Friday, September 30, 2005

Does this Plug-in Work?!?!

So does this plug-in for Word work or not? I have had some questionable results thus far so I just don’t really know?!?!

I also had to turn on the word type verification for the comments. As it turns out, I have received numerous posts that are just ads to totally unrelated stuff. What a pain in the ass! Oh well, ya just gotta do what ya gotta do!

Out the window

It seems as if this beautiful day has been taunting me through the window. Maybe when I get home I’ll round up all the critters and get them all outside. Throw some tennis balls for the dobie and rottie, let the girls lay about on the deck, get the pig out too by scattering some pig food around. Then just kick back with a glass of merlot and start reading Harrington on Holdem Volume I.

On second thought, maybe I’ll start with Volume II. I’ve been making it to the final table consistently and find myself on a short table. As people drop off, it really does change the dynamic of the game and I have yet to go heads up, and I know that is much different than anything I have done thus far…

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Getting back into this...

Well, let’s get back to this now, shall we? Way back when I had mentioned that I had an eye exam that had some pretty disturbing results. Well, after going to the specialist, it looks as though I have nothing to worry about. The problems were very minute, especially when you consider I’ve been Type I diabetic for 20+ years!!

Let’s see, what else has happened? Good old Norm (my dad) had a bad stress test and had to go in for an angiogram. There was an 85% chance that there was blockage that would need to be dealt with in one way or another. As it turns out, he had minimal blockage and was sent home in the afternoon.

The only other new thing is this, I have discovered on-line poker, and not only do I enjoy it, I’m also doing pretty well at it!! It started out innocently enough; I enrolled in a Katrina Benefit at PokerStars. A few days before I read up on the game so I could learn the rules and a bit of strategy so I could make it at least a bit entertaining for the real poker players.

Well during that week, I played a few ring games on-line and for the most part got my ass handed back to me. The amount I made in one game did not make up for what I lost in the other two. I suppose I should mention I made a $50 deposit, signed up for a $5 and $20 Katrina tourney (PokerStars matched 100% of all buy-in, raised over US$110 Thousand with the match). So with my remaining $25, by the time of the tourney, I had just over $20 left.

Well, at the $5 tourney, I did not do so well, 1818 of 2212. As it turns out, tourneys are a bit different than cash games, but I fell in love with the tourney structure. After that I had 24 hours before the next one, so I did a bit of studying, and by the next night and the $20 tourney, I placed 69 of 738.

Well, after finding a structure that I liked, having done pretty damn well with only a week of experience and still have $20 left, I continued onwards. It turns out, there is a type of min-tourney structure called a Sit and Go (SnG). Basically, you sign up for it, and as soon as the minimum numbers of people have signed up, it goes (usually takes 3-6 minutes).

Naturally, I’ve been playing in the shallow end of $1.00+ $0.20 ($1.00 into the pot and 20 cents for the site as and administrative/hosting fee), but of my 6 tourneys, I’ve ended up in the money 3 times. So that ended up putting me positive (not including the $25 for the Katrina donations).

During that time, I found out that one of the message boards on the site I love for my investing advice, just also happens to have a board for poker players!! So I singed up for a $10+$1 SnG and actually placed 7th of 22!! Now this was not in the money, but many of the players here are pro/pro-am! By that I mean that some of these peoples bankrool (the amount they play with) is approximately my annual salary! Some of them post about bad hands they had in their $30/$60 games and lost a $700+ pot…before going on to the next hand!!
Pretty scary, this could be transforming into yet another poker blog!!!