Cowboys and Bullets Blues

I've been having a really tough week. I've busted out of 5 different tournaments holding either AA or KK. The first time I admit to having played the hand wrong when I limped my red rockets UTG expecting a raise, only to have 5 other limpers follow me in, and an all spade flop. I've put a lot of thought into the other 4 hands, and they were all just bad luck, but that is still hard to take in such a short period of time.

The images at right are from an online tournament I played in on Friday afternoon. A little over 4 hours of work to bust out in 12th of 550 for a paltry $140. The insanely lucky ronny52 managed to take my chips on to 3rd place for nearly $1500. I like to think I'd have taken them the whole way, but don't we all.

I had a conversation with flipchip while watching the early stages of the headsup match between Andy Bloch and Chip Reese about the fiasco of a tournament that Sam's Town held last month. After getting complaints from nearly everyone in the tournament, including the winners, they sent out letters to the 30 players that were in the tournament offering them a free buy-in in any of the regular daily tournaments. That's only $45, but it's $45 they didn't have to offer at all, so I went by this weekend to see why I haven't gotten a letter yet. Supposedly it's in the mail.

Since I was there, I hopped into the 7pm, and later, the 11pm tournaments. AA cracked by KK. KK cracked by TT. Unbelievable. But I did make it far enough to decide that I hate the new buyin and blind structure. It's positively stupid. I think I'll be spending my weekend nights down at Binion's for awhile.

But right now, it's time for a break from poker. More, perhaps, later.

-Tommy

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Titles Are Hard

"We got a eight foot tall blogger? Are you fucking kidding me? Hi, I'm PokerGrub... I just puked in this trash can man." -Iggy

I missed the blogger tournament (I was up all night celebrating my birthday and think I went to bed right around the time it started), but I finally caught up with the bloggers on Saturday night. Like everyone else, I can't remember all the names, so I'm just gonna list a few memorable moments.

- Drinking heavily whilst playing a rousing bout of "Spot the Hooker" with Eva, Iggy, Spaceman, Bobby Bracelet, and Iakaris, and at least 20 others who came and left. I don't think we actually saw that many hookers, but calling them all hookers is just as fun.

- Dinner in Sherwood Forest with most of the same, with the addition of Marty (Iggy's Bodyguard?) and Derek. The waiter sucked, the food sucked, and the 2 hour wait for the food sucked, but the company was good.

- Getting my ass kicked by YoSoyVeneno when I challenged her to a match after hearing that she'd won the RoShamBo tournament earlier in the day. I'm still on RPS tilt after losing to the triple rock. She claimed she didn't want to play for anything higher than $10, to ensure she'd still have cab money. I was totally setup.

- The 6 hour marathon of Pai Gow, constantly taking action on each other's fortune bonuses with Otis, Maigrey (who was actually playing all 4 hands for us, and shall hereafter be the PaiGow Princess to me, since I ended up $175 with her help), Chilly, and some crazy looking filipino dude with a bloodshot left eye named Artoo. I think he stabbed someone in the parking lot when he left the table for about 45 minutes, but he was still cool, and totally into what we were about. SHIP IT!

...

Sunday I went to see the taping at Poker Dome. Never again. Speed poker it may have been, but there was a 15 minute break after every hand where we were subjected to the long rambling speeches of a madman and his candy. Most of the people playing were not really that good, and the player that won did so mainly because he was a card rack like never before seen.

After the show I headed over to the MGM to meet my Mom, but she had just left for dinner with her new husband, so I decided it was a good time to finally go check out the new poker room. When I got there, they needed one more player to get a $60 SNG started, so I jumped in. The structure was awful, with $1k starting chips, 25/50 blinds to start, doubling for each 12 minute level. I bubbled in 3rd. 1st place paid $300 and 2nd $200. I haven't decided yet how I feel about the whole experience, and I think I could have played better (I was drinking, which I usually don't do when I play) so I'll probably try it again sometime.

Actually, that last sentence pretty much sums up my feelings about the blogger gathering as a whole.

-Tommy

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7/7 = Super Birthday Luck Powers(tm)

It's my birthday, and my Super Birthday Luck Powers(tm) are in full effect. I've cracked pocket aces twice already this morning, once with a well timed 8To bluff. When you're born on the 7th hour of the 7th day of the 7th month, you're gonna grow up to be a gambler. I can't imagine what a powerhouse of luck I would have turned out to be if I had been born next year instead.

I headed up to the Bellagio a little after eleven last night to see if any of the blogger crew that are in town were about, but didn't recognize anyone. I didn't actually expect to, but figured it wouldn't hurt to stop by on my way to the Rio to see the Hellmuth heads up match in progress.

I ran into Pauly in the hallway on the way in to the Rio, but he didn't have time to talk, being on his way to piss and needing to get back to covering the game before it was over. It was because of his coverage that I was even there, but since his posting had slowed down in the evening, I joked with him that it was his lack of coverage that brought me there. "That's because nothings fucking happening in there man.", he replied. I lost track of him after that.

I don't care if Phill Hellmuth is a whiny "brat" or not, I really wanted to see him win, the way that I always want to see skill win out over luck (yes, despite my Super Birthday Luck Powers(tm)). Knowing that there are people like him is the sort of thing that helps me keep my head together everytime that some total idiot makes an awful bet or call and sucks out on me on the river. I need to see the pro beat the guy playing in his first live tournament ever. Sadly, I didn't get to see it last night. Maybe Chan will pull it off for me tonight in the stud tourney.

As soon as I finish this post, I'm headed down to the MGM, but not for the reasons most would expect. The poker bloggers are all meeting down there tonight, but through sheer coincidence, it is also the place where I put my mother up for the weekend, being the closest strip hotel to my apartment. I arranged the trip here to vegas for her a few months ago, when she told me she was getting married, which happened yesterday. I haven't met the guy yet, but she seems very happy, so I suppose I'll be nice to him. I'll probably stop by the poker room to see if anyone is around, but one of the side effects of spending the majority of my life as a drifter is that I've only seen my mom 5 times in the last 10 years, so the chance to spend time with her wins over a bunch of people I don't know very well is a no brainer.

I don't know if I'l make it to the big blogger tourney at ten oclock in the eaarly fucking morning tomorrow (I'll likely be getting done drinking just an hour or two before that), but I am gonna try. If only because there is bound to be a lot of dead money on the tables from people with little to no live experience.

If not, maybe I'll finally run into someone at the Poker Dome show. Strangely, my second passion after poker is domes. There is one (obviously not erected) on the floor under my desk as I type. Seriously.

That's all for now, and if I hadn't mentioned it already, it's my birthday.

-Tommy

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Around Here, We Call That a Weekend

new bartender: "You guys out on some kind of a bender?"
roommate: "What's a bender?"
new bartender: "When you drink heavily for a few days straight."
roommate: "Oh, around here we call that a 'weekend'"

My name is Tommy and I'm an alcoholic, albeit a highly functioning one. I don't have much time today, but I need to write this fast and lengthy post from work just to get some of it out before I lose it, or as usually happens, lose interest in posting it.

I blame Full Tilt and their cushy room with free beer for starting this weekend off all wrong (exactly right). It was in that room that I demanded the gentlemen that looked exactly like my roommate "Hold my fucking beer for a minute, fucker."

Of course, he only looked exactly like my roommate when I wasn't looking at him. When I turned my head in his direction, he actually looked exactly like someone who was not my roomate. As it was, he took it well, and handed both me and my roomate $50 gift certificates for Titan Poker.

That may have been a mistake.

On the back of these cards was one of those scratch off area hiding the bonus code that grants the owner a free $50 when creating an account for Titan Poker. Later, at another bar, we scratched off these areas to reveal that they had the exact same code, and out of curiosity, we gave the code away to half a dozen friends, all of which have recieved the $50 with no problems. This isn't some kind of first deposit bonus, or anything like that, it's just $50. When I created the account, I tried to withdraw the cash immediately, but got an email the next day saying I need to accumulate 2500 points first, so I plan to do that later to get my free money.

The code is "44F2F". I don't know if there is anyway to use it if you've already got an account. As a matter of full disclosure, I stand to gain absolutely nothing from use of this code. You're welcome, pass it on.

The next morning, I was a bit groggy when I got up a little after noon, and decided that I wanted to play an MTT on party, but given my mental condition opted to throw my money away on a small stakes game, and bought into the first $6 tourney I saw. Three hands into it I caught pocket Queens UTG and went for a standard 3BB raise when I suddenly realized I'd fucked up and bought into a limit tournament. Pissed off, I decided to go ahead and play it somewhat seriously since I'd already paid the price of admission, and somehow donked my way into 3rd place for a win of $427.

I'm not sure why, but it seems that whenever I play in limit tourneys, I do well. I think it's because the type of people who play in low stakes limit tourneys are really, really bad players. About two weeks ago I had made the same mistake and cashed somewhere in the 30s.

Later that night, out drinking again with friends, they all started bothering me to tell them what the numbers from "Lost" were so they could put them in the Keno machine again. I refused on the grounds that the last time I hit big and then got fucking arrested the next day, and ended up losing half my bankroll the following week.

Instead, we each (five of us) picked a different number, and made a side prop bet that if we hit all but one, the missing number had to walk home. Sure enough about 2 hours and $60 (playing 50 cents a pull) later we hit it, and mine was the missing number. My keys were promptly confiscated, which was irritating, though I was unconcerned having walked home from the bar we were in on several other occasions.

I quickly made another proposition, "If we hit 5 of 5 before the remaining money runs out, then I get my keys back.", and immediately snatched my keys when we hit 5 of 5 on the very last pull of the night, which scored us a little over $400. We had all gone to this particular bar to support a friend in need of rent money who was tending for the night and only took what we'd put in originally and left the rest as a tip.

On and off over the weekend, I have been following Otis' coverage on the Official Poker Stars Blog rather closely. I highly recommend it, even if it a bit (naturally) biased. He had me totally rooting for Joe Hachem over Dutch Boyd last night, and crushed when it didn't pan out for him. Then I came to my senses and realized that I didn't care if either guy won, as long as it didn't go to another Tiffany Williamson.

If anybody has a Full Tilt bag with the number 4648 on it, please get in touch with me so we can meet up and get us some free iPods. If anybody knows of an online registry for matching these numbers up, please let me know.

Update: The number is actually 4684, and I found this thread on twoplustwo. Guess I'll have finally to give up my lurker status.

I really need to figure out how I'm going to scrape up the $2500 to enter event #13 this friday. There is something about playing in the unlucky numbered event that begins on 7/7 that appeals to me. That, and it's my birthday... and if I need any other reasons, my mom is coming to town on her honeymoon, so an extra excuse to not have to accompany her and her new husband on touristy type tours couldn't hurt.

-Tommy

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