Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

Just want to say a big congrats to all the locals who kicked butt at the Beau Rivage Million Dollar Heater and the just recently completed Boomtown HPT event.  Nice to see some of the good guys run good. First and foremost, my partner Gene D went deep at Boomtown despite being deathly ill the morning of day two.  Great result for a class act.  He earned that one, and faded the bubble breaking with an all in at the same moment as the eventual bubble boy Maurice Hawkins go it in. Jeff Sager went deep at the HPT, somehow holding late on Day two when he got it in with Pocket Kings and was called by I think Queen Jack?  Good for him.  Big Phil is a regular at the Harrahs weeklies and bar tournaments and he confesses to being on fire right now.  Great for him.  He's playing well too.  Saw it first hand at Boomtown where he kept applying the pressure.  I know he bluffed me off at least one hand. Chris Canan pounded the satellites at Boomtown t...

A bridge to nowhere.  After my day two ended I went out on the deck the boat to see this.  Had I taken the picture just a little sooner it would better as the fog was covering both sides of the bridge.  Just the top of a bridge in the sky, clouds above, and fog all around it.   Pretty symbolic as day two began with the promise of a bridge in the sky heading somewhere to something.  Just the fog of bad hands was too thick to find an on ramp.    As I got closer, and closer to the bridge or to "In the Money" and the final table it seemed even further away.  I just could not chip up. The day began and nothing much of note happened.  Then I chopped a pot with my nemesis.  Why my nemesis? At the end of day 1 when we were bagging up one of the Mid-States pros, a guy I had sat next to and had a pleasant idle table conversation with, got very angry with me.  With two tables left we drew a set amount of hands to play out the night. ...

**I haven't been able to blog in a while even though I got a maelstrom of thoughts I've wanted to get out on a whole range of topics.  Obviously won't flesh them all out but here some tidbits... **15 comments waiting for review.  15 out of 15 spam.  Boo! **It's never fun to have the water go out on your block.  Less fun when you are dealing with a nasty stomach virus through the night.  Yeah, that recently happened to me. **Roger Goodell probably doesn't like Paul Tagliabue all that much.  Can you imagine if say Bill Clinton was called in to help Obama with some sort of impasse with Congress, and he was like "Yeah, that's a good effort and all, but NO!" **Hornets will likely be the Pelicans.  Back in the 70s and early 80s when all the mascots went for the cartoonish lovable aesthetic and not the edgy, menacing animals they are now, the Pelicans would have made sense.  Though I'm eager to see what a angry, intimidating Pelican looks li...

Took yesterday off to take my mind off of poker.  I'm going to go in reverse chronological order for no good reason. Today: Went to Starbucks.  Spent some time in the shower visualizing myself winning the National Championship.  Cards in the air today at noon.  Field is loaded.  Excited about it.  Looking forward to mixing it up and challenging myself.  I have that good feeling. Yesterday: Took the day off from WSOP tournament poker to relax before today.  Gene and I went to a few different casinos and I booked a small winner at an old Vegas casino in a tiny donkfest.  Had my Phil Ivey on and just decimated a table betting two or three times an orbit.  Might have a slightly different strategy today. When I sat down I immediately discovered the cards were marked.  I think the process is called daubing.  Ace's had a mark right in the middle of the card, kings just below it and queens just below that.  T...

***Oops, I just did it.  I referred to myself in third person in the title.  Must be the success of the New Orleans Main Event going to my head. ***Um... what success? ***Never mind ***First, you refer to yourself in third person and now you are having a conversation with yourself.  You really are becoming a narsacist.  ***A narsacist that can't spelll? ***And what's with the asterisks?  Don't you use "" for dialogue. ***Do you use them for thought dialogue? ***Don't know. ***Well shut up. ***Can you ***shut up*** if you are engaging in ***thought dialogue***  seems impossible. Okay, excuse the skitzo opening.  Sometimes after an ofer the brain gets a little rattled, maybe.  ***Maybe? Maybe... he'll go away if we just ignore him.  Bad luck found me in the main event in the NOLA circuit.  I started off card dead.  Then, I started playing hands I maybe shouldn't but I wasn't going to blind off or not take c...

Lots of people, surprisingly and flatteringly, have asked when i was going to wrap up the IP series... I haven't even gotten to the Main Event.  I'm going to do so today.  One quick sidenote, that I  meant to include before, when I was at the table with Captain Tom and Kathy Liebert, shortly after I called her down with Queen high, and then she got bad beated (I believe) she remarked to him, "Remember when we used to be good at poker." Nice little self-deprecation there (once upon a time I'd confuse the words self-deprecation with self-defecation which is an entirely different sentiment but anyway...).  Obviously, she was joking and I'm confident she knows she still has "it" but Captain Tom wasn't on the same wavelength, he informed her he was still pretty good and started rattling off some scores in the past year.  Okay, after an aborted nap I went to down to see Gene play.  Somehow the donk chipped away at him and then prevailed.  I felt ...

Did it seemed like I just upped and disappeared?  Well, I did.  At a very late moment we made a family decision to go to Disney World.  Found a cheap trip through the mouse and instead of waiting a year or two for another time, made the most of the last week of my wife's maternity leave.  Sorry, I left this blog dangling in the wind (so too GCP) but despite my intentions to update things during my two year old's naps I discovered two year olds don't take naps at Disney World. But I'm back...  Surprised by the number of hits I've gotten in my absence so I must reward those of you who have been checking in. Anyway, with my memory a little less clear let's get back to the 1k.  They move to a table with Chris Tyrba , (who's on fire this year), bracelet winner Captain Tom Franklin and on my left maybe the best women's player ever, bracelet winner  Kathy Liebert .  I love her outspokenness on twitter and I respect her chip on the shoulder ...

Okay... It's coming I promise.  Blogtacular posts await.  Just have to play catch up on all the family time I missed.  So, we'll get started a little bit today and come back to wrap it up in a post or two later. Let's get the niceties out of the way, I have a very special wife who thought I was just going to Biloxi for a night or two last week only for me to return late Monday night.  My heavier pockets eased all the stress of the trip and for the first time she got to enjoy sweating me on the Internet in a poker tournament but I still need to fill up on some quality time with my two young uns.  Leaving her with a newborn and son who's in and out of his terrible twos is quite a bit different than life was a couple of years ago when I'd take off for a tournament with no worries.  Big thanks to my in-laws for helping out. Yes...  I had a hell of a run at the IP which I need to encapsulate.  I hate posting after wins because it feels self-indulg...