From the most recent Full Tilt email:

Chris Ferguson got nailed by the hammer in last Saturday's Bust Out Bounty. Chris was short-stacked when he was dealt J-K. He pushed all in pre-flop, triggering all the players at his table to fold, except tekiller. He called with 2-7. Through the flop and turn, it looked like Chris would prevail, but tekiller paired his deuce on the river and collected Chris' $100 bounty.

Nice.

So I hear there's this elite eight of bloggers spending the weekend taking casino money in Vegas and crashing a poker-related party at the Playboy Mansion. Good for them.

I think I'll play online and also express my solidarity with the boys by going down to the bar tonight and hitting on unattainable women. Unsuccessfully, of course.

Should be roughly the same experience.


I received a reminder last night why playing PLO on a short bankroll is not the best idea. It boils down to me missing virtually every draw, while my opponents hit virtually every draw. I finally got stacked in the "big" game when I got my money in on the turn with the nut straight with a redraw to yet a better straight. One opponent made the call -- correctly, since he'd led out and it was only a few bucks more -- with the sucker straight and nut flush draw. I'm ahead 75/25, he hits the flush, I lose. Dodge that, and I'm even.


Pretty much nothing else to say except TGITMFW.

Huge announcement coming!

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(wait for it)

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Okay, I lied. I have no announcement. I'm just bored and figured hey, why not go along with the crowd. Lots of big blogger news set to break on Friday or thereabouts for whatever reason.

I've got an idea or two, but I'm probably wrong. For the sake of those involved, I hope I'm right.

Now please ignore me and go read about Drizz's great idea for April 1.

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On the poker front, I actually have a desire to play at the moment, so it's probably going to be an online blowout tonight. You'll most likely find me at microlimit PLO sites all over teh place. It might be time to retry the Omatard Challenge.

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Another in the endless stream of ripoff sites -- gamblingdad.com appears to be that and nothing much more. Reprints of content from Up4Poker, Poker in Arrears, Poker Kipper's Way, probably a couple others.

My question: Why? I can understand (not agree with, just understand) why a shill site would want to rip off content. But why do it otherwise?

Commence randomness.

Going to lunch today, I spotted a great bumper sticker on the back of a minivan. I didn't get a picture (too slow with the camera phone), but here it is in T-shirt form:




I also just received a Nigerian bank scam email. In French. Okay, technically it was a Benin/Cote d'Ivoire scam, and for some reason the return email address was from an Italian ISP. It's still a Nigerian bank scam email.

Should I be flattered that my services are worthy of a 25% share of US$36,000,000?

I'm almost (but not quite) bored enough to set up a random free email account and to try to establish a running dialog with the scammer. I've seen a few posted here and there and some of them are gold. I think my angle would be to switch languages (with a little help from Babelfish) periodically. Maybe see if I can convince him/her that I'm Russian mafia or something. I think the exchange would end with a report of the demise of the original correspondent in a tragic motorcycle accident outside Copenhagen.

Yup, not quite bored enough. But it's an idea.

Maybe practicing good table selection is indeed all it's cracked up to be.

Being rather bored, I hit up a random $50 PLO table on Full Tilt last night. I bought in short and tripled up on the first hand when my monster wrap draw came in on the turn. I even picked up a few more bucks before the end of my first orbit.

Bring on the pros!

Or at least the pro.

Attracted by the smell of deep-fried breaded lake perch, FT pro Steve Brecher sat down (this was "his" table). Despite his presence and being joined by three other bloggers -- Mourn, Wwonka and Drizz, the table stayed good, at least until my personal ATM finally left. Final tally, better than a quintuple up.

Hooray for omatards!

Yeah, yeah, hitting draws and flopping quads once and not having opponents hit their redraws helps. It wasn't all table selection. I'm just enjoying the afterglow of a good session, especially since I've hardly played at all this week and can't say that any of those efforts were successful.

I now return you to my regularly scheduled mediocrity. Enjoy your weekend!

Sorry, CJ.

I owe CJ an apology because I singlehanded caused the Syracuse Orangepeeps to flame out of the first round of the NCAA tournament.

That's right, they didn't lose due to lousy play, the questionable coaching stylings of J-Boe (pronounced "J Bay" for those not in the know), G-Mac's tender hammy or the stellar effort of the Texas A&M crew.

I say they lost because of me.

I made one and only one wagering selection on the first round. Syracuse over A&M. Sound reasoning behind that pick. They were giving one point. They have the power of the luckbox behind them. They're from some conference that got 8 teams into the tournament. Did I mention that they have the luckbox?

It turns out that my anti-luck is overpowering. Crushering. Down go the Orangepeeps. Oops.

Sorry, CJ. I'll be sure to not wager on any of your horse selections this weekend in an effort to make up for it.


I took the time to check out the collected blog feeds harvested by All In Magazine (credit to 2holecards.com). I was pleased to find that I'm not one of the "Top 200" poker blogs.

Interesting selections, though. You have the late, much lamented Snailtrax blogspot address. The Poker Pundit, who's posted twice since Labor Day '05. The retired Ed from Openers. The wrong address for Ten Mile, which is now a shill site of some sort. And that's just a sampling.

It's almost like they didn't put any time into actually LOOKING at any of the blogs that are being harvested.

Oh, wait.

They probably didn't. Which is almost as obnoxious as the idea to swipe feeds for commercial benefit in the first place.

Flying below the radar can be a good thing -- yessir, at this moment, I'm almost proud to suck.

I plan to use the term 'March Madness' as often as possible in this post, in the (probably) vain hope that I get a cease-and-desist letter from the NCAA.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one less than thrilled with the internet streaming setup offered by CBS.

I logged on about the time the games started, only to find 57,000 of my invisible internet pals in queue ahead of me. I left it, went to lunch, and came back to find my connection ready to go. How about that.

It didn't take long to figure out how the line moved so quickly -- periodically, you had to click an acknowledgement that you were still watching. If you didn't you got the boot. Of course, I wasn't really paying that much attention, so I got booted three or four times this afternoon.

Still, it's better than nothing. I can't get any kind of reception for the "local" CBS station (which is a hundred-odd miles away), so it's internet or bust. So thanks, CBS.

March Madness, baby!

I admit that I don't really care all that much. The two teams I follow (Michigan and Minnesota) both bubbled out of the tournament, and I probably haven't watched fifteen minutes of basketball all season. This is not a 'we wuz robbed' post -- both teams had good wins, but also had days where they wouldn't have been able to beat Winthorp. No, not Winthrop, which is actually a pretty good team, but Winthorp, the Dan Akroyd character from 'Trading Places'.

Enough drivel. I'm going to go root for UCLA to lose.

It was an unusually nice winter day here in Michigan. Sixty five degrees in mid-March. The golfers, dog walkers and window shoppers were out in force.

Being a contrarian, rather than get out and enjoy the reprieve from the late winter doldrums, I stayed indoors. I'm cagy like that.

I didn't even play poker. I did log on to a couple sites, though it was just to cash out. I also read a book that was at least tangentially about poker ("Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids"), but otherwise I just did a few projects around the house and the usual Saturday errands. I even napped for a couple hours. I rule.

Why am I boring you with this, you ask?

No reason. I have a blog, which means that I feel like I have both a license and an obligation to drop several dozen mostly meaningless words on my ever-dwindling readership.

Oh, and that book? Not outstanding, but a good read nonetheless. It won't be finding a permanent home on my shelf (I got it from the library). I'd recommend it for a flight to Vegas, or maybe as something to park in the crapper to be taken in one chapter at a time. It won't change your life, but you didn't need me to tell you that.

Okay, now THIS is what I want for breakfast. I bet Al would enjoy it as well. I had to settle for a sausage McGriddle this morning and while it was tasty I'd say we can do better.

Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth commence among dietary nazis everywhere.

I'd drop some f-bombs but that's against company policy. -- Drizz

Not much in the way of words today. I will say that Drizz's comment made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that.

Kirby Puckett died. Man. I'm wearing black tomorrow.

I had a rare awesome moment this evening. I was sorting through some papers I'd chucked in a box to be filed away someday and found a stack of christmas and birthday cards. I don't know why I put them in there, but there you have it. I flipped through them, just to see what they were about, and a fifty dollar bill dropped out of one of them.

Good times.

I need to post a Pokercomix update, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Probably tomorrow.

Otherwise, postings are likely to be sparse around here for a while. Call it a semi-hiatus if you like. Similarly, I won't be found at the tables or in the chat rooms as often. Good luck to all.

Saturday, 12:10 p.m.

The clock is ticking away, the early afternoon passing us by minute by minute.

The line at the Kentucky Fried Chicken is six deep with one lone person working the counter. "I didn't think it would take this long," says the degenerate gambler, "and we might not make it to the track in time for the first race at Tampa." The things you'll do to cash in a dollar off coupon in exchange for some greasy finger-licking sandwichy goodness.

The line does not move. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Signs of desparation (or is it just frustration?) appear.

Technology to the rescue!

Folks, let me be the first to tell you: You truly have not seen degeneracy in action until you see someone place a bet on the horses via cell phone, while standing in line at KFC, just in case we don't make it to the track on time.

Not that there's anything wrong with any of that.

And make it we did.

I went to the track with BG and DuggleBogey, who has been in Michigan for work. There wasn't much of a plan other than playing some highly juiced charity poker and investing some money betting on the horses.

The poker wasn't all that memorable - we all played the 1 PM "main event" tournament, and none of us made the money. I actually had cards for the first time in a live tournament, and felt like I played decently with minor exceptions. T4000 to start, with blinds of 25/50, increasing every 15 minutes. I busted a shortish stack early on with AKo vs. A8o. During Level 2, found JJ in early position and raised to T400. Guy two behind pushes for about T3000 more, I fold face up which induces him to show his KK. Not much damage there. I find KK and AA before the end of the first hour and get a caller preflop on each, but they drop on the flop. I dump about a thousand chips limping (on a very loose, passive table) a couple low pocket pairs and big suited hands and reach the break with T5000, just above average.

In the second hour (at 200/400 blinds), I have AKo. Standard raise, short stack to my left pushes for 200 chips more. He has As9s. Blank blank blank, blank (2 of his suit, though, so he has extra outs), 9 of diamonds. There goes a bit more than 1/3 of my stack. A couple hands later, I find JJ again in EP and it's bumped to 4xBB. There are five to the flop. Oops. K on the flop, have to let it go. That's another chunk.

In the small blind (300/600), I get to see a flop for the discount with Kc8c. Flop club, club, club. The lone limper, of course, has AcQx and catches another club on the turn. Oh, well.

The rest of the afternoon involved betting on (and losing at betting on) the horses. Just a brutal day for me, although I think BG and DB were much closer to even. I cashed one win ticket (on a 3/5 favorite, so it wasn't much) and one place ticket (which covered the cost of the win-place bet plus 40 cents). That's it.

I would still have come out even for the day, though, but for a steward's inquiry (and jockey's claim of foul) on a race where we were holding tickets on a horse named Corinthian to win and place (at 7 to 1). He crossed the line first, but for whatever reason they decided he screwed things up for the other horses and bumped him down to third.

Horse racing is so rigged.

Oh well. It was still a good time.

A few of us were kicking this idea around on chat tonight....

I want to see a bunch of people all join a site as ZeeJustin(fill in a number here) and all play a MTT together.

I have dibs on ZeeJustin69, fools.

This is quite possibly the dumbest poker challenge ever devised.

Still fun, though.

I did it at $0.02/$0.04 last night for kicks. Final results? -65 BB/100. Drizz was along for much of the ride, although he actually folded periodically for some reason. Mourn was doing the challenge as well, but since he actually has skillz and a bankroll, he was doing it at $0.25/$0.50.



Retarded fun.

And just because I like graphs, this was the earlier (no rules other than play every hand) donkeyfest. I especially like running -170BB/100 in the middle there. I blame Alan (can I get away with an LOLOL here?)

I'm on life tilt. Perma-tilt.

For anyone who doesn't regularly read the drivel that makes up this blog, I'm in the law business. Have been for more than ten years. Ten freaking years.

I joked recently (in chat, I think) that I could never blog my workday because Blogger would not allow me to use an accurate number of F-bombs. I think, just because I can, that I'm going to do so anyway. This is really a composite of the week, but it's depressingly close to what any given day is like.

Let the whining commence.

6:45 a.m. Alarm goes off. I've been sound asleep for about 3 hours. God bless stress and insomnia. At least I finished two more books yesterday.

6:46 Stumble across the room and give the clock a hearty whack in hopes of triggering the snooze. It works. Lapse back into coma.

6:55 See 6:46

7:04 See 6:46

7:13 See 6:46. Alarm clock is miraculously not broken.

7:22 Drag self out of bed, commence morning routine.

7:30 Scrounge around for breakfast. Too tired and too late to fry eggs. Settle, with some resignation, for store brand Cheerios and milk.

7:32 Eat breakfast, catch up on reading of blogs and news sites.

8:00 Office opens. Ignore clock and finish reading.

8:37 Drag self into office. I'm such a good example for the staff.

8:38 Drop first f-bomb of the day, followed by several more.

8:39 Close office door to ensure full containment of audible f-bombs.

8:45 Start wishing that I drank coffee, or a least had a caffeinated beverage of some sort.

8:46 First phone call of the day. Trustee wants to know why my client hasn't done something. Call client. Get response that is a barely better articulated version of "duhhhhh, I dunno."

9:00 Telephone call with another client. Client has idiotic problem with ex-wife. Advise client how to solve problem. Listen to lengthy rant about that evil bitch. Struggle to stay awake.

9:15 Still listening to client rant. Wonder why I don't have a computer with Party Poker in my office for calls like this.

9:18 Call ends. Mark down 0.3 hours of billable time that I may or may not ever get paid for.

9:20 Telephone call with asshole lawyer from another town. Listen to incredibly unreasonable demands. Twiddle thumbs, which is hard to do while holding the phone. Politely reject demands and say 'thanks for calling'.

9:30 Draft meaningless motion. Pray that receptionist/secretary can spell the four and five letter words correctly. Decide that prayer alone won't be enough.

9:46 Stop in the middle of drafting said motion to take phone call from client. Client has heard from a friend of a friend that the law relevant to his case is "X". Advise client that, no, the law relevant to his case is in fact "Not X". Client dubious, says he's going to check with his neighbor's cousin who watches a lot of Court TV.

9:50 Hang up phone, drop extra loud f-bomb, resume work on motion.

9:51 Stop work on motion for another phone call. Never mind, it's a sales call. Bastard lied to get past the receptionist. Hang up on him and tell the staff to hold the damned calls.

10:00 Finish dictating motion and give tape to bored receptionist, who no longer bothers to minimize "eBay" when I walk up.

10:05 Consider what to work on next. Find myself paralyzed by indecision and loathing. Read tax newsletter instead. The IRS continues to lose in its effort to collect the telephone tax on cents-per-minute plans. Good. This has absolutely no relevance to any of my clients.

10:25 Phonus interruptus. Someone looking for free legal advice. Answer quick question (it's always a 'quick question'), give out number for Legal Aid. Consider breaking phone. Decide that I'd need to destroy every phone in a three block radius in order to achieve productivity.

10:30 Legitimate phone call. Existing client has a new project. It's a shit project, but it's work and the client pays. Accept project. Hang up. Drop emphatic f-bomb at prospect of having to do project.

10:45 It's really loud in the office and I'm having a hard time concentrating. Blood sugar is dropping. I consider the idea of fleeing the country. Australia sounds nice.

10:50 Decide to work on something relatively interesting. Pull out tax file and work on return. Find myself jealous of the client's large refund.

11:55 Observe that the phone has been quiet for an hour but my desk is a mess. You can't win 'em all.

11:56 Decide that the f-bomb is overused. Unleash stream of alternative profanity.

12:30 p.m. Read letter from clerk in county Register of Deeds office. Deed rejected, the dates don't match. Draft responsive letter saying (politely but in essence) that if you'd actually read the mf-ing thing, you'd see that the dates do match and perfectly, and just do your job and record the damned thing.

12:35 Read letter from a receptionist-cum-law clerk at the Friend of the Court rejecting divorce judgment. Claims that a required clause was omitted. Draft response pointing out exactly where the required clause is, was and always will be and (politely) request that s/he do their damned job and approve the stupid thing.

12:36 Ponder the question of why I spent three years and umpteen thousand dollars going to law school when I could have just walked in off the street after high school, gotten myself hired by the Friend of the Court and I'd have way more "expertise".

12:39 Blood pressure is now approximately 900/600. I think. It's hard to tell through the curtain of rage-induced dots blurring my vision.

12:45 Lunch time. What's it going to be today? Looks like hot dogs. Hope I have ketchup. That's still a vegetable, isn't it?

1:30 Drive back to office. Ponder what to do tonight. Decide that I'll probably be too tired to do anything more strenuous than checkraise some online douchebags.

2:00 Pretrial conference. Opposing counsel is a smug, pompous ass. He will not yield an inch to move things toward settlement. We both know exactly how the case is going to turn out, but apparently feels the need to churn a few fees first. Set case for trial. Feel sorry for the judge.

2:45 Return to office. Consider job options in Anarctica.

2:46 Discover six new phone messages. Four people who want status reports, one non-client who wants me to do something for them and one request for representation from someone with a crummy case and who can't afford to pay a lawyer. Gold.

2:47 Ignore phone messages and consider the merits of the Tibetan monastic lifestyle. Decide that ritual flogging would be better than this.

2:50 Open today's mail. Assorted legal documents, a $50 check on an account with a sizeable balance, the usual demand letter or two from other asshole attorneys. In other words, junk mail.

2:54 Try to decide if being caned would be better than this. Caning wins. Easily.

2:55 Dictate meaningless cover letters forwarding legal documents and asking clients to do things in response. Know that requests will be ignored. F-bomb. Take break to individually curse each of America's 197-odd accredited law schools.

3:10 Place phone call to egomaniacal opposing counsel on a case with a rapidly approaching hearing date. Get voice mail. Again.

3:11 Debate when the last time was that I didn't get voice mail. Curse the invention of voice mail.

3:12 Curse the invention of the telephone.

3:13 Curse the practice of law (in general).

3:15 Review memo regarding new Friend of the Court procedures. Track down annoying new required forms. Three times the work for little or no obvious benefit. Hooray! Bureaucrats rule!

3:16 General cursing of the Friend of the Court and State Court Administrative Office.

3:20 Unscheduled drop-in appointment with client who feels the need to tell me in person the latest evil thing her ex-husband has done. Listen patiently and get rid of her by citing next appointment.

3:30 Conference with potential client who is just shopping around. Map out strategy. Discuss costs. Determine that we're much less expensive than the big firm, big city attorney she's also consulted with. Know that it won't matter.

4:00 F-bomb. Five new phone messages. Three status report requests, one more from a client who's called three times already today. One from the creditor of a client who wants information I'm not giving out. Multiple F-bombs. I want to kill.

4:42 Finish returning phone calls. Final obscenity count: 27. I hate people.

4:45 Dictate pointless followup correspondence. Wonder if secretary/receptionist will manage to spell names correctly. Decide that the opening line would be at least -190 for at least one typo. I'd still take those odds.

5:00 Office closes, staff leaves, answering machine goes on.

5:15 Enthusiasm level, already low, continues to drop. Billable hour total pathetic. Shuffle papers and ponder whether panhandling might be a better career. Decide it's probably +EV.

5:38 Think about dinner. Should I keep the no fruit, no vegetable streak alive?

5:45 Place a few more calls to people who send all their calls to voice mail.

6:00 Give up and go home.

I'm ready for a change, and circumstances could dictate sometime this year that I make one.

The question is, doing what, and doing it where?

That remains to be seen. I simply don't know. Maybe I'll create a fake resume and see if I can't get a job in Gibraltar working for Party Gaming. Maybe I'll move to Las Vegas and live in a cardboard box. Perhaps Southern California or pushing golf packages at Pinehurst. Or maybe I'll just stay here and wallow in this particular mud puddle.

Life tilt.

Maybe I need to engage in some primal scream therapy. Back later.

Question One: Don't you wish people would stop calling it "humpday"?

On to the real question.

Chad had a post not too long ago asking for input as to where he should move. This is a variation, which I ask out of curiousity:

If you yourself were going to make a serious mid-life change, where would you move to and what would you do? Assume for the purposes of this question that you're not independently wealthy (if you are, congratulations!).

I'll be curious to see what anyone has to say, and will post my own thoughts a bit later (i.e. after the usual workday).