I made an effort to have a very low poker content in April. I only played in two live games and 11 online sit-n-gos. Results were mixed.

First my live play. I played the Weekend at Mookie’s tourney and did not cash (no surprise there): -$30; Then I sat at a table full of ringers and got smoked 🙂 -$50. This past weekend I hosted a crawfish boil at the house and a poker game broke out. It was 5c/10c NL and I did pretty well: +$12. Overall, not great, but not horrible.

As for online, I did really well this month. These numbers would be better, but I bubbled two SnGs last night when I shoved on the flop and was ahead in both hands. The deck screwed me both times and my monthly stats dropped. Poker is as poker does.

This is my SnG finish distribution. I am quite happy with this:

Yeah, it is a small sample- but it shows positive growth. I am going to limit how much I play in May as well; if this trend continues I will be a very happy camper indeed.

I was approached about hosting a game at my house. I do have a very nice 10 top table (pictures here). It gets very little use so this is a good option. I will probably run a 1-2 or 2-4 limit game for a period of hours and start a $10 or $20 buy in NL tournament at a specified time. It won’t happen a lot as some of the people who might want to play might want to play at Mookie’s or Rocco’s home games and I don’t want to interfere, but it would be fun to shake it up a little. I might even do it mid-week rather than on a weekend.

Yes, I was part of last weekend’s festivities. Mookie put on a heck of event and I was happy to be part of it. It started Friday night at Iron Cactus where I got to watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees. Always a good thing. The dinner was great too 🙂 I had not met April before and had not seen Don or Weak since Rocco, Mookie, and I went to Vegas awhile back.

Everyone bailed after dinner, but I was downtown and got a text that Lovejoy’s was about to get “crazy”. It turns out they were having a High Five Contest. It was a lot of fun, the two pictures I found at that flickr link don’t really do it justice.

Saturday was golf in Lago Vista. Lago Vista GC is a pretty good haul from my house- 45 minutes or so with no traffic. I was playing with Rico and Rocco, down a man from a full 4 man team. We had a rotating 4th shot and playing best ball. We sucked. The main highlight of my round was that my iron play was fairly solid and that I can snap the head off my driver and have it go futher than the ball I was trying to hit. This was the repaired club from before. I think it is time to just spend money on a new one as it seems obvious this club hates me.

Yes. I was one of the monkeys. But that damn $10 grill sucked to put together. The food was great and the company was fantastic. The Mooks’ house is setup pretty well for entertaining especially if the Texas summer heat hasn’t hit and we can use their backyard.

Poker was a lot of fun. Full of donks. We probably had the sanest of the three tables and Don pushed in the dark 4 times in a row at one point. Our sanity was probably our downfall as the chip counts from rebuys at the other tables just crushed ours. I got to sit next to JJOK and chat it up for awhile which was another plus. As it turns out I was never in a position to rebuy so with the add-on I was in for $30 and got knocked out in the mid teens when my KQ could not catch up to Don’s AJ. I watched some basketball and waited for the final table so we could play some cash.

The cash game was a great learning experience- and boy did I get schooled. Before *all* of the heavy hitters sat down I got some cards and pulled some chips. That probably just delayed my cash death. Scott was the primary at this table and I could not get by him. I ended up going busto with JJ against his QQ on a 9 high flop. I made mistakes, but learned quite a bit. I won’t be as much of an ATM machine next time. I headed to the house after 2am and tried to get some sleep.

There was talk of trying to make it to the Round Rock Express game Sunday afternoon but I was too wore out to even see if that was going to happen.

A lot of fun. Thanks to Mook for putting on a spectacular event and count me in as an early sign-up for next April.

Since I am keeping track of my February results I might as well post up the table here.

I did better on my ITM percentage (by a few points) but I did 3 times *worse* with ROI.

It was pretty much as bad as can be. I played all but two of those SnGs at FullTilt. The last two were back at PokerStars where I bounced in 8th, then managed to finish 2nd when I could not race KQ past 77.

Let’s hope March is better. (which is exactly what I said about February).

I have a new toy. I am typing this on a new Dell Inspiron E1405 laptop. It is a shiny silver with a 14″ wide screen; an Intel Core Duo 1.6 GHz processor; 1 GB of RAM; and a 120 GB SATA hard drive. It is running Windows XP Media Center and as of yesterday Ubuntu 6.10. It is a pretty sweet machine and a good way to spend my tax refund.

I decided that some live poker would be a good way to waste a Saturday evening so I headed over to Mookie’s (and Mrs. Mookie’s) for some re-buy madness.

There were 20 runners and 23 rebuys in the 80 minutes of re-buys. I was, unfortunatly, one of those when my aces were cracked by 56 sooted when a 3 on the river sealed a straight. I chipped up for the 2nd half of the re-buy period, did not add on, took my bonus chips and was about 2/3 of average. When we lost two players we moved to two tables where I continued to bleed chips. I was able to double though Rico and then held my own to the final table. (…time passes, now bubble time…) The blinds were 4k/8k and I had about 55k. I made it 30 to go and Rico made it 60. I was pretty much commited with pocket tens. Looking back, he showed his jacks before I said call- but it wasn’t an angle. The blinds were going to 5k/10k the next hand with me on the BB so the money went in. No lucky outs for me and I was done.

Total cost: $20. Time spent: 5 hours.

I really am not a fan of re-buy events. Some may recall the last time I played there that I won with no re-buy or add-on. It just isn’t my thing. This particular event had an extra round of re-buys and the initial chip count was reduced from 15k to 10k. [note: this is from the last time I played, chip counts and rounds have been modified since then] It basically forces re-buys. I would prefer a $20 or $25 buy in, larger stack, freeze-out event. In this case the money would not have been as good because the average buyin was $30; but that is what I prefer.

All in all, a pretty good time. I’m going to try and make at least two more events so I can play in the $50 invitational this spring- if I feel like donating that much cash 🙂

I’m still running. I am using a Hal Higdon plan. Total last week (week 2) was 8 miles (yeah, I know, pretty soft). The plan calls for 9 miles this week starting with 3 miles tomorrow. Week 5 is where the mileage really starts to pack on- 12 miles. Right now it looks like first week in April is when I culminate my ramp-up training with a 16 mile week. Once I get there I will have to work on a maintenance plan. I would like to get it closer to 20 or 25 miles a week long term.

Zefrank is one funny man: the show with zefrank: 02-14-07

I signed up with Mookie for his home game on Saturday. I have not played their in quite a while (October 6th according the archived results) so it will be interesting to see how I fair. I have no plans to drop a ton of bank out there, so I will probably be starting from quite a disadvantage.

No bad beat stories from me. They are happening, yes I am still playing, but it does no one any good to just bitch. I did get quads on the opening hand the other day. I actually got paid; I may have been able to get more from him (his sixes full of aces vs my quad sixes) but I did end up winning the SnG so in the end it did not matter too much.

My “contract” with Big Blue is ending in about a month. I am starting to actively look. My group has a DBA-type position open which I am considering; but I want to keep my options open. Rumor has it, BB has a crappy severance package so I will need to step into a new job quickly. Any one have leads on a IT/Lab Administrator type position in the Greater Austin area? Hook a white boy up. I’ll buy you a beer when I start drinking again.

I am on day 10 of my On The Wagon Adventure ™. I only bring this up because I was invited to a going away party for my friend Kristen on Friday night. It is downtown and starts at 9:30. It is not the kind of event I can slip into, have an iced tea and leave gracefully. Chances are I won’t go. A shame, because she is headed to ATL and I will very likely not get a chance to wish her bon voyage.

Googe. I got some googe for you.

So I was treading water in the Hammer Day Poker Event when I woke up with pocket tens in mid-late position. Fishiswa raised from 80 to 280 in early position. I re-raised all-in to 1700ish with my tens and he insta-called with The Hammer! 7 on the flop, 2 on the turn. No board pair to counterfeit his two pair and I was down to 20 chips. All in next hand with J7o and ran into Aces and Nines. Shlee1112 ended up with quad 9s and I was out 101 of 158. Ouch. That is enough poker for tonight.

I’m signed up, are you?