Weekend Recap

What does it mean when you can't pull the trigger after a continuation bet when you aren't playing with money, you can get more chips if you need to, and you aren't playing for anything? It means you (I) are (am) a big wuss. Four players yesterday after Easter lunch: Sweetie, marshman or Marshall-Will-and-Holly (brother-in-law, BadBlood's nickname), the Big Guy (our ten-year old son), and myself. The horrible, horrendous check/check turn and river by me sees marshman's A5 take my raised pot with nothing. It's hard for the Big Guy to play his best when he keeps running to the computer to help All-In with Empire Earth, so he was pretty much a non-factor (that and being card dead). Best pot of the afternoon was when Sweetie bet a scary three-club flop which marshman and I called (something like ATx), Jd on the turn, then Qs on the river. She bets, marshman raises and she goes all-in, which elicits an insta call from Kc. She them beautifully slowrolls Qc3c for the flopped flush. I almost cried. I made one nice all-in after she had bet a rag board and marshman called, she called and marshman laid down an overpair to my TPTK that ended up two-pair on the river. He wanted me to write about the end of the game when I screamed, "I'm going to blog about that!, but frankly I don't remember any of it except that I had to put all of his chips up and I didn't have any.

I wateched a WPT tourney from last year with Phil Ivey, Negreanu (who wins), David Williams, and Josh Arieh. Arieh made what had to be the absolute worst play in the history of poker when the river gives the board a straight to a 6, Negreanu bets his 6, then Arieh comes over the top for another 1/6th of the pot or something. Negreanu says, "That would be pretty sick if you had 86. OK, I call," in this really strange, almost parental tone. Just brutal (I'm pretty sure it was WPT Borgata 2005).

Sunday's NY Times had an article about the state of poker. Some interesting facts (WPT losing 36% of its audience, total buy-in's up significantly last year). Phil Gordon, late of Celebrity Poker Showdown, says he makes more now from speaking engagements and events than from poker. There is definitely a glut of television programming, and WPTE (stock for World Poker Tour) is a fiasco, but as many of you I think we have life still left in this bird.

I'm working on a new series which I hope to have started this week. It is one that is particularly near and dear to me and should be very interesting. More later.

No poker play this weekend. What does that mean? Is that bad? I dunno. This was a weekend for family, and that's what I did. My father-in-law, Marshman, the Big Guy, and I went to see Georgia Tech pound Clemson in baseball Saturday (they then won 22-4 yesterday without us!). We need to do that more as college sports are so accessible. The Big Guy had a great time just hanging. ADDENDUM: The game stops in like the 3rd inning with Tech in the field. I'm looking around and suddenly realize that the Tech 2nd basemen is throwing up about three yards into the outfield behind his position. He does this for probably three minutes, no one going to check on him or anything. Then he's gagging the rest of the inning, stays in, no problem. When we got back, Marshman played soccer in the back yard with us (adding All-In), then I backed off when our guys played the Cambridge hooligans (the neighborhood behind our house). We prevailed 6-5 with the Big Guy holding his own against the twelve year olds, Marshman playing solidly (he's a solid player, now 27 or so), and All-In once again standing on his head in goal. The Little Guy assisted by chasing a ball near the Cambridge goal, as well as Angel (our Gordon Setter) and Abby (Marshman's Border Collie) disrupting things. The Cambridge hooligans actually didn't have much of a chance.

Then Easter service yesterday, with Sweetie and I having nursery duty for the main service (the Big Guy joined us). In-law's took the Little Guy and All-In back home. I have some sort of spellbinding way of stopping the crying almost-two year olds as I got seven of the twelve to shut up upon arrival. I had to change Noah's diaper. A couple of things about this. You really don't want to change anyone else's kid's diaper as it is strangely very gross compared to your own child's. Also, I took Noah's sandals off and they were absolutely putrid, just horrible. We were able to hold snacktime off until 45 minutes in. Snacktime kills a good fifteen minutes or so as you just keep shoving Ritz crackers in their mouths until they can't chew anymore.

I was pretty wired and maybe stressed for the week, so not in a very good state last night. We tried to watch the French Connection (winner of Best Picture for 1971), but Sweetie kept going to sleep and it was maybe a bit tedious. I don't know if we'll finish it, but maybe yes.

I have to travel to Raleigh Wednesday and hope to close on China in the next couple days. I hope today can be a great day. Until then, here is Monday's Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where we leave this blog to see where the links take us.

• Falstaff: Part of the fledgling Charlotte poker scene (really just G-Vegas without the charm and inbreeding from my understanding). Great writer, part of the inner sanctum.
• Klopzi: An overweight lover (like me) trying to lose pounds and increase bankroll. Klopzi leaves good comments here, which I always appreciate, and has good stuff as well. Why no link to his site? I'm just lazy, I think, I don't know why. I should.
• Law School Dropout: I've been here before several times, mostly when I hit from other folks' blogs. He dropped out of law school to play professionally, then went back to finish up while still plugging away. Higher limit play, which is always interesting to read. No links, so I have to search and search comments to find somewhere to head from here.
  
• Poker Fund Investments: Again, another great blog that I don't hit often for some strange reason. fairnbalncd lives in Wyoming and loves his poker and his lady. GL with the new job.
• threebet33: Eric lives in Vegas and plays poker. Look at the 5 April post, just a great post into his journey to Vegas, the atrophying of his life, his struggle when confronted with a downturn, and then a rebirth. Good stuff.
• hempy: Paul Hempseed, British poker dude. Scraping away as the KSOP, twenty pounds at a time.

I've decided that today is going to be an incrementally more productive day than any day last week. Here's to that, and I hope you can crank it out today as well. Take care.