Fantasies

First, to help perpetuate the big news:

Sunday, April 24
Poker Stars
7pm EST
$30 +$3
No Limit
WPBT WSOP Satellite

Big thanks to Iggy and everyone else who had a hand in this idea and getting it set up, it going to be…..(searching through list of appropriate words)…..BAD. ASS.

So just for shits and giggles, I decided to seek out some definitions, particularly for the word “fantasy”.

fan·ta·sy (făn'tə-sē, -zē)
n., pl. -sies

---An unrealistic or improbable supposition.

Is it unrealistic that I expect to win this tourney and the WSOP event? Yup.

Is it improbable that I will accomplish the above? Most definitely.

It’s official, I’m fantasizing.

Will I still play and enjoy sending another blogger just as much? Damn straight.

See you all there next Sunday!

Foxwoods Wichita?

I find myself unable to really think this morning, so I won’t try to fool you into thinking that you’ll find anything witty or poignant on this page. The work/school grind over the last 2 years is really starting to take its toll at this household. A pervasive feeling of sick and tired is hanging over pretty much everything at the moment.

Hangin’ tough, though. Vegas is only 48 days away. Dammit, I just had to say “hangin’ tough”, now I’m gonna have that that effin’ New Kids song stuck in my head all morning…..

From the “shake your head in disbelief” department:

April 14 - Supporters of a destination casino in Park City [a suburb of Wichita] have found financial backing. Thursday, they unveil plans for the $270 million facility.

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe is putting up the money to build the casino. The tribe owns the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, one of the world's largest.

The 1.2 million square foot compound will include a casino, hotel, restaurants and eventually even a water park.

The land has been purchased, the plans are in place, and there's money to build it. But the governor hasn't decided whether or not to give it her approval.

Governor Sebelius says she'll only give the project a greenlight if there's support from the region.

Mayor Mayans and other city leaders want to put a casino in downtown Wichita, not Park City. But former Wichita mayor Bob Knight, who's spearheading the effort for Park City is hoping the governor will change her mind. He says a Sedgwick County Casino could be the answer to the education funding problem.

(Source)

“Shaking my head in disbelief” at the fact that we might actually get a casino, and a pretty good one, at that.

“Shaking my head in disbelief” at the fact that the mayor and governor seem to be doing everything in their power to fuck the whole thing up. The mayor says he’d rather see a casino downtown and there are groups interested. Who? Harrah’s? Great. They’re going to hem and haw and be complete jackasses until everyone pulls their development plans, when they should be rolling out the red carpet, frikkin’ wonderful.

The Mrs. and I are only going to be here for another couple of years, maybe less, so I’ll likely never see the casino even if it does get built. Nevertheless, the douchebaggery of city and state leaders never ceases to amaze.

Adventures in Bubbling

Finally, I was actually home on a Wednesday to watch the WPT. Not a bad episode, but not a great one either (damn voice-over commercials), although it was pretty entertaining witnessing the drawing power of Tuan Le and Humberto Brenes antics. I felt kind of bad for the other guy…well not all that bad; his payday was none too shabby.

While I watched, I had it in mind to play a bit of poker. I didn’t really feel like spending any money because I wanted to pay more attention to the TV than poker, so I registered for the WSOP 400 FPP qualifier that sent 9 people to the round 2 on Sunday. 3 ½ hours later, I bubbled out in 10^th. Yeah, that sucked, but honestly I shouldn’t have even made it that far. I started out well, but two separate 5 to 1 shots sucked out on me before the first break, and from then on it was scratch and claw poker the whole way. Every time my stack would work it’s way to ‘almost respectable’ the blinds would shoot up again and I would be short, which forced me into making moves I wouldn’t normally be making. Even though my cards were crap in comparison to the cards I was up against, the poker gods saw fit to reward me with some seriously long shot suckouts, but only enough to keep me afloat. Example, my A8s vs. A9o. My shortness forced me to push, and I sucked out a straight. In my defense, I felt terrible at the beats I was handing out, and I knew I was living on borrowed time, but with my pitiful stack I had to gamboool in many spots, so I don’t feel too bad in general about how I played.

I’ll get there sooner or later, I’m sure of it. Although, 19 months into my poker playing life, it’s looking like it may be later.

In further nonsensical news, it seems I have been found out. Looks like he’s about to bubble as well, but he’s hanging on for at least one more week.

Here is what I’ll be thinking about today as I wander off for work: Is there a high ranking poker god of Vietnamese descent? After watching Tuan Le last night, and watching Toto Leonidas (wait a minute, I don't think he's Vietnamese...oh well he's a drawing master so worth mentioning as well) in the US Poker Championships these last few weeks (add to that last years USPC), I think they have some kind of special link to some sort of Vietnamese drawing god. Or, is it just the fact that there are quite a few great players that are Vietnamese and we just happen to see one or the other on a good day at the final table on TV?

One thing is for sure, if I ever happened to be at a table with Toto or any of the others, here’s how things would go:

1) Soil myself

2) Excuse myself and go clean up

3) Go to confession + make small sacrifice to any and all poker gods

4) Return to table and hang on for dear life

Have a great day, and may you all avoid all bubbles.

Herpes and Wine

“I have genital herpes, but I’m not going to let that stop me”
--Some dude from a new herpes commercial

Stop you from what? Baking a cake? Hiking or bike riding? Banging that genital herpes chick from the other commercial?

These are the questions I couldn’t help but ask after Mrs. Head and I finished a nice bottle of Qupé 1999 Syrah. I have to say, I like the way good wine makes me think.

“I am NOT drinking merlot!”

Yeah, I finally saw Sideways this weekend. Paul Giamatti totally got gypped on awards, he was awesome.

Iggy commented that the orginal (British) The Office was great, so having never seen it and being a fan of the US redux, maybe someone can point me in the direction of an easy (and perhaps free) way to get a couple of episodes to check out?

Darice had the idea of doing a private blogger table on Party on a semi-regular basis. Stop over and offer any other suggestions if any come to mind. Hell, if it was at a set time, I could actually schedule time out to be there and at least railbird, and only once or twice a month would take away any –EV worries of sitting down at such a table to show off my ‘mad cash game skillz’.

Lastly, but certainly not leastly (<--yes that was intentional), be sure to keep Felicia in your thoughts, as tomorrow is the day she goes under the knife.

I’m trying Think Big about poker, but alas, I must continue to devote my few big thoughts to the drudgery of schoolwork. At least my head is consistently Much Bigger.

(trudges off to be immersed in ‘higher’ learning)

Here she coooomes....

I wonder sometimes where in the heck I’d be if it wasn’t for other bloggers. Joanne illuminated the reason why canucks have to answer questions for sweepstakes winnings. Felicia suggested a few books to read that I imagine I should have read some time ago. I ordered The Psychology of Poker and Killer Poker, and after reading about them, I think they are going to help a ton with what are the biggest problems with my game at this point, the psychological/emotional aspect. Many Thanks!

I only played in one SnG last night, took 2^nd, and that’s that. There is precious little time for poker at the moment, but I’m still trying to get some in at least every other day so that by the time the June WBPT Event rolls around I still remember that a flush beats a straight.

Of course in the grand tradition of talking about useless things, today is as good as any other to talk about Miss USA. You truly know that there is nothing but crap on TV when Miss USA is the best thing going. After another disappointing episode of Poker Superstars Invitational we turned to the pageant, which was our last, but only, choice of things to watch while doing schoolwork. I decided at that point to spend the next hour emulating The Donald:

“This is the classiest pageant in the history of the world, with most beautiful women in the solar system. It has the most gold, the most celebrities and easily has the classiest and highest television ratings in every country on earth. You know, I was on the phone just yesterday with the King of Dubai, and he was telling me just how much he loves this classy operation, how much his people love me and the pageant, and how he should probably give me some money because of the general classiness I exude. It’s really just incredible and it’s the first time this pageant has been done in such a classy manner….(etc. etc.)”

Needless to say, at this point Mrs. Head was doing her best to try and tune me out, but hey, the dog’s were interested in my Trump diatribe, so it wasn’t a total loss. Then there’s my nemesis, Billy Bush, who is like a worse version of Ryan Seacrest, if that’s possible. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because he’s short or something, but he annoys me to no end. To be sure, the entire cast of Entertainment Tonight, E!, TV Guide Channel ‘correspondents’ have the same effect on me, but Billy seemed to stand out last night. Every time I happen upon one of those shows or channels, I wonder what it would be like if my job was to talk about commercials advertising other commercials, which pretty much sums up what they do. Yeesh.

Then there is the issue of celebrity judges. Perhaps I simply don’t understand since I’m not a celebrity (other than in my own head), but is great knowledge suddenly bestowed upon you once you are officially declared a celebrity? Sugar Ray Leonard judging a beauty pageant? I’d gladly take any advice or judgment he may feel like handing down when it comes to boxing, but if I was a beauty pageant contestant I would be annoyed. Perhaps this is why I’m not a contestant. Well, that, and the fact I’m not a beautiful woman. Oh yeah, the swimmer gold medalist guy? Why? Isn’t he still like 16 or something? He can’t judge correctly whether or not he should drink and drive, but can judge an important pageant? Go figure.

Miss North Carolina was the winner (our second choice), although Mrs. Head and I agreed that Miss New York should have won. Now I can rest easy though, we have a new Miss USA, and if you believe The Donald…”she’s the classiest and highest rated Miss USA in the history of time.”

Thankfully, today is Tuesday, so I can look forward to Scrubs, The Office, and The Shield buoying my TV watching spirits. Have a great day, everyone!

Idiocy is still King

I’m a pretty rock-like tournament player, this is no big secret. It works well for the most part due to the silliness of many online tourney players, especially the ultra-low buyin crapshoots I tend to play in once a week or so. Just wait for a premium hand or a big blind special and then punish the loose folks who will call anything or want to try and run a WPT style bluff on you with their 92 off.

The thing I can’t seem to wrap my noodle around is why patience and good sense seem to leave me once the final stages of a tourney can be seen in the distance. In the early and middle stages of a tourney, it’s not a problem to be what the Doritos commercials have referred to in the past as “bold AND daring”. However, once we reach the later stages, I’ve been turning into an impatient idiot, a scared little bitch, or both.

Last night was a perfect example, yet again. $3 Sunday Crapshoot on Stars, 1850 entrants. We’re down to 105 and I’m approximately middle of the pack. Per usual, I get sat down at the table with all of the giant stacks in the tourney and am simply biding time. I get AKo in mid position and the player in front of me (super tight) with about half my stack makes it 8000 to go (1K/2/K/100). After considering my options, I folded. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I had position and chips, but folded like a punk because I didn’t want to get involved in a coin flip.

Compounding this error, I get AQo the very next hand and limp. SB min-raises, BB and I call. It’s worth noting here that the BB had been playing pretty wild the whole time I was at the table and catching some extremely lucky cards with marginal or crap hands. Flop J 8 9, 2 clubs. BB bets out 8000 into the 12000 pot, and I push on the (insane) logic the I have a straight draw and 2 overs, plus I thought he was just trying to buy the pot. Insta-called, he flips over the J9 for flopped two pair and I’m sent packing, deservedly so for such an idiot play. I knew when I did it that it was the wrong thing to do, yet my hand on the laptop seemed to be acting independently of my brain. Maybe that spliff from earlier had something to do with it.

If anyone has any advice or techniques they use in the later stages to keep themselves from egregiously fucking up and feels like sharing, it would be most appreciated, but not wholly necessary. I really just needed to write this in order to publicly berate myself so hopefully I’ll learn from mistakes that are in the 'completely obvious' department. The later the tournament stage, the less I seem to be valuing my good holdings just because of the blind size, and that REALLY needs to stop. It’s also one of those things that just comes with practice. Due to my style of play, I often come into the latter tourney stages with a short stack, and have no problems playing. The problems come when I have a decent or large stack, which seems counterintuitive, but it’s true, nonetheless.

Must. Stop. Fucking. Up.