Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

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. ...

WSOP:  A Bad End Ugh... The World Series of Poker did not end the way I would have liked.  It also didn't begin or "middle" the way I would have liked either.  It was a bit like I'd imagine it would be encountering a three-boobed woman from Total Recall.  At first I'd be like "Hmmm... two are nice... three must be better" so there was all that awesome anticipation of the WSOP and the National Championship.  Then I'd get there and start to think besides the convenience of one being in the middle what's all the fuss about--it's the world's softest poker tournament series and there are still bad beats.  Then, you'd recognize, it's just one more boob, and besides the extra curve boobs are really for babies.  The World Series is in itself a trap.  Hundreds of good players run bad there every year.  Some bad ones run good.  Then finally, I'd be looking at the three boobs, thinking it's actually kind of gross... get me out of...

***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...

--The Good. Sweated a lot of Gulf Coasters over ESPN2 and the internets in the main event the last couple of weeks. --The Bad. Ben Mintz, David Diaz, Claudia Crawford, Shannon Shorr, Fred Berger, TK Miles (and more), all went out before the November Nine. --The Ugly. Ryan Lenaghan and Sam Barnhart got to within a table away. Got to be heartbreaking, though six figure paydays have to ease the pain a little bit. --The Good. Min cashed and chopped the Donkley recently. --The Very Good. The chop was seven ways when we had over 90 people last saturday. --The Bad. Prior to the chop had these finishes, 16th, 13th, 11th, and 10th. Yuck. --The Ugly. One of those days compounded the loss with a bad day at the cash tables. --The Good. Harrahs is adding a Tuesday night tournament starting August 5th. --The Bad. It's a rebuy. --The Ugly. If they are doing it to increase cash games on an off night why create a format where everybody will pour their money into rebuys instead of into 1-2 or 2-5 ga...

More comments and my responses. Thanks for reading this little No limit Texas Hold'em blog. Much apprecitated that it's finding some people who find it ineresting. I'll continue my break from Online Sit and go poker tournaments to respond some more. What did you think about the big Cheong-Duhamel hand? Congrats! I hadn't checked the blog in a while and it was nice to come back for a win. Definitely post more details. I might be heading down to New Orleans for New Year's, so we should definitely hang. Hi Keenan, I think I'll be in town New Years so I'm down with meeting up with you in the Harrahs poker room. Don't felt me too often. Sorry, I was light on the details of the that tournament I never really got back to. It was another event where nothing got going until it really mattered and then I really started to chip up, and had the luxury of exploiting the tightest guy in the field image I had built up by being dreadfully card dead. The Cheong-Duhamel ...

So recently two GCPers Monkey and Kai Landry and two other male players (who backed out on the day of) were going to play in the ladies Texas Hold'em poker event at IP World Series of Poker Circuit Satellite. They struck up a deal before hand with the tournament director and thought of a way to play and to make a charitable contribution at the same time. All their winnings would go to breast cancer research and they agreed to dress as women. All parties thought that it would be a fun, memorable and essentially altruistic endeavor. As the story goes, Monkey and Kai showed up just after the start of things in the first or second level and they were barred from playing because at the Tournament Director’s discretion registration had closed before late registration was overall. Considering the TD had never used that discretion in any other event in the IPs poker tournament history in the past five years something was rotten in Steinmart. Several women that arrived after them were als...

Anyway, that Texas Holdem poker game table just got harder with Monkey joining it. Especially for me. The guys I was supposed to lord it over in position were the spots I was trying to avoid on the table. Bad beat. I was initially talking about QQ being a hand that followed me around. I took this pretty bad beat of fate in one of the tournaments (the one I sold pieces of myself to my friends). The dealer gave me two ordinary cards which were in the insta-muck category. It was declared a misdeal. While he reshuffled I had time to reevaluate and despite just being moved to the table I thought I should try and steal. Three steals per two revolutions and you can win a tournament, I know how to play poker , and I was getting short. I decided I was going to shove with any two if it were folded to me. The redeal went well and it was folded down to me. I looked at an Ace and slowly peeled back to see a five ugh! I hate stealing with a weak ace. So many people are wise enough to...

I'm trying to get amped up for all the poker on the Gulf Coast in the next couple of weeks. The IP is running poker tournaments concurrently to the Beau Rivage. Is this good poker strategy ? At first glance this may seem like they are splitting up a rather small pool of poker players and we'll have to see if that is the case. I hope not. I hope it means they are expected a huge turnout and I have to say I think with the timing of the Beau Rivage event being a little bit after the PCA they may just get that. A lot of the poker pros will be heading back to the mainland with a layover in Miami which is just a hop away to Biloxi. Ignoring the trouble of connecting flights and looking at it just from a geographical perspective this might mean the biggest turnout on the coast in some time--and hoping that's the way it's looked at by the returning poker players. Course, those are mostly deep pocketed online and live pros that MAY be coming. The IP's event will draw ...