Hella Hold'em

Merry Christmas, and a hella Happy New Year to all! :)

This made me giggle this morning. I love posts like these, full of the random and often goofy-ass shit you hear only in Vegas...

Go visit Grubbette

I'm playing in the Full Tilt Bad Beat on Cancer tourney, but I fear I am not long for this world. With the arctic chilly cards I've had, I probably should have been out long ago. I'm 7 places out of the money right now (9 pay out of 98 entrants, I think it was). Booo.

Or not. April (CA) just popped into the chat, suddenly I had back to back AA and JJ - and doubled through both times! I'm 9/11 right now and 9 spots pay. Of course, this being a cheap charity event, pay is small, but considering how long it has been since I've actually played poker - I'll take whatever I can get!

At one point, there was this player I'd tagged as typical donkey style. (My literal first comment on him was, "Hee haw"). After a little while, I'd tagged his preferences, and threw a little salt into a wound when I bet him out of a pot in which I'd flopped a set. He then asked me if his 9 for 2nd pair was good. I replied, "9 was good." He said, "Damn you must be taking notes on me!" Ha! No... I just want you to call me down more! He got knocked out a few hands later, and I thought to myself, "Man, that sucks! Just when I figured him out and set out some bait!"

Isn't that how it should go, though? The donkeys shouldn't really be around long enough that you can play fancy against them, unless they're on a lucky streak. Sometimes I need to remind myself not to waste time getting fancy against the donkeys. Pound on donkeys with ABC and save the trickery for someone smart enough to be tricked.

One more person out and I'm in the money. Fingers are crossed. My cards are nasty ugly. But the new FTP interface is nice. I'm playing the Racetrack style with avatars. I had to re-download the client and re-install it, since for some reason it didn't want to do its usually in-place upgrade via the software update since I upgraded to Windows Vista. The new install, though, worked fine. I played next to Andy Bloch for a good portion of the evening. He's very polite, and generally quiet. Unlike when people like Phil Gordon play, there weren't a zillion teeny-bopper fanboyz badgering Mr. Bloch, which made the chat nice and tolerable.

Final table - nice! $2 profit so far :)

I miss playing poker in the casino. I miss it a lot. Sometime in 2007, if I'm not mistaken, the major construction on I-80 will be complete and I will once again be able to make it to the Indiana casinos in 45 minutes or so. As it stands, I'm lucky to do it under an hour 15, and I just don't have enough free time to make that trek each way. I miss Empress Joliet. A 15 minute drive is so much easier. I shouldn't complain; some people don't even have a casino within driving distance.

The only success I tend to have online is in NLHE SnG's and tourneys - but I don't like them so much, aside from the occasional game. My favorite game is limit hold'em, and I don't have the same success rate in that game online as I do F2F. I sure do miss the poker room.

Well, I went out in 8th place. Pushed with the nut flush draw (and as it stood, 2 live over cards). If I wasn't so sleepy, I might have tried a bit harder, but I was the shorty anyhow and at some point you must either play to win or go home :)

With that, I'm off to bed...

Apparently it's OK to trash people and talk about their personal problems on your blog, as long as you don't use names. This is the first and last time I'll ever read Michael Craig's blog, and you can bet his book is going right in the fireplace.

I can't even summarize in a decent or respectful way. This post is just sick.

Somewhere, It's Hammer Time - Part II by Michael Craig

Of course, parts 3 and later show bloggers in a very obviously over-compensated bright light.

The bloggers mentioned are referred to as Craig's "new friends," but where I come from, a friend wouldn't expose your worst moments to the world just to have something to write about.

I'm even more disturbed that PokerWorks.com approves of this sort of opportunistic bashing.

Kudos to SLB for being the first to comment on Craig's piece.

UPDATE:

Falstaff commented on Mr. Craig's post page that the things said in that post are no worse than things Mr. Craig has said about his other friends such as Mike Matusow. I find it noble that Falstaff would publicly post in defense of his blogging site-mate, but I beg to differ.

Just because it's "no worse" doesn't make it right. The "concern" expressed here is so thickly veiled that I'm inclined to find it more likely that Mr. Craig falls into the category of those with "no conscience" that would find this "funny." (Mr. Craig's words - not mine).

I wasn't at the blogger gathering this time around, but can piece together the faces behind the missing names based on tidbits from other trip reports. Does our "sobbing, hyperventilating" friend want the whole poker blogging community to know of her addiction problems? Maybe, but that's not Michael Craig's judgment to make. I wasn't there, and now I know. At least the detrimental effects of someone's behavior are limited to those who witnessed the event. Thanks to Mr. Craig and the almighty and constantly archived internet, many more people now know and will be able to research the fact for years to come.

That's the thing that irritates me the most about irresponsible posts such as this one. I'm not saying Mr. Craig is the only blogger to write such posts - but he's one of the highest profile bloggers to do so. As a professional writer, I would expect Mr. Craig to have the skills to focus his creative talents on things other than bashing people for fun and profit, and the common sense to be a little more sensitive to the implications of posting private details about peoples' lives on the internet.

I stick to my original notion that friends don't say things like that about friends. Obviously, the definition of "friendship" varies from state to state and blogger to blogger.

(Waffles, however, said it much better than I ever could).

In honor of Al and the stories of degenerate gambling and debauchery that are about to occur (and that I will miss) in Sin City, I listened to my entire catalog of Anthrax tunes last night.

Dude I miss Judge Dredd.

Good luck in Vegas, you lucky bastards.

I'll be reading :)