Hello Saturday!

All you can do is get your money in with the best of it, but even that does no good if the doom switch is turned on. I kid, but now I have to spend the next couple of hours easing off of the pre-tilt I can feel rising inside me. Worst Feeling in the World, especially when you know intellectually that there is no reason to feel like that. With a finish in 62^nd in Pauly’s tourney, rest assured I’m going to have to shove 14 horseshoes in my ass before the final one in order to have any chance at the iPod. No pain, No gain.

NaNoWriMo Update: It has been taking ALL of my spare time, hence the very sporadic posting. I’ll be taking the day off from writing, but will have crossed the 25,000 word mark by the close of the weekend. It’s turning into everything I never thought it would be, and by that I mean that I seem to be writing an Oprah book (the tone is turning out to be very touchy-feely). So, manly men coming across this work, prepare to be severely underwhelmed. Females and other assorted estrogen-laden organisms, stock up on the tissue. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see how the last half goes; it is what it is.

It also looks like I’ll be stuck in this god-awful city for a bit longer, since I didn’t get the job I wanted. The thing that I can’t seem to let go about it is: Did I fuck up, or did I simply lose out to someone better qualified? I guess I’ll have to file that one away with the other unanswerable questions such as, “How come I didn’t win the lottery this week?” and “How come there’s corn in there? I haven’t had corn in weeks!”

Oh yeah, and “Why isn’t Vegas here yet?”

Pre-Vegas Rushin'

The rush to bankroll up for Vegas is definitely on. Congrats to all of the bloggers who recently made some nice tourney scores. Seriously, it’s getting to be too many to count. Joe just hit for a nice win. Daddy is taking down anything even alluding to a farm animal, reaming it good. CJ, -EV, and SirWafflesWinsTourneys. The list is nearly too many to count or link. The world must be nearing its end, though, because I can now add my name to the list of Those Who are Scoring (this also happens to be the name of the list I desperately tried to get on in Junior High, but I digress).

First NL final table ever in the WWdN Invitational two weeks ago. Final table at Saturdays with Pauly. Final table at the Bill Rini Desert Shootout.

While playing like a weak-tight sissyboy (shut up, If you had Hank and Joe on your left you would too) I decided to jump into the NL $10+1 after the first break in the Shootout. To make a long story short, after busting in 9^th in the Shootout, I scored a 4^th for a nice $300. Man, anything seems easy after playing the tough blogger fields.

Just need to work on closing now.

Review: The Best Hand I Ever Played

The Best Hand I Ever Played was an entertaining, albeit short, read. It is a collection of 52 hands played by various professionals and big tournament winners. Each person recounts a brief tale of one of the best hands they ever played, hence the title of the book. Following the recount of the hand, Steve Rosenbloom throws in a section called “The Rake” where he dissects the strategic implications.

Upon receiving the book I was understandably excited and jumped in right away. After a couple of hours went by I realized that I had already ripped through over half of it and that my enjoyment was nearing an abrupt end. In the middle of “Oooh! New poker book!” euphoria I had failed to consider its length and consequently failed to pace myself.

Don’t expect any in-depth strategy lessons with this book, you won’t get them. This is primarily a poker book that tells a collection of brief stories; very brief stories. All of these things combined led me to a sense of mild overall disappointment with this book once I was finished. Perhaps I expected too much, that is always a possibility. I loved reading about the players and their favorite hands, but I was left wanting something more in-depth. The post-recount strategy sections were even briefer and felt like an afterthought; something just put there to fill space. Scattered throughout the book were handy-dandy little graphics explaining poker terms like “The Turn”. These definitely could have been left out. With ESPN increasing the poker coverage year by year I find it difficult to imagine that someone reading this book would find this most basic information enlightening in any way. Again, maybe I expected too much.

So, there’s how it all shakes out in my world. It seems that this book was devoted to pleasing everyone, which is understandable, but I believe that this is its downfall. I wouldn’t buy this book. I would, however, buy it for a friend or acquaintance as some sort of small gift, stocking stuffer, etc, and I would enjoy receiving it as a gift. The good thing is that it costs less than many of you spend on blinds in an orbit. It definitely couldn’t hurt to pick up a copy to read while your folding that string of Q3 offsuit’s you’re being dealt, just don’t make the same mistake I did and expect too much.