Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

Poker Update: Gulf Coast Poker Tournaments: I never finished up my part 1 of 2. Not sure where I left off, I may circle back around to that if I do but spoiler alert... Made the money of two of the Harrahs weeklies and ran like dirt at the IP. There I literally played a couple of tournaments where I didn't have a playable hand. Whenever I got creative with a crappy hand I got abused. I last played Wednesday at Harrahs and it felt a bit like the IP. Painful. Looking forward to reversing that trend as soon as tomorrow. aPOKERlypse: My lack of blogging has a lot to do with tracking the maelstrom of online poker that is all over GCP's front page. My apologies. I will likely do an opinion piece on here soon. Started to a couple of times and new information came out that would have made me reverse course anyway, so once the dust clears a little more I'll opine. Cell Phone Idiots while Driving: Louisiana has a lot of potential new laws that may be on the books sooner rather than...

The subtitle of this post should be: I brag about achievements in a sport nobody's heard of or plays and then mention the video above... I love games, and odd ball sports. Lots of fun to play. Handball, variations of dodgeball, even ultimate frisbee, you name it, I'll enjoy playing it. One of my favorite games is a variation of football called Hardyball. In that you can forward pass from anywhere on the field. You have six total downs to move the ball downfield. It's a blast. Though nobody quite understands why, but two of my favorite team athletic moments were on a Hardyball field. And before you mock me as an athlete, I was quite accomplished in soccer (I know, I know) but it was in an area of the country that took soccer seriously. Anyway, in Hardyball, memory number one was beating an All American Championship subdivision QB and an All American receiver, on a team of football players (Hardyball was touch otherwise we would have been mauled) in intramurals. We didn't...

Heard the numbers were down for the IP, so I targeted the Friday night tournament as a good one to play. It worked on a number of levels. I figured it would be one of the bigger fields, it was, but that's not saying much, and I didn't have to find a babysitter. My wife, who is pregnant again, teaches and takes classes at night. Yes, she's a hard working lady and I'm lucky to have her. Still, I'm often with my son and getting away is harder and harder. Considering the price of gasoline these days maybe I'm lucky to not be on the road as much. So, Friday night worked out kind of perfect as my wife doesn't have classes on Fridays and I was able to get away and get to the coast on time. I played the 6pm and we got I think 76 players. I would end up busting around 16 or so. They paid eight. I actually got into a spot, that I'm growing accustomed to, I looked down at a card and felt this was the hand that would send me packing. I told myself if the pot was uno...

This is afterall a poker blog. Have to have something regarding or somewhat resembling poker news every once in a while. I played Saturday at Harrahs to kill time in advance of the Final Four. Obviously, had the right team from Richmond made it to Houston I would have been there too. Unfortunately, nothing really stood out on the session. I mostly dragged pots without showdown. If it was a bigger tournament with a slower structure, I'd feel real good about this as I grew my stack fairly steadily without risking too much. Still, the Saturday Tournament has fast blinds so you really need to win a few big pots with showdowns, if you are to survive late. Normally, I'll bluff-catch and can win a lot that way. Not this week, I'd basically sense weakness and take down a pot. Lots of time I probably had the best hand but not all the time. That's encouraging for when I play the Circuit event in May. You need to steal those pots to stick around until you can win the bi...

I don't want to take anything away from VCU. Scratch that, as our rival I want to take everything away from VCU especially their final four. However, being rational I can't, rather I shouldn't. I can but I won't. For those of you do want to take something or everything away from VCU, here are some excuses, you can put them in your back pocket for your next chat around the office cooler (insert elitist UR joke like you are the boss and the VCU fan is the delivery boy if it makes you feel any better): 1. They did away with staggered games, ie play-in games, before they expanded to the field of 64 because they felt the teams that played in them had an advantage getting their feet wet in the tournament. They did. Higher seeded teams playing teams cold were losing too much. Those play-in winners got a bit of momentum and were rolling with it. It was deemed to be slightly unfair. Recently, this was forgotten as 16 v. 17 obviously never had enough of an advantage to de...

Might as well not play the game Richmond has no shot against Kansas. Okay, the video disrespecting UR wouldn't post so here's one that will highlights of the win at the Phog:

March has roared in like a lion for me in New Orleans. Mardi Gras, Irish-Italian parades, St. Patricks Day, and of course the Madness. Hasn't left much room for poker... so today I'll put on my sportswriter's cap. This year tiny little University of Richmond with a student body of only 2800 or so is one of the last remaining 16. Reward for that? A date with Kansas one of the top two teams in the country. Does Richmond have a shot? They've played only once before and that was in the Phog (Kansas' home Phog Allen Fieldhouse). Yeah at KU, when KU was good, and in head coach Bill Self's first year--how'd that go? The itsy-bitsy Spiders came into enemy territory, a place where KU had beaten 52 straight unranked opponents, and stole a win with a buzzer beating jumper from the top of the key (Read about it here ). Consider the Spiders had to overcome a late deficit and the shot was just one of many baskets they had to make to win it was an epic performance. Right u...