something like QJ or even J7 so I just call. River is a brick, I'm first to act and just check, villain quickly throws a bet into the pot and I go into the tank, studying him. He definitely doesn't look very comfortable, and I know that he isn't good enough to be trying to give off a false tell so I call and he swears under his breath as he flips up AK, woohoo, first hand at the new table and I'm back above even.
From there I more or less took control of a fairly weak table, If I told you how many times I got paid off on the river by someone with A high or 3rd pair you wouldn't believe me. There were multiple people in the game who would call bets all the way to the river with almost nothing and didn't seem to have any concept of things like starting hand values. I left after about 4 hours or so, up about $340.
This new part time job is working out good so far, for the month I'm up about 4 big bets an hour, where else could I find a job that paid that well where I get to set my own hours?
Monday, October 31, 2005
I like play pokah, pokah is nice....
An eventful bye week...
It's rare for a football team to be front page news on their bye week, but the Riders have a certain knack for getting unneeded press at the wrong times.
Early Friday news broke that 7th year import linebacker Trevis Smith was arrested at his home in Regina on charges of aggravated sexual assault in a case involving a woman in BC. Speculation began immediately, what were the mitigating circumstances that elevated the charge to being aggravated? We only had to wait a few hours to get that answer. He is apparently HIV positive, a fact we can assume he didn't share with his sexual partner in this case.
This is not the first time that the off field actions of a player have made front page headlines during the regime of head coach Danny Barrett and GM Roy Shivers and I for one am sick of it. It's not bad enough that they seemly completely inept when it comes to fielding anything that vaguely resemble an offense on the field, but they have also lost complete control of their locker room.
Regina is a fairly small community, and members of the Riders are something of celebrities around town. They stick out in crowds, and it doesn't take long for the grapevine to get going when one of them is seen doing something they shouldn't be. I believe it's time the management and coaches lay down the law with the players and let them know that in no uncertain terms will negative publicity be tolerated any longer. I'd like to see the players submit to frequent drug testing and be made to adhere to a strict code of conduct when they are in the community. Once the off field problems are solved, it should be easier to fix the problems on the field.
One crappy week of TV
YAWN...Is it too much to ask that we don't get reruns for at least the first 2 months of a new TV season?
My Name is Earl, Lost, CSI...all repeats this week. Were they really so concerned about going up against some crappy baseball games?
Boston Legal - Not the best episode of the series, it was a bit flat, but still head and shoulders above just about any other show on television. Sad to see Betty White go, I really liked her character. Note to Entertainment Weekly TV "critic" Mark Harris: If you don't find this show funny please have a funny bone transplant, yours is clearly malfunctioning.
CSI: NY - Not even qualifying it anymore, this is without a doubt the best series of the CSI franchise. Solid and consistent every week.
Smallville - Lana Lang: Vampire....uhhhhh...ok...For some reason I didn't hate this episode even though it was possibly one of the most retarded concepts the show has done yet. Kudos to the writers for that.
Looks like everything but Lost is back with new episodes next week.
Monday, October 24, 2005
F**kin' Zebras
The CFL has the worst officiating of any professional sports league, this should be an undeniable fact. But even by CFL standards, Dave Yule and his crew of morons should be ashamed of their performance in the Saskatchewan/Calgary game this afternoon.
Several incredibly bad calls killed any hope the Riders had of pulling out a victory against the hated Stamps today. Now don't get me wrong here, the Riders didn't do themselves any favours by not bothering to score any points in the entire 2nd half, but it is pretty hard to develop any momentum when the officials seem to have money on the other team.
Apparently it is now a penalty in the CFL to pat an opposing player on the head after a play, unnecessary roughness. Of course out of the several times that this happened in the game it was only called once - to extend a Calgary drive.
The referees are also now clairvoyant, once a player is hit, there is simply no need to wait and see if he is going to go down, might as well just blow the whistle now instead of letting the opposing team scoop up the ball he just fumbled and return it for a touchdown.
Intentional grounding? What's that? Apparently in the CFL you can't get called for it as long you have a receiver in the same stadium as your QB.
It's been bad all year but this game takes the cake. Heads should roll, but they won't. All will stay the same, because the CFL is just not proactive when it comes to improving the onfield performance of it's officials.
This is the avatar I'll be using on all the football forums I post on for the next while.
I am not a poker god
It figures that I would follow up one of my best weeks of playing poker with one of my worst. Simply nothing went right this week. Played 2 sessions for a total of about 8 hours and ended up down almost $300.
I alternated between runs of either getting zero playable hands for multiple laps of the table or, picking up nonstop decent starting hands only to never have them develop into a winning hand. I didn't keep track, but I'd guess over that 8 hour period I won less than 20 pots.
Oh well, such is variance. Next time will be better, it can't be worse.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
A useful website
Found a link to this over at digg.com. It's basically a do it yourself comics page. You pick which comic strips you want it to show and it makes up a page for you with those comics on it. Very cool.
http://darkgate.net/comic/
Monday, October 17, 2005
Another week on the felt
And the hot streak continues, man is it going to suck when the bubble bursts and I have a losing session, but at least I've gotten myself far enough ahead that I can drop a few buyins when I run cold and not have it be disastrous.
Played 3 sessions this week all 5/10 with a kill:
Wednesday night I played about 3 hours in a game that featured a few of the regulars and was rounded out by some tourists, one from Saskatoon and the rest from the US, who were up here on a hunting trip. Played well all session but didn't hit a whole lot of playable hands but the ones I did get I think I milked for as many chips as possible. Ended up booking a $170 profit.
Thursday night I played for about 2 and a half hours and got smacked in the face with the deck the whole time. Have a pocket pair? Flop a set. Have suited connectors? Flop a straight flush draw and finish either the flush or the straight on the turn. Flop a set? Have 3 other people flop straights and fill the pot with money for when the river finishes off my boat. It was pretty sick. Finished the night $430 to the good.
Saturday afternoon is the session of the week I'm most proud of and it's not because I made the most money (it was my worst session of the week in that regard) or because I made some brilliant plays (everything was done very straight forward this time out). It's because this is the session where I show how much I've improved my discipline. I started out the session catching good cards and decent flops but someone was always outdrawing me on the river and taking the pot away. In the first hour or so I managed to get myself stuck $151. There was a time when I might have gone on tilt and played fast and loose with the $49 I had left in front of me trying to get back what I had lost as quickly as possible, but that time is not now. I stayed focused and folded and folded and folded until I did eventually look down and find AK of clubs. I got a couple of clubs on the flop and finished my flush on the turn and managed to take down a pot that put me back to within $30 of being even. From there I continued to play my best and ended up making about $120 in 4.5 hours (I feel this is probably about what I should be making in his particular game).
TV this week...
My Name is Earl - I hadn't been watching this show but my uncle recommended it during Thanksgiving dinner last weekend and he usually has excellent taste in TV programs so I figured I'd give it a try. I downloaded the first 3 episodes and watched them in preparation for this weeks 4th episode and I must say I'm hooked. The show is the story of Earl, a small time petty thief and all around jackass who comes to the conclusion that bad things always happen to him because he does bad things to others. He writes himself a list of all the bad things he has ever done and sets about making them right. I highly recommend this show.
Boston Legal - A stand out episode of a show that is consistently one of the best shows on TV. William Shatner committing the shotgun murder of a fish is just great TV. This episode also provides the best line on TV this week:
Alan: This book, "A stain upon the sea", it's all about these sealice.
Denny: Interesting
Alan: They call them Cling Ons.
Denny: Did you say Klingons?
Lost - I liked this weeks episode. Which probably means I'll dislike next weeks. It's nice to see that Rose was in fact right and that Bernard did survive the crash. What happened to the other survivors from their group though? Did they cannibalize each other? Did the others kill them? How come their bunker seems to suck compared to the one that Locke found on the other side of the island? How long will Claire make that jar of peanut butter last? Some of these questions may or may not be answered in the next episode.
CSI: NY - As much as I complain about my job from time to time, at least I know I'll never be asked to fish through a barrel of tiger poo looking for body parts.
Smallville - A good mythology episode. Let the fan speculation over who is going to die this season begin. My guess is that it will either be Chloe or Pa Kent, and I'm leaning towards Chloe if for no other reason than because she was an original character created specifically for the show thusly making her the most expendable from a DC Comics/Warner Bros perspective. Clark has go to have the discussion about his powers with Lana pretty quick or I'll never believe that she has an IQ over 60 again. She sees him die then an hour later she doesn't recoil in horror when he is standing in his house looking like he just came out of a burning building? What the heck kind of story did he come up with that had her defending him to Lex in the next scene and why didn't we get to see it? Could it be that the writers couldn't come up with anything that wasn't completely retarded either? And as if she isn't going to want to check out the scar from his gunshot, chicks dig scars.
CSI - Still feeling blah about this season. Hopefully this Warrick is married storyline is going somewhere. Are they really going to find some tight claustrophobic space to shove Nick into every week?
And that's your week in TV.
Another week, a bunch of posts
Ok, this week I'm going to break each topic into it's own post...Eventually I'd like to archive them in this way so that people who only care about one thing can just read the posts about that topic without wading through everything else.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Another long post about not much...
And away we go...
Friday, October 07, 2005
I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!
This event is powered by PokerStars.
Registration code: 5061910
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Podcasts
So my current addiction is downloading and listening to internet radio shows and I figured I'd share some of my favourites with anyone who might have accidentally stumbled across this blog while looking for something more interesting to read.
Diggnation - Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, who were both on air personalities on TechTV before G4 sucked the soul out of what was a great TV station, host a weekly show where they drink beer and discuss the top stories from Digg.com.
TWiT - This Week in Tech also harkens back to the days when TechTV was good. Leo Laporte hosts a weekly show about all things tech with a revolving panel of co-hosts including John C. Dvorak, Kevin Rose, Patrick Norton, etc.
Fan Boy Radio - An always excellent, hour long, weekly show about all things related to comics. They have some truly outstanding interviews with some of the biggest names in the field.
Rounders - The best poker show I've found. Recent guests have included T.J. Cloutier, Chris Ferguson and Mike Matusow.
Does anyone have suggestions of other shows I should kill time at work listening too?
Mental dump...
So much to cover, man I should update this more often.
TV
BEWARE: SPOILERS ABOUND!
Boston Legal - I simply can't get enough of this show. This is William Shatner at his finest, and his interaction with James Spader is the best on TV. They both greatly deserved the Emmys that they recently won.
Lost - Well that was a much better episode than last weeks. I don't know why but I just couldn't get into last weeks episode, it just seemed really flat to me. This week was completely different, it had me sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time. The scenes with Michael and Sawyer on the raft were amazing. I can't wait for this weeks episode and more details on who the guys with the clubs are. My guess is leaning towards them being descendants of the crew and slaves of the Black Rock, of course my track record for guessing things on this show is pretty weak, so I'll probably be completely wrong.
CSI: NY - Great. Perfect. Consistently one of the highest quality shows on TV and hopefully this season doesn't suffer from the dreaded sophomore jinx.
CSI - Still haven't started to watch this seasons episodes...maybe I'll just keep saving them up so I have something to watch next summer :P Ok, Ok, OK, I'll try my best to catch up this week.
Smallville - Wooohoo. Now that's jam packed season premiere. The Fortress of Solitude is created. Clark finds out Chloe knows his secret. Clark and Lana look like they are headed back into relationshipland. Lionel is coocoo for Coco-puffs. Oh, and then there is all the stuff that happens in the other 75% of the episode. This is looking like it could be a great season.
Whew...I'm kind of glad that my other 2 favourite shows, The Shield and 24 won't be on for awhile, it's hard enough keeping up with these.
Poker
Well, I think it finally happened. The morons have spoiled online poker for me. I accept the fact that bad beats happen, but lately online it hasn't been so much about the bad beats as it has the COMPLETELY RETARDED beats. I can handle situations like having AA cracked by KK, that's no big deal, it happens. Lately however I just can't figure out what the fuck some of these morons are thinking and why it's working for them. I've had people call off their entire stacks preflop with K7 suited against my KK only to have the flop come down 977, the case K doesn't fall and I am done. I've had AA run down by A6 suited, AK cracked by a smaller A more times than I an count. And it's not like these have been in $1 Sit n' Go's, it's been in $22 or $33 multitable tournaments with prizepools well into the thousands of dollars.
So, I cashed out all the money I had remaining online (except a few dollars so I can still play the occasional tournament with the friendly folks from fullcontacpoker.com) and am going to play exclusively live face to face poker against actual people. I'll update my progress here.
Football
It's like Christmas came early and I got everything on my list!
A Hamilton win against the Eskimos? Check.
A Montreal win against the Stamps? Check.
The Riders ending BC's 15 month home winning streak? OH HELL YA.
A Rider team that most (including me) had all but written off 6 short weeks ago as being done has turned things around nicely and after a 5 game winning streak sit in a 2nd place tie with Edmonton, one game ahead of Calgary. Hold on to your hat's folks, the season is far from over and things are just heating up.
This week let's hope for:
A Rider win at home versus the Alouettes
A Toronto win at home against the Esks.
A BC loss in Winnipeg. (a guy can dream can't he?)
Ok, enough for now...more some other time.
J.