From the Road...

Just a quickie update while sitting and having a cup o' joe on a beautiful Kentucky Friday morning...

Finished yesterday at Churchill +$62 after nailing a trifecta the DRF advised. That one paid $133, and it was all gravy from there.

Things I will remember to talk about upon my return:

"A little bit murdered."
Friday's long day of fun (probably golf + horses + poker)
Low carbs
"We all had bets how long that would last"

All for now.

On Hiatus...

I'm off on vacation starting in about four hours. I will return to regale you with tales of low stakes gambling excess in approximately five days.

If anything interesting happens while I'm gone, leave me a comment. I might check it on the road once or twice.

We're all tied up...

Pauly and I are knotted at one win apiece going into week three of our $5 weekly gambling challenge. He and Tony-fucking-Randall took week one, and I rode significantly under the still over-performing abilities of a friendly ogre to take week two.

Week three's question:

What do the numbers 69 and 180 have in common?

Give up?

They are, respectively, the average height (in inches) and weight (in pounds you un-American kilobastards) of the adult male in this country.

The bet is:

Take these poker bloggers and guess whether they fall over or under the combined figure of 249 (inches+pounds) when adding height and weight:

Intrepid Card Player
BadBlood on Poker
Love and Casino War
Cheap Thrills
Grubby
Chris Halverson
Monte Christo
Genius of the Poker
Chicago Phil
Poker Penguin

I haven't met any of these guys, and short of that picture of Chris Halverson online a couple of weeks ago (and he might be exactly 5'9" and 180 lbs), I haven't seen pictures or went trolling to figure out if they ever wrote about height and weight.

My guesses:
ICP - Under
BadBlood - Under
Love and Casino War - Over
Cheap Thrills - Under
Grubby - Over
Chris Halverson - Under
Monte Christo - Over
Genius - Under
Chicago Phil - Over
Penguin - Over

He who gets the most right wins (of course, we need to get results from these guys - if you're one of these bloggers, wait until Pauly posts his O/U guesses, and let us know!).

Good luck!

Sunday Home Game Spectacular

Over the course of this weekend I played three nights of poker, four games (NL Tournament style) total, three of which were for money. I didn't run the table with victories, but was in the money in all four with a 2-1-1 record.

Sadly, one of the wins was in a three-handed game designed to teach our cousin how to play, and there was no money on the line. But a win is a win, right?

So last night the usual suspects gathered round the table nine strong for a little holiday weekend poker.

In the first game, I jumped out to a huge lead right away, as a SB limp with 23s landed me a flop of 2T2. I checked, and amazingly my brother came out strong. Even more amazingly, another player raised him.

I was worried at this point. My kicker sucked, and TT in the hole spelled second best for me. Still, I called, as did my brother.

The fourth deuce hit the turn. I had quads.

Again, I just check. My brother grabs all his chips and slammed them down in the middle. All-in. My adrenaline is pumping like mad. I'm doing everything I can to look distressed by his maneuver. The other player thought real hard before laying down his pair of sixes. Good move.

I said, "I'm not going to let you get away with that bet. I call." He flipped over his JTs, giving him the full house on the board. I don't think he was worried about JJ/QQ/KK/AA from me, let alone my deuce. I turned it over to much whooping and hollering.

For the first half of the game, that's what it was like for me. I was catching crazy low cards in the blinds, limping in, and making oddball sets of threes, or something like a full house, fours over twos to win and build my stack.

Going to four handed, I had nearly 5k of the 10k in chips on the table. I felt invincible.

That's when my old friend, Mr. NineThree decided to pay himself a series of visits to my down cards. Seriously, that hand from now on is called "The BG," as I guaran-fucking-tee you that I see those cards more on average than any two other hole cards possible.

My cards went ice cold. To be fair, when I did have playable hands and raised, it happened to be when the low stacks had better hands, and re-raised all-in. I helped a couple of people double up along the way, and whittled myself down to 3100 going to three-handed against Bob and Matt.

Again, the cards remained icey for me. Matt pushed it, Bob pushed back, and I was left folding 93, J2, Q4, and 85 into third place.

But at least third place got their money back.

In game number two, I doubled up with AQs on hand number one against Bob's KQs. It was a classic "Sure, I'll play again, but I'm warning you I'm drunk and would rather play PartyPoker for awhile, so what the hell" move on his part. I caught, he didn't, and boom - I'm in the lead.

No less than four hands later, I caught a set of threes with my pocket pair, and Mr. TwoPair raised me all-in, which I called for an effective triple up.

Nothing much exciting from there, just solid play on my part, as I wasn't about to lose another game to the same crowd. I've got too much pride on the line to get soundly beaten twice. I managed to break Matt at the end for the Game Two prize of $70. Game One's $120 would have been nice, but I'm not complaining.

I've got a royal fucking mess here to clean up now today, and then it's couch time baby. Look for me on the Limit tables later today, unless I get dragged (kicking and screaming) into some sort of bullshit barbeque.

Early morning rambling

I have one, and only one, PartyPoker superstition.

If I'm joining a SNG table, I try to look at the table number and sit in a corresponding seat that would make a poker hand with that table number.

For example, as we speak I'm in a $10 SNG at table number 11021. If you figured out I chose seat #1, you'd be absolutely correct.

I played in an ad hoc home game on Friday night with some of my brother's friends from high school. The Pistons were laying an egg in game four of their series, so poker was certainly a more appealing option. I took a page out of Mean Gene's patented No Limit playbook as we got down to the final three (my brother, myself, and semi-regular GamblingBlues reader Matt), and got ultra aggressive. I was the middle stack, but Matt had a nice sized chip lead over me anyway. I managed to knock Bob out, and then on the first hand of heads-up, I pushed all-in preflop with wired sevens, only to catch Matt with Jacks in the hole. Neither of us caught, so that was that.

Entertaining game, even though I caught next-to-no cards for the first two hours. Folding sucks.

I was sleeping wonderfully Saturday morning, but was rudely awakened to the sounds of clapping and cheering. They had routed an early morning 5K right in front of my bedroom window, and there were numerous parents in my front yard screaming encouragement to every youngster running by. At 8AM. Right in front of my bedroom window.

At least the Coast Guard parade has the good sense to start near Noon.

I went out and bought David Sklansky's "Theory of Poker" yesterday at the bookstore. Very excited to read it. What's even more interesting is that I went up to the information desk, curious to see if Pauly's literary opuses can be bought over the counter, or only with a prescription. I asked the lady at the desk to look up "McGrupp," and she didn't get anything at first, but then pulled up a book called "Toward the Second Dimension, a Sociology Primer" written by someone with the last name of "McGuire." Although that's not Pauly, that's scary close to Pauly when they scour the database for "McGrupp."

In home game #2 for the weekend, Bob and I taught cousin Rachelle how to play Hold 'Em. I took down the pot. Therefore, I'm 2-2 for finishing "in the money," even though we didn't actually play for money on this one.

Other Brother and his fiancee had people over last night for a cookout. Other Brother's Fiancee's Brother's Girlfriend (follow that?) was kind of a good looking girl, except that her eyes were a little too close together, and her irises were so enormous that you couldn't see the whites of her eyes. She looked like a deer.

So it was rainy and chilly yesterday, as it has been all month since some gypsy bitch in Oregon cursed Portland's weather to West Michigan, and the cookout had to be parked indoors. Indoors, that is, until the ice cream man came rolling by. I had a Choco Taco, which I not only like for the taste, but because by eating it I continue to thumb my nose at my ex-wife who found the topic of a Chocolate Taco distressing and disgusting.

We played this game "Scene It," which is a DVD game in which you watch a one to two minute scene from a movie (anything last night from "Steel Magnolias" to "Spinal Tap"), and are asked a question about that scene. A pop culture trivia game? Don't fuck with me people. We (the guys) won, and handily at that.

Today is Home Game #3 for the weekend, the $20 game. Full report pending tomorrow.