Baseball

Stupid Yankees had to go and take two outta three from the Mets. Actually, the Mets really just gave the games away making so many errors. They really shoulda been able to take the last game. They’re still two games over .500 and only three games back in the NL East, but they’re just so bad. They need to learn to field and pitch. Their hitting (or, ability to score runs, anyway), despite low batting averages, seems just fine. They’ve scored the most runs in the division. Hell, the Yankees, even with their awful start, now have the same record (though they’re 4.5 games back in their division).

Last weekend, I went to NY for a friend’s wedding, and managed to get to a game against the Cards in between picking up my tux at 10am and the wedding at 8pm. It was a 1:10 start, and ended in plenty of time for me to get home and change. It was also a great game, though the result was disappointing, thanks to the Mets terrible bullpen. Anytime Pedro can give up 5 runs and leave with the lead, the team should fricken win. It should have been a great pitching matchup, but neither Pedro nor Mulder were sharp. Unfortunately, the Cards bullpen didn’t allow a run, while the Mets pen allowed two, for a final score of 7-6. It was my first game this season, and I think my first time back at Shea since I moved out to California. At least it was fun.

Bowling

I bowled again this weekend, for the first time since I got hurt. I pretty much picked up right where I left off. Saturday morning, I threw a 619 series. Saturday evening, I shot really badly in a 9-pin no-tap tournament, and didn’t even break 600, but I wasn’t really trying. Honest. My third game of that tournament was my best, and I was using my spare ball for the whole thing. Yesterday, I bowled in the last week of my Sunday night league, with a new glove.

All I needed to do was throw a 218 the third game for another 700 series, and if the pins had cooperated, I would have. Every shot except for the split in the middle was right in the pocket. I left three 7 pins, two 10 pins, and a solid 8 (which I didn’t pick up). All of them solid in the pocket, but I just couldn’t get any carry. Still, I can’t complain about a 665 series, especially as my second series back from injury.

And no pain, stiffness, or other bad or strange feelings in my wrist. That’s a good sign.

Poker

I’ve been playing online poker a bit more again lately, and badly. I’m making bad plays and terrible calls, and I know it when I do it. I need to get out of my rut. Maybe the blogger trip to Vegas will help. It’s less than two weeks away. I finally booked my flight and room. I somehow managed to pull off a room at the Plaza, where lots of other bloggers are staying. Their website shows nothing available for Friday and Saturday night, but http://www.lasvegashotel.com/ let me book a room there. I’ll be splitting it with Joaquin, who was looking for someone to share a room with. That website still shows available rooms at the Plaza, so if there are any bloggers looking to stay there who don’t have their rooms yet, you should check it out.

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Tendonitis

The trackball at home didn’t seem to help. I rearranged my desk, and started using my mouse again, and so far so good. The SmartGlove seems to be helping a bit. I picked up some stress balls from Staples. Get ’em while they’re on clearance. I’m taking glucosamine and chondroitin. I still haven’t been playing much online poker, but my wrist feels much better. I played softball for the first time since I got hurt this week. I did fine, but we still got killed. Next week, I’m going to try to start bowling again. We’ll see how that goes. It has been almost two months now.

Poker

While I haven’t been playing online poker much (I played – badly – in the WPBT WSOP Satellite last night), I did manage to make it up to Chumash last Friday. The game there is now $100 or $200 (not in between – weird) buyin NL, $2/$5 blinds. I played for around 5 hours and made $215. I didn’t play any terribly exciting hands, and was never all-in. Just won a few decent sized pots and stayed out of the way with my junk. It was good to play live again after my horrendous play in Vegas last month. I actually felt like I played well this time.

I really do want to get back into playing online poker again, but don’t want to reinjure myself. I rearranged my desk so my keyboard and mouse are on the desk instead of in the keyboard drawer, and I think that will help, but there’s not enough room on the desk for it. So… I just ordered my second 2001fp (for $352.90 after crazy coupons and the $150 Dell gift card I got from ECD), and it will replace my CRT on my desk. That should free up enough space to leave the keyboard and mouse up there permanantly. Then I can get back to playing online again, I hope. ECD and PSO have so many new rooms that I need to do (Noble Poker, Superior Poker, Poker Rewards, Paradise Poker). Plus, I’m letting Party skin bonuses slip away because I can’t play. On top of all that, I actually want to play. It’s frustrating not being able to.

For the record, I just bought a 20.1″ LCD monitor for my health.

Spam

I recently installed a plugin for WordPress to force comment previews. Hopefully, it’ll be a while before spammers catch on to this one. It seems right now they just submit and then ignore whatever comes back. I haven’t gotten any spam since I installed it, and you should be able to leave comments now without getting redirected elsewhere. You’ll just have to preview it first, which I like having there anyway.

Baseball

I’m heading to New York this weekend for a Mets game wedding, and will be going to my first game at Shea in a few years while I’m there. The Mets are in second to last place in the NL East, but they’re really not too bad. Well, they have the best offense in the East, I think, but their pitching sucks. Only Philly in their division has given up more runs. Anyway, they’re still over .500 (barely – by one game), and only 3.5 games out of first place. There’s still plenty of baseball left to play, plenty of time for them to drop out of the race entirely. Or replace the entire bullpen, starting with the closer. This will be my first baseball game of the season.

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I’ve been seriously neglecting this place for quite a while now, and I don’t really know why. Serious lack of motivation, I guess. It’s certainly not that I have nothing to write about. Since my last post over three weeks ago, I’ve been to Vegas for a bachelor party, been to Tucson for Passover, and… uh, that’s it, I guess.

I haven’t bowled at all since the week I threw my 700 series. The “tightness” in my arm got worse when I bowled twice more that week, and I just had to stop. It wasn’t easy to get myself to, though, since I had just thrown a 720, and then three days later threw a 174-262-205 for a 641 series, through the pain. In the 262, I had ten of twelve shots for strikes. I knew I couldn’t keep bowling, though, if I ever wanted it to get better. The doctor said it’s tendonitis, and I should take 6 weeks off, and had me take prescription level Aleve for a while. That happens to coincide with the end of the regular season leagues, so I get to rest it for another month before the summer leagues start, which is probably for the best.

I don’t think bowling was the cause of my problems, however. I definitely made it worse by continuing to bowl when I knew there was a problem, but I think the root of it is, of course, online poker. Before I started playing online poker a ton, I didn’t really use the mouse on my computer all that much. Not enough to create any problems. While playing poker, I’m pretty much contantly using the mouse. For unrelated reasons, I hadn’t played much online poker for a while after I got hurt. My arm was getting better, which I attributed to just resting it and not bowling. Then last week, I played again for about a half hour, and it immediately started to hurt a little again. All this time, I had still been working and using computers, just not playing poker, with no problems. I don’t know if it’s something about the way I sit when I’m playing, or just that I use the mouse so much more, but poker was definitely the problem. I think it’s specifically Party Poker that does it, too, as I’ve just relatively recently started playing a lot at the Party skins. I’m going to blame it on the fact that I have to click buttons 8 times for the clicks to actually register, so I have to keep the mouse in one place when I do it. They need to fix this.

So, I got myself a Logitech Trackman to use instead of a mouse, and an IMAK Smart Glove, which seems to be helping. I’ve been playing online poker again for a few days now, clearing the latest Party bonus, and I don’t seem to be having any problems. I’ve got about 100 hands left for that, and made around 27BB/100 hands while doing it. I love $100NL 6max at Party.

Vegas was a ton of fun. One interesting thing that came out of it is that I think I now have a new signature card protector: A bottle of Aleve. I’ll probably fill it with Penguin Mints or something, and pop a few every time I lose a big pot. 🙂
That happened to me a lot that weekend, in the $2/$5 NL game at the Rio, but it was all entirely my fault. I just played terribly. The game itself was great, with lots of easy money to be made, myself included.

Last weekend in Tucson, I finally got out and did some more photography. I’ve set up a new gallery, but only have one picture there at the moment. More will be added as I find time to go through them and clean them up. I do love my 20D.

Hopefully, I’ll start actually posting here fairly often again. No guarantees.

Oh, I almost forgot (actually, I did forget, and I’m editing this post): Congrats to Bob on winning the blogger satellite to the $1500NLHE tourney at the WSOP. Everyone should go sign up for the next one this Sunday. Unfortunately, I again can’t make it because I’ll be in Pittsburgh at my brother’s graduation. Good luck to everyone who plays!

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Sorry I haven’t been posting much. I will again soon, I promise. For now, a hand from last night:

Party Poker No-Limit Hold’em, $1 BB (6 max, 6 handed) converter

Button ($101.15)
geeknproud ($97)
BB ($121.35)
UTG ($23.8)
MP ($23.45)
CO ($152.3)

Preflop: geeknproud is SB with 7♦, 2♣. geeknproud posts a blind of $0.5.
4 folds, geeknproud (poster) raises to $2.5, BB raises to $4, geeknproud calls $2.

Flop: ($10) 6♣, 7♠, 2♥ (2 players)
geeknproud bets $8, BB raises to $16, geeknproud raises to $93 (All-In), BB calls $77.

Turn: ($194) 5♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($194) T♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $194

Results below:
geeknproud has 7♦ 2♣ (two pair, sevens and twos).
BB has J♣ J♥ (one pair, jacks).
Outcome: geeknproud wins $194.

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Finished clearing the $200 Party bonus last night, and my account is $100 higher than where it started. This hand had a lot to do with it:

Party Poker No-Limit Hold’em, $1 BB (6 max, 6 handed) converter

CO ($167.81)
Button ($157.9)
geekandproud ($142.05)
BB ($254.5)
UTG ($46.1)
MP ($206.05)

Preflop: geekandproud is SB with 6♣, 8♥. geekandproud posts a blind of $0.5.
3 folds, Button calls $1, geekandproud (poster) completes, BB checks.

Flop: ($3) 7♣, T♣, 9♥ (3 players)
geekandproud bets $4, BB folds, Button raises to $10, geekandproud raises to $30, Button calls $20.

Turn: ($63) J♥ (2 players)
geekandproud bets $111.05 (All-In), Button calls $111.05.

River: ($285.10) 9♠ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $285.10

Results in below:
Button has 7♠ 9♦ (full house, nines full of sevens).
geekandproud has 6♣ 8♥ (straight, jack high).
Outcome: Button wins $285.10.

Oh well, can’t win every hand where I’m 90% to win. That’s why it’s only 90%. The funny thing is that after this hand, the rest of the table started criticizing my play, not the other guy’s. I wish I could have caught some other cards at the table.

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The Streak

I knew it couldn’t last forever. It was only a matter of time before I had to lose with pocket aces again. My streak was somewhere in the 60s. Over 60 times in a row, when I got AA, I won the hand. Sometimes I won the blinds, sometimes I won big pots, but they had just always been winning.

The first hand that broke the streak, and made Poker Tracker say I didn’t have a 100% win percentage, wasn’t actually a loss. I managed to get all in preflop against QQ. My opponent flopped a Q, and then the board ended up making a Q high straight. We chopped, and I still had yet to actually lose with my aces. That was yesterday.

Today, I got aces in the small blind at $100 NL. Everyone limped in, and I raised, but not enough to get rid of the powerhouse 73o in the big blind. Lucky for me, he was shortstacked. I put him all in with my $20 bet on the 456 flop, and someone else came along for the ride. When the big blind went all in, I knew my streak was coming to an end. I also knew the other guy who called didn’t have me beat, and I tried to get more money out of him on the turn, but he folded. I didn’t end up losing all that much on the hand, but my aces were still beat.

Update: Twice more. Once K4o called my raise and flopped trip kings. Didn’t end up costing me that much. Another time, a guy who had been pushing all in preflop (for about $28) did it again. Someone called in between the two of us, and I pushed for a little over $100. The other guy folded, and the maniac’s Q6s made his flush. Oh well.

The Run

My good run of cards, unlike my aces streak, seems to still be intact. Obviously, I can’t win every hand, but for the most part my good hands are holding up, my draws are hitting at what seems like the right frequency, and I’m not losing too much money when I’m beat. I had one session where I won one $120 pot, and several more around $30, and the most I ever lost on a hand was $7. Not every session was like this, and I’ve had several losing sessions lately, but they’re almost always coupled with another that’s a much bigger win.

Update: I wrote that yesterday… I’ve since gone on a pretty bad run, and dropped some of it back, but I’m still up 12BB/100 over 3000 hands at $100NL this weekend, and 17.5 BB/100 since the beginning of February, over the various NL games. Also cleared a $150 bonus and I’m more than halfway to an additional $200 Bonus.

Poker Tracker Guide

I was able to work out an acceptable DRM solution with Hdouble, and got my hands on a copy. It’s already helped me out a ton. I’ll post a real review once I get through it all (I only went to the sections I was immediately interested in: Review Your Play and Using the Auto-Rate Feature). The short review is: Get it. It’s good.

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I’m my latest shameless attempt to make money off the poker boom (without actually playing more poker; I certainly play enough as it is), I have just launched ReloadBonus.com. Initially, it’s going to be a list of all the current deposit bonuses at various poker sites. Eventually, it will be expanded so users can create accounts and keep track of all of their bonus money, see bonuses at just their selected sites, and lots of other features I’m sure I haven’t thought of yet.

I wish I had more to say about it, but I don’t. I will hopefully be adding more sites soon. Go check it out.

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Many thanks to Iggy for setting up the latest blogger tourney, a HORSE event at Full Tilt. I couldn’t make it due to bowling, but signed up anyway, with the slim hope that I might have chips left when I got home. It was only $5.50, and I wanted my leaderboard points. 🙂 I still outlasted 40 players, and finished a respectable 52nd, never playing a hand.

I will not be able to make the next WPBT event, either. We need to get some of these things on a Thursday night. Or screw the east coasters, and make it at 9pm pacific time. I will be heading to Vegas for the WPBT Aladdin Classic, though.

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I first read about this over at StudioGlyphic, and then got the e-mail about it when I woke up today.

Hello Alan,

Unfortunatley, we have some bad news – iGlobalMedia, the software provider for all Party Skins, has mandated that PokerNOW immediatley stop all rakeback relationships with their affiliates.

This was not PokerNOW’s decision, it was iGlobalMedia’s, and PokerNOW has to go by what they say.

We, of course will pay all rakeback due through March 11th. This is an across the board decision, and all sites offering PokerNOW as a rakeback partner must take them down immediatley.

Our other rakeback provider Caribbean Sun, is completely on board with our rakeback program, many of our players enjoy huge rakebacks from them. We will also add another site as soon as possible.

We are truly sorry for this, but it was a complete shock to us and other affiliates. If you have any questions, please email us or post inthe rakeback forum, we have started a thread there as well.

This has caused a delay in processing all rakeback points from being credited, however all will be completed today.

Thanks,

Tom
Customer Service Manager
eCasinoDeals

I don’t particularly like the Crypto software, so I’m not too thrilled about having to play at Caribbean Sun to get rakeback. I just sent off an e-mail to Party cancelling my account. I’ll continue to play their tables at PokerNow (or get in on a Eurobet rakeback deal for however long that lasts), and then create a new account there through a rakeback affiliate in three or six months, when they let me. I don’t where I’m going to play in the immediate future, now. I have a bonus to finish off at Bet Holdem, and have a bunch of bonus money at Absolute, UB, and Stars. And FullTilt, but working off the bonus there is a real pain.

Any suggestions?

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Fortytwo. My aces streak has been extended to 42 straight. Twice last night, I got them in the big blind, and the table just folded to me. Those hands still count. Maybe I should put up a counter somewhere here to keep track of the streak. As soon as I do that, it’ll get broken, though. I wonder how many times I’ve cracked aces in that span. I did it once last night, because the guy slowplayed himself into oblivion.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold’em, $0.50 penner4242 (6 max, 5 handed) converter

SB ($43.8)
penner4242 ($99.25)
UTG ($58.7)
MP ($99.9)
Button ($43.1)

Preflop: penner4242 is BB with Q♥, T♠. SB posts a blind of $0.25.
UTG calls $0.50, 1 fold, Button calls $0.50, SB (poster) completes, penner4242 checks.

Flop: ($2) A♥, 9♦, J♣ (4 players)
SB checks, penner4242 checks, UTG checks, Button checks.

Turn: ($2) 6♥ (4 players)
SB bets $1, penner4242 calls $1, UTG calls $1, Button folds.

River: ($5) 8♠ (3 players)
SB checks, penner4242 bets $4, UTG raises to $15, SB folds, penner4242 raises to $93.75 (All-In), UTG calls $42.20 (All-In).

penner4242 is returned 36.55 (uncalled).

Final Pot: $123.40

Results below:
penner4242 has Q♥ T♠ (straight, queen high).
UTG has A♠ A♦ (three of a kind, aces).
Outcome: penner4242 wins $123.40.

No preflop raise, no bet with a set on the flop, and only called (didn’t raise) a small bet on the turn with some obvious flush and straight draw possibilities. Significant betting anywhere before the river could have easily gotten rid of me there. Not that I’m complaining.

I think I’ve found a big leak in my game that I have to figure out how to get away from, I just don’t know how to do it. The problem occurs when I’ve got trips (two on the board) and a decent kicker, with no straight or flush possibilities, and someone else has a lower kicker but has hit it and has a full house. I just can’t seem to get away from these hands. It happened twice last night, with AT vs A2 and an A2xAx board, and KQ vs K7 with a KK7xx board. I lost quite a bit of money on both of those hands (but still booked a nice win for the night). I’m just not sure how to get away from these. If there’s a possible straight or flush out, I have a much easier time doing it, but when there’s not, I pretty much turn into a calling (or raising) station. At least I’ve identified the problem.

One other thing: I think I just might be overplaying the hammer. Just a little bit. Check out the preflop raise percentage. (Note: most of the losses below from KQo are from the hand mentioned above, and KJs were from a guy who called way too big a bet with a flush draw, and then hit it. I didn’t pay him off.)

On the other hand, if I always folded it, I’d have lost a lot more than just 0.15 by just posting the blinds. So maybe I’m playing it alright. 🙂

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