Just a friendly reminder that Kat's Friday Night Donkament is once again upon us.

Time: 9 PM ET Fridays
Place: Full Tilt
Password: donkarama (I think, if not it's probably donkament)
Entry: 1 + 1 with REBUYS

This event bears about a much resemblance to real tournament poker as the Special Olympics does to the real Olympics, but that doesn't mean that it's not fun. In fact, it's way more entertaining than anything else in the two dollars, American, price range that I can think of. Even if you have to rebuy a few times, you're still looking at less than the price of a movie ticket.

If I'm around I'll be there. Easy pickings. Plus, where else do you have the potential opportunity to bust Waffles more than once in the same hour?

Query: Is it possible that the dog days of summer start this early?

I mean, it's only June. Yesterday was one of those days where the heat and the humidity just take all the starch right out of you. Clothes too - you feel like you're walking around in your pajamas regardless of what you're actually wearing. The only thing that sounds good is sitting in front of a fan with a cold drink. The kind of day that makes you wonder how people survived living in the South before air conditioning.

I'm going to be hanging out exclusively in the basement - where it's 20 degrees cooler - until the next cold front comes through.


When it comes to all things poker I've been largely out of the loop, having taken off the end of last week to play in a golf tournament. I popped up Bloglines yesterday and found that I had something like 425 unread posts. Once I got caught up, I learned that a lot of things were going on:

* Dr. Pauly cashed in the WSOP and even got a sweet bustout consolation prize.
* Poker scribe Michael Craig just made a final table and is 2nd in chips.
* Drizz and Amy Calistri played in yesterday's Omaha H/L event.
* Some guys started up a really intriguing site called Fantasy Sports Live.
* Other people are winning or cashing big in online tournaments.
* Several bloggers including Fuel55 are gearing up for the main event at the WSOP.

Congratulations to all. I'm sure I'm forgetting things and I really want to dig in to these topics and more, but time's a little short at the moment.

I did spend a few minutes yesterday poking around the Fantasy Sports Live site yesterday and will probably have a full review up in a few days - need to get some funds into Paypal and study the rules a bit before diving in. Brilliant idea and it looks like fun. Could be a real killer app come football season.

I also want to mention a post Lee Jones put up on Bigger Deal. He takes a thought-provoking look at the benefits of random/anonymous user "names" versus the current setup. I happen to think he's right for the most part, although I'm definitely more pessimistic about the condition and prospects of the online poker ecosystem.


I hope to get back to playing shortly - if I can get a stable wireless signal down in the basement it'll be soon, if not it's going to have to wait until the weather changes. I enjoy poker, just not enough to play in a sauna.

Answer: Not much.

Especially not much poker-wise. Since flaming out spectacularly in the Mookie (okay, okay, I'll remember 94o is not the mortal nuts), all I've done is play a little on Friday. The Katitude-organized Friday Night Donkament is retarded good fun. I played like someone who couldn't hack the Special Olympics for the first hour but found a little bit of the zone in hours 2 and 3. Managed to final table but didn't cash. After being as high as 3rd in chips I took a bit of a hit when my AQs went down to J9 and then went completely and utterly card dead. No aces, no decent faces, no pairs, nothing sooted. Them's the breaks.

I've been hanging around the micro-stakes play chip HORSE tables on Full Tilt as well the few times I've played and they've been pretty good to me. And that's about it. Poker inspiration is definitely lacking.

The WSOP seems like a world away. I've been following it a bit via the blogs, but that's all. Maybe next year I'll get serious about playing and try and satellite into one of the huge field low buyin badbeatathons. Or maybe Drizz will roll up a huge score next week and I'll be part of the way there. Good luck, man!

Watched a lot of the U.S. Open this weekend. It was slightly less noticable on Sunday than on the other days, but holy cow is Tiger Woods ripped. He looks more like a linebacker now than a golfer.

Until next time, you'll find me working around the house or hanging around the golf course, losing any and all prop bets that involve bunker shots. [Censored] sand.

We interrupt this blog while waiting for the start of the Mookie to bring you some unrelated content.

I read. I read a lot. In fact I'd rather read than do most anything else, which explains both (a) why I don't miss TV all that much and (b) why I'll never be a competitive triathlete.

My selection process for reading material is highly scientific: I look at a shelf and grab anything which might be interesting. I should mention that this rarely results in poker books being selected - although I've read a couple dozen, none have been read lately. Thankfully the public library lets me engage in this smorgasbord methodology at a miminal cost in time and money.

If I were to give you a list of what I've read lately, you'd probably just scratch your head, say "huh" and move on to a blog worth reading. For that reason and others, I generally don't offer up book reviews.

I will, however, put in a pitch for what I'm currently reading: Steve Ettlinger's Twinkie, Deconstructed. The undertitle says it all: "My journey to discover how the ingredients found in procesed foods are grown, mined (yes, mined), and manipulated into what America eats".

I've read Fast Food Nation. I read a book by the guy who did Super Size Me. While they were both fairly interesting, I found each to be as much about politics as anything else. The slant of the latter, if you'll excuse the pun, was particularly hard to digest. I think that's why I'm finding this such an engaging read - the author is genuinely interested in food science (which I happen to think is a fascinating, if somewhat scary, topic). There's very little-to-no "OMG Trans Fats! Nooooo, factory farms!" and a whole lot of explanation of what the hell Polysorbate 60 is and where it comes from. There is no shortage of material that will get you thinking -- it's disturbing how many food components are manufactured in China, for one thing -- but the author's not on a mission to change your life.

Or, I should say that if he is, it's not working. I enjoyed some microwave popcorn and an ice cold Coca Cola while reading a couple more chapters this evening.

So, anyway, if you are tired of rereading your copy of Phil Helmuth's "Play Poker Like The Pros", you might want to pick this title up the next time you hit the library. I plan to go back to reading it just as soon as I finish overplaying 86 offsuit.

I got nothing. Really.

Played for the first time in quite a while last night. I was going to sign up for the Wheatie replacement - it only took about ten minutes to realize it wasn't Tuesday. Oops. It was too early for Mondays at the Hoy, so instead I hit up the PLO tables for a few. 2 double ups and one stacking later, I called it quits just about dead even. Thirty minutes was exactly enough to satisfy any poker jones I may have had.

It'll probably be a while before I get in any more time at the tables. Too much to do - and I don't mean just sitting here reading trip reports from those that went to Las Vegas for the WPBT gathering.

**

I got an email this week from PokerPlex regarding changes in their rakeback structure. That's all well and good, aside from the fact that as a "U.S. player" I've been banned from PokerPlex and the rest of the Cryptologic network for the better part of a YEAR now.

Sigh. If email wasn't free, maybe companies would actually purge their mailing lists once in a while.

I think I also read somewhere that UKBetting was no more.

I may be alone in this, but I still kinda miss the Cryptos, they were really pretty decent for low stakes bonus chasing.

**

Time to go back to reading WSOP coverage.

Lindsay Lohan has a message for you:


She's stuck in rehab, Paris is stuck in jail and Nicole is stuck in the bathroom ... and you're all heading out to City of Sin for three-to-five (days) of non-stop mayhem. Without her.

You heartless bastages.

(beep)

Ahem, sorry, we have a correction. Lindsay's message is for the paparazzi, not for WPBTers. My bad.

**

Me, I'll be serving a perpetual 9-to-12 (hours per day) sentence in the 12'x12' prison called my office, with occasional exercise breaks on the golf course. I hope to be released on good behavior sometime before I'm 75 or dead.

**

Have fun, kids, and don't do anything Lindsay wouldn't do.

The idiotic laws we have in this country never cease to amaze.

Actually, in some cases it's not so much the laws themselves as it is the law enforcement personnel and prosecutors who are charged with applying them. Here's a doozy:

A Michigan man has been fined $400 and given 40 hours of community service for accessing an open wireless Internet connection outside a coffee shop.

Using an open wi-fi connection to check your email is a 5 year felony?

I'm not sure who's more reprehensible, the police department that had to look it up to see if it was a crime and then passed the buck on to the prosecutor or the prosecutor that said "It wasn't anything we were looking for, and it wasn't anything that we frankly particularly wanted to get involved in, but it basically fell in our lap and it was a little hard to just look the other way when somebody handed it to us". What a crock.

This entire matter could have been handled by someone, ANYONE, saying to the guy "hey, please stop doing that". Especially when there are no victims - it's not as if the cafe owner had an issue with his actions.

It's really a shame that there isn't a "common sense" defense.


Poker content is again lacking. No play.

Instead of reading my drivel, be sure to check out all the various bloggers working for the man. Pauly in particular is on fire with outstanding writeups of the first couple days - and no, I'm not just saying that because he got an endorsement from Erica Schoenberg.