Sunday, February 22, 2009

The Music Gods are listening... Poker Gods not so much

Nope, didn't score any additional Dead tickets or Phish tickets to anything.

But part of my music wish list has been satisfied: KBM for Kreutzmann, Burbridge and Murawski are now booked for Mountain Jam. That now puts two members of the current Dead line-up on the mountain (Billy K and Warren Haynes) and one member of Max Creek on the mountain (Scott Murawski). I'm crossing my fingers that Max Creek will be added to this years festivities.

Disappointed I'm going to miss Eh-Vegas but I and BFF Kim will be attending a Max Creek show here at Troy's Revolution Hall in two short weeks. One month later its the Dead, a month after that Springsteen and a few weeks after that Mountain Jam. Dave Matthews just announced a couple shows at SPAC (Phish did not) in June.

Kim looked into condo rental for Mountain Jam, but supposedly already sold out and taking deposits for 2010. I suggested renting an RV with nephew Zack and Sierra. I cant rage for 72 hours with no sleep and enjoy the music, especially when its rained every year. Sleeping on what amounts to Hunter Mountains version of the Lhotse Face loses its charm when there are no Sherpa's to do the hauling. I could sleep in my SUV away from the mayhem. Seriously considering getting VIP tickets so I can take in the music from a nice covered perch and actually really write about the whole weekend.

No one wants to read bad beat stories but the past week of poker(beginning with last Monday) has been a cluster fuck and I've blown thru a good $150 or so on pokerstars. This was after finishing 2nd in one of those $2.20 90 person sngs (I had a first and second in my first two attempts at them) last Sunday night. . I have made deep runs in $8.80/$5.50 90 person sngs and the $22 deep stack, only to get bamboozled at the end just short of the money. Maybe Ive played the AA hands wrong by just not shoving all in but I'm trying to extract value from my hands and at the lower limits I constantly get run down by someone chasing their flush, gutshot etc without the odds to do so. Example, I flopped to pair with 57os on board of A57. bet the pot and some donk with Ace high only calls me all the way down to the river where they are rewarded with a better two pair. I know its tricky playing those kinds of hands. But its redonkulous to call off your stack with just top pair. Poker is not fun when you are card dead and get your big hands cracked when Pokerstars RNG throws you a bone. I looked over one SNG I played and I think i only hit the 5 card flop 5 times over the whole tourney till i busted out. I was catching no pieces of anything.

Today started a new week and I did manage to win a $5.50 DoN which is my first cash since last Sunday in anything.

I made an awesome marinated Flank steak, roasted yukon gold potatoes and marinated asparagus for dinner last Sunday during the Daytona 500 which fed me for a few days. I was disappointed at the rain delay/cancellation. Next time start the race like at 11 AM or noon. The West coast is used to getting up early for football!!

Monday, February 16, 2009

I Am Yoda?

I found this on Gadzooks64 blog. What kind of a Sci-fi character are you. Always thought i was a little more Trinity from the Matrix. Whats funny is when i first got sober and was embracing the concept of a higher power, i thought he looked like Yoda.


Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?



A venerated sage with vast power and knowledge, you gently guide forces around you while serving as a champion of the light.

Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not - for my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminescent beings are we, not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you, everywhere.

Yoda is a is a character in the Star Wars universe. (part of the blurb, i assume everyone knows that)

PokerStars SCOOP

It's no secret that my preferred site to play online is Pokerstars. I haven't played on Full Tilt since October and I don't see myself redepositing anytime soon there. I do have a small bankroll on Bodog which i use for the Bodonkey and for playing the ponies, and a bit on Poker.com and Bugsys Club but i rarely if ever play those two sites.

Fresh off their 25th billion hand promotion, PokerStars announced its first ever SCOOP- The Spring Cup of Online Poker. This is not replacing the WCOOP at all which is still their penultimate series.

The reason PokerStars in my opinion reigns supreme is they have a price point for everyone in each of the events scheduled. There is something for everyone low limit grinder to medium to high. I kind of fall somewhere between low and medium, so I'm as happy as a clam.

The schedule subject to a few tweaks can be found over on 2+2 and satellites begin this week.

Click here for the link to the thread/schedule.

And as an aside, Snake5970 chopped the Thursday 11 AM tourney at Foxwoods for a cool 2300+ with none other then his brother Silo. They started at the same table and both were card dead, got split up and met back up at the second to final table. Their friend/coworker Doggan freerolled a slot tourney and won it for $1k plus he and his wife had about another 4-5k in slot winnings. Between the 4 of them they brought back almost 10k to help stimulate the Upstate NY economy.

I'm thinking of heading to Turning Stone for the $350 buy-in in a few weeks on Friday March 6th to be exact.

The WSOP-E coverage last nite (4 hours of great poker) featured some really good play and hands. Scott Montgomery took an ugly beat and handled it with class. His composure really impresses me. Brandon Adams and Peter Neff both wound up getting some bad breaks and both had that shell shocked deer in headlights oh what could have been look on their faces. I felt bad for them. And of course Negreanu impresses with me with his hand reading/people reading skills. Even though I know the outcome, I enjoy watching the interactions and hands visually.

Time for 24 and to pay attention in the 90 man $5.50 SNG Im in since its down to three tables. I finished 2nd in a $2.20 90 man yesterday after playing some really good poker early in other tourneys, only to blow chip stacks with I cant believe that moron just hit that flush again itis. Curiousity is expensive!!!

Fawking donkey just called my 4x bb raise with q9os and cracked my aces. once again a deep run only to get bamboozled.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Blogiversary (almost 4 years)

Wow I just looked at my archives and have been doing this for almost 4 years now. February 20th 2005 was my first post. I only posted 10 times during that year and had no idea what blogger tourneys even were. I belonged to a lot of poker forums and posted frequently on the message boards of those forums and played alot of poker on sites like Poker Host, Titan, CD Poker, Royal Vegas, Bet365, Interpoker etc. I was a freeroll junkie and built a small investment up to almost 4k spread out over a ton of sites. I still have money held hostage on Microgaming sites that I won and cant get off because of UIGEA. I also lost about $150 of money on JetSet when they went belly up. Fortunately I had never deposited on JetSet and it was all freeroll winnings from forum events I had played and then used some of those winnings to play the small dollar buy-ins. I used to love the JetSet Headhunter tourneys.

Anyway, I've noticed like most of us poker content is fewer and far between in my posts. I know for a fact I am not glued to my computer 7 days a week like I used to be back in 2005/2006. I still play alot of poker but I usually now take 2-3 and sometimes 4 days a week off from playing. I haven't played live since New Year's Eve but should be back in the live swing in a bit. Ive had deep runs in a bunch of the Pokerstars $11 buy-ins but no big scores. Typical situation I flip with QQ and get called by a bigger stacks AK and they pair their overcard and I go out 40th or so instead of vaulting up to being a top ten stack and final table bound. One of these days I will win my flips late stage and take one of these bad buys down. It doesn't make a difference if I win $18.93 for 44th place or $33.46 for finishing in 18th place by fold fold folding and playing like a nit. Id rather bust out or be in position to finish in the top three where all the money lies.

The feral cat we've been feeding, will come over to me if hes out of his box when I come over to bring it water and food. I have been able to scratch its head and pet him. And he purrs and rubs against me. But he can still be very skittish. The other day it got sick on frozen milk it had been eating and threw up when i was there (it threw up the milk crystals it must have been licking) . the poor little thing fell over on his side and I thought he was having a seizure or was dying on me but he righted himself and came back over and wanted the water I had brought him. I dumped all the milk. The elderly owner of the porch where he resides leaves him milk as she has nothing else to give him and thinks its a good thing. She was even pouring milk into the water and I'd find a frozen concoction of milk water which sent me over the edge. I'd call up Joan and say "Joan, I'm gonna kill Jean shes gonna kill the cat with the milk. Jean, came out today when i was working with the cat and I told her she doesnt have to leave him anything, Joan and I and our mail lady are feeding him kibble and fresh water. He is not the prettiest of cats. Hes almost cross eyed, hes got a really round head and a lumpy body and kind of walks funny. Hes the cat version of either a puff-a-lump or an oompa loompa from Willie Wonka. But mail girl will take him if I can get it more socialized. So far Im the only one who has been able to pet it. Just call me the cat whisperer. (I also can do great things with plants)

And Happy Birthday to Snake5970. It's his 46th and he headed to Foxwoods with his brother today for a couple of nights, as a former co-worker of his and current co-worker of Rich (his brother) had some comped nites. We went to Carrabbas last Friday nite for the football bet I won. I gave him a cool card that had a poker theme I found at Target (a green felt cover with a spade royal flush on the front) and a Bruce Springsteen Greatest Hit CD so he can get ready for the show. He only has like 6 CD's total in his collection and is definitely not a music person like moi.

Carrabba's was excellent. I'm a fan of the family style portions at Buca de Beppo but Carrabba's was really really good. We ordered the Bruschetta as an appetizer which we didn't need and that was probably the weakest part of the meal and it was good. I wound up ordering the Steak Marsala with garlic mashed and Caesar salad with the anchovies. Ray wound up getting three appetizers for his dinner. The steamed mussels, the fried calamari and the appetizer sized shrimp scampi. When all the food came out we started cracking up because our table was covered with platters. We pretty much split everything. then for dessert we ordered the sampler of 6 of their desserts which comes served in little rectangular shot glasses: there was a cannoli mousse, a tiramisu, a Kahlua espresso mousse, a zabaglione and a strawberry lemon mousse cake and another one i cant remember. By the time dessert came Snake was only able to have a few spoonfuls and i don't think he tasted them all. i laughed at him and said "remember the saying your eyes are bigger then your tummy?"

We had a marathon TV movie watching session planned for after dinner. First we watched the new reality series Jockey's on Animal Planet. Snake is a major horse racing guy and he wanted to check it out. One of the horse's he has a % of should be making its debut in the next few weeks probably at Gulfstream in Florida, then we watched the 4th episode of the 1st season of SNL featuring Candace Bergen as the host.. (we had watched the first three episodes back in January). Esther Phillips was the musical guest and she had a weird style to her singing. There was one skit where Bergen is playing a journalist over in the Middle East and refers to John Belushi who is playing some sort of Arab diplomat as a raghead which kind of shocked me but then I remembered this was 1975 and not the PC era we now live in. And of course the weekend update featuring Chevy Chase had lots of clips referring to President Gerald Ford as a klutz. Its kind of cool going back and watching the old SNL's and there's only about 33 more years to go!!

Then it was a choice between Zack & Miri make a Porno or Pineapple Express. Since our 420 friendly poker playing Olympian was making headlines we opted for Pineapple Express. Anyone who has ever ripped bong hits will get a laugh out of this movie. And Snake and i both agreed that Michael Phelps was no stranger to using a bong. I know i graduated to a bong from a joint and pipe when I used to partake (our bong in college was called Beast after one of my college friends stated man that is a Beast of Burden after the Stones song). As i said to Snake, who cares that he was smoking weed, I'd smoke some too if i spent every day of my life from the age of 7 swimming mindless laps & staring at the bottom of or lane line in a pool. Swimming may be one of the greatest exercises but its boring (Ive only swum a minuscule smidgen of the mileage Phelps has and I can attest swimming is boring but hypoxia can be kind of cool). Heck he's a young man who has to make his own choices and they may not always be the wisest or smartest choices as viewed by mainstream America but hes gotta walk his own path and find his own way. He cant have a coach or mom or US swimming dictating his every waking moment. Oh and btw lest we forget, Phelps isn't the first Olympic Gold Medal winning swimmer caught smoking pot. Anyone remember Gary Hall Jr who just retired after failing to qualify for Beijing? He was suspended by Fina for Marijuana use back in 1988 in between his 1986 and 2000 Olympic appearances.

Monday, February 02, 2009

BIG BOSS MAN aka Bruce tickets

Sometime last week I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. I had just retired for the evening with the latest issue of Rolling Stone in hand. The boss, aka Bruce Springsteen was on the cover looking pretty hot for a soon to be 60 year old (must be the soul patch). I of course knew he was to play the Superbowl and intended to watch his show. Hell its reunion time with Phish, the Dead, Fleetwood Mac, and the Boss all heading out on the road this spring. In the back of mind I thought about actually acquiring tickets to see him when they went on sale

I may identify myself as a dead head and I love the jam band scene but I also have a vein of Bruce running thru my bones. I can probably sing every lyric to Blinded by the Light, Rosalita, Thunder Road etc. When I attended the University of Vermont from fall 1978 to the Spring of 1980, I was actually tossed out of Rasputin's (a favorite Burlington watering hole at the time aka Pukins) with my sorority little sister (who worked there btw) for dueting Born to Run at the top of our lungs at closing hour. (Must of been the line.. tramps like us........) I have only seen him once in Denver, at McNichols arena and i believe it was the fall of 1980. Myself and a bunch of girls i was living with as boarders in a sorority that wasn't my own, hopped the bus to Denver and saw the show. By far I can say it was the best show I ever saw until I saw U2's Elevation tour. Did I mention we missed the last bus back to Boulder and there we were stranded until some dudes in a VW bug picked us up and drove us the 30 miles to Boulder. that put 7 of us in a VW bug. 3 in front seat and 3 seated in back with one person laying across the laps of the other three.

I was doing about 4 things at once yesterday during the superbowl: quietly watching the progress of some of the big names in the Sunday Pokerstars majors, trying to watch the superbowl, as well as Season 7 of the WPT now on MSG here in Albany and ESPN coverage of the WSOP-Europe as well as jumping up every 5 minutes to a text message from Snake5970 about some bonehead player incurring a penalty mostly ranting at the Cardinals.

Then Bruce came on and like a preacher at a Church revival he had the entire stadium and those of us watching at home on our feet and dancing to the scripture of the E Street Band. That was one joyful noise;

At 8:12 PM I received a text from Snake: BRUCE!!!!!

i texted him back with: What a showman, I've only seen him once

then this text from me... He's playing Albany........(hint hint hint, read my mind Snake)

We exchanged a few more texts and by this time I'm saying to myself we should have just watched the game together because i was feeling like a Mexican jumping bean, running from computer to wherever i had last placed the cell phone then back to the TV etc.

that sent Snake5970 to the the Times Union Center calendar of events and shortly later he called me.

I basically said this to Snake: "Get me a ticket, they go on sale tomorrow at 10Am And I'm working. I was even willing to give him my ticketmaster log in info with info all loaded to buy tickets but he had established one when he got tickets for the now cancelled Fleetwood Mac, Albany show.

Today I was greeted by this good news via email, a RAY of sunshine in the bleak news of no PHISH tickets and only one set of Grateful Dead tickets. Snake had scored us floor spots (no seats ) for the TU center. That of course immediately sent me over to LJ's blog because she follows Bruce much like I followed the Dead. She was the first person I thought of after my ticket acquisition and sure enough the greatest boyfriend (aka Lucko) scored his gal tickets when she had failed or should I say TicketBastard failed her.

And today, I also got an email that there are still a few higher priced tickets available thru Grateful Dead ticket sales for some select dates. I'm pondering picking up a few tickets for NJ now.

I am now also totally hooked on Man vs Food on Travel Channel and caught a marathon showing last week. Snake5970 turned me on to the show and then confessed he took notes on places he wants to go to some time in the future. I only laughed because I've done the same thing. I'm a big fan of tripleD on food network (that's Diner's Drive-In's and Dives) as well as the Paradises on Travel channel. I also visit Roadfood.com daily for their restaurant of the day. did I mention I'm a big fan of food porn and food porn and just love food blogs with pictures. Apparently there are thousands of us out their with the same fetish. Retirement nirvana would be to take an RV on a tour of casinos and roadside eateries.