I've been catching up on my Las Vegas themed reading lately and it's set off a bit of envy.  WPBT 2010 is only a few short weeks away and I'll be missing out again.  Sad.  But I'm doing what I should have done last year - trying to work out a plan that will get me there in 2011.  If I can survive April 15 I think I'll have a shot.

***

The big plan definitely won't involve luckboxing any donkaments though.  Considering how many I used to play just a couple years ago, I find it amazing how little patience I have for them anymore (thanks Rush Poker).  Even super turbos feel like they take forever.  I played the Tuesday Spewday super turbo and LOL'd each time I thought to myself "I should sit out to see how this hand plays out".  You don't have to DO that, dummy!

***

I did make a few shekels playing Rush so it was a good evening.  Off to go do some planning. 

Nothing poker specific today.  I took "yesterday" off after the late night bender.  Still paying the price for that.  I really need a couch in my office so that I can nap on days like today.

Anyhow, I decided the other day that I'm ready to advance out of the stone ages and upgrade to a smart phone.  I have an old unsmart Motorola RAZR that's getting up there in age.  It still works OK other than the battery not holding much of a charge.

After getting some recommendations (thanks BG, gadzooks, luckbox et al) I'm leaning toward the HTC Droid Incredible on Verizon.  I currently have AT&T and have no complaints except for one big one - they have a large dead zone right where I do a large amount of my out-of-office work.  Zero bars.  I'm not the only AT&T customer who experiences it and there's no reason to expect it'll change any time soon.  It appears that VZW and Sprint both have good reception.

I'm not eager to sign up for another contract (after being without one for quite a while) but I guess I can.  It looks like I can get a deal on the Incredible if I shop around - minimizing that upfront outlay is a plus.

I considered the Evo on Sprint or possibly waiting to see what would happen with VZW's 4G service but after thinking about it - why?  No carrier is going to have 4G where I live for at least two years and probably longer.  It'll probably be a while after that before it makes sense to upgrade to a 4G phone.  So really there's no reason to dawdle.  Except that I've read that VZW will be going to tiered data plan pricing next week.  It's always something.

Anyway, that will probably be the non-poker fun time task of the week.  Looking forward to it.

Edit:  I'll have to look at the Samsung Fascinate too.  Time to go to Best Buy and fondle examine the options.

On any ordinary day I am on what you would describe as a "normal" schedule.  I get up, work an 8 to 6 job, relax a little in the evening and crash before the 11:00 news.  I might sleep in a little on the weekends but I rarely deviate from the basic routine.

Yesterday, I was hurting.  I got very little quality sleep Friday night and after the usual Saturday morning stuff I was bushed.  Although I fought it for a while, eventually I succumbed to the need for a nap ... which lasted until 8:00.  Oops.

Needless to say, that threw my body clock totally out of whack.  After watching the Oklahoma-Missouri game, I still wasn't ready to sleep.  What to do, what to do.  Oh, yeah.   Since this is a poker blog, obviously I fired up the internet poker machine.

Yeah, you can say it's been a long time since I've played a late night session.  A long, long time.  Apparently I've been missing out.  I know I bag on the FTP RNG on a regular basis, but for once it was mostly kind to me.  I got off to a quick start via an egregious suckout (KK > AA) and just boomed from there.

I did give back a couple buyins on total misreads, but still ended up nicely in the black.  And I got in my 10th day of Take 2 so I should have an additional lil' sweetner coming my way.  I think I finally called it quits about 4:00 a.m.

Rush Poker for your Droid device is on the way! Currently in beta testing, reports of GREAT SUCCESS! are starting to trickle in. BadBlood says it is teh awesome (or something). If it's eye candy you want, the Full Tilt blog has a little video clip.

From reading through the initial reports, it seems like people are generally positive although there are mentions of disconnects when playing on 3G service.  It probably won't come as any surprise, but I think Full Tilt is onto something here ... if they can make it stable enough and secure enough.

Also:  Sorry, iPhone fans: The beta uses Flash which is not supported by Apple. Don't look for officially sanctioned Rush Poker on the iPhone, iTouch or iPad anytime soon.

***

I've always used Blogger for this site.  I've had good luck with it.  I think my lucky streak is over.  

Playing around with the template, I have been completely unable to fix the problem that I was having - that everything in the right sidebar was getting pushed to the bottom of the page.  I went from my custom 3 column layout to a pure stock layout.  Vanilla.  No help.  Tried wiping everything out and rebuilding with a simple two column layout.  NYET.  Anything I add to the right sidebar goes to the bottom.  Argh.  I've messed around with the width settings, no dice.

For the moment I'm leaving it with this simple design.  I have saved a copy of my old template and may go back to it ... or I may switch to something else.

Blogger, you're on the list.

***

Another session, another win.  Dug myself a nice hole by failing to lay down my flopped straight when the board paired on the river.  I need to do better at laying it down when I'm pretty sure I'm beat.  But I came back with some better play and some minor donktardery to end up a couple happy meals in the black.

Be they ever so small, there is nothing like a win.

Although it is Friday and there is a non-zero chance that I will enjoy a beverage or two this evening, that's not the kind of wasted I'm talking about. 

I got in another session last night and was really feeling good about my decision making.  I felt more alert than usual, did a much better job of maintaining fold discipline and was taking actual time - yes, even at Rush - to think situations through before acting.  In other words, I felt like I was "in the zone".

Such a great feeling.

As it turns out, though, being in the zone proved to be largely unnecessary.  It's not all that common to play a huge pot preflop at Rush100 but when somebody 4-bet shoves on you when you're holding AA what are you going to do?  Call, pray and grin when your favorite holds.  Yep.

I was grateful for the courtesy double and promptly shut things down.  More and more it makes me happy to book a win no matter how small.  Now if only I can get better at sticking to a stop-loss on those days where I can't get it going I'll be where I want to be.

***

Much else to talk about but no time.  With the weekend forecast looking dismal and the home teams on a bye maybe I can crank out a few words.  We shall see.  It's been a long time since I've been "in the zone" when it comes to blogging.

The Take 2 plan rolls on. I played a little longer than expected last night. I dug myself a modest hole through bad play (yeah I play bad. Really really bad.) plus a few times when I saw an ace hit the flop when I held a big pocket pair. And I managed to run AK into AA on a King high board. I didn't go crazy on any of these hands so the hole was one I could recover from.

Anyway, the RNG finally decided to take pity on me. I finally picked up AA in early position and got action. 3 players to the K-T-6 flop. I lead out, one fold, was raised and I called.

Turn A. I bet it again and was insta-snap raised all in.

I took a moment to think and came to the conclusion that if my opponent had QJ so be it. I didn't think the chances were real high that he did, the action just didn't support that conclusion. I called.

He showed KT. Massively misplayed (dude, I could have had AK) and also unlucky for him. Good for me, though. Thanks for the stack.

One quick shutdown and another positive session was in the books.

Five days of Full Tilt's "Take Two" promotion in the books, five days to go.

After Sunday's crushing I've changed strategy - instead of playing a lot, I'm playing a little. I've booked a little win and a very nice little win the last two days, recapturing most of the losses. I haven't earned a ton of points in the process which is a shame - double FT points are a good thing.

Here's hoping for more promos -- with golf season winding down and the holidays approaching it's rapidly becoming online poker season.


With bloglines going dark on November 1 I need to figure out what I'm going to do as far as blog reading goes. Using a feed aggregator like bloglines is certainly convenient but I waste too much time with subscriptions to stuff that's not really worth reading. I'll probably switch over to Google Reader or something and just try to weed out 50% of my subscribed feeds.

Note to self: Just do it already.


Also on the to-do list: Figuring out just what the heck I did to break my blog layout. Either that or go to an entirely new style - blogger really isn't overly fond of my hacked 3 column design. Hmm. Might have to flip a coin.

Hi, I'm one of them. I'm not good at collecting bonuses without getting killed.


I filled some 'relaxation' time this weekend with Rush PLO. Friday's session went quite well. An early session on Saturday during football wasn't good. A later session was OK and yesterday I got drilled for multiple buyins.

Most of the time I muddle along OK, but there are these stretches where I get outdrawn time and time again that are just killer. I usually play a pretty conservative game but when I tilt it can get ugly. Essentially, the FTP RNG (still) hates me:

I have AAxx double suited. 3 way all in versus AAxx single suited and a shortstacker with crap. The other AA guy hits his flush. Yep. Okay.

I flop top set with a redraw to the nut flush. Guy with second pair goes to war and hits runner-runner broadway. Uh huh. Jeez.

and my personal favorite:

I have AAKQ double suited. I get it all in against KKJJ single suited - I have his suit dominated because I have the AQ. This is about as favorable a position as you're going to get pre-flop in LOLmaha. Door card is OF COURSE the case king, followed by a pair of 8s.

Standard.

#$%^&!

I would offer to pay you a dollar for reading those but you'll have to collect it from Full Tilt. Stupid rigged game.

The object lesson, as always, is that I'm not good at poker.


Otherwise, I breezed through "Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling" by Beth Raymer. An easy read with some solid lulz about an unexpected career working with sports bettors. Worth picking up (especially via the library which is what I did).

I received a copy of Jim McManus' Cowboys Full this week and that's next in the queue.


Last and pretty much least, I was thinking about playing a little charity poker this weekend. When I went to see what was happening I was sad to discover that my room of choice shut down a couple months ago. There are still options, but that was the place where you'd always find the same opponents doing the same things. RIP Holland Poker Zone.

The rare DOUBLE QUADS!

First, the poker. Full Tilt is running a Take 2 promotion over the next ten days where they'll give you either $5 or $25 (depending on how many days you play) if you earn a couple points playing two tables or Rush Poker. You have to opt in so check the FTP site for details. Free money it's a good thing.


Now. Off topic time.

I have a couple domains - including this one - that are registered with godaddy. I think it's three domains total. They're all timed to renew about the first of the year. I try very hard to avoid having anything auto-renew because auto-renew sucks so at some point I will need to sign in and fork over a few dollars.

The expiration notices and renewal reminders have already started. I think I've received five emails already this week.

If I don't sign in and renew - and if history is any guide I'll take care of it in mid-December when I have time and hopefully a few spare dollars - I'll continue to get notices and reminders. Several each week. I feel like I should set a line, but even at something at the higher end of reasonable like 50 reminders I'd still take the over.

What a waste of bandwidth. One weekly reminder would be MORE than ample. Even monthly until the last couple weeks prior to expiration would be great plenty. This constant contact stuff is kind of annoying. So I'm quick on the delete button. Hey godaddy this isn't making me more inclined to register future domains with you.

There are times when the FAIL of other people puts your own personal fail in perspective. This is one of those times.

The K Mart bandit I ran across last week screwed up even more than previously expected. Not only did she get busted for shoplifting four cans of air freshener and seven twin packs of deodorant, she allegedly bit and went after the security guard with a pair of scissors she had in her purse.

Charge? Upgraded from unarmed robbery (probably) to armed robbery. Prison time is fairly likely.

Well, not on the scale of a LJ great success (yeah, um, wow), but I'll take it.

Footbaw was watched. Greyhounds were consumed. Alas there was no Paigow but I did relieve some Rushing omatards of their pocket change. Good times.

Since I've been watching a lot of football on Saturdays (ESPN3 is GOLD) I see a lot of the same commercials over and over and over again. This usually leaves me with a lot of time to consider ways in which the creative minds behind those commercials could die.

One of those commercials never gets old, though. It's the DirecTV ad with the Russian gazillionaire. When DirecTV offers him five months best television package he says

I JUMP IN IT.

And I LOL every single time.

Yeah, I know, I am easily amused.


I am also officially old today. I plan to celebrate this evening with a little online poker for imaginary money, a few greyhounds and if I'm lucky some Monday Night Footbaw.