Well, now you've seen a glimpse of the future. When I'm old and in ill health, living on a tiny fixed income, I'm going to be one ornery son-of-a-gun.

Oh, who am I kidding? I already am, and I'll probably never even make it to 'old'. Apologies to the bloglines subscriber who was apparently traumatized by the reality.

Sigh.

Speaking of the future, it's only one week until a beautiful trainwreck commences all over that city called Las Vegas.

One week.

I'm not ready, but reviewing the word artistrity of Mr. Joe Speaker is helping me get mentally prepared ... his composition in anticipation of WPBT December Last was GOLD.

Time to make a list.

In one week, I plan to be:

(a) Introducing myself to the 31 registered bloggers whom I've never met before (and probably getting 29 "who are you again" blank stares in return).

(b) Starting an intensive alcohol therapy program.

(c) Once again losing money at each and every casino game, including poker.

(d) Scouting out horses for random donk-betting on Sunday.

(e) Putting down at least $20 on the Lions to not cover.

(f) Running into Iggy at least once at 6:30 a.m. at a bar in the IP.

(g) Propbetting someone willing to eat several platefuls of food from the Emperor's Buffet that they can't do so and keep it down for an hour.

(h) Hoping that I'm sufficiently conscious to make my early morning return flight.

I could go on, but I'm out of prune juice.

Nurse!

The following is a decidedly uncompensated review of ABC's Tuesday night lineup.

I was forced into watching TV last night by an unexpected and decidedly unpleasant bout of food poisoning. Since I get all of three and a half channels (PBS only counts as 1/2) and none of them had anything that I'd normally even consider watching, I went with the best reception. ABC it was.

I'd really, really like that hour and forty-five minutes of my life back.

First up, the end of the worst Charlie Brown Christmas Special ever made. Not even close to coherent. Tolerable, though. It's hard to get mad at Peanuts.

At 9:00, it's the premiere of the brand new comedy, "Big Day!"

9:01 pm -- I discover that the batteries in the remote are dead and I'm too ill to get up and turn it off, no matter how badly I want to do so.

I want it off badly. Desparately, even.

In a nutshell: This is the worst show I've ever seen. Ever. I really wonder what the pitch meeting was like -- "We'll take a chick flick that some guys find tolerable ('Father of the Bride'), suck out any actual humor, add some lame jokes about salad and blindess, get someone who looks like Nikki Cox except for the rack to play the lead, mix in the style of 24 -- just like 'Groundhog Day In The Hood', also on ABC -- and just layer on enough wacky, over-the-top crap to make people think it's funny! We'll use the 'What's Happening' theme song as a gag! Comedy gold!"

I thought I was sick before I started watching. By the end, I was ready to check myself into the E.R. and beg for horse tranquilizers.

ABC, please consider beating the crap out of anyone associated with writing, directing or producing this show. I'll give the actors a pass, but that's just because I'm feeling generous. They sucked too.

9:30 pm -- I offer up prayers of thanksgiving for being relieved from watching any more of that "Big Day" crap. My joy is limited and praise muted, however, by the fact that the next show is Ted Danson in "Help Me Help You".

Which sucked. Of course. Ted Danson has been mailing it in for years. But since it didn't suck nearly as much as it could have (and there was some punching, even if it wasn't of Ted), it was tolerable.

10:00 pm -- Boston Legal.

By 10:05 I was ready to help the guy out and shoot Candace Bergen myself, but I couldn't stay awake any longer. So I have no idea what happened later. Then again, since I've never watched the show before, I had no idea what happened earlier. I just developed an instant dislike for everything and everyone associated with the show.

Thank you, Hypnos for relieving me from my suffering.

ABC's Tuesday night lineup! It's Shat-tastic, minus 100% of the tastic!

Fresh off a four day weekend, I have nothing of interest to post about. Turkey was consumed, a couple of rounds of golf were played, football was watched.

Virtually no pokering took place. I recognized the signs of crazy monkey tilt on Wednesday and shut things down quickly, but not until I donked out of the Mookie with bottom set.

No further desire to play manifested itself the rest of the weekend, although I did decide at the last minute to play the WPBT HORSE event. Finished 11th. I put a tough beat on Hacker59 in H -- I had KK UTG, Hacker had AA in the big blind. I flopped a set and there was plenty of raising and reraising.

Otherwise, I pretty much played like I wasn't paying attention. And that was that.

Now it's Monday and I've got to get busy so that I can go on VACATION in about 11 days.

The lack of recent posts has entirely too much to do with nothing to post about.

What little play I've had lately has been decidedly negative. Spent an hour or so playing PLO last night ... the best hand I made in the entire session was top and bottom pair. No straights, no flushes, no sets. Pretty hard to do. Lots of folding on the flop. Sigh.

I'm anticipating even less play over the next couple weeks as I assemble some sort of puny bankroll for Vegasapalooza.

Go read an uberpost instead of my drivel.

A brief tangent from the usual blog content, if you don't mind.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you probably have seen that former Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler passed away this morning. A sad day for all Michigan fans, and especially stunning since it happened a mere 28 hours before Football Armageddon.

Bo's passing won't mean much to most people who grew up outside the Midwest. For me, both my parents were Michigan alumni and a standard feature of fall Saturdays was listening to the Michigan football game on the radio -- or seeing it on TV if we were lucky enough to have Michigan selected as the game of the week. Bo was always the coach. Afterward, I'd go outside and recreate the exploits of my football heros. Being a kid was great fun.

Even as I got older, I still found myself listening to the games and inspired to throw the football around afterward. I never was much of a football player -- I like to think I was easily the best placekicker around, but I focused on other sports instead. Any football ambitions I had were lived vicariously through the guys in the winged helmets.

The college years overlapped the end of Bo's coaching career and the start of the post-Bo era. I was fortunate to attend the games and even got to go to a Rose Bowl on his watch. And I can still remember the stunned reactions when he announced his retirement, even though we all had an idea it was coming.

Fast forward fifteen years, and he was still around, promoting the University. He would make appearances, had a radio ad promoting a candidate for the Board of Regents. He featured prominently in the buildup to the big game. He's not the face of the University anymore -- Lloyd Carr is -- but he's still known to all.

And all of a sudden, he's gone.

I was sitting around this afternoon waiting for a hearing, and the topic of discussion was naturally Bo's death and what it means for tomorrow's game. The consensus was simple: Nobody knows. Will the players be down? Will they be up? How much will it matter, since the guy retired in 1989? Nobody knows. I do know this much: I felt a lot better about Michigan +7 yesterday than I do right now.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope it's a good game. Hard fought, closely contested, both teams giving it their all. I think it will be. The old coaches would have wanted it to be that way.

Thanks, Bo. Go Blue.

Speaking of all things Michigan, I want to mention that I finally have gotten around to adding Wolverine Fan to my blogroll. My kind of guy. Poker and golf. He's got his own thoughts on Bo, too.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled bad poker blog content.

Rest in peace, Party Poker Blog, you passed too soon. Others will say it better than I, so let's leave it at that.

In the finest Iggy tradition, though, how about some pimpage? I've added Michael Albert's Riding the Hippocamp, the world's southernmost pokerblog, to my roll. Also added: The blog of Annie at Launchpoker, a sponsor of this site. Check 'em out if you haven't already.

Time for a beer.

One of the things I need to do one of these days is clean up my blogroll. Are you on it? If not, would you send me an email so I can link you up? Email address is at right, or if that's too much work, it's the name of this blog (no spaces) at hotmail dot c0m.

Thanks.

Lots of good stuff going on.

For one thing, it's now less than four weeks until the dealers, cocktail waitresses and pit critters of Las Vegas will be faced with the eye-rollingly silly antics of the WPBT. I'm getting more excited by the day. I love Vegas. I mean I love it like a fat kid loves an underattended birthday party.

Time to get some lines up on stupid prop bets.

*

It's been a good weekend at the tables, not only for me but for a bunch of people.

Friday night, I hit up a couple of tourneys with the Poker Princess. I finished 10th in the PLO8 event, while she went on to bigger and better things, final tabling the HORSE guarantee.

Yesterday was even sweeter. I think I mentioned the other day that I freerolled into a big tourney. It was a $200+16 event with $100k guaranteed. I managed to scrape my way to 48th of 500 some for a nice little $354 payday.

I don't have many hands of interest to comment on -- I cruised along early, but was rather card dead after the second break. Early in the 3rd hour, I got a much needed doubleup with JJ in the BB vs. a button push with 88. A couple hands later this happened: A shortish stack pushes UTG. I have AcKc in MP and reraise to isolate. It works. UTG flips his cards: 6h 4h. W. T. F!

The flop: 753, all red. I couldn't be drawing more dead if I were Terrell Owens with a sharpie.

That hurt. I didn't see many more cards. The last hour and half was push-or-fold and I scraped past the bubble by stealing every once in a great while. 54 paid. Once we were in the money, I doubled once when forced all in with some junk like J5o, then ran the tourist on the button into the BB's pocket threes. Game over.

Oh, well.

Free money is still good.

I also had the pleasure of watching Drizz cash in the Full Tilt Online Poker Series PLO8 event, winning himself a nice stack of bills for what was originally a tiny sit-n-go buyin.

Capped the day off by watching Boobie Lover take down a trip to the Pokerstars Carribean Adventure.

Nice job guys.

*

I also earned myself another citation in the "Evidence that I'm a Dumbass" file.

I randomly signed up for a cheap supersatellite on Full Tilt while I was playing the tournament and watching Drizz. I ended up winning it, giving me a seat in the Satellite. I hadn't bothered to check what it was.

Turns out, it's a $50+5 satellite to FTOPS Event #2, the $200+16 double stack holdem event. The satellite is at 1:30 ET today, the event at 6:00 ET.

I probably can't play either one, since it's more than 50/50 that I have family obligations. Too bad, because the satellite currently pays 60 entries with 257 runners, and the FTOPS has a $500k guarantee (702 runners at the moment).

Maybe I can rearrange my calendar, maybe I can't. But I'm still a dumbass for playing a tournament without looking to see what the prize was.

*

Time to go do weekend stuff. It's amazing how an entire day can slip by when all you do is sit around and play (FOR FREE, SIRS) online and watch college football. Good times.

Maybe I've been taking the wrong approach all along.

I was dinking around last night, having missed the special early start time of the Mookie. I was about ready to shut down the computer and get some sleep, when I stumbled across a freeroll. An unusually good freeroll -- the prizes were entries into the site's weekly big tournament. The field wasn't that big -- just over 500 runners -- so I signed up.

Big mistake.

Being tired, I decided to donk it up. It is a freeroll, after all.

Didn't work.

I knew I was in trouble when I doubled up with K8o. After minraising UTG.

And when I took down a pot by minraising a K22 flop. With 33.

Fortunately, I had April explain to me that it's when you're more trying to lose that you're pretty much guaranteed to win. I was not previously aware of that rule. Maybe I'm just used to sucking at tournament poker. All I had to do was not really try. So I didn't, but I still won pots with 54o, 63o, 73o, and true junk like KK.

Cutting this boring story short, four hours later I found myself with a tournament entry. This will be the biggest buyin tournament I've ever played -- small potatoes for you WSOP and Sunday Million players, but still. My EV is 0, since I'll probably suck as usual. I'd much rather have the cash for Vegas, but that's not an option.

All in all, it was pretty neat to win a decent prize in a freeroll. It's been a while.

Now, if only I could freeroll my way into some extra sleep. It's going to be a very long day.

Well, I did my civic duty yesterday. I voted. Some of the people and things I voted for won. Some lost. None were really close.

Some of the decisions were harder than others. Do I vote for quite possibly one of the most useless Senators ever, whom I've had the pleasure of voting against for various elective offices going back to my student days? Or the opponent, who campaigned with Bill Frist? How about neither?

I didn't bother waiting for results before cracking open the fizzy wine last night. It didn't seem necessary. The way I see it, a long national nightmare has finally come to an end -- the season of campaign advertising is over. I'm confident that 99.6% of Americans would agree that's worthy of celebration.

Thus concludes what is hopefully the last politics post ever on this blog.

1. Berate Iggy for being an internet poker blogging tease.

2. Try and make Otis laugh. Done. Add comment-spam Rapid Eye Reality to the list.

3. Vote. Against anyone who's even had their picture taken with Bill Frist. Done. Looks like good turnout -- more than 530 people had voted less than halfway through the day. I'd guess that there are no more than 2,000 registered voters in my precinct and it's probably less. Voted against as much as anything.

4. Learn how to operate new coffeemaker. This will be interesting, since I haven't consumed coffee in years. Done.

5. Check Bloglines about 9,850 times instead of doing work stuff. Up to about 6,000 so far.

6. Write a PLO-centric post (idea already in head) for submission to the Full Tilt Poker blog since they apparently didn't enjoy my attempt to be humorous.

7. Encourage Mean Gene to put "death to any advertiser ever using 'This is Our Country' in a jingle" into his official campaign platform/manifesto.

8. Rejoice that "The Rich Li$t" ON FOX was canceled after one airing, so no more promos will be forthcoming. Find listing for "Groundhog Dayz 'n the Hood" starring Taye Diggs only on ABC.

9. Enjoy really really bad YouTube videos instead of watching election coverage.

10. Post random crap to blog. Done.

or ... Dear Life, I'm sorry I didn't get around to raking those leaves.

Dammit. Stupid [censored] media.

A golden opportunity to tell Senator Frist just how much he sucks went by the boards yesterday.



Political power Bill Frist lends support to Bouchard at GH stop

There was no mention that I saw anywhere of Frist being here.

This just ruined my morning.

I've noticed a disturbing trend in my imaginary poker play lately.

When I first sit down, I play very, very badly. Bad bets, bad calls, playing marginal hands out of position. Occasionally, I lose by suckout for variety. Either way, the last several sessions I've managed to dig myself a sizable hole rather quickly.

Note to self. When you flop an underfull with K5xx, that player on your left will ALWAYS have KKxx.

I've been fortunate to make a comeback the last couple times, but getting even from down three buyins is a lot less fun than just winning three buyins.

I would like to stop this trend.

Then again, I'd also like to win the lottery tonight. Neither is too likely.

It was interesting getting into virtually the same situation as the hand I complained about yesterday. Once again I have AKxx and flop a full house. This time, however, I have the whip -- the flop was AAK instead of AKK -- and get paid off.

Speaking of trends that need to be stopped but probably won't be, this series of exceptionally bad posts needs to come to an end.

The trend is not my friend.

I get all excited when I see a headline like this:

Study: Fat, boozing mice stay healthy

I immediately set out to offend everyone I could find by emailing them the link. I haven't yet gotten any "what, you calling me fat?" or "what, you calling me a drunk?" responses, but they're inevitable.

I do it because I care.

Relax, have a bratwurst and some large quantities of beer. It's good for you.

Edited to add picture of advertising irony in action:



I bet the Quaker Oats people are extra happy with that placement.

{Editorial note: This post contains all the crap you hate about bad poker blogs. Don't read it if you don't like whining about bad beats, poor PLO play and general moping.)

From my upcoming book "Why 2 Card Games Suck Enormously", an excerpt of Chapter 6 -- "Overbetting For Value ... Gone Horribly Awry"

KK in the big blind (Level 1, 15/30 blinds). Couple limpers. Pop to 330.

Some guy I don't know calls from MP. Stack sizes are irrelevant, since this is like the end of the first orbit.

Flop is some random uncoordinated junk like T74 unsuited. Full Tilt is not cooperating in giving me the hand history, so this may not be exact.

I'm first to act. Push for value. Entertainment value.

Called ... by JTo. Turn is a J.

gg.

Not Gigli. Barely.

The Mookie is one giant kick in the nuts. Love this game.

---

Hey, as long as I'm posting imaginary hand histories, how about this one, which I'll call "he didn't raise preflop, please please please let him not have AAxx the one lousy freaking hand that can beat my flopped underfull ..... Awwwwwwwwww FGHJKHGFAUEIHFHAFOIQEWHF!"

Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: Fake $0.50/$1
9 players
Converter


Fake stack sizes:
HERO: $18
UTG+1: $84.60
MP1: $46.55
MP2: $154
MP3: $116.15
CO: $74.25
Button: $186.45
SB: $242
BB: $20


Pre-flop: (9 players) HERO is UTG with Kh 5d Ah 5h
HERO calls, UTG+1 calls, 2 folds, MP3 calls, CO folds, Button calls, SB calls, BB checks.


Flop: Ks As Kd ($6, 6 players)
SB checks, BB checks, HERO checks, UTG+1 bets $1, MP3 calls, Button folds, SB calls, BB folds, HERO calls.


Turn: 6c ($10, 4 players)
SB bets $5, HERO calls, UTG+1 calls, MP3 folds.


River: 8h ($25, 3 players)
SB bets $12.5, HERO calls all-in $11, UTG+1 raises to $73.5, SB folds.
Uncalled bets: $61 returned to UTG+1.


Results:
Final pot: $58
UTG+1 showed Ad Ac Tc Qh
HERO mucks Kh 5d Ah 5h

This was part of the series of bad plays and outdraws that had me down nearly 3 imaginary buyins. It took 3 hours of playing better to climb back to even. Ended up close to it.

---

And now for the important stuff.

Visit For Peyton and buy some really cool poker stuff on Ebay for a good cause.

"Spaceman" is blogging from the WSOP Circuit event in Hoosierana. If I were less lazy, I'd find a link. Instead, consult Tao of Poker for all the information you might need. Or about any blog on the right. They're much more diligent than I am.

Consider going to Vegas in December and hang out with a bunch of degenerates. Good times.

That's it for tonight.

I got a chuckle out of this one, received today:

Your VIP Level has been changed.

Dear XXXXXXXX,

Your VIP Level has been changed and is now listed as VIP Level Bronze.

In order to raise your VIP Level, you must earn additional Points at
our ring games and tournaments.

An explanation of our VIP Levels can be found here:
http://www.titanpoker.com/vip_club.html

See you at the table and good luck!

Robin Steele
Manager
Titan Poker
"Become A Legend At Titan Poker!"
http://www.Titanpoker.com

It won't trouble me too much that I've been downgraded from Silver to Bronze. I won't be trying to regain my former status. You know why?

Because Titan BANNED U.S. PLAYERS.

Geniuses.