First things first: Joaquin posted about this in my comments, and I realized I haven’t mentioned it yet. Iggy has set up another WPBT WSOP satellite, this time at PokerStars. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it, as I’ll be at the bowling alley. Monday night? WTF. Thanks, anyway.

What: Blogger WSOP Satellite Tourney
Where: PokerStars – Private Tab
When: April 3rd – MONDAY
Time: 9PM EST
Buyin: $30 +3
Password: socoshot

Second, Easycure is raising money for the American Cancer Society. You can just give cash here, or play in a charity poker tournament he’s set up on April 16th. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to the tournament, but I’ll be donating at least the $15 if I can’t.

What: Hammer Out Cancer – WPBT-POY Circuit Event (Tournament ID 3381723 under the Private section.)
When: April 16th – Sunday
Time: 9pm EST
Where: Full Tilt Poker
How Much: $10 + $16 ($15 goes to American Cancer Society so buy-in is 25+1)
Password: dahammer

I haven’t been playing much poker lately, and haven’t won when I have played, so nothing really to report on that.

Last weekend, I went back to the east coast for Evan‘s bris. The ceremony was nice, and it was good to get back home for a couple of days. I have a picture of him in my photoblog, and there’s one in the gallery. While I was there, I also got to see Brad and Staci’s new house, and it is beautiful.

Yesterday, I finally got a replacement receiver back from Denon after they finally decided waiting three months for a part was absurd and sent me a whole new box. While I’m not at all happy with their service, I do love the receiver. I set it up again last night, and got my Harmony 880 remote working with it. That was a bit of a pain, actually, but once it was programmed everything is working perfectly. It’s so nice to be able to switch from my Xbox to my Cox DVR without having to go behind them and move wires around. I also got the Xbox DVD kit yesterday, so I can use my Harmony remote to control XBMC now. I’m very happy with the whole setup now.

One last thing: Opening day, this Sunday.

Sort of.

I’m so behind in posting, and have so much to say. Where to begin?

Last Friday, I became an uncle! My brother‘s wife gave birth to a healthy 8lbs, 10oz baby boy. Say hello to Evan Scott Penner. I’m heading to the east coast this weekend to meet my new nephew. I’m now officially “crazy uncle Alan from California.”

Saturday, I went down to LA with some friends to see V for Vendetta. I enjoyed the movie a lot. I liked the political message, and while it really seems like an obvious attack on the Bush administration, it’s worth remembering that the original comic was written between 1982-1985. From what I understand, the movie is pretty faithful to the comic. The explosions (though few) were good, too. The 1812 Overture is great music to blow shit up by (as opposed to Music to Look at Boxes By). I bought the graphic novel as reading material for the plane ride this weekend.

Sunday, I played some board games. First, Paranoia Manadatory Card Game, which was a lot of fun. Also, I won. I don’t think it played out quite like the game normally would, as people didn’t seem to draw the right cards for some of the missions, but it’s a good game. After that, I played a few games of Lost Cities before heading home.

I went home to play in the WPBT WSOP Satellite. Many thanks for Iggy for setting it up. I didn’t play particularly well, and eventually busted when I pushed (with an m of 2) from the cutoff with K5 and ran into Gnome‘s AK. He would go on to take second. Congratulations to Gracie for winning!

Last night, I played in the $17k guarantee at FTP. I was doing just fine until my KK in the small blind ran into AA in the big blind. It actually folded to me, and I just completed. The big blind raised, and I pushed. He said “you better not suck out,” and then called. He flopped quads. I rivered a king. I had him slightly covered, and so I still had some chips. Built them up a little bit, and then my 55 lost to A4s who made runner runner flush. And then the next hand my JJ lost to 33 (all in preflop) and I was out. Damn poker. I guess I was due for a bad run of cards at some point.

Update: I almost forgot… okay, I did forget, and I’m fixing that now: April has posted information on getting room reseverations for the WPBT™ Summer Classic. Go check out the news here.

Sadly, I missed the DADI Invitational tonight. Byron was only able to win because I wasn’t there. Congrats!

Instead, I was at the bowling alley, as usual on Monday nights. My first three games were nothing special. In fact, they were pretty bad. Nothing wrong with a 192, but 178 and 162 are pretty sad. I’m not sure what happened for my last game, but I figured something out.

Unfortunately, if that last shot was strike, I’d have gotten a plaque for 11 strikes in a row. A teammate threw 279 that game, too. Again, I throw a big game, and it’s not the highest on the pair. Can’t really complain, though. The game pulled me up to a respectable 810 series for the night, too.

When I got home, I fired up FTP and registered for the $8k, and turned on my DVR’d 24. It took 10 minutes of me thinking, “how long is this damn ‘previously on 24′ bit?” before realizing I was watching last week’s episode. Anyway, I watched 24, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, and then ran out of things to watch, while playing in the $8k. I doubled up early when I flopped a set of eights against aces. Caught enough cards to keep up. Got lucky when AJo outflopped QQ. All of a sudden, I was shortstacked on the money bubble. Then shortstacked on the three table bubble. Then chip leader with two tables remaining. Pretty card dead after that, and went out in sixth place (final table!) when I pushed for 4 BBs with A8s and got called by J9o. He flopped a 9, and I hit a useless 8 on the river. $520 for my effort. It was good to be at another final table. Even though it’s only been a month since the last one, it seemed like it had been forever.

Thanks to April for staying up late and railbirding me through the whole thing.

Yesterday, I upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.0.2. It was relatively painless, though are a few things that are still broken. My gallery no longer works, but I’ve been wanting to find something new for that anyway. Part of the reason for the upgrade was to actually clean up a lot of the junk that had accumulated in my web directory. I had done a lot of customization, and was using WP before it had themes, so my layout and all the custom code was all sitting there. Now, I’ve moved it to a theme, and the only customization I’ve done to the actual WordPress code is a tweak to get my archive listing to look the way I want it to. I’ve also installed another plugin, Brian’s Threaded Comments, so you (and I) can actually reply to specific comments on posts now.

Thanks to Chris for the recommendation of Hamachi. It’s basically a zero-configuration VPN that lets me access my home machines from work as if they were on a LAN together. No more messing with port forwarding, and crazy configuration stuff. I’ve also had my father set it up as well, and now we can send files back and forth just by accessing Windows shares and copying things. Today, I actually copied files from my home machine to my father’s machine across the country, by just dragging them from one shared folder to another while at work. It’s very cool.

Tomorrow, I’m playing in a $220 buyin, 700+ field tournament at Chumash. I’ve played in it a few times before, and cashed once. The payout structure is very steep; they pay 100 places, with first getting $50k and 9th only $1500. It should be fun, I hope.

Sunday is the first event in the WPBT-POY (Player of the Year) Race, set up by Byron.

What: Pot-Limit Omaha

Where: PokerStars (Private Tourney 20742121) (password wpbt72)

When: Sunday, March 12th at 9:30 PM EST (that’s 6:30 PM PST, according to the supercomputer I use to keep track of time-zone changes).

Cost: $20+2 (couldn’t make a $15 tourney and there were slightly more votes for $20 than $10)

Requirements: Be a poker blogger who wants to take part in this year-long experiment. The poker blogging requirements will be light. Even if you post as often as Hdouble, or mention as much poker as AlCantHang, you are good. This rule will be enforced on an honor system. Non-bloggers will not be eligible for the title and the as yet unannounced prize at the end of the year.

Monday, we have the DADI Shorthanded Poker tournament, set up by Jordan and TripJax.

D.A.D.I. Shorthanded Poker
PokerStars
Monday, March 13th starting at 9pm
password=blogsaregay

Finally, this year’s first WPBT WSOP Satellite will be held on Sunday, March 19th. Thanks, Iggy.

WPBT WSOP Satellite Tournament
March 19th – Sunday
9pm EST
Paradise Poker
$30 NL
password: email Iggy

I think that’s it for now.

This new WYSIWYG in WP 2.0 is interesting. I like it, but at the same time I’m so used to typing in my own HTML code for most of my stuff that it makes it strange to use sometimes. I’ll have to get used to it.

I haven’t been playing any online poker lately. My internet connection has been dropping out a lot, and isn’t reliable enough to do anything. The cable guy was finally here this morning, and after checking everything out, and seeing that the signal levels were strong, and replacing the modem, it still happened. While he was here, he got a call from someone else on my street who had the same problem. Obviously, there’s something wrong with the line going to both of our houses.

Saturday afternoon, I bowled in the Santa Barbara City Tournament. I did reasonably well, but not enough to make any money. I shot 1807 over 9 games, so I’m plenty happy with that. I also somehow picked up the 4-6 split. It was awesome. I had picked it up once before, probably about 10 years ago. I got the ball to the right of the 6, and it just tipped over and then bounced into the 4. Makes the whole thing worth it.

As for poker, I played at Chumash on Saturday night. More card dead than I’ve been in a long time. I lost my first buyin with AQ vs AT, when he turned two pair. My second buyin I went from $200 to $65 basically just posting blinds and folding. The few decent hands I did get (AQs, AJs) I had to fold preflop to lots of action. With $65 left, I called a raise to $20 in the big blind with A7s. I pushed my last $45 in on the AA5 flop. Two callers. They got all in on the 8 turn, and I figured I was beat. Taking lessons from CJ, I said I had three outs for a win, and three for a chop, and called for my 7 to hit the river.

And there it was. They had AK and 55. With the other people who were in the pot preflop, I almost quadrupled up. I had already said it was my last orbit, so I folded the rest of it, and took my $255 (from $380 in buyins) and left. I used $220 of that to buy into the 700 person tournament they’re having this coming Saturday.

Sunday night, I drove down to LA to play at The Bike with Byron. I only was really involved in one pot with him, and it ended when I folded my AQs to his reraise preflop. He had KK. There was one interesting hand I played with someone else. I limped with 76s, and saw a $5 flop of 663, two diamonds. Checked to me, I bet $20, and the big blind check-raised $40 more. I thought for a while, and just called. The turn was a nice looking 7♦. The big blind led out for $60, and I just called. The river was the 5♦. He bet, I pushed, and he called. I flipped up my cards, and said if he had the 4♦ he was good.

He turned over 76s for a chop.

I finished the night up $90, making back almost what I lost at Chumash. Byron finished ahead a little bit, but not too much.

I need my internet connection to be reliable again. I really want to play the FTP online tournaments again, dammit.

PSO is making me post this. Well, they’re giving me free stuff for doing it. DuggleBogey shills for them all the time and gets away with it. I think I can do it once. Actually, I’ve posted about them before a few times. Basically, you sign up at their site, their poker forum, and then some poker sites through their affiliate links, and they give you free stuff just for playing a bunch of hands of poker. Which you were going to do anyway. Also, their Instant Bankroll promo is great for people who don’t already have Party or Titan accounts. Their forum just hit 25k users. I just recently got some cool new $1k Nevada Jacks to round out my set. Now, I actually have to start having a home game, or something.

Not much to report on my actual poker play, lately. Since my crazy run of four final tables in a week, I’ve cashed in a few more of the $8k and $16k tournaments on FTP, but no big money cashes. I had about a week of bubble finishes, and a few times got the bottom payout. This week, I got knocked out in the middle of the field getting my chips in as a 90% favorite. Luckily, I had swapped 5% with Ryan, who made the final table, so I got back more than my buyin.

One of these days, I’m going to hit a big win when someone has a piece of me.

Part of the reason I haven’t been playing in as many of them as I’d like is that my parents were here for a week. I’m not at all complaining about that, just giving it as a reason. I still did manage to play a few of the late night $8ks. While they were here, we went out and did something I’ve been needing to do for a while: furniture shopping. It was surprisingly tiring, and after driving down as far as Oxnard (about an hour), ended up getting just about everything at a store that’s closing right around the corner from me. I ended up with a new dining room table and chairs, living room furniture, some bookcases, and a bed (instead of the plain metal frame only that I had). There are pictures up in the gallery.

I’ve also been killing a lot of time playing the damn blobby game. I made it this far: