Round-Up
Last post I made clear my thoughts on Black Friday and Full Tilt and Phil Ivey. I was wisely advised it was maybe a TLDR kind of effort. I wish brevity and an ability to be concise were skills I had a better wrap up. Anyway, this go around tried to keep my thoughts in justa paragraph or two. Here's the bullet points:.
*Kai's Final table
*Weiner Press Conference
*My soon to be two year old an advertising mark
*Harrahs Weekly back up
*Game of Thrones
*Sports... Soccer, Hoops
*Props to some local guys
-Lots of fun watching Kai's final table streamed on WSOP.com except for when he went out. My wife actually was interested in poker for a moment, even moreso when I texted him and she watched him read it and send one back during the action. Though, I fear she might have contributed to his demise. For a long streak I kept busting out of tournaments with pocket aces, usually in bad spots where a guy with pocket 10s would open shove for 200 BBs from middle position and I'd be in the blinds preflop. She now always says "Just fold pocket aces you can't win with them." "...Yes, dear, thanks for that nugget." Anyway, the ending was painful as I see Kai shove for his stack and Shawn Johnston announce that Kai has a pair of Aces and Eric Buchman a pair of 9s(Or some other middle pair).
Then I realise, she's watching and I'm like no way Kai wins this hand, if only because it will further reinforce in her mind what a bad starting hand the best starting hand in poker is (and... yes, Kai was playing Seven Card Stud and didn't start with pocket Aces but explaining that to my wife would be wasted effort). I want to chase her out of the room, but she's transfixed as even she knows what "All-in" means. Sure enough he dodges outs until the river. Then Buchman peels back his final down card in agonizing fashion. I understand giving yourself a sweat, but I hate that in these stud games when a player is already all-in, and you do the super slo-mo reveal, in truth all you are doing is raking your opponent over the coals.
I won't for sure call it a slow-roll, as Gene pointed it out, it may have been a super slow peel back, but from the angle of the feed it looked Buchman had exposed his card fully to himself and then took an additional interminably long time to either process it as hitting one of his other cards or just to show that he had indeed hit a second pair. I wanted to ask Kai about it but he had just busted 5 people short of a bracelet and I figured if he did get slow-rolled and didn't notice it why make him feel any worse. By the way, one the guys had two tone hair. From the feed he looked like the blond bully archtype from 80s movies (specifically Karate Kid), five minutes later, he's looking the other direction and I'm thinking somebody's ganked his seat. No, that's just Mr. Two Face himself. One side blond, one side black. One side Swede, one side Italin. One side cool. One side not cool. Actually, there's no 50/50 there, you just aren't cool.
-"Ask Me About My Weiner!"* How has this not been a headline that last couple of days especially after Weiner's press conference (*said by Jonah Hill in Accepted) and on repeat in my head any time I see Weiner on the news.
-I think my son will be an "As seen on TV" fish. There are a couple of commercials that he hears the music for and comes running into the room. One is the little hands-free metal chain link basket frier kind of thing. I hadn't even registered the ad until he busted into the room and giggled and said "Ow!" just as the man did when he burned his hands. Then he shakes his finger at the TV and says "hot, hot, hot" which was off-script. Remember this is cute because he barely has a vocabulary and is under two. If he's seven and doing this not so cute.
The fun part of this age, is when he says stuff perfectly correct and you have no idea where it comes from. Jurassic Park was on in the background this weekend (he has strep throat again so he's been watching a lot of TV) and he walks by the screen and nonchalantly says "Dinosaur Bones" when they show the bones of a T-Rex in the pavillion. What? How does he know that? Does Dinosaur Bones really fit into a vocabulary of "Red, Yell-O, Geen, Car, Up, Moke (Milk)" No not really. Weird.
-Harrahs weekly tournament aka the Donkley is back up. Seen some people griping about the structure. Yes, it does turn to shit but the trick to that event is to stay alive until it does and then you got a fighting chance. As chops are likely, I don't mind flipping coins to win 7 to 10x of my money, especially when they are people that find a lot of folds they shouldn't.
-Game of Thrones... I've written about this HBO show before. I heard it got picked up for another season. Good. After the wife and I didn't make our Sunday appointment for it, we kind of lost interest a few weeks ago. With the son sick I managed to watch what turned out to be an OnDemand marathon of the episodes I missed, and I was glad I did. Again, the interwoven plotlines, backstabbing, and escalating pace would work in any genre. Even if fantasy is not your thing, worthwhile viewing. Very Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire-esque (though far more characters than B.E.) just set in a world a little askew from ours.
-USA Soccer. Spain destroyed us on Saturday 4-0. We were missing many of our studs. Spain fielded many of theirs (albeit at different times), but the difference in class was obvious. Could have been 6 or 8 nothing. Worried about our chances against Canada tonight but at the same time excited to see what happens when our studs on the field together. We definitely need to find a striker soon. Shame that the Striker of the future for Italia is a New Jersey boy that decided to play for Italy over the U.S. He is a difference maker and could have had us advancing all the way to the most recent world cup semis (and with some luck agains the Dutch the finals).
-NBA Finals. Lebron, Wade, and Bosh will be failures every year they don't win a championship. Sorry Mavs fans, they won't be failures this year. Probably a long reign for those guys in spite of Spoelstra.
-Not to brag on our site, but I love the twitter feed on our front poker news page. During these WSOP events you get better reporting from our local guys about their chip-stacks then from WSOP.com or Pokernews. BTW, add Johnathan Poche to my list of good guys I root for (also on the feed), he seems like a genuinely nice kid in his interactions with me and others on facebook/web. I hope his world series continues to go well. Also, I want to give some respect to Matt Stroud and his efforts over at Acadiana Poker Players, he's doing a great job of highlighting players from the greater Lafayette area. Another nice kid that I wish the best for, alright, that's all I got.
*Kai's Final table
*Weiner Press Conference
*My soon to be two year old an advertising mark
*Harrahs Weekly back up
*Game of Thrones
*Sports... Soccer, Hoops
*Props to some local guys
-Lots of fun watching Kai's final table streamed on WSOP.com except for when he went out. My wife actually was interested in poker for a moment, even moreso when I texted him and she watched him read it and send one back during the action. Though, I fear she might have contributed to his demise. For a long streak I kept busting out of tournaments with pocket aces, usually in bad spots where a guy with pocket 10s would open shove for 200 BBs from middle position and I'd be in the blinds preflop. She now always says "Just fold pocket aces you can't win with them." "...Yes, dear, thanks for that nugget." Anyway, the ending was painful as I see Kai shove for his stack and Shawn Johnston announce that Kai has a pair of Aces and Eric Buchman a pair of 9s(Or some other middle pair).
Then I realise, she's watching and I'm like no way Kai wins this hand, if only because it will further reinforce in her mind what a bad starting hand the best starting hand in poker is (and... yes, Kai was playing Seven Card Stud and didn't start with pocket Aces but explaining that to my wife would be wasted effort). I want to chase her out of the room, but she's transfixed as even she knows what "All-in" means. Sure enough he dodges outs until the river. Then Buchman peels back his final down card in agonizing fashion. I understand giving yourself a sweat, but I hate that in these stud games when a player is already all-in, and you do the super slo-mo reveal, in truth all you are doing is raking your opponent over the coals.
I won't for sure call it a slow-roll, as Gene pointed it out, it may have been a super slow peel back, but from the angle of the feed it looked Buchman had exposed his card fully to himself and then took an additional interminably long time to either process it as hitting one of his other cards or just to show that he had indeed hit a second pair. I wanted to ask Kai about it but he had just busted 5 people short of a bracelet and I figured if he did get slow-rolled and didn't notice it why make him feel any worse. By the way, one the guys had two tone hair. From the feed he looked like the blond bully archtype from 80s movies (specifically Karate Kid), five minutes later, he's looking the other direction and I'm thinking somebody's ganked his seat. No, that's just Mr. Two Face himself. One side blond, one side black. One side Swede, one side Italin. One side cool. One side not cool. Actually, there's no 50/50 there, you just aren't cool.
-"Ask Me About My Weiner!"* How has this not been a headline that last couple of days especially after Weiner's press conference (*said by Jonah Hill in Accepted) and on repeat in my head any time I see Weiner on the news.
-I think my son will be an "As seen on TV" fish. There are a couple of commercials that he hears the music for and comes running into the room. One is the little hands-free metal chain link basket frier kind of thing. I hadn't even registered the ad until he busted into the room and giggled and said "Ow!" just as the man did when he burned his hands. Then he shakes his finger at the TV and says "hot, hot, hot" which was off-script. Remember this is cute because he barely has a vocabulary and is under two. If he's seven and doing this not so cute.
The fun part of this age, is when he says stuff perfectly correct and you have no idea where it comes from. Jurassic Park was on in the background this weekend (he has strep throat again so he's been watching a lot of TV) and he walks by the screen and nonchalantly says "Dinosaur Bones" when they show the bones of a T-Rex in the pavillion. What? How does he know that? Does Dinosaur Bones really fit into a vocabulary of "Red, Yell-O, Geen, Car, Up, Moke (Milk)" No not really. Weird.
-Harrahs weekly tournament aka the Donkley is back up. Seen some people griping about the structure. Yes, it does turn to shit but the trick to that event is to stay alive until it does and then you got a fighting chance. As chops are likely, I don't mind flipping coins to win 7 to 10x of my money, especially when they are people that find a lot of folds they shouldn't.
-Game of Thrones... I've written about this HBO show before. I heard it got picked up for another season. Good. After the wife and I didn't make our Sunday appointment for it, we kind of lost interest a few weeks ago. With the son sick I managed to watch what turned out to be an OnDemand marathon of the episodes I missed, and I was glad I did. Again, the interwoven plotlines, backstabbing, and escalating pace would work in any genre. Even if fantasy is not your thing, worthwhile viewing. Very Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire-esque (though far more characters than B.E.) just set in a world a little askew from ours.
-USA Soccer. Spain destroyed us on Saturday 4-0. We were missing many of our studs. Spain fielded many of theirs (albeit at different times), but the difference in class was obvious. Could have been 6 or 8 nothing. Worried about our chances against Canada tonight but at the same time excited to see what happens when our studs on the field together. We definitely need to find a striker soon. Shame that the Striker of the future for Italia is a New Jersey boy that decided to play for Italy over the U.S. He is a difference maker and could have had us advancing all the way to the most recent world cup semis (and with some luck agains the Dutch the finals).
-NBA Finals. Lebron, Wade, and Bosh will be failures every year they don't win a championship. Sorry Mavs fans, they won't be failures this year. Probably a long reign for those guys in spite of Spoelstra.
-Not to brag on our site, but I love the twitter feed on our front poker news page. During these WSOP events you get better reporting from our local guys about their chip-stacks then from WSOP.com or Pokernews. BTW, add Johnathan Poche to my list of good guys I root for (also on the feed), he seems like a genuinely nice kid in his interactions with me and others on facebook/web. I hope his world series continues to go well. Also, I want to give some respect to Matt Stroud and his efforts over at Acadiana Poker Players, he's doing a great job of highlighting players from the greater Lafayette area. Another nice kid that I wish the best for, alright, that's all I got.
Comments
Big Smoove.