NFL Week #6

Season record thru week 5:

IG 48-26
Snake 46-28

I won two of the three games we picked differently and moved back to a two game advantage. All picks are Straight up (SU) vs ATS (against the spread) in my three season long contests. This week Snake and I picked 4 games differently and they are all early games. I can sweat the games and then go play live poker.

California Rob's league looks like this:

JD 53 21 (has had two weekly wins this year)
JUNX 50 24
SOOZ 50 24
DOUBLED 48 26
GREER 48 26
IRONGRL 48 26 (yours truly... can hang with the boys on the field as well as the felt)
SAL 48 26
SBCCVAQ 48 26

followed by the rest of the league: DOM 47 27 JACK 47 27 TY 47 27 POPS 46 28 VELIO 46 28 RUMBLER 45 29 BIGD 44 30 51 43 31 JMW 43 31 RT 43 31 (California Rob & league commish himself) STEVEM 43 31 ZILLI 43 31 RJW 42 32 SCHOTTS 42 32 WILL 42 32 PMILLER 41 33 RAK 41 33 CU 40 34 LJF 40 34 V 40 34 MAYBE 38 36


I'm in a multi way tie for 14th place in the Tao of Poker league 5 games out of first place with 48 points. there is 1 at 53, 1 at 52, 1 at 51, 4 at 50 pts, and 6 at 49, 7 at 48 (includes me) there are about 82 of us who have picked all 5 weeks left.

My picks for this week:

WAS> CHI> HOU> BAL> MIN> NO> NYJ> TB> DEN> DAL> PHI> GB> SD> >
Monday game> > NYG > > POINTS - 45>

It's really really nice to be able to watch your alma mater play on national TV 5 of the first 6 weeks of their season. It is not nice to watch them lose three weeks in a row. CU lost to Kansas in a game that got away from them totally in the second half. Cody Hawkins was pulled by his coach who happens to be his father to give the backup QB Matt Ballenger some experience for the second week in a row. What i saw left me scared for the future. Where is Kordell (Stewart) or Koy (Detmar)? I flipped the channel in despair to watch the much better game of Texas vs Oklahoma.

Congrats to Texas (who beat up on CU last week) for beating Number #1 Oklahoma. I know all to well the anguish that was on the faces of the Sooner fans as they left the stadium late in the 4th quarter. I remember all to well the sea of Sooner Red and sea of Cornhusker Red in my stadium during my college years.

Although my hammies were sore today when i woke up, I took to them with a quick roll of my massage stick and I hoofed it out the door for another 15 minutes of slogging (I cant call it jogging just yet). My baby loop is 1.3 miles just about and I beat it down the line at about 11:30 mile pace. Short of stopping to double knot my shoe I have not had to mix jogging with walking. Tomorrow I will take the day off and be back at it Wednesday AM. I came back inside to watch an ESPN story on a San Diego triathlete who was killed in the first fatality in 50 years from a great white shark attack. Of course I had tears welling from my eyes. Read the compelling story here.


Yours truly the real Ocho Cinco (eat your heart out Chad Johnson!!!) at the West Point triathlon circa August 2002 or 2003. My arms and legs are both toned and although not as thin as when i was solely a runner I was in awesome shape. My goal is to achieve that body composition once again.

Big thank you and props to Waffles

I know a lot of folks were recently burned by lending money to other bloggers (or one in particular). That didn't even dawn on me when I asked to trade Pokerstars for Full Tilt. Waffles was the first and only blogger to respond to my plea. We exchanged a few comments and when I got home from Starbucks Thursday night the money was in my Stars account without me having shipped to him on Full Tilt. We didn't even have a girly chat going. I promptly shipped him what i had on full tilt ($13 less due to a Mookie buy-in) and the balance back on Stars.

Normally Snake5970 is who I do business with but he hadn't played on Full Tilt in months ( WSOP Main Event multi-seat giveaway was it) and has no desire to do so at least for the present time so a plea to someone who plays mostly on Full Tilt was going to be my best shot.

So thank you Waffles for not only helping me out but for posting those nice remarks on your blog about my trustworthiness. I know there are a few others out there who can vouch for me but they aren't part of the normal blogger crew who plays on Full Tilt.

So my FTP balance is now at Zero. It is easy to get money on to the site but difficult as all hell to get it off. I mean you have to fax in ID and do a bunch of other calisthenics and for what I had on there it wasn't worth it . I have plenty of money on Bodog (horse racing winnings) and plenty of $T on Bodog to last me till next year for poker buy-ins but had decided I wasn't going to redeposit onto any site. Plus you cant do player to player transfers on Bodog. I prefer playing on Pokerstars vs Full Tilt for numerous reasons. Plus its easier to withdraw. I mean they send you a check without you having to provide proof of who you are and its to you in a few days and they never bounce.

As for the IG vs Snake Pigskin Challenge I maintained my two game advantage thru week II. We picked 5 games differently and split on 4 of them. The other game was the rescheduled Baltimore vs Houston game. So I maintained my week I lead.

Current standings: IG 20-11
Snake 18-13

(BTW I can hang with the experts over at Bristol University and then some. I think they need some girl power in their expert analysis).

I keep getting these delusional emails from Snake that I better start bowing to the king because all my homework is/will be for naught. He also wanted to know how much I paid Ed Hochuli for that blown call in the Broncos-Bolts game as I had picked the Broncos. I mean really he must be joking right???!!!! He knows I take my football as seriously as I take poker (at least the live version) and this is going to be 17 weeks of tough competition.

And how about them CU Buffs!!!! I will admit it was a little hokey listening to John Denver's Rocky Mt High whenever they featured CU and Country Roads when they featured West Virginia. But there can't be a more beautiful setting for a college football game. I'm just jealous we never had Thursday night games broadcast on ESPN when I was attending CU. Of course ESPN much like MTV was in its infancy when I was attending school. Besides my Buffs were horrible circa 1980-1982 and would never have been featured on a national prime time broadcast. I mean Jim McMahon was attending BYU at the time and passed for a gazillion yards each time he had the ball when BYU played CU back in 1981. How horrible were we: 1980-1981 record was 1-10, 1981-1982 record was 3-8, 1982-1983 record was 2-8-1 (a tie is a win right?).

**IG graduated CU in May 1983 earning two degrees (Business & Psychology which serve me at the poker tables today) . I attended Boulder for three years, my first two years were at the University of Vermont.

I''ll have my week III picks up tomorrow.

Meet Ralphie V (aka Blackout)

She's a beauty but at only about 500 lbs she hasn't reached top weight which can be up to 1300 lbs for a female bison. Ralphie IV is still alive and well but is semi-retired.

Here is V at her Spring Debut. She slipped her harness and all but one of her handlers

For the histoy of Ralphie's I thru V click here.

Football Musings

So it looks like the Patriots have lost Tom Brady for the season. I'm not sure if California Rob loves the Pats (and Red Sox for that matter) more then Phish. It may be too close to call there but my condolences to him if so. I read an interesting tidbit in USA today I believe, that for the first time in a long time Brady was not listed on any injury report leading up to Sunday's game, meaning he would start. Maybe that was a curse. I know he didn't take a snap at all in preseason. Maybe he was a bit rusty.

How about Brett Favre? I mean I have to get excited about a 40- something scrambling around on a football field (I mean he is hot in that Wrangler's commercial!!!). And being a NYer I do root for the Jets and Giants (and have been to quite a few Jets games).

As for my football results, I'm in the hunt for the weekly win for California Rob's pool. I need Minnesota to win and then it will go to the Monday nite game points tiebreaker. One dude is 11-3 right now. I'm tied for second in a three way tie. We all picked Denver to win. I am the only one who picked Vikes over Green Bay. I'm also in a multi-way tie (before tonights games) for 2nd in Dr Pauly's Tao of Poker ESPN pick-em league. VinNay is in a tie for first. My guess is he picked the Bills (being a western NYer) and that was a big win for the Bills over Seattle. Seattle does not look like a super-bowl contender after that loss. As for the Snake5970 vs IG steel-cage heads-up challenge I currently have a one game lead. If Denver wins make it two. We have decided that the winner takes the other to dinner at Carrabba's at season's end. Just another game in our mixed game rotation. I missed out on Miami Don's survivor league and I'm playing no pure fantasy football leagues with drafts etc.

My Colorado Buffs won over the Eastern Washington University Eagles, who I dont think we ever played before. I just checked and I'm correct we had never played EWU. Next week things get a bit dicier as we play West Virginia (another 1st time game) currently ranked in the top 25 (24th or 25th depending on the poll). I'm excited about this because it will be a Thursday nite game broadcast on ESPN on September 18th.

I did not see any of the VMA's. From what I have heard on various message boards Russell Brand, the Brit host (a former junkie well lets just make him an addict ) was unfunny. Of course Brit humor is an acquired taste so I dont know if this is true or not. The new issue of Rolling Stone has an article on Brand titled Stand-Up's New Bad Boy.

I do not watch the Hill's I caught a clip where Spencer called Heidi (yes I know who they are thanks to their frequent appearances in EW and other weekly magazines) down to his car while she was working to address an issue. First of all, I would never have left my job on company time to hold court with a boyfriend. Okay, I forget that this is" reality TV". The issue was that Heidi's older sis is crashing with them and she erased three shows of his that he had TIVO'd. Oh, the horror. So, I found him completely annoying and the male version of a dumb blonde. Another annoyance for regular Hill's viewers was that MTV had all these banners up for the VMA's during the Hills and it covered up half the Hills dialogue and stuff that was being posted at the bottom of the screen.

Yesterday was the clamsteam poker tourney. When I sat down I decided to adjust any expectations for the day. I felt like I was playing a senior citizen's version of no limit holdem. I decided to just have fun and just roll with it by not taking the game seriously. Snake5970 was having issues of his own at his table. The dealers, folded themselves out of turn at his table, and didnt act as table captains. Snake even said to me, about one person at his table who I had taken several huge pots off of the Friday nite before and given him my dead on assessment of... 'That woman you told me about, is a miserable bitch." I reminded him that she was just as miserable the one other time we all were seated together at the former APL location. There are some good solid players amongst the older then me set ( Action Hank and Marilyn) but they were outnumbered by the weak tight, no foldem holdem, chasers (who shall be unnamed).

We started with 6k in chips, 20 minute blinds (vs the usual 10k chips Shane's tourney's usually start with) since we had to be out of there by 8PM and had about an hour break for our dinners. I figured if I bust out early I can go suck down more raw clams. I could get nothing going. When a new player got moved to our table and raised, I shoved all in with AKc since I only had about 4k left and I'll shove when calling a raise amounts to 25% of my stack. Into KK I ran and i was down to scraps. From a low of 375 chips I quaded up on the next hand with AJ, and got back to 4k+ after three allins in a row with AJ, AQ, 88. With the blinds at 300/600 and me in the BB an early position player raised to $1600. Again that was more then 25% of my stack so I shoved again with AQ ran into QQ and to the rail I went. I mean I'm not going to waste my time and wait for a hand or blind a way to nothing. My motto is chip up or go home!!. As Chad and I said there is no difference in going out first, 15th or on the bubble. I'm playing to put myself in position to win. So this was my first none final table in my last 5 outings. Got it out of my system and Ill be ready to roll again come this weekend.

A lovely day off for IG. I went over to Border's and browsed thru the magazine racks. Spending time in a book store has to be one of my most favorite ways to spend an afternoon off. I sat down latte in hand and combed thru ESPN the magazine and Rolling Stone. I had a desire to read MAD magazine which I loved as a kid but couldn't find at my smallish Border's. I made a list of some books I want to read, one being The Road by Cormac McCarthy which Dr Pauly himself just read. I also checked out Eat Love Pray which LJ just read.

On Saturday at Target, for $19.99 I picked up the first season of a show I loved: Millennium. Does anyone remember that show starring Lance Henriksen? It was by Chris Carter of X-files fame. It appears that a millennium movie may be in the making. I also just found out that next month all three seasons will be released in a box set.

Soon it will be time to order a pizza and wings and settle in for some Monday Night Football. Does life get any better?. I suppose if I had a flat panel Big screen TV with a Bose sound system to watch it on it would be. Add in a profitable night of poker and chocolate cake and it would be enough to curl my toes!!!!