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Showing posts from July, 2008

Better Poker Player Tony Parker or Chris Paul?

I don't know the answer. Better point guard is almost as interesting a question, but any sports fans knows you have to be smart to play the point and both guys seem like shrewd tacticians with a penchant for anticipating the play before it happens. Certainly an asset for an aspiring poker player.. What I do know is the point guard of the Spurs is a really nice guy and enjoys poker. In fact, he makes me completely reconsider my French people are rude stance. Just the opposite. Why? Because he suffered some idiot in Vegas on his bachelor party challenging him to a heads up game where he had to put up 500 to win a 1000. His wife, dressed like Phil Laak, though it's hard to hide her kind of beauty no matter how big the hoodie, was also tolerant of the idiot. The couple were very gracious even after many other people would have suggested that the lout isssuing the challenge be removed. They just wanted to play some 2-5 and have some fun. Though the challenge was accepted I

Book of the Month.

I've had a lot of success in sit 'n gos recently. This book has been helpful. I will do a review after I get back from my bachelor party. It will be in flight reading as I give it another perusal. Time to extract some notes from it like I'm a high schooler. In the meantime, it's a great add to your poker library and introduces some important elements and perspectives to one and two table sit 'n gos. I got a lot out of it.

I have seen the future of poker and it is a scary, scary trip to your IT department

The Future of Poker... It's Bleak, It's Dark, and Pretty Pathetic. Tom Dwan and Tiffany Michelle two of the four horses of the Poker Apocalypse... Wheeeeeeee. Wheeeeeeee. Wii, Wii, Wii, the felt is going to be taken over by a new breed. It's internet whiz kids. Anybody catch an episode of Poker After Dark on NBC this week? It's Vets vs. Nets as the new generation of internet poker stars square off against Dolye Brunson, Johnny Chan, and Huck Seed. Brian Townsend, Tom Dwan aka Durrrrrrrr (or just your average vampiric shut-in tethered to the broadband connection in his parents basement), and a kid whose name I don't remember but is probably worth 100,000 of me. Anyway, if these guys are the future of televized poker we are all in trouble. Don't worry about the mortgage crisis putting a dent in poker revenues the real bringer of the poker apocalypse is Durrrr's personality. I'd rather take a razor blade to the any of my skin tissue that is dark pink then b

Put a white dress on and grab your ankles...

Doesn't matter if you are the bride or the groom, you are going to get... well you know. Consumation on the wedding night won't be the first time for anyone. Might be the first time you are the alpha but that's about it. Get ready for some serious BUT fucking. And by BUT fucking, remember the only thing relevant to your life is what is said after the BUT not before it. The wedding industry is the biggest freaking scam in the world. Want to make a lot of money, offer your service/business for a wedding. Go ahead and mark it up 500% and offer less options, because the poor effers getting married have to pay it. Let's say, you are a limo service. You might rent a mini bus for $400 for six hours with unlimited stops. BUT... If somebody is getting married, they get the wedding package, that same limo bus, suddenly is rented in two hour periods, you say it's cheaper because it's $350 (for four less hours) but go ahead and make it $100 for each additional half hour (t

Jeff Madsen Human Bowling at 2008 WSOP, Day 6

November Nine

The November Nine is set. As you may or may not remember the final table will be played in November. These are the luckboxes who will play for immortality, and will have to stew until then. • DENNIS PHILLIPS, 53, St. Louis, Missouri, 26,295,000• IVAN DEMIDOV, 27, Moscow, Russia, 24,400,000• SCOTT MONTGOMERY, 26, Perth, Ontario, Canada, 19,690,000• PETER EASTGATE, 22, Odense, Denmark, 18,375,000• YLON SCHWARTZ, 38, Brooklyn, New York, 12,525,000 • DARUS SUHARTO, 39, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 12,520,000• DAVID RHEEM, 28, Los Angeles, California, 10,230,000• CRAIG MARQUIS, 23, Arlington, Texas, 10,210,000• KELLY KIM, 31, Whittier, California, 2,620,000 Kelly Kim nursed his short-stacked for a couple of hours to get there. Peter Eastgate is a Scandi, Ivan Demidov a Ruskie, and Craig Marquis our "gulf coast" horse. Some observations... -Joe Bishop when it was eleven handed had a friend buy his table a celebratory bottle of Dom Perignon. I guess the writing was clearly on the wall,

Got Lucky last night

Took down a 22 person tournament in Houma. Have to get lucky to win these things. I played badly in a number of spots, mangling pocket Aces once, making a bad call three handed with A5 running into the hand I thought my opponent had preflop AK and of course hitting my 5. I got short and ended up with AA in the blind and Frank woke up to an AK and got a very timely double up. Started out on a very strong table,11 handed. I was not happy to see Gene D there or Davey, Ruttley, and a couple others. Gene D, organizes and runs these things, and it's a huge disadvantage. He spends so much time after the game has started figuring out the money that he's away from the table too much. We don't get enough chips that you can afford to miss that many hands, I feel like when he's fully ready to play he's coming back to a shortish stack and forced to make moves. We all owe him and Dinger a thankyou for the tournament. In fact, I forgot to ask Dinger how much his baby sit

The French

This is a little off topic, but since a Euro, and maybe a frenchie might win the WSOP this year, and um... you know... the globalization of the game all that, and all the people traveling to Vegas from far-flung places, I thought I'd loosely tie in this article I read... http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080707/wl_time/mostobnoxioustouriststhefrench It says, according to a French website, that the French are regarded as some of the most obnoxious tourists. Even in their own country they find them obnoxious. I didn't know that. Not that, I should be surprised, because when I've traveled, the French are by far the most obnoxious hosts. So why wouldn't the travel poorly too. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. Pariseans, and larger city folk, are obnoxious. People in rural France are not quite so bad. Still, in this HATE-AMERICA era, it's surprising that our most vocal critics, the French (whose national pasttime is criticism), are less liked abroad then we

Word has it that Phil Hellmuth...

Will be arriving today in a tank. You'll remember last year he showed up in racecar gear, he was supposed to be in a racecar but crashed it the day before. He also had 10 "babes" on either arm. Guess all the models were taken up by the expo because even in the land of showgirls several of them barely qualified as babes. Today he's supposed to be dressed like Patton and they are supposed to be wearing camos. You gotta love the guy. His sense of self-promotion is better than just about anybody else out there. Johnny Chan always grabs some TV time behind the final table, usually peddling his water and energy drinks with his branded stretch T-shirts, so I'm sure he'll come up with something this year to have him in the ear of one of the guys that's gone deep, but that's about it for self-aggrandizers. And still, Hellmuth is just a little bit better at it than Chan. Hellmuth has mastered the walkby conversation that gets him face-time on ESPN. He di

Old rules to live by...

I've gone back to some rules of my cash game that I used to have. I used to have a far better ROI then I have recently live. I need more discipline, plain and simple... Rules I used to live by and will do so again: 1. Limit my buy-ins per sitting. Instead of being prepared to go deeper and deeper into the pocket (UNLESS the table is especially JUICY), I'm back to my limits. Just about everything I've read or heard on the subject says that if you feel you have an opportunity to make money or an edge on the table you should play. It's one long poker game and you want your next hand to be played on a table with an edge. Doesn't matter if the next hand is tomorrow or today. However, I've definitely had bigger losses chasing lost money. Probably I go on a slight tilt at some point after digging in my wallet. Don't know why, but I don't play as well. Bad beats seem to come in batches too. 2. Be prepared to table jump more frequently. If I'm a