You know what's coming...

... a whole lotta shit to say seeing as it's been since Friday since my last data dump!

Friday we(Nicole and I) took the evening flight out of Reagan International to Columbia, SC to visit my family, more specifically my Grandfather who hasn't been well since breaking his hip a few weeks back and then running into more and more complications ever since. Saturday afternoon we were receiving phone calls that he was hospitolized in Aiken after the nursing home found his blood sugar to be "life threateningly" low which is to be expected when a diabetic won't eat and regulate their own blood sugar. I spent a tear-filled, emotionaly draining 3 hours with him on Sunday and said my final goodbyes as we are all painfully aware the end is near with him. He had periods where he was very lucid throughout those 3 hours but other times when the pain killers had his mind warped. I was amazed when he immediately asked for my wife when I showed up an hour prior to her getting there with my Mother. As soon as he saw her he looked at me and said "PD(my initials) that's a pretty girl you have there, hold on tight and treat her right" my eyes welled up and it was hard to regain composure. He asked me if we were there for his "sending off," to which I had to reply was "up to him." He gave us all a wonderful family and back in 83 when he kicked his drinking he was the best Grandfather a boy could ask for. I tried to tell him all these things at the end of our time together but all I got out was a choking "I love you G-Pa," and that was the end of it. I am not sure I've ever cried as an adult in front of my father but I guess I am not as ashamed of myself as I thought I would be. This was my only Grandfather and he is my dad's dad so I know my father understood the way I felt. I never knew my mom's father so I am especially close with this Grandfather.

On to some poker since most of you don't want to hear all that blubbering nonsense. We came back midday Monday and I got out to E and Keenans 1/2NL game. Nothing super to talk about there, first hand of game around 8:15pm I got up $200 when I set deuces vs Kenny and apparently "talked" him into calling a big bet on river. I'll swear forever I was just talking cause I was drunk but Kenny thinks I was convincing him to call so I got the standard "you dirty mother f**cker." LOL... all in good fun of course cause that dude is str8 comedy!! Anyway for the next 4 hours I pissed away the $200 profits and ended up down $15 on the night when midnight came and I was beat ass tired.

On to last night's game at Rob's the normal 1/2NL game I like to hit up right around the corner form here. There are many hands to talk about but I'll only describe one in detail. Early on I managed to get paid with AA vs JJ and that was after I had sucked out on Rob pretty big with my J9 vs his AJ when I turned Jacks up on him. So I was running pretty well and avoiding any major coolers at this point when a rather large hand between Ali and I happen. Any of you who read these blogs with any regularity must be thinking "ahhh, Ali and Paul in a large hand again, what's new?" I've straddled to $7 UTG and it folds around to Ali who smooth calls. Folds back to my action where I look down at T9 diamonds and decide to yank on Ali's chain a little bit by putting $18 on top to make it $25 total, Ali snap calls and we head to the flop. Tc3c8d and I put out $35, to which Ali puts $75 on top. I call after deciding I'm in pretty good shape but I still check the 3 of diamonds turn trying to get a read off of Ali's action. FTR I now have two pr and flush draw; Ali is in the tank thinking and thinking as Ali always does, until he decides to put out just $100. I go into the tank for quite a bit and have to decide if that's a bet that wants a caller or is that just a BAD weak bet. After a long deliberation on my part I see Ali has ~320 behind and I decide to put $250 on top of the $100 bet with just my weak T and diamond draw. Ali almost auto ships so it's $118 more to me, I exclaim "Jesus Ali, AA-JJ and you're good, or possibly you have boated and I'm drawing dead, but I CAN NOT fold for $118 more so I call." Ali says "you have to be good!!" That almost floored me because as he said it he flipped over pocket 5s! Weeeeee to PDoggie getting the right turn read and weeeeeeeeeeee for Ali trying to make me fold for $118 more!! My hand holds on the bricked river and I go on deeper and deeper last night to cash out for $2200. I THINK that's my largest live win on the MDP circuit. One of my larger ones too for even AC cash games which I tend to do pretty well in too.

Exciting stuff, anyways, hope all haven't fallen asleep yet! Just busted 14th in the AP 20R&A and I'm getting tired of just cashing in it! Would be nice to win it again sometime soon!! LOL

P

Out of it for a few

Haven't done much this week. Cashed in a few online MTTs but nothing major to write home about. Going to be off for the holiday weekend down to visit my Grandfather who is not doing well. I already feel blessed that he has held out this long and that my wife and I will get to spend some time with him. Hopefully he will make a dramatic turnaround but he won't eat and won't take his medications anymore and that really worries us all of course.

Hope all have a very safe holiday weekend and I'll pick you back up on the flip side(that's next week for you non jive lingo types LOL)

P

That's a lot to miss...

I'll start with saying that I just lost w/ AA on a TTJQA board in my FTP tourney... Why yes, the man had quad Tens. I like it!!

Played Rob's game last night AKA Goodfellas Odenton game, it's a 1/2NL game with a wide range of players, many of whom have never been a part of the MD-Poker community. Some so weak you literally salivate to be in a pot with them, and some are pretty good so you need to bring your senses with you to figure out what's the dealy-o...

Pretty normal night for a few hours, started about 8pm and somewhere around 1030pm this hand goes down with Gatti, a cool ass marine who is quite the LAG. I pick up hooks in the CO and for the first time there weren't 5 limpers ahead of me. I make my standard raise of $15 and it folds to Gatti in the sb who makes the call pretty quickly and then to Ali who is going call every raise I make no matter where it is and when it is. Flop comes down 843 rainbow and they check to me which I put out $35, Gatti nearly immediately says raise and puts $80 on top of it. Ali folds and I go into the tank for a second to figure out what's going on. After a few minutes of deciding that Gatti could easily do this with 99 or TT I decide to put it to the test and go allin for another $130 on top of the $80. I do this because I know if I just call $80 the $130 is going in on turn anyway so fuck it, let's see it. Gatti flips up his 99 and I feel pretty good about my read and ship until the turn bricks and the river rips a 9 out. Someone says, "damn, that's a case 9 cause I mucked 92o and I felt a lil puke creep up in my mouth, but I'm aight. REBUY!!!

Sit back down with $300 and begin to hit some cards and just absolutely punish the table for the next 2.5hrs. About 1245 I had said that 130am would be my cutoff as I was tired and I'm really trying to get in the habit of getting out of a game when I'm beat down tired. Someone should start installing those oxygen machines like they have running in the casinos to keep my ass awake!

Round 1am I'm sitting with close to $800 and I make a huge error in judgement, one I've made before and one I'll probably make again because I'm so gay for 87soooooooooted LOL. Ali makes it $12 from EP and without any odds because it folds around, I call his bet from the SB like a moron. BB calls as well and here comes the awesome flop of Qd6d5c. Hmmm, OESD and Flush draw, that's a PDoggie supersize at McDonalds, I'm smiling like a 6 peckered billy goat now!! Check, bb check and Ali fires out $40, me being me and not letting anything go, I pump it up to $140 and BB folds, putting Ali into the tank. He has about $230 behind when I bumped it up and I was well aware of what he had behind. I had made up my mind that I would pay $230 for this draw but if I could get him off his AA, KK, AQ, KQ type hand then I'm fine with taking it down right there. Besides, it's Ali, he may not even be that strong. QJs there is just as possible... anyway, he says after a minute "Paul, I know you, you have an oesd with a flush draw." I kinda laughed a little and said "so Ali, are you ahead of me" to which he replied "yes, for the moment I am." I said, "well, you know what they say in the south then Ali," he says "nope," and I give him the ole "Cowboy Up!!!" LOL... got a good giggle from this very Arabic man, but he was back to business after a minute or two... he goes allin and I snap call the $130 more, flips up his AQo and I brick the turn and river. Ahhhhhhh... why couldn't I leave well enough alone pre-flop with no odds and no position? Retard me!!

I cashed out shortly thereafter and was down 85 on the night. That's a win to me especially after that 99 busted me up. No biggie.

See y'all round the tables, PEACE!!

P

Swings n Things

First off I'll mention only playing one online tourney yesterday which was the 20R&A on AP and went out 27th of ~130players or so. My fervor for online play has been pretty non-existent which tends to happen when I'm not in the habit of being tied to an online schedule. Getting ill last week and being busy this weekend disrupts that, but I don't mind.

Summertime is here and we will be busy almost every weekend, which is FINE by me! This weekend we head to see my sick Grandfather, I am well aware that it may be my last encounter with him in this life and I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for it.

Last night I did attend Ehonda and Keenan's 1/2NL game. I've made that a pretty regular thing hitting the game up 4 out of the last 5 weeks. Last week being upchuck week so I didn't make it! LOL I guess more importantly is that each of the last 4 times I played there, I made $$. I guess I'd have to say that it's a mixture of consistent play and a generally weaker crowd. Not the whole crowd, just a select few who I'm almost positive will NEVER make a dime in this game unless they figure out that crying and getting frustrated over hands that they should've never been in will NEVER learn them any lessons in this game. Whew, soapboxy of me, but had to get that out after watching some very poor sportsmanship at our table last night when a shitty player lost with shitty hands and then got shitty with the dealer over and over. I'm just glad I wasn't a dealer because I might've made a scene.

Weeeeeeee, on to the part that actually relates to the title! I know you all reading just LOVE the fact that it takes me four paragraphs to actually get to the freaking point! I will do my best not to butcher these hands, and hopefully if any of the hand participants read this they can correct the mistakes via comments to reserve their integrity.

First hand of note came a few hours into the night where I had been floundering around the $500ish stack all night (my buyin was $300). Trav and I get involved in a hand, which was no surprise as we had been involved in a few pots early on already. Avoiding Trav in pots is much like getting my fat ass to the gym; it ain't easy to do, and it doesn't happen very often. I'm sitting in the BB and pick up 8c8s, with a limper or two around to Trav in the cutoff who bumps it to $17. Fold around and I call, to which Ali calls as well from MP. Flop comes down 764 and I don't remember the suites completely but there were two diamonds down there. Check around to Trav who makes it $35 and I call. Ali goes in the tank for a minute then goes all in. Trav without even knowing the full amount of the AI says "min raise" and we figure out Ali has bout $65 on top of the $35 so now Trav has pushed it to ~$105 more to me. I don't think it took me long to figure out what was going on. One of these two has my 88 dominated, and one of them is on a flush draw. If I can figure out that Trav has the flush draw, I can still make a few bucks off this pot by going all in, IF my 8s hold and I win! Right about the second I come to this conclusion Trav says "if you hate money, go all in." I barely heard the first breath from his mouth and I was already moving in to which he called without hearing me finish saying "in!" He turns up Kd5d and I know I'm in deep shit as he not only has the flush draw but his redraw to the str8 is blocking one of my outs for a gut too. Ali has a set of 7s and is in pretty good shape till Trav busts a 3 on the river to smoke the str8 and beat both of us in that huge pot. I had Trav covered by about $160 or so(rough guesstimate) so I still had plenty of chips to play with.

Very next hand I get AKs in the SB. 1 limper and I bump it to $15 pf. Only caller is JacSr who is in the BB. HU flop comes down J high but bringing me four to the flush. I fire out $20 and JacSr calls. Turn is a King and I'm confident I have him torched but I only put out $35 giving him some room to hang himself. River brings my nut flush and I just fire out $65 thinking he may have hit a flush too and will come over top. He only had another ~$40 behind so it surprised me when he just called and showed his Q high flush which he made by playing Q4s to my raise pf. So, with that hand I'm real close to my original buyin if not a little over it, and low and behold here comes the final big hand right away.

Now I'm OTB and admittedly I'm still on a weird tilt feeling. Not really mad at the Trav hand because it was a good, interesting poker hand and while I KNOW I coulda laid down my 88, I just didn't want to and lost my gamble. Back to being OTB and I get As6s, with about 5 limpers I make it $15 to go. Ali, Pops, and Todd or Jeff call so we head to the flop four handed. Flop comes down KsQsJs and I of course can't believe that I just flopped 2nd nuts with the strong feeling it's nuts cause only thing beating me is someone flopping the str8 flush. Ali though from EP leads out $50, Pops doesn't take very long to make the call, whoever the other player was folded pretty easily and I had a decision to make. Do I just call? I have two players in the hand who I'm almost certain I can absolutely destroy if a few things don't happen: the board doesn't pair, and no spade comes out. I decide to just call the $50... turn card is a Jh... FUCK! Ali goes AI almost immediately for $155 and Pops goes into a deep tank and takes a very long time to fold, but he eventually does. Pops being in tank gave me a long time to think some things out and I decided if Ali had a boat I wasn't COMPLETELY drawing dead, but I just didn't think that Ali had a boat. That dude easily could have any range of hands there because I've played with him a ton and generally he is a bad player. I was pretty sure he had a Jack so I just had to pray he had no K or Q... but for insurance as I made the snap call I yelled out, I NEED A TEN OF SPADES!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM, Ten of Spades on the river and I had a royal flush!! Ali looks disgusted of course and I asked him if I needed the Royal to win or was my A high flush good anyway, and he said it was good, he just had a Jack. He then went to semi-berating me later in the night about how I make that call if I think he had a boat but I have learned to not listen to his crying. It's just him, it's how he reacts and it's nothing personal. Fun times, my 3rd ever live Royal and it was paid pretty nicely. Played a few more hours till 1am and ended up cashing out for $580 so took a lil $280 profit on the night and hit the sack.

Whew, I gotta learn to streamline this stuff and to my readers I'm sorry for all the rambling. You all KNOW I like to talk a lot and I use this blogger often times as my Dr. Phil. I just ramble whatevers in my head and barely do any editing. It's often typed out over a period of time during the day when I get time to fire something into it. Thx for reading!

P

Hopefully back on Track!

Ok,

I think this week I'll have more time for da poka! Let's see if I can reach my goal of winning one Guarantee this week on AP.

Spent the weekend with the new baby Kylie Sarah who is my Brother-In-Law's first child, and the first niece/nephew for my wife and me. She will be duely spoiled as such and we are very excited. I was shocked when we got to the hospital and my wife got to hold Kylie, she was two days old at this point. My wife who has never once displayed AN OUNCE of motherly type instincts, picks this beautiful, perfect, innocent child up and low and behold as she stares down at the baby I catch a tear rolling down my wife's face. I sound like a massive pooo-tang here I know when I say, it whacked me across the head, hard and I was really touched by the moment. Go ahead, bust my balls, I don't care. If I can get a picture up soon, I will. That child is just too beautiful to not be shared with the world. I know there are a few women who read the blog so y'all can enjoy since my boyz will just be busting my balls after this post!! BTW she was 7lb 11oz




Kylie Sarah Payne born 17May07

Gobble Gobble...

This is less of a poker blog than a place I just spout shit out the last few days! Speaking of spouts, I been SICK!! Started out hamlessly as a stomach ache on Sun night and ran through Tuesday the same. Went out to a local Tue night homegame here and had a spectacular game when the deck pretty much knocked my ass out cause it hit me so hard. Ran my $300 buyin up to $1180 before the game pretty much broke at 1am. By that time I was starting to feel pretty ill though and it was a good thing. I got home about 115 and slept until 3am when the party began!! Gobble gobble seems to be a good noise to explain what happened next but it was a long day to say the least... lots of gobble gobbles and other obscenities from the bathroom!! By late last evening my wife convinced me to try a popsicle just to get something in my system. That started to perk me up and after one last bout late last night I was fine again this morning.

Feeling a little weak from the last 24hrs of hell I havent' played much poker and probably won't get much in again utnil Sunday night now as we are leaving town tomorrow mid-day. Well, after work we both are because my sister-in-law is giving birth in Va Beach as we speak! Nicole and I are very excited to have our first niece to spoil!!

Anyway, I'll update more when I know more bout my new niece Kylie Sarah Payne!

P

Lil Break Been Nice

Ahhhhh... I wonder if it's possible to be drunk and hungover at the same time, for this many days w/o my liver finally just giving in?

Little poker on Thursday only since last post. As usual I ran deep as a sumofabitch in the nooner on AP but made a stupid azz play w/ my ATo in middle position on the final two tables and ended up losing ~$8 total on the tourney after busting 14th and getting ~$72

After that and what all that had gone down on Wednesday I decided it was break time and headed off to my watering hole Friday evening to partake in my 2nd love Karaoke and Miller Lite. It was good shit, but I had a few too many and work Friday morning was NO FUN! Anyway, just decided that I was not going to play any poka on Friday since I needed a little break from the bubbles lol. One of my good buddies was to be married Saturday so of course Friday night we had to get out the beer pong tables and get stoooooopid on his driveway with his whole family and the wife to be's family -- I wonder if "be's" is a word? lol It was mad drinky time and had a great time, also didn't have to drive since Nicole(my wife) was there and not in mood for the games...

Saturday morning I got up after about 3 hrs of sleep and went trout fishin with Greg. Was good shit, we caught a mess of Rainbow Trout out there but my hungover/still drunk ass was sweating like a mofo and thought I might passout a few times over as we were hobling my dumbass up and down the river in waders. As fucked up as my back has been, trout fishing definitely isn't that good for it, but I REALLY need that time out there to know I'm still half normal! Got home about 1pm and had to get all cleaned up to get out to Frederick for the wedding.

Wedding was off the hook, can't believe my boy Eddie got married, he is younger and I've always counted him as a little brother. It was a trip, damn near busted a tear out as they said their vows. These two, along with Eddie's younger brother lost their home to a fire a couple of months ago and it really made me realize how fast our lives can change. Thank God no one was hurt but it was a close call with Eddie and it really shook everyone up. It was just such a relief after all to watch this wedding go down... Anyway, we of course got drunk as pissss but we were staying in the local hotel out there so no long driving to do.

Man, this was all real boring I'm sure to those of you who read this for poker related stuff. Sorry I've pretty much turned it into a man diary for the day but I'm sure it will all come back aroudn to poker eventually as that's what I spend a shitload of time on.

If you made it this far, thx for reading ;-)

P

Wednesdays 17k Report

Well, last night I was obviously feeling a bit froggy after running deep in the other tourneys during the day, so after finishing 2nd in a $65 sng I decided I'd go ahead and try to grind out the 17k gtd on AP which is a $30R&A starting at 10pm. It's not one I normally enjoy because it's a long one and by 10pm at night I'm often already kicking it in w/ some pain killers and getting ready to shut down on the poker. I got in the tourney and did my standard double buyin and then doubled on the very first hand when someone with ATo tried to push me out when I had 66 and a strong belief that they didn't have shit. It was a good start and I never looked back, taking over the chip lead and staying in the top five in chips for the majority of the tourney...

But wait... I said it's Bloody Wednesday earlier did I?? Fast forward to down to 25 players out of the original starting ~175 and I'm sitting in 7th with ~T45000 and I get AKs OTB... I've told the story enough times now, it wasn't a bad beat but it was an interesting hand to say the least. You can visit this FORUM to see or join in the discussion about what happened in the hand.

Just got back from some physical therapy earlier today. Picked up the tux for Eddies wedding and I'm looking forward to the shin dig out of town on Saturday. Hope my back allows me to have fun that day as I could sure use it. I love dancing even though I suck at it, it's always fun to embarrass my beautiful wife :-) She wouldn't of married me if she didn't think it was cute right? LOL

Bloody Wednesday

That's a U2 song right? Wait, that's Sunday, but wtf I'm naming it Bloody Wednesday after the last 2 MTTs might have me slightly tilted!

Play my normal $20R&A on AP and run well, sitting in top 10% of chips most of the game. Somehow in the final 13 players I manage to let a player OTB limp into my BB on a fold around board, which is so unlike me. That's generally an auto-ship moment late in a tourney, OTB limpers from there deserve to be punished but for some reason I didn't do it and I paid for it. I had KJo and the board came up K95 to where we started to battle, turn Q came out and I lost more to him as I was so commited w/ my stack that I paid off his K9o that he shoulda never been allowed in the hand with. My bad, and it cost me that MTT when I shipped short w/ 9To on a fold around into JJ which I still flopped double gutted but the afore mentioned hand of JJ took away a cpl of my outs! Out 10th in the tourney for a monster profit of $7.82

I shake it off though thinking, hell, I'm getting ITM non stop lately in these MTTs. That's great really if you think about the variance that comes w/ MTT play... I mean, comeon I'm not going to win them all, even if I sound like I feel like I should!!

Soooooooooooooooo, I get in another $50 MTT right off the jump; it's a super stack tourney w/ a 6k gtd payout. ~110 players and before you know it there I am sitting in the top 17 of the tourney, which is good for in the money status but the money is weak. I'm on the bb w/ AKs and an UTG raiser ships it all in for $15000, I have $13500 and have to call as the blinds are $500/1000 at this point. He flips up A7o and I'm elated to see it. The board comes down 256A7 and I am sent to the rail by the shithead w/ A7o! Another monster net of $22! w00t

I'm venting here, that's what this is for. Technically 100% ITM on the day in MTTs is out fucking standing, but I'm of course disappointed that I'm missing the big cashes. It's going to come though, I'm pretty much on fire at the moment and I'm feeling very good.

P

Hit and Run, HUH??

Welp, as many of you already are aware I have a continuous battle going w/ my back and this degenerative disc disease which is just a fancy way of saying that I have herniated discs that are getting worse. This week has been particularly rough and I've spent much of the early morning hours doing physical therapy just to keep me from going insane from the pain.

Monday night I decided to self medicate a little and headed to Damons to meet with the one they call "Superdave" for a few spirits. While there I was speaking about going to a local 1/2NL homegame run by Kiki and E. Dave decided it was time for him to get his balls in there again as well and it was set, we were going to play! I arrived on time about 730pm and began playing. It didn't take me long to run my rivered nut flush that I chased to hard to get, into the other guys rivered nut boat leaving me just a little over $120 from my original $300. I rebought for $200 and slid the extra ~$20 into my pocket since you can't be over $300 on a buyin or rebuy. Shortly there after, @ about 10pm I get into a great hand with Erik(EJS from MDP) who has seen me play hands many different ways, but probably never seen me do it with the absolute nuts. So I got him to pay off my turned nut flush with just his one pair. Matter of fact, I was betting the whole way and he kept raising me! The pot was a good one and I am pretty sure there was over $700 in it. For awhile I sat w/ a stack near $900 but never over it. I was getting quite drunk and on a whim about midnight I started drinking sodas just trying to sober up some because I realized there was no way I could last a long night the way I had been drinking. Around 1am I said this is probably my last round at the table and by 130am I was out the door. I cashed just around $740 or 770, I can't remember which but either way I was in for 500 and out the door w/ 240-270ish...

What really irritates the living shit out of me is that apparently Ali and Ahmed started jabbing about me leaving after running my stack up at the game!! To know me is to know someone that you talk to man to man and NEVER talk behind my back. It's fucking ignorant and you shouldn't be smiling in my face one minute asking if you will see me tomorrow at someones game, then when I leave start bitching because your suck ass can't make a fucking dime at this game and you are having yet another shitty night! I don't need to be your scape goat and I'm also not down with fake ass people. I didn't hit and run that game, and I DAMN sure didn't put the plastic wrap on the chips when I got them. I think I'm so offended because this is one of the biggest pet peeves I have and I would NEVER intentionally do it and feel as though I didn't do this the other night. I sincerely feel that Ali was crying because he got his ass raped that night like most other nights and he just wanted to bitch about something. That's fucked up, I thought he and I had become cool off the jump but apparently I gotta watch my back with that dude.

Nuff of the rant, just think it's fucked up.

P

Back at it

Not much of an update here just trying to not break the habit of posting. I played very little over the weekend as I am normally busy during the summer doing summer stuff!! Had the opportunity to watch the Oscar De La Hoya fight vs Floyd Mouthyweather Jr. and it was a shame that I felt the Golden Boy did plenty to retain his title but the judges gave "Pretty Mouth Floyd" the title. Kind of sick I think, but I'm glad Oscar did what he did and hung in there tough as could be. Not many people gave him much of a chance and he did plenty to have warranted the decision in my opinion.

Played the 60k guaranteed on AP yesterday, it's a $150+12 and I decided to take a shot since my tourney play has been pretty good as of late. I was running great the first hour and a half, staying in the top 50 of the field which started w/ over 450 players. Everything changed though when I tangled witha a medium stack who had QQ when I had AQ and Q flopped out. I couldn't get away from it and he took a significant piece of my stack when he was able to just TAG play the fuck out of me since he was in good position and had a dominant hand! Not too long after that happened I got AA OTB and a huge stack at the table makes a 3x raise. I decide to slow play and just smooth call hopeing for BB to come OTT or even to just come in because I had to take big risk, to create big reward when I'm that short. Flop comes down K82 rainbow. Original raiser checks to me and I put out a bet about half the pot which leaves me less than what I originally bet there, meaning OBVIOUSLY I can't fold to any raises. BB folds and superstack the moron comes over top shipping it forcing me all in. I snap call of course and the genius flips up his 84s. I was elated to see this beautiful hand until the turn card dropped an 8 giving him trips. THAT'S FUN, good game me! All good though, I distinctly remember beating KK last week in one of the tourneys I won w/ QTo when I shipped it on a T high flop and the turn brought me trip Tens so shit happens and we move on.

See you all around, maybe an update today after the nooner and a Mon night live game I attend.

P

Copy/Paste Damn I'm Lazy

I'm too lazy to type it out so here is the update I gave the PXF crew...

Well, Officially it's been about 48hours that I've been a part of PXF. I have watched only about five of the videos but I have managed to read a TON of the posts. So far it's been awesome and I am looking forward to more and more.

I've been pretty awful on Stars as usual but I did mention that on day one with you all I won the AP 7k gtd which is their daily noon $20R&A, managed to pull in $2100 there and I felt like my mental block had been lifted.

That was Tuesday, Wednesday I played the same tourney and was top 10 in chips from the start until the final 18 where the weakness in my big stack game(my ultimate curse) came to haunt me and I ended up 10th for a few $$ but nothing major. Last night I entered their $100MTT fo 10K gtd and I got to the final table with a pretty weak stack. I managed to double up and get in the mix but then I lost a couple of races and ended up busting 6th for $500.

I know it's nothing major and I hate to sound like a bragger but I know you all like to hear results and I really do attribute some of the success to listening to these videos. I think one of the first videos where JBax makes mention of it being a "privilege to play on Sundays"(paraphrase obv) hit me strong because I have the opportunity to play quite often and sometimes I take that "privilege" for granted. It made me refocus and hone in on skills I've always had. Now I just need to keep learning from the pros to figure out the skills I'm severely lacking in!!

See ya round the tables.

Raisindye Open in Full Effect!

Well... not really, but just yesterday I wrote on here about needing to get back to the basics which include playing as often as possible in the Absolute Poker noon 7k guaranteed which is a $20 rebuy&add-on tournament. I mentioned how one of the old regulars once dubbed that tournament the Ashby open because I had a two week period that I placed ITM in 9 str8 tourneys and won 3 of those. The tournament was a 4k gtd back then but for those of you familiar with MTTs that's a pretty tough run to make in them.

Anyway, back to the title... Now I'm Raisindye on Absolute Poker because I created a better rakeback account through ITH, hence changing my username as well. Yesterday was my first try back in the AP nooner since I had taken a little bit of a tournament hiatus and I'm VERY happy to say that I won it!! $2100 takedown for a $120 investment. I believe there were 137 players. Most notable for me in the win was the fact that on the final table I was in positions 9 of 9 left, 8 of 8 left and then 7 of 7 left until I started to catch a couple of breaks. It was one of my more difficult final tables that I can remember because when we got down to 9 players there was a HUGE stack to my left. So large that when the FT started he had over 300k in chips and the next closest stack was 114k. My stack was around 20k but blinds were manageable. Regardless as we got to the final 3 players this monster stack on my left hammered out the other player and as we got Heads up i was a 5:1 dog w/ him having nearly 513k in chips and I had 83k. Blinds were 3k/6k so I thought I was in deep poop!! Thankfully this guy turned out to be one of the worst headsup players I've ever encountered. I think I had him so frustrated by the 3rd or 4th HU hand that the tournament was already won by me it was just a matter of time. I know I sound uber cocky here, I'm not trying to. I normally wouldn't call someone a bad HU player, but HOW do you lose a 5:1 chip advantage like that? Seriously, I'm not all that good at HU play, but damn he let me run his ass over.

Anyway, W00000t to the win, I sure needed that confidence booster!!

Paul

Blogging is Hard Work

I'm such a lazy non posting somebody!! I'll try to keep up better, but we shall see how this goes. Trav mentioned the Blog to me last night and got me thinking about it again.

Been the same ole same ole around here. Back on the home game circuit since those that owed me dough finally hit me back and I had a semi-successful trip to AC. I say semi-successful because I would of made a lot more $$ had I not gotten drunk on day 1 and tripped over the Blackjack table on the way back to my room. The positive thing was the 2/5 sessions I had up there with 7 sessions that all finished in the black which to me is incredibly lucky mixed with some good play.

I've not had a good tournament score in a long time, and in fairness I haven't played very many. I got hooked on the damn LO8 game on PStars but I'm going to take a break from that because I do feel my tournament mentality has suffered from the action. I can't seem to find that patience that I used to have, that I KNOW is making me do STUPID things late in tourneys. I recently signed up for PokerXFactor because I'm so desperate to get back to being a solid tournament player who is just "ok" at cash games. Johnny Bax said something interesting in the very first tournament video I watched that has been ringing in my ears ever since I heard it. It went something like "I cherish and respect every tourney I get to play on Sundays because I have a family and it's hard to get a chance to play." This translates to my life in a manner that I need to take every tourney I play seriously. I got to a point over the last few months where I'm calling down these chuckleheads with some of the silliest things just to SEE what they are doing. I've changed my game for the worst and I'm not taking it seriously at all. It's time to get back to the grind of the daily 7k on AP(nooner). BadBeete was known to call that the Ashby(my signon) at one time, but now I am not even on the RADAR over there. I'll start playing that tourney at least 3 times a week if I can find the time and I'm going back to hammering the $30-$65 sngs. I have a decent ITM% and ROI% over a relatively small sampling (<1000) and I'm hoping that I can continue to win that way.

I promise to try to keep this rolling. As I said before, I think it's theraputic to write stuff out in here. I'm going to make a post about home games too that I play in, but for now that's enough.

P