This and That

"Sean Shiekhan's an idiot, and he'll probably lose all his money." Todd Brunson, High Stakes Poker

First, a nice start to the contest. For those of you who didn't catch this yesterday, I'm giving away a free Junior's Cheesecake (delivery included). Junior's in Brooklyn is one of the best cheesecakes in all of America. I know there's no free lunch, but maybe a free dessert (or a free gift for your significant other...). To be elibigle, just leave a comment on any post. We'll run this from 8-13 February, and I'll use my trusty random number generator to select from all those who leave a post. I'll post the winner on 14 February, and if it works well we'll have regular contests like this. Make sure you either have a valid blogspot ID (so I can email you); otherwise, I'll just have to post the winner with some sort of get back to me date.

I do like the High Stakes Poker action on GSN for a couple of reasons. First, when Sammy Farha is rolling it is something to marvel at. The running it twice (dealing the cards to come twice, thereby doubling the bet) is very interesting to see, although Negreneau may not agree after losing twice to Eli Elizra. It is also somewhat rewarding to see that these guys misread their opponent's strength, but they decide and commit better than we do. A major lesson is how quickly they will get out of a hand when a rock has a hand (see Jerry Buss for more details). It is really more about there is no reason to play a pot with this guy unless I have the nuts, which also shows the importance of mixing your play a bit if you are a rock. And here's to hoping that the Shiek gets beaten to a pulp by Todd and his dad.

My wife's birthday was yesterday, and I was reminded of her obsession with various other men through our marriage. I must confess I was a bit startled once to find a shrine to Tom Cruise in our laundry room (MI:2 popcorn bag taped to the inside of a cabinet door, along with various glossy tear sheets). We were watching American Idol last night, and a guy at the end gives Paula these dreamy eyes. Well, my wife visibly turns away from this guy and pleas with me to fast forward, just as Paula gets all weak in the knees back at him. After pausing the still of this guy and watching my wife, maybe I do have some problems. This was before having to go in the basement to watch Bones with Angel on it, which I think is her #1 boy toy.

I searched for joemeli yesterday to find him sitting at a $2/4 table which just happened to have an open seat two seats to his right. Eight hands later (after I re-raised my nut flush draw on the flop then caught it on the turn), and he was gone. Ended up $10 after some guy caught three one-card straights in a row on me. I'll never play him again, that's for sure.

In the spirit of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (which is another of my wife's finalists), here is a path from a blog linked to mine. Where will the journey take us?

1. Will Wonka, who is always great.
2. DoubleAS, I read sometimes when I go to Will's blog, and it is widely regarded as one of the best poker blogs.
3. TripJax, again another great poker blog. I like it because of the picture of Benicio Del Toro, who was in one of my all-time favorite movies, The Usual Suspects. Entertainment Weekly, one of the best magazines there is, has a great article about the making of The Usual Suspects.
4. The Obituarium is again one of the great poker blogs (I'm not in the inner circle and found it when he guest blogged for Pauly). I haven't read this yet, but he seems to have a horrible, long post about his wife leaving him on 21 January.
5. SheVerb I've never been to until this. Seems very interesting, some poker, some weird obscure topics.
6. Fussy, OK this is a part of blogdom that I don't travel to for sure. Other folks must, since there are 20-50 comments each time she posts. Today it's about her dog being bitten at doggy day care, which is an incredible testimony of America today (we take our Gordon Setter to these boarding spas, so I'm part of it).

My brother the economist Ph.D. candidate is launching a 100 SNG experiment, playing $5 buy-in's. He had a 27% ROI using Poker Acedemy, and I have half of his juice, so we'll see how it goes. Two incredible stories that I found from other folks (they're probably old news, but I post them here anyways). The first is the absolute worst bad beat story possible I would guess. The second is about Chris Ferguson turning $1 into $20k on FullTilt, the story focused on bankroll management. I haven't listened to the audio, just read Luke's recap. Thanks Luke for this.