Justin Shronk Memorial Tourney

Where: Full Tilt Poker
Tournament ID: 121607994
Title: Justin Shronk Memorial Tourney
Game: NLHE
Buy-In: $5+$5
Starts: Sunday, December 6 at 18:00 server time (6 p.m. EST, 3 p.m PST)
Password: Justin Shronk (title case, with the space)

Half of the buy-in goes to the Justin Shronk Memorial Fund at the Temple University School of Communications And Theater (SCT). This is the same fund for which Brian Lemke (Shronk's cousin) provided a $20,000 lead gift after winning his WSOP bracelet this summer.

Here is the full text of information Ashley Lomery of the Temple University SCT sent to Full Tilt:

Founded in 1884, Temple University has grown with the city in which it thrives, Philadelphia, PA. Today, Temple is a comprehensive public research university with more than 37,000 students. With schools of law, medicine, pharmacy, podiatry and dentistry, Temple is the nation’s fifth largest provider of professional education. At home and abroad, Temple remains committed to providing access to educational opportunities and improving local communities. Temple was the first college in the United States to offer a bachelor’s degree in broadcasting in 1948. The School of Communications and Theater, with nearly 4,000 students and six departments, is the third-largest academic unit at Temple. Through creative instruction, a curriculum that reflects today’s changing media and professional facilities, the school provides students with an unparalleled educational experience. The result is high national rankings and demonstrated success in readying students for first jobs and careers.

The Justin Shronk Scholarship will provide scholarship support for students majoring in Broadcasting, Telecommunications and Mass Media within the School of Communications and Theater. Students must have financial need, and there is a preference for a student who has a deceased parent. While a student at Temple, Justin’s father passed away and he considered dropping out to help his mother. With her encouragement, he remained at Temple, graduated and went on to start his career. The recipient of the scholarship should also exemplify some of the same characteristics that Justin exhibited during his life—an absolute passion for everything media, a great wit and sense of humor, loyalty in his friendships, and someone who would take a job for less money to be able to do the work that he loved. With a generous gift earlier this year from Brian Lemke, Justin's cousin, the scholarship was permanently endowed and will honor Justin's memory in perpetuity. We are hoping to raise additional funds toward the endowment through this tournament to increase the amount available to award to deserving students in Justin's name year after year.

On Deck- Phish Albany

I was seriously thinking of going out to Syracuse for tomorrow night's show but Thanksgiving week time off from work was pretty much unavailable since I didn't put in for any in advance, so I'm hanging tight for two nights of Phish at the Times Union Center on Black Friday and Saturday. I went to work the day after the SPAC show and was exhausted. Dancing for three hours is tiring. I have been taking a Body Jam class to prepare myself for a busy series of concerts and my return to running.

First up your Phish Pforecast: We've had a pretty mild November this far and Turkey Day Weekend should be no exception. Right now 45 on Friday with chance of showers so bring your Wellies and Saturday a little cooler at 41. I'll probably cross post something over on Coventry as show time approaches. Give you peeps and tweeps some places to eat etc. Just an early PSA. Plan ahead and leave early. Exit 23 of the Thruway to 787 may not be too bad that is the exit you take to the Times Union Center. But traffic around town will be crawling as it is Black Friday and Saturday. Leave early. Exit 24 of the Thruway which is where the Thruway/Northway/ and 90 converge will be a clusterfuck.

Dr Pauly will be taking in the shows with me so Coventry Music will be well represented. He'll be kicking it old school style with his "big sis". BFF Kim and her son (nephew Zack) will also be attending for at least one night. And I believe a whole host of the Phish Twibe members will be here. I'm bummed I'm going to miss the NYC shows which Pauly and Nicky will be going to the following week. She's not flying east until after the holiday so I miss my chance to catch up with her. Again time off from work is the issue. I'm trying to save 40 hours till 2010 so I have like almost 7 weeks off.

I won two nights at the Rio Las Vegas in a twitter promotion and have to use them up before 3/31/10. Cant hold on to them for the WSOP time but im thinking Venetian Deep Stack in February or March Madness time if its not blacked out. Think that would be fun to see kickoff weekend in a sports book in Vegas.

Sunday Overload

I am trying to do/watch too many things at the same time.

NYC Marathon: I caught most of it on line at Universal Sports but missed the finishes of the races. Had to run out and hand off my moms goodies I got for her at Trader Joe's and Costco. Plan on catching the NBC highlight broadcast in a few minutes.

NFL Football a full day of games ahead.

NASCAR at Talledaga - Granted I don't follow Nascar as much as I used to since my driver Rusty Wallace headed to the broadcaster's booth but I still like to catch snippets here and there.

Festival 8 - Third and final day of Phish's Halloween run of shows from Indio, CA. Most of my colleagues from Coventry Music are in attendance. I've been listening to as much as I can on Sirius Satellite Internet Radio. Got a free 7 day trial and I must admit I'm liking it. Love the Jam-On station. Currently gigging down to a live Widespread Panic (WSP) performance on which Oteil Burbridge of The Allman Brothers is guesting. I've had my face melt a few times over the last two nights. Can't wait for the Albany Phish shows Black Friday and Saturday!!

Amazing Race- Gotta see how Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho capitalize on their second place finish after last weeks leg. The Amazing Racers head to the Netherlands tonight.

World Series- Granted I'm not much of a baseball fan but I am interested in this East Coast rivalry: Cheese Steaks vs NYC Style Pizza.

Poker - Once again attempts to get out and play live are a fail. I may join in the FTOPS warm-up at 3:05 PM to see how long I can last.

IF a cat could talk...

Yesterday I brought Rags in to be tested, neutered, his ears rid of mites and dewormed. He got his nails trimmed to and his fur cleaned up. My neighbor Mary Lou and I split the cost and another neighbor Randy is going to pitch in too. I was a little worried the little dude was going to test positive for Feline Leukemia or Feline HIV. I also wanted to get an age on him. I had an inkling he might turn out to be older then the 18-24 months I initially thought for a couple of reasons: A) He has full jowls, B) His balls were fully developed C) I noticed his teeth were discolored, including one of his canines being a snaggletooth.

I got him into the cat carrier no problem at all. From a cat who ran at the sight of people 10 months ago he now greets our Post-person Sandy when he hears her mail truck every day when she brings him treats. He's become quite social and I can pretty much handle him and pick him up. He weathered the car trip to the Animal Protective Foundation well. Drop off time was 8AM and I wasn't the only one bringing in a cat for the program. One lady brought in 5-8 semi-feral males the last of the bunch from a colony in Ballston Spa. She had already done the same for about 38 other kittys and had found homes for most of them. When I returnd to pick Rags up at 4PM at the APF's education center there had to be at least 12-15 cats all lined up waiting to be picked up. The vet must have worked on them assembly line fashion.

Much to my surprise Rags came out of his day like a new man. When the volunteer told me he had some dental disease and the Vet removed his snaggle-tooth because it was loose I wasn't surprised. When she told me he was about 10 years old my mouth hit the floor. I was also told he was not a feral and was very nice with the vet. I looked at him in the carrier and said "Dude what is your story?". He was glad to see me and when I got him home came right out of the carrier and butted my hand even though he was still groggy.

Where this cat was the first 8-9 years of his life me and my neighbors will never know. Maybe someone threw him out, or moved away and left him behind or he was abused and ran away. I know he knows how to hunt and he used to dumpster dive. He's definitely been in a bunch of fights (torn ear and hes battle-scarred). Since I've worked with him he's become quite affectionate (male cats typically are). He will cross the threshold of my doorway but doesn't want to be inside behind a closed door yet. When I closed the door but didnt completely shut it he walked over to and and took his paw to open it and leave yesterday. right now he only comes in because he knows where is food is.

I've fixed up his cat house with a fleece mat and old towel on top of his straw bed and he's content in that or on my door mat. I will definitely bring him inside if he wants to come in when it gets bitter cold. He may have to stay in my entry way but at least he'll be warm at night.

All I can say to the person who turned Rags out: Karma is a bitch and what goes around comes around. I have no compassion to anyone who disposes/mistreats an animal.

October 16th is National Feral Cat day. Across the country there are thousands of volunteers working with our homeless cats. If you can afford to contribute for a spay/neuter please do so. For more information Alley Cat Allies is a great resource.

Football, Poker, Music

FOOTBALL:

It came down to the last play of the game. Miami was stymied for the game winning score when Pennington's throw to the end-zone/Hail Mary pass was intercepted, but based on points of the Monday Night Football game, I won one of my leagues outright this week!!! Three of us were in contention on Monday night: Had Miami won, California Rob would have taken it down. Had the points come under 45 one of the three "Wags" brothers in the pool would have won. I faded them both and won for the first time in 5 years (my first year in the league). Over the last 4 years, I've lost the weekly title either by whiffing on MNF points or mis-picking the Monday night game winner outright, at least 7-8 times that I can remember. Sometimes, the weather was a factor and the games were low scoring and I was over the total points scored, other times just bad Ju-Ju.

I was also co-winner of this week's Pauly's Pub league hosted by none other then Dr Pauly. That is an all-season long only league (no weekly payouts). My Big-Eyed Phish entry moved up to one game out of first place. Of course we are only two weeks and its a long season to go.

I'm watching more football and paying more attention then in prior years where poker was my primary focus on the weekends. And as Ray & Rob and any other of my good guy friends can attest: I know my football. Last night I even watched the South Carolina - Ole Miss game over network TV. Ever since I was a little girl, I can remember watching football with my dad and sometimes my maternal Grandpa who actually played college football. One of my high-school boyfriend's was co-captain of the football team our senior year of High School and I went to a NCAA Division I football school. I think I bleed Black and Gold for my Colorado Buffs.

POKER:

I actually played some live poker last weekend. The first time since end of June or beginning of July. I know the last time I played live was during the WSOP shortly after LJ's horse near final table. It was a nice early Sunday start time with 4 big screen TV's going and a prime rib/shrimp scampi dinner which was worth the entry fee. I bubbled the final table in 11th but only top 5 were to pay. Near the end, I got my money all-in behind two times and sucked out. One was a suck re-suck suck hand. I was all in pre-flop flopped two pair, opponent turned straight I boated on the river. On the other hand, I rivered two pair but was dominated on the flop. I knew I was behind with my KJ but shoved the rest of my short-stack in any-way because I needed chips or it was time to go home. If people can't lay down hands when they have fold-equity and nothing but top pair on a coordinated board, I'm not going to feel bad about sucking out. And I really also don't want to hear my table mates go on and on about how I got so lucky for 10 minutes. Of course I got lucky. Better to just say nothing and move on with your lives. I'll take the lucky bones I was thrown because believe me I was not born with a horseshoe up my arse. I probably got my only two lucky rivers I'm going to get for the next year. And look what it got my anyway Squadoosh.... Remember, sometimes I don't care what my cards are. If I'm short, I'm making a move solely based on my chip stack in relation to yours and board texture.

Dr Pauly is soliciting opinions on who should be inducted into this years Poker Hall of Fame. You can leave a comment at the end of this post. Congratulations to him for being selected as one of 15 media member's who get to vote. I'm pretty sure Andrew Feldman over on ESPN is another media vote based on a comment he left. Both of these guys are reading our comments. All the nominees are worthy, but who deserves to go in first is the question.

MUSIC:

If your a music fan and/or fan of Mike Gordon's solo band, lead guitarist Scott Murawski is looking for suggestions of covers to under take. I came up with some pretty wild ones including Pink Floyd's PIGS. I tried to come up with song's that had killer bass lines for Mike as well as great guitar work for Scott. I stayed clear of songs PHISH has covered and Max Creek has covered including the Grateful Dead catalogue. Not that I wouldn't want to hear them try The Eleven, its just that there are so many other cover songs out there they could have fun with. I no longer go to Max Creek shows to hear them play Dead covers. I may have done so back in 1986 but after I became familiar with their own tunes those became my favorites. In fact, Emotional Railroad is a current Max Creek cover being performed by MGB and one of my favorites.

And be sure to head over to Coventry for all the news thats PHISH to print (and lots of non-Phish stuff too).

Finally, It's amazing how many people pop onto my blog still looking for info on Brandi Hawbaker as well as, the Ultimate Bet cheating scandal. The UB cheating scandal is still pretty fresh in everyone's minds since the recently released official report finely outed and named Russ Hamilton as the primary person behind the accounts thru which a multitude of higher stakes cash game players were robbed from. No surprise there really. The question remains on whether the other alleged cheats names will be released. Its quite possible those alleged names may never see the light of day unless they actually were the owner's of the accounts. Since these other people may have not had any inside position at UB with direct access to creating super-user accounts it may be really hard to prove they were the ones who actually played and cheated on the account. One of the reasons said names may not have been released. I'm by no means a legal expert but can only imagine the ramifications if someone is named and it cant be proven (libel & slander lawsuits up the wazoo).

Now its time to sit down with Dan Brown's Lost Symbol and some left-over Chinese Food.

On the Road

I'm about to head out the door for a quick trip down to Woodstock, NY for a concert at the Bearsville Theatre. I'm raging solo tonite as BFF Kim has a bad case of pink eye and Zack (my oldest nephew) can't make it from Boston in time. I'll be seeing the Mike Gordon Band. For my poker playing readers, he is the bassist for Phish and features one of my top 5 favorite guitarists, Scott Murawski of Max Creek.

I am still on poker hiatus. I took off all of August. And short of playing ten minutes of the Blogger thank you freeroll that awarded $109 WCOOP seats on pokerstars recently, I have not played any poker live or online since 07/26/2009. Once I return to the felt I hope to have a renewed focus. But I have really enjoyed my down time

I've discovered its really hard at my age to do it all. I love music, I love to play poker, I love trying out new restaurants and recipes. I love to read and to garden. I'm about to take on some volunteer work with our soon to open Saratoga County Animal Shelter satellite location. Plus, when you work a customer service job which requires you to be perky 40 hours a week and your soon to be 49, you get tired. Playing poker, like training for a marathon is a part-time job.

Rags my little semi feral or throwaway cat is getting snipped on October 1st. Hopefully he'll test out okay for FIV/FLV and I can work on getting him semi indoors for the winter. I'm beginning to think he may have been kicked to the curb and became unsocialized. He's currently living in a dog house I bought for him outside the condo front door behind some shrubery. He spends most of his time on my doormat or sunning himself on the walkway and doesn't run from anyone anymore. In fact he is constantly looking for a pet. He brought me two half eaten mouse heads last week. Guess he appreciates all I've done for him. He took a swipe at me (but missed) yesterday when I walked away from petting him but hadn't done that in a while.

My mom just had her hammertoe operated on today for the third and hopefully final time. I'm going to spend most of tomorrow afternoon and Sunday afternoon with her as she already is stir crazy about being unable to drive for 4 weeks while she heals. Unfortunately its her driving foot. The first season of True Blood came from Amazon.com today and I figure that will be good to watch together. I'm also looking forward to reading Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol when it drops on Tuesday.

And for the record, CU plays Toledo tonight and it will be televised. I am not going to miss another concert to watch them play. Maybe they will win if I dont watch!!!

Now its time to go get Bassed. Mike should be soundchecking right now on WDST. Check out my quick post over on Coventry Music.

I was Ready for College Football

This half-time report is brought to you by: Alum who remembers when we sucked it hard.

Its beginning to look alot like when I was in College circa Fall 1980 - May 1983 or the Pre-BM years ( that's for Bill McCartney). I know we were beat up by injuries last year, but this is ridiculous. The Defensive line needs to learn how to tackle. The Offensive line needs to give the Quarterback some protection and Cody needs to learn how to stay in the pocket.

We were totally pwned/owned in the first half by the CSU Rams. The most exciting thing other than Ralphie's magnificent run was the 55 yard field goal by the dude who couldn't do anything last year and whose name is escaping me currently. Think its Goodman.

Woot we scored while i was typing this. I'm a little shocked to see Little Hawk back in as QB thought he would get the bench and they would start out the 2nd half with Tyler Hansen.

I decided to stay home and watch football rather then drive or to Lenox and see Max Creek. I'm beginning to question my decision/sanity.

A Phish Tale

I had a great time at my first live Phish show and a most totally awesome time catching up with and hanging out with everyone's favorite globe-trotting, soon to be book author, Dr Pauly.

You can check out my thoughts on the show over on Coventry Music by clicking here.

And this is just my two cents but local journalists should really be ashamed of themselves for this kind of reporting. I know more then a few poker bloggers who write better then this.

PFRIDAY PHISHY PFORECAST

Sunday 8/16/09:

HIGH 90F LOW 66F

PARTLY CLOUDY
Times of sun and clouds. Highs in the low 90s and lows in the mid 60s.
Chance of rain 20%

Head over to Coventry Music at 4:20 AM for my guide to navigating Saratoga/SPAC during the busy racing season that is August.

Hey Now I Still have a Blog

Twitter has definitely killed my blogging efforts. I also have played literally no poker in the last two, err actually three weeks except that 2010 WSOP seat freeroll I qualified for. That was held on the day I drove back from a music festival. I had it going on early and then ran my big stack into another big stacks turned flush. Yup online poker morons still call pot size bets on the flop with just flush draws. Its also what I expect for a freeroll.

I pretty much have decided to take the summer off from poker. Mostly because, Ive been busy doing other things. I went to Gathering of the Vibes on a day trip with BFF, Kim, stayed over night at my sister's in Westport CT. Shopped with Kim at Trader Joe's, Stew Leonard's and Whole Foods in Norwalk/Westport on the return. It was a good old girls day with a slumber party at my sister's. My sis had not seen Kim in 31 years since my High School graduation party. Suzie is an awesome gardener and sent Kim home with lots of succulent babies to get started.

I got stung by a wasp last Friday night. That resulted in me jabbing myself in the thigh with an epi-pen and a trip to on-call. They held me for a bit, gave me some prednisone and two prescriptions. I was no worse for wear next day. The prednisone took away all itching, swelling and in the morning I could barely see where I was stung. Amazing!!!

I will be headed into actual work for a two week training class in September as it stands right now. The good news, I will work a normal 5 day week of like 8 to 5:30 instead of my 9.5/9.5/9/8/4 schedule I work now. I have had every Friday off for the months of July and August though.

I have not made it up to the Race Track (Saratoga) yet and probably wont. I have an old running friend in town for the meet. She rent's a house for four weeks and I have to squeeze in a day/afternoon to catch up with her. She owns horse's in partnerships much like Snake5970. Snake's horse's are all on the sidelines right now. Two are recovering from injuries. If he's lucky he may see Hooked on Hope run at the tale end of the Saratoga meet. She is still stabled and training down at Belmont. She's been on the comeback trail since getting injured after her last race in late April.

I will make it up to SPAC however for PHISH 3.0 next Sunday 8/16/09. BFF Kim and I are on the lawn. Nephew Zack (Kim's 24 yr old) and his buddy Nate are in the Balcony and Dr Pauly is coming into town (balcony). WOOT! WOOT! WOOT!. Anyone who knows Pauly, knows its virtually impossible to catch up with him when he's working the WSOP. Since he's pretty much west-coast based when he's not traveling now and his trips to NYS/NYC infrequent its cool that he's literally going to be on my doorstep. Way cooler hanging out and catching up in a relaxing setting where people don't talk about bad beats. Plus its my first live PHISH show ever!! Pauly has already initiated a few of us poker bloggers into the way of the PHISH. The only poker-y thing I may even mention is his upcoming book LOST VEGAS. Much rather talk about music, food, travels etc. The only bummer is Nicky isn't coming on this east coast trip and I haven't seen her since the day we both played the 2007 ladies event.

Just for the record, I am not a complete Phish virgin. I did see the Coventry Simulcast in 2004 with California Rob and wife, Toni. I have seen Trey and Mike play with their own bands as well as them sitting in with Phil Lesh & Friends and I saw Mike join the Dead on bass and segway a few years back. This will be my first time seeing the fab four together. I'm going in with an open mind and no expectations. For years, I didn't get PHISH probably because they weren't the Dead. I finally came to appreciate them for the awesome musicians they are. Compositionally, they are nothing like the Dead so to compare them it isn't even fair. But man they can lay down some mind-bending jams.

I also scored tickets for the Mike Gordon Band at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock on 09/11/09. The theatre sits like 250 people. Attached to the theatre are two well know restaurants one Chinese the Little Bear and the renowned Bear Cafe. I'm totally psyched for this because Max Creek/BK3, guitarist Scott Murawski is reprising his role on guitar. Max Creek put on a smoking show at Vibes and I'm going to try to catch them Labor Day weekend at CreekEnd, if i can set aside the time to stay on site as required. I can honestly say that as someone who has followed Creek for a really long time, Scott gets better with age. One of the most under-appreciated/rated journeyman guitarists out there. Time permitting, BFF Kim and I will first travel to the Museum at Bethel Woods, site of the actual Woodstock Festival in 1969. It's about an hour away from Woodstock proper. Plus there is also the Kaatskill Kaleidoscope (the world's biggest) in Mount Tremper.

All for now, time to check out the farmer's markets and stands for NYS's best produce. Tomatoes suck this year. Too much rain causing a major fungus. Fortunately I didn't try to grow any myself this year. The Albany area had the rainiest July in history. We had 9.91 inches which was 6.4 inches above normal. It's also been unseasonably cool.

Midterm WSOP Main Event Fantasy Report

After four day 1's, two day 2's we are finally condensed to one day 3 of the 2009 WSOP Main event. Cant believe the WSOP started over a month and a half ago and we are already to the grand finale event 57.

I participated in Full Tilt Poker's Fantasy Poker Challenge. I'm currently sitting in the top 200 overall. I earned two full tilt hats for two top fifty finishes in individual events, entry into a bunch of free rolls for top 2000 finishes in a bunch of events and by virtue of a 4th place finish over 1000+ in the RAZZ Tourney the other night, I now play for a 2010 WSOP Main Event seat. The top 100 overall finishers plus the top ten in every free roll earn spots in this finale free roll. I was in the top 100 overall for most of the later half of the challenge but fell out when i had zero money finishers in the last donkaments. It also didn't help that in event 56 my picks didn't take and carried over from the prior event. Had they taken I should have been back in the top 100 overall as a lot of my horses cashed including eventual bracelet winner Matt Hawrilenko. I now don't really care about a top 100 finish since i have my spot in that grand finale freeroll already.

So, who did I take as my final horses in the Main Event? I went with players who had solid live poker tourney success in deep fields. In other words, warriors those who know how to survive a grueling multi-day event when its not won on the first second or even third or fourth days:

My line-up of 15:

Vitaly Lunkin on to day three with T135900

Phil Hellmuth on to day three with T142900

Daniel Negreanu - Busto day 1C. Daniel tweeted that he was sick sick sick. I only wanted to pick Negreanu or Ivey wrong horse picked as Ivey is still alive and doing very well. But does Ivey really care about the ME or would he really rather be over in Bobby's Room playing cash and winning outrageous prop bets?

Gus Hanson - Busto Day 2A. Not alot was reported about Gus on his day 1, largely as he was at the feature table and ESPN has the monopoly on reporting over there. Pokernews updates were few and far between.

Huck Seed - Busto 1D not alot said about Huck but I think he was in the area of the feature or secondary feature table hence the lack of updates. Some folks thought he was a shut-out but his bust-out was reported

Justin Bonomo on to day three T22330 - Solid player both online and live. He was my young gun horse. Chosen over the likes of Jimmy Fricke (who is still alive going into day 3) and Shaun Deeb (busto) and Isaac Baron. I've met Jimmy a couple of times at Turning Stone and like him a lot as a player and he's a nice young man. But Jimmy hasn't been running hot like Justin coming into the series, and in the early WSOP events. Shaun was actually an easy bench for the ME. He ran up a huge stack early and then busted on his day 2 when he 5-bet a9os into pocket AA or KK. In a prior post I mentioned the importance in the ability to change gears. Even Joe Hachem on the pokerstars blog mentioned this important ability in a large field live multi day MTT. I'm picking on Shaun here, but over and over again throughout the course of the early events many of the top online players succumbed to their Achilles heel: the inability to back off the aggression factor when they were not getting the best of it and coinflipping with hands they wouldn't fold after being played back at.

Mike Matusow - Busto day 2A. per his tweets he was card dead. I was rooting for you Mikey.

Lee Watkinson - on to day three with T62300. I'm not sure why I picked him, other than a few deep runs over the last couple Main Events. Lee was up over 100k in chips but lost two big hands on day 2B

David Benefield - busto day 1D. He cashed last year had some deep runs in other events. Fellow blogger and friend, LJ works for CardRunners and he looked to be the best of the CardRunners bunch as far as MTT ability and I wanted another young gun. (Sorry LJ you are not an option in Full Tilt's Fantasy Challenge, so I couldn't pick you!!).

Ylon Schwartz Busto day 2B. The one November Niner who had the best 2009 WSOP in the preliminary events. Sadly he is busto. Eastgate, Phillips, Suharto and Kim are still alive from last years original Novemeber 9.

Ivan Demidov - Busto day 1D (see above). He joins Ylon on the rail along with Scott Montgomery and Chino Rheem. I'm not sure if Craig Marquis even played this year

John Turner - Busto day 2A - I picked pearljammer much for the same reason I picked Justin Bonomo. Can play both online and live with success.

Greg Raymer - on to day three with T95900. A great finish in the 40k, plus hes proven his ability to go deep in Main Events more then once!

Eugene Katchalov on to day three with T183800 - He's a Russian, who lives in the US. if you notice a pattern of my picks, I picked Russians, young dudes who can play online and live, and a few former ME champs who have gone deep in other big championship tourneys.

Matt Hawrilenko on to day three with T65700 - Fresh off a bracelet and like Justin was running well coming into the main event. Plus his name sounds Eastern Bloc-ish, Russian.

So 7 of my 15 are alive heading into the meat of the Main Event. 6494 players began with 30k stacks. Total chips in play T194,820,000. total players remaining heading into Day 3 2044. Average stack size t93484. As you can see only two of my players are below average stack. Raymer is average stacked and the others are well above average.

I'm kind of sad we are getting to the end of this years series but at least I will have the TV coverage to look forward to.

Due to Technical Difficulties.....

I apologize for the lack of updates. First, the cable modem went. I had phone and cable but sporadic Internet signal. At least that's how it all tested out when Time Warner got here. I was off the grid from a Tuesday night to late Saturday afternoon. Then a few days later my computer started turning off on its own and wouldn't restart. Thought it may have been a loose cord so I tried a new one. Still no computer. I had a new power supply put in back in late December but my Dell is 4+ years old and on borrowed time. I did get it going again bought a hard drive and backed everything up.

So now I'm shopping for a new desktop PC. Ive always owned Dell's but frankly their customer service is lacking and your lucky if you get someone in the United States. I'm no stranger to outsourcing as my original job at my company was largely outsourced. I'm thinking about an HP A6700F which is a relatively new model and I can get a discount on one thru my company as HP is a vendor for us. Then again I can also get a discount on a Dell.

I haven't played much online poker in the last three weeks short of 4 DON's and I cashed 4/4. Now of course we are faced with a whole e-check debacle of not being able to get money on and off PokerStars and Full Tilt easily. I've qualified for a few of the freeroll's Full Tilt has as prizes for the Fantasy Poker Challenge. I ran TT into JJ last nite in the first one so I failed to cash. Speaking of the Challenge, my ability to pick horses to finish in the money in the low buy-in NLHE donkaments is nil. I've goose-egged (no fantasy dollars) every NLHE low buy-in event. Yet I have three horses who final tabled the $10k deuce to seven Lowball event (all 15 of my horses actually played the event). Obviously in the NLHE events I've picked Internet young guns who have largely crashed and burned in their attempts to acquire chips early. I figure the big established names are playing the bigger buy-ins and mixing up their game selections.

I have noticed that the young guys who play fearless and ruthless early on and build up big stacks, seem to implode a lot later on. Seems like they just don't no when to change the gears back to medium speed mid-tourney when table conditions change and they run their big stack into someone else's big stack and are out shortly after. I'm sure that is why the big stack on a Day 1 or Day 2 normally isn't the chipleader or around on Day 3. Or they are not paying close attention to the players at their live tables.

Here's best wishes to CK who made it to day two of the $2500 Mixed Stud/Omaha 8 or better tourney. Play resumes at 5PM EST/2PM PST. I'm heading out to play live tonite at my friend Rich's place across the river. Actually make that two rivers, gotta cross the Mohawk and Hudson. I'll be checking up on you girl when I get back in.

Full Tilt Fantasy Challenge -Events #2-#3

These were my picks for the 40k high rollers events (wsop#2) and I had to let them ride for the $1500 Limit PLO8 event (wsop #3) because of Internet connectivity issues all day Wednesday thru Saturday afternoon. Fortunately, I had gotten my first picks in before my modem conked out.

As you can see below, I took a mix of hot Internet players and seasoned pros. One thing I don't think is possible is write-in candidates. I just looked for Greg Raymer on the pick list as he has final tabled the 40k event to see if anyone had him. Don't think Team Pokerstars' Fossilman made the FTP powers that be radar. Team Full Tilt and red pros heavily make up the pick list. ******EDIT Greg Raymer found on list!!!!

What makes it hard is you actually have no idea if your picks are playing. Unless they tweet about it. And they then have to make deep runs in donkament size fields. For example, I didn't pick Eric Seidel for the 40k, because he announced on twitter that he wouldn't be playing till next week. I also no one pro is going to Hawaii this week so he's been dry docked. Obviously ZeeJustin (Bonomo) didn't play the Limit PLO8 tourney as he was deep in the 4Ok, but I was able to scrap him in time for event #3 (the stimulus special tourney) when my Internet service returned.



A Player Justin Bonomo $0
A Player Chris Moorman $0
A Player Allen Cunningham $0
A Player Kenny Tran $0
A Player Erick Lindgren $0
B Player Shannon Shorr $0
B Player Daniel Negreanu $0
B Player Tim "Tmay420" West $0
B Player Jeff Madsen $0
B Player Mike Matusow $0
C Player Vivek Rajkumar $0
C Player John Juanda $0
C Player Jimmy "Gobboboy" Fricke $0
C Player Michael Binger $0
C Player Jon "PearlJammed" Turner $0
Total: $0

I look totally brilliant taking Team Bodog's Justin Bonomo, as one of my A-listers. He was playing extremely well heading into the WSOP with a WSOP Circuit win. He's currently playing the final table of the event with 5 left. On the flip side, I don't believe Kenny Tran even showed to play. I also should have taken a harder look at Isaac Haxson as hes hot right now and should be a bracelet contender sometime during the series (think/hope hes on the list for future consideration)

Knowing my luck I win a FT baseball cap, which I already have but there are other fabulous prizes and swag including winners freerolls and top scorers will play for a world series 2010 seat. The games have begun!!

Anticipation...........2009 WSOP

The media, photographers and poker players are all rolling into Las Vegas. I followed BJ Nemeth (@BJNemeth on twitter) and his cute doggy Rhapsody on their road trip from Atlanta to Las Vegas via twitter. BJ also posted some great shots of his journey. I can't remember if it was BJ who snapped my photo when I played the Ladies event. I remember Dr Pauly coming over to advise me of the two pros at my table (one I knew the other I did not as she was Swedish) and I remember CC coming over with a photographer to snap my picture for the article Carmen did on me for PokerWorks. I'm just not sure if it was BJ.

Dr Pauly will be splitting his time between Phish tour and the WSOP. He has an all-star line-up tapped to pinch hit for the days he's on tour. He posted pictures on his blog with the faces blotted out. I've identified 5 correctly including one person I hoped would contribute and is. I still have two to go. One I got only because I obviously have spent too much time reading poker blogs over the last 5 years or so and because I have a freaky memory. Not sure if he will introduce them before the start of the series or as they contribute. I spill no secrets as to the identities of these pinch hitters, I'm Italian remember and we have a code of silence, besides that's Dr P's job to do.

Wicked Chops will be covering the series in only the way they can, including their Girls on the Rail series and perhaps a return of the Ginger of the Day? I'm going to copy and paste from a recent WC post the outlets covering the series and add a few they missed and embellish on a few. I've italicized the WC original post so as not to bring the wrath of the Entities down on my head. Follow the Entities @wickedchops.

WSOP.com: Get chip counts and full tourney reporting. For a link to the full schedule of events go here.

You can follow Jeffrey Pollack (the commish of the wsop) on twitter @JeffreyPollack and wsop live updates @wsopliveupdates and the wsop @wsop.

BluffMagazine.com: Stepped up their online reporting efforts the past year or so, lots of timely and relevant news. Bluff Magazine will be live streaming the final tables of 12 events that will not be televised. You can follow Bluff on twitter @bluffmagazine.

PokerListings.com: Solid coverage, often with a funny take. This is a Canadian site I often forget about but have recently been spending more time at. Hopefully, I'll get Matt to invite me to the next PL Run good challenge!! Follow them on twitter @_pokerlistings_.

Tao of Poker: Dr. Pauly is the hardest working man in poker, and is a staple and fixture of WSOP reporting. The entities are on point there. Dr Pauly is to poker and music coverage what Warren Haynes is to Rock and Roll. Oh and he's got a book coming out too. Follow him on twitter at @taopauly.

Pokerati.com: Good scoops and perspective, tons of updates. Follow them on twitter @Pokerati. Pokerati's Dan Michalski & Dr Pauly team up on the Tao of Pokerati podcasts. The archived podcasts can be found here.

PokerRoad.com: More pro perspective than you'll find anywhere else, plus the awesome Poker Beat and other shows. Joe Sebok, Barry Greenstein, Amanda Leatherman, Scott Huff, John "Shecky" Caldwell, Jimmy Fricke have big things in store for this WSOP. Follow on twitter @pokerroad or join the twibe by clicking here.

ESPN.com: Aside from keeping track of the Fantasy Draft (oh crap that's today), the Poker Edge podcast are worth the price of admission (which is free, but whatever) alone. ESPN360.com will be live streaming twelve final tables not covered by Bluff. Unfortunately my ISP (the evil empire Time Warner) does not allow me ESPN360 access. This year ESPN TV coverage will only be broadcasting 4 events with coverage commencing July 28th. The same number of hours are planned but only the 40k high rollers event, the 10k buy-in Main Event, the Ante Up for Africa Charity tourney and the WSOP Tournament of Champions will be shown live. HORSE/Omaha/Limit events and god forbid Razz don't make for good TV.

Poker Stars Blog: Otis keeps this a great source of news for the site that most of you probably won your WSOP entries from. As of this mornings count, 922 qualifers have qualified thru pokerstars (not counting the multiple packages won by the dudes who are always in that Step 6 you want to play). Typically the Pokerstars blog covers Pokerstars qualifiers.

RawVegas.tv: Wicked Chops is behind Raw Vegas TV: Between our new episodes of The TOKE (our fave from last year below, the Girls of the GLE), plus Daniel Negreanu vlogs (and many, many more pros this year, more on that later), a great video source of WSOP action.

PokerNews.com Not sure who the 2009 line-up includes but my guess is the usual poker bloggers's such as Shamus, Change100, Mean Gene, Haley, and F-Train as well as the other PokerNews staffers. Follow on twitter @pokernews.

Full Tilt's Poker From the Rail: The new kid on the block. AlCantHang's new bill paying gig. Hopefully, the coverage Al has planned here will be similar to the Pokerstars Blog. You'll get a perspective on the Full Tilt qualifiers (251 as of this morning). Al just landed in Vegas a little lighter as he chopped off his hair.

Annie Duke FTW!!

I haven't been a religious follower of the show but have kept up on it. If you read my archived post where I commented on the first episode, I stated, Jesse James, Brande, and Annie impressed me the most in that very first episode, other then Joan Rivers who I assumed would be the person to beat. Pretty good call by me, as all of the above mentioned players made the final four.

Love her or hate her Annie has proven herself as a formidable opponent or as Tyra Banks would say... FIERCE. I have been impressed with her work ethic. Joan on the other hand lost any respect I had for her and comes across as a total harpie. She has enraged every poker player with her "your kind, your people" remarks. Kind of reminds me when a police officer in Worcester MA told me they didn't want my people (meaning deadheads) around. Lets see if Annie can uber-TILT Joan tomorrow night during the finale.

Doyle Brunson (@texdolly) doesnt mince words about his feelings for Joan Rivers:

Joan Rivers has a concussion. She was getting a drink and the toilet seat fell on her head.

I'll quit tweeting about Joan Rivers when she apoligizes to the poker world

Happy Mothers Day Annie & I hope you found a dress to wear for the finale. Show Joan how heads-up is played!!

I want to see Dave at Jones Beach!!

I am alive just been busy with household maintenance and spring cleaning. The ADhD part of me only has time to tweet in 140 characters or less.

I must say Dave is looking rather hot. I see a big void whenever I see the band's picture without the great LeRoi Moore (RIP).

I love the New York Post. Even though it tends to lean right and Obama bash every chance the editors get. I just find it a guilty pleasure. Its kind of like a tabloid newspaper.

Lazy Sunday

I've been a slacker blogger lately on my home blog. I have had a few posts up over on Coventry on the currently in progress Dead 2009 tour. My write-up of the Friday nights Albany show is posted here.

Snake5970's horse: Hooked on Hope is making her second career start. She is entered in the 9th race running on the grass at Aqeuduct TODAY, Sunday, April 19th, breaking from the 9 hole with Ramon Dominguez up. Post time is 4:55 p.m. She won her first outing at Gulfstream Park last month. Snake5970 is headed down. It looks like the weather will hold and she will run. She's a scratch if the race gets moved to the dirt.

I have been active on twitter though, and find twitter certainly is a fun way to journal ones activities in 140 characters or less. Lots of poker pros are on twitter. I for see a new way tournament reporting is done in the future. Although the news sources will still be the primary source to outline key hands as far as the flop turn river, suit, the amount bet on streets and chip counts (twitter space constraints). It doesn't get much better then Joe Sebok twittering about Shaun Deeb bluffing the shit out of Kevin Saul (BeLoWAbove) at the Bellagio WPT Championships yesterday. Oh and it was fun following along on Phil Hellmuth's drink by drink drunken Thursday night as he randomly tweeted his activities. You can follow Joe on twitter he is Joesebok, Phil Hellmuth is phil_hellmuth. Haven't looked for Deeb or Saul yet but lots of other pros tweet including Annie Duke, Evy Eng, David Williams, Jeff Madsen, Daniel Negrenau, Tiffany Michelle, Andy Bloch, etc.

Even though I don't drink or do any other kind of intoxicants any longer and haven't in 19+ years my body just doesn't recover like it used to. I spent yesterday recovering from my concert and went to bed relatively early. I am still sore and tired today. I cut the bottom of the back of my right foot near the heel slightly sometime Friday night. It's in the middle of an old callous from my running/triathlon days. My foot was sore as hell and I've been monitoring it to make sure I don't get cellulitis which I've had before in my toe. Much better today it is. Ahhhh, the joys of growing old.

I must play some poker today I haven't played since last Sunday. Today there is a big game WSOP qualifier but it actually sold out (first prize should be enough to buy into the Main Event if one so desires). I didn't want to pony up the $325 buy-in since I hadn't been playing all that well up until last weekend when things started turning around. I played live a week ago Thursday night and although no cash I did final table and finish 9th. That set me up to play rather well online last weekend. For some reason, I play much better online after I've played live and actually handled chips.

Happy Spring!! Time to go get the papers, some coffee and figure out if I should shop, play online later, check out the live tourney which is not at my club, head down to the club later tonite to play live or do some combination of all of the above.

SCOOP Begins Today

Still not sure if I will be playing the NLHE low option rebuy starting at 2:30 PM today. I better make up my mind soon because 16851 are currently registered and the total is climbing. That is going to be one hell of a prize pool. I am registered for the 4:30 PM PLO8 Low option buy-in. And Gods of the Interwebs & Network Connections please don't let me disconnect during said tourney. I have already lost connection with your servers twice this morning and I'm not even playing yet. 95115 people have nothing better to do on a Thursday morning apparently. Oh and I know I mentioned that I will gladly take river beats for a month because I was smiled kindly upon and received Phish tickets for SPAC but can we please please please put that penance on hold for two weeks or so?

The First Annual SCOOP per Pokerstars is:

Spring Championship Of Online Poker (SCOOP) - All Stakes

With 66 tournaments, covering 22 different poker disciplines at three different stakes levels and a combined prize pool guarantee of $30,000,000, we’re bringing you a new poker championship not to be missed. Beginning on April 2, we bring you the Spring Championship Of Online Poker (SCOOP) - All Stakes. With buy-ins as low as $5.50, everyone will have the opportunity to play and the chance to win big cash prizes.

Running until April 12, SCOOP will have two events every day, and each event will consist of three individual tournaments based on different stakes levels: one for low-stakes players, one for medium-stakes players, and one for the high-stakes players. Every tournament has its own guarantee, so even low-stakes players could win big.

Otis, Change100, F-Train and Shamus will be covering the events over on the newly redesigned PokerStars blog along with a few other bloggers

Big congrats to Dr Pauly. It appears that Project Z is now titled so look for his upcoming book release LOST Vegas



And be sure to check out the great music coverage over on Coventry. I did a recap of The Dead's triple crown of shows performed 03/30/09 and Strawberry Shortcake (a ginger) has a post up on Suwannee Music Fest 2009. The Joker being a prankster and all had a great April Fools joke up too . I wasn't one of the lucky ones to get picked for the free tickets to the NYC shows, but you can bet your ass I would have driven to the city for the day/evening. With the Dead and Phish touring this summer and all the summer festivals: Rothbury, Mountain Jam Bonnaroo we will have some kick ass coverage coming your way.

I'm only working 4.5 hours of my normal 9 hour day today and will be signing off at 2pm to play some poker. If I bust out early I can always make a run down to the club to play the Thursday nite tourney I normally can never make. Good luck to all in the SCOOP's!

One Man Gathers... What another man spills.

The other day I logged into my Bugsy's Club account and noticed the balance I had left of about $210 after winning $225 in a tourney on Easter Sunday 2007 was gone. When I checked my account activity it had been transferred to Bugsy's for an inactive account. I found that odd as I had received no email notification from them advising that a transfer had taken place. I will admit I rarely played on the site. Only a few tourneys since I had cashed back in 2007. I fired off a tactful email that asked where did my money go? Within 24 hours it was back in my account and I didn't have to fire off the threatening email that i would trash them publicly on my blog.

A few hours after receiving said funds an email from a forum notified me that Bugsy's was closing its doors. I figured my newly returned money was now gone for good. But when I logged into Bugsy's they had a nice post that explained the UIGEA had made it difficult to do business for players wanting to remove funds and deposit. I'm not sure why they didn't seek a merger with the growing Cake or Merge networks but all was not lost for my funds. Bugsy's Club had worked it out with Pokerstars that funds would be transferred to a players Pokerstars account. Major Woot Woot Woot for IG!!.. Within 24 hours of receiving the email from Pokerstars to enter my Bugsy's info the money was in my Pokerstars account.

It does appear that PokerSchoolOnline and PokerPages will remain in business. I'm sure most of us who play poker have accessed the PokerPages data base for player results at one time or another. Lately, I find myself utilizing the PokerDB or OPR more often then not, or the Hendon Mob database over on Full Tilt. PSO utilized the same software as Bugsy's Club which was the money site.

If you followed any of my twitter updates, you will know that Snake5970's horse he's a part owner of, won her debut race at Gulfstream Park on Sunday, going off at 20:1 odds from a morning line of 12:1. A $2 win bet paid $44 and change. I know my friend Action Hank is happy as he had her twice in the second daily double which paid a sweet $400 plus. Snake5970 was the only owner present on race day. At the last minute I didn't put any money down. The Italian in me didn't want to put the whammy curse on her. Hooked on Hope came out of the race fine and is shipping north to Aqueduct I believe where she will run against some NY breds on the grass hopefully we'll see her run this summer at Saratoga too.

Today I took the day off to once again try to attempt to score PHiSH tickets this time for my home venue of SPAC. I'm not sure most 48 year old women still do this but music is and always has been a big part of my life. SPAC is a Live Nation venue. Many of my phish phan phfriends had been shut out of Ticket Bastard for the Gorge and Red Rocks etc. California Rob and wife Toni both tried online and by phone and were able to score two out of the three passes they need for each night. I assume the third is for their daughter Lauren, now almost 6 (edited from 5 per her daddy) Ms Lauren accompanied us to the Coventry simulcast in 2004 with earplugs. The SPAC box office, a mere 10-15 minute drive away is closed till May 10th, so I couldn't get tickets by going right to the venue. I opened up one browser kept hitting refresh, wound up in the waiting room and....... waited. I decided a few moments later to open up another browser and literally I was taken right to the order form. My hands were shaking as I typed in my info and by 1:04 PM EST a mere 4 minutes after they went on sale I had a nice $250 charge on my credit card. Today pigs really do fly. As I said to Dr Pauly via email, I'll gladly take a months worth of river beats on PokerStars to watch a middle-aged man in a dress suck on a vacuum hose. I've seen TAB, I've seen Trey & Mike, I've seen Mike Gordon's band but I've never seen all four members of PHiSH together live. This will be my first PHiSH show.

Shortly after Pigs took to the air, I saw a twitter announcement from the good old Grateful Dead calling out for NYC fans. A sweepstakes entry for three surprise shows before they kick off their official tour. They are playing three shows on March 30th in NYC closed to the public. My entry is in with BFF Kim as my guest. I'll know by tomorrow if I earned a pair of tickets to one of the shows.

Now that its Spring and I'll soon be on work-free Fridays I plan to get a little more active. Tweeting with one of the Wicked Chops entities who is also a runner has me reminiscing about my days scampering up and down mountain sides and thru the woods. And I did once mention I would do another marathon sometime on or after my 50th birthday which is 18.5 months away. I've served as race director for more marathons then I've run. If only my knees and hamstring can take it. My Orca wetsuit hangs unused in my closet and is probably all dried out and my Specialized racing road bike suffers the same fate. I'm not even sure I would be confident/comfortable riding clip less pedals again. (edited from petals.... you can tell i spend more time gardening then riding these days)

And what is this crazy rule that the State of New Jersey wanted to ban Brazilian waxes? Obviously some man came up with that one. If I want to have hot wax applied to my nether regions by an Asian woman I barely know and then have it ripped off with muslin while I pull in the other direction its my right!! And yes, I've paid for the privilege.

Too Busy to blog but you can follow me on twitter

Ive been anti-Face book and My Space but I jumped on the twitter bandwagon. Its perfect for someone who is always doing 3000 things at once.

Go check out my review of Jam Band Max Creek over on Coventry. And of course check out the awesome coverage of PHish's three night run at the mothership in Hampton, Virginia. I just took next Friday off to attempt to get tickets for PHiSH at my home venue of SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center)for their August show date.

I completed an NCAA bracket for Dr Pauly's pub league. I don't know much about college hoop. I do get into the hoopla during March madness. So far I'm 7/8 in todays early games only missing Butler who i picked over LSU. Those 8-9 seed match-ups are tough. I did pick Maryland over overrated California. I listened to some upset videos by college coaches and a couple of them actually picked that one. Dr Pauly has been live blogging today's action over on Tao of Poker.

Just got an email from Snake5970 that his horse Hooked on Hope will finally be making her debut run Sunday in the 3rd at Gulfstream in a Maiden special weights race. Haven't talked to him yet but I'm sure hes going to be flying down to watch her run.

I will be playing an all ladies poker tourney Saturday afternoon. I will probably twitter expletives, chip counts and my bust out. So follow along Saturday afternoon sometime after 1 PM EST. Whats really cool about twitter is a lot of the pros jumped on the bandwagon and twittered updates from Bay101. Annie Duke even was posting updates faster then the WPT update team. Obviously twitter is the next wave of providing action from the tourney floor.

My work computer has been bogging down. Tomorrow I have to head into the office with it and swap it for a new PC. Its an older model and we are all due to be upgraded. When I called the help desk today to mention the noise it was making and that things were freezing he put in a ticket for me and I will get a new one sooner then later.

I've been working 5 days a week plus some overtime. The extra money is nice but I'm tired. Soon summer will be here and I will be back to 4 day weeks. I once again have every Friday off in the months of July and August so far.

Rock of Love Bus - Cat Fight

Found this clip while amusing myself on my bed rest day off. (in reality I'm really sitting in a chair at my computer in my office, as my bedroom is normally a tech- free zone). I missed last nights episode opting instead for Celebrity Apprentice and following in on LJ's progress over on Pokerstars (go congratulate her).

The clip features the remaining members of the blondetourage vs the brunettes in a food throwing, foul mouthed clip. Just another day in the life for rocker Bret Michaels. Really, dude you cant be serious about making any one of these woman step-mother to your girls or your life companion.

I give kudos to Taya (penthouse playmate), or Mindy for holding back and only finger waving. I might have just aimed a few darts in the direction of the silicon laden blonde Ashley or was it Farrah who is equally as silicon laden. And Brittanya, (obviously a stripper name) with the front side tramp stamps is scary looking. Farrah was given the walk of shame off the tour bus, leaving Ashley the only blonde remaining

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Watching these women is like watching a NASCAR race on a super-speedway track and waiting for the big crash to come. You know its going to happen.

Whats Been A Going On

Friday, I had originally scheduled the day off and was planning to head to Turning Stone for the $350 buy-in that is part of the March Madness Series at TROCK. I had plans to catch up with this girl and this guy, but LJ emailed me to tell me they were going to pass on TROCK as there was a family function on Lucko's side of the dynamic duo. Then overtime at work fell into my lap and I cancelled my day off and worked a long Friday and also Saturday morning.

I had cabin fever and live poker jones so I headed out to Shane's new digs Friday night. I hadn't played live since New Year's Eve. Not sure if there were 63 or 72 runners but I made it down to the final three tables busting somewhere between 23-26th or so with 10 paying. I could get nothing go on, I played neither good nor bad. I made the right decisions, stayed out of trouble got away from some hands I knew I was beat on and realized I was really tired too boot. My first table featured me and "Soul-patch" Mike to my immediate right after the donkey sitting between us donked out. I would say we were the two of the three best players at the table, the other being Pops, Shane's dad. The table was weak passive, with lots of limping which doesn't help me. I need the young aggro guys who build the pots and three bet. Shane's game tends to draw an older crowd. I'm bumping up against the half century mark and am on the young side. Some of these players may have played for years but a lot of folks aren't students of the game. I would characterize them as: recreational, out to have a good time, and I have no idea what pot odds are, or how to size my bet, players. The young aggro guys that like to mix it up and know what a three-bet is tend to stay on this side of the river and play Albany.

I bit the bullet and signed up for twitter. Actually more fascinating then a blog. I know that Kat is knitting and reading today and Otis was working and cleaning. Actually Otis has been really busy blogging today over on the PokerStars blog about the NBC heads-up Championship. Kat, did you ever read/finish The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo?

I was reading Shane Schleger's blog and a commenter called Shane a hippie for some time Shane spent in Burlington, VT. Shane commented back that only made him half a hippie. I spent two years in Burlington at UVM, before moving on to CU Boulder. I considered applying to Law/Business School at Cal-Berkeley so I guess that makes me a full on card carrying Hippie. I even broke out the Birkies (with socks) when the weather hit above 38 degrees the other day. Anyway, back to Shane he is one of the bloggers whom i most enjoy reading, just wish he wrote more often.

24 is kicking ass this season. Top Chef finished up with Hosea winning over Stefan and Carla. I watched the first episode of Celebrity apprentice. Annie Duke was dead on but her bossy way is as annoying as hell. Snake who has seen her in action at the tables said, "Now the whole world will get to see what a bitch she is". In my opinion, Joan Rivers, should be able to win this thing. My god, she sells jewelry on HSN or QVC for goodness sakes. I thought Monster Garage's Jesse James (married to Sandra Bullock) and Tom Green represented the men well. Jesse is my pick for the male to go the furthest. Brande Roderick showed shes more then just a playmate. Natalie Gulbis had a blonde moment. I think of her as golf's Anna Kornikova. Dennis Rodman, should have gone before the DiceMan but maybe the fact that Andrew kept calling Mr Trump, "Donny" didnt help his case.

Coventry has kick-ass PHISH reunion coverage thanks to Dr Pauly, Change100 and the Joker. I start my concert season next weekend with the MaxCreek show at Troy Revolution Hall. Pauly's Phish tweets inspired me to get signed up so I can report from the floor of the Times Union Center. I actually have no idea where my seats are for The Dead, as I haven't received them yet, but mail-order was successful.

Layne Flack Busted

According to PokerNews, Layne was busted on his way home from the bracket drawing party for the NBC Heads-Up Championship Thursday night held at Pure nightclub and did not show up for his scheduled first round match. He was charged with driving 21 mph over the speed limit, driving under the influence and failing to yield to an emergency vehicle.

Sometimes good things happening in addicts lives set off the chain reaction for a relapse. You could almost see it play out before our eyes. Layne gives interview about how he's clean and got his act together with the help/intervention of fellow poker players, including Daniel Negreanu who supposedly paid for Layne's rehab. Layne wins bracelet during 2008 WSOP, Layne shows up during the WSOP Horse final table and makes an ass of himself, earning the scorn of Erick Lindgren. This week, Layne shows up acting drunk and stupid in a video PokerlistingsTV captures and Wicked Chops Poker dedicates a post to:

Fun with Flack from PokerListings TV

Message to Layne: Forget about being a prospective suitor on VH1's Megan wants A Millionaire. Instead get in line for Dr Drew Pinsky's Celebrity Rehab.

Layne issued this statement:

"I attended the Draw Party at Pure on (Thursday) night and then met with my brother, who had flown into Vegas for Heads Up. I was under the impression that I was to play in the last bracket the next evening at around 8 pm. I was pulled over for speeding and refused a breathalyzer test as I have been instructed to do. I have no idea why I was written a ticket for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. There were no emergency vehicles around, besides the police car. A test, given by the Las Vegas PD, later revealed that I had a blood alcohol content of zero. I also took a blood test, as I have nothing to hide. I was held for the mandatory 6 hours and released. I always go out of my way to not drink and drive. I regret that I was not able to play in NBC Heads Up and hope to be invited next year to play in this prestigious event.”

To steal part of a line from one of my favorite movies, Animal House:

Drunk and Stupid is no way to go thru life, Son!!!!

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!!

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.

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.

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.