Not only did the postal shooting happen less than two miles from me, but the other person shot lived in a condo right next to my old apartment: http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=LOCAL&ID=564675238294585647

After a little peer pressure in IRC, I decided to play the $8k guarantee on FullTilt with one of my tokens. I knew I had to get to sleep early because I actually had to get to work at a reasonable (read: not 11am) hour today, but figured I’d bust out quickly as usual. Byron and JoeSpeaker played in it, as well. In my first 40 hands I was dealt 52o 6 times. Great start. I somehow managed to hold on and steal often enough, never hitting a flop, to stick around a while. I managed to double up with QQ vs 88, and suddenly I was in the money. Not sure how it happened. Byron made it, too, and we ended up at the same table.

I stole his big blind twice in a row, not because I was picking on him, but because it seemed those were the only times I could manage to be first into the pot. So, the next orbit, when I got dealt the hammer and it folded to me with him in the big blind, I had no choice. Everyone folded, and I showed. Sadly, that would mean the end of easy stealing for me, and I’d need a hand to do it. He also said he’d get back at me for it, and he did. With both of us still in shortstack pushdonkey mode, he pushed from UTG+1. I had AKo in the small blind, and called when it folded around to me. He showed KQo, and the flop came all rags. As soon as I said “sorry” in IRC, the queen hit the turn, and I was left with 29 in chips, with an ante of 100. I flopped the best hand all in on my ante with Q5o when AA5 came out, but the turn gave the luckbox (who would later bust Byron with A9s vs AK) his flush, and I was out in 31st. Lucky for me, though, because 32-36 paid $50.06, and 28-31 paid $50.07. I got my extra penny.

Maybe it’s a start to another winning month of (online) poker after an absolutely horrible January. At least live poker was good to me last month.

Tonight:
What: WWdN Dr. Pauly Appreciation Tourney
Where: Poker Stars
Tournament Info: #19063218 (Check under Private Tourney tab)
When: Feb 2 @ 11:30 PM (or 8:30 PM on the West Coast)
Buy-in: $10 + 1 NL
Password: monkey

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There was a shooting at a post office less than two miles from me. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/31/postal.shooting.ap/

GOLETA, California (AP) — A former postal worker shot five people to death at a huge mail-processing center and then killed herself in what was believed to be the nation’s deadliest workplace shooting ever carried out by a woman.

The attack Monday night was also the biggest bloodbath at a U.S. postal installation since a massacre 20 years ago helped give rise to the term “going postal.”

I finally got my ring for my 299 game. Here’s a picture, which will probably get changed once I manage to actually take a good picture of it.

Tonight is the WWdN: penner42 Invitational. I busted Wil last week when my AK beat his TT, becoming the first former champion to get this tournament named after him. I’ll do my best to win my own tournament.

Everyone go wish Ryan good luck tonight in LAPC event #12. Play resumes tonight at 7PM, with 29 remaining and 27 getting paid.

I haven’t been playing much poker, online or live, lately. Too busy playing with my new toys. Last week, I got a Cox HD DVR (Scientific Atlanta 8300), and it’s a piece of crap. It has so many stupid issues that could be solved easily by any decent programmer who cared about it at all. It’s such a shame to switch from Tivo to this thing, except that it displays and records high definition shows. It’s worth all the hassles just for the HD recording. 24 in high definition last night was amazing. I just can’t wait until Tivo releases their cablecard/HD box later this year.

I also got a Logitech Harmony 880 remote. This thing is amazing. 5 minute setup on the computer, and it controls all my devices (DVR, receiver, projector) perfectly. It also has a battery charging base, and a screen better than most phones. Very happy with it.

I probably have more I could talk about, but I can’t think of anything right now. I really need to start blogging more often, just because I think of things I want to write about and then later forget them.

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I bowled in a ten game tournament Saturday. My first five games were horrible with one 213 or so in the middle of four 160 and 170 games. Then we broke for lunch, and my second five were pretty good. Three games over 200, a 192, and then out of nowhere I pulled out a 279. First nine strikes, and then a damn four pin. Still, pretty happy with that.

Afterwards, I went to Chumash and made some money. The very first hand, I got aces UTG. I didn’t have chips yet, so I said $25. Folded around to a shortstack who had $45 total who pushed all in. I called, and he had jacks. The flop was a disgusting 9TQ, but the turn and river didn’t help him and I had $45 in front of me before the chip runner came with my $200. I ended up +$383, but would lose all that and then some the next day at Commerce.

My first table at Commerce on Sunday was a rollercoaster. I dropped $100 quickly missing the flop with AQs 5 times, and then built up to +$200 with KK vs QQ and then AK vs JJ vs KQ. Then I missed a whole bunch more flops, and a flush draw with 5 people in the pot, and finished the session down $83 before breaking for dinner. Had dinner with glyphic, absinthe, change100, pokergnome, and a friend of his and a friend of mine. Shane had been at Commerce, too, but got killed at the tables and left before dinner. We ate at the Arena Sports Bar and Grill inside the casino, which was decent enough food.

Then I sadly went back to playing poker. Dropped two buyins at the $200nl game. The first, I raised to $25 UTG with TT. I had been getting zero action with my $25 raises. Not a single one had been called. This time, four callers. The flop looked pretty good to me, a 345. I had about the size of the pot left in front of me, so I pushed all in. I figured if someone had an overpair or a set, there was nothing I could do. All four people called. Even if I had the best hand at the moment, I figured there was no way I could win the pot so I pulled out another $200 before the rest of the cards were dealt. They turned over: A7o for a double gutshot, 53o for a flopped two pair, A6o for an open ended straight draw, and 52o for top pair with an open ended straight draw. The turn was a 2, and all four of them beat me. A6o won the pot. I needed something like running 88 or 99 to win that pot after the flop.

With my second buyin, I was getting good starting cards and missing flops and was down to around $65 and ready to go home. I looked down at the hammer UTG and just pushed it all in, expecting to get one call from the maniac at the table, lose, and go home. Three people called my $65. The table had certainly loosened up since that TT hand. The flop was K75, and the big blind bet $100 to knock out the other two players, and showed KQ. The turn was a 2, the river a blank, and I quadrupled up, and yelled “Hammer!” while tabling my cards. I played another hour or so, and finally busted out, getting all in with a flopped flush against a set. I didn’t even have to sweat out two cards, as the board paired on the turn to have me drawing dead. Had I won that hand, I would have been even for the day instead of down almost $500. Snakes on a plane.

—

Congratulations to Ryan for his amazing first place finish in the first event of the LA Poker Classic, for a nice six figure payday!

Iggy owes everyone in IRC a dollar for a bad beat story from the tournament in Tunica. Maybe more, since it started, “So, I had KJ…”. Sucks to get knocked out that way, though, especially with a good shot at going deep in the money had you won.

For some good tournament reporting, check out Pauly‘s coverage of the Borgata Winter Open and Spaceman‘s reports from the World Poker Open in Tunica. We need to get someone covering the Classic in LA, too.

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Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. No particular reason, really, just laziness. Poker’s been way up and way down since the last time. My Stars account is marginally ahead of where it was before Christmas, after jumping up 9x and then back down. Actually, it’s at about double where it was, thanks to my first final table at a 180 SNG last night, and a 7th place finish after getting crippled getting all in with AKo vs A8s preflop. Snakes on a plane.

My FTP account was doing well until I got AA and two people pushed all in preflop ahead of me in the $200NL game. They had 56 and KK and the flop was 34K, giving them both a better chance to win the pot than I had. Oh well.

Live poker has started off well for the year. Played the $200 NL at Bicycle when a friend of mine was in LA from New York. Cracked aces with 83s for an $830 pot, and I only made one mistake in the hand which was calling the $10 straddle preflop in the first place. I was in the cutoff, the people behind me hadn’t been raising much, and there was already $60 in the pot. The button then raised to $30, and everyone called, so I looked back at my cards and disgustedly called, saying “I’m just giving my money away.” I was getting $220:$20 on the call. Flopped T83, and the button pushed all in after I bet. Ended that game up $570.

Made $105 playing 2/5 $300-$500 NL the next night at Chumash, too.

Congrats to Ryan, who is in the final 18 of the $330 event at the LA Poker Classic. Good luck doubling up early a few times tonight!

Congrats (belatedly) to Factgirl for her win of the $16K guarantee at FullTilt!

Congrats to BadBlood on his WWdN tourney win, and Poker Nerd on his second place finish in the WWdN west coast warmup/whatever it’s called.

Congrats to Chris on his win of the $2k Triple Draw event in Tunica!

I know I’m forgetting someone here. Dammit. Sorry.

WPBT HORSE Tournament tonight, 7 PST. April rules. Password: princess

I’ll try to start posting more often again. Honest.

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The holiday weekend really screwed with my sleep schedule. I’ve not been getting to sleep until 4 or 5 in the morning lately, just lying in bed for hours wide awake. As a result, I’m waking up late, even for me. Maybe I can fix the problem with another three day weekend.

I’ve still been playing a whole ton of poker. Pauly has got me hooked on PLO, even if he did bust me once with a straight flush against my nut flush. I played a little bit of shorthanded 3/6 on FullTilt, and pretty much broke even. I think I’m going to have to start seriously playing limit again. Playing in Vegas, and the .50/1 blogger games, have made me actually enjoy it again. Not shorthanded, though. I love shorthanded NLHE, but shorthanded LHE doesn’t seem as much fun.

Last night, I had my first ever dial-a-shot, with Al and April. Ahh, soco. They were both playing razz on FT, Al on wireless from the bar, of course. I joined in, and lost a few dollars when I kept getting (A3)5 and bricking out. Other bloggers played, too. drizz, maigrey, change100, and others were there.

In the chat window, there was a message about a $10+1 razz MTT that Andy Bloch was going to play in, so I joined it. Also playing in it were drizz, maigrey, Wes, and Derek, who was at my starting table. I expected to play for a little while and bust out.

I didn’t see fourth street for the first 25 minutes, at least. I was getting awful cards, but not playing stupid and just folding. Finally, I starting getting some decent starters, and not completely bricking out, and all of a sudden, I had made the first break with a decent stack. I got a little short again, but then won a few nice pots (including doubling up with a 9 low against a T low), and then again shortly after when I made a monster. All of a sudden, I was the chip leader!

I played pretty solid after that, and got enough good hands to keep going. A little while after we made the money, I played one hand poorly, and then limped along and finally finished in 11th place (out of 131). Not bad. I think I need to play this game some more.

I also think my tournament luck might finally be changing (of course now that I said that… [attempt at mean gene‘s patented antijinx; does it not work because I said that?] ). First cashing in the 180sng at Stars, and now the Razz tourney at FullTilt. I think sweating Gamecock and JoeSpeaker has been helping. And they think I’m doing it for them. 😉

Tomorrow, if I’m not lazy (so probably won’t happen), I’m going to try to post a list of some poker goals for 2006.

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PokerStars Tournament #17224210, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $20.00/$2.00
180 players
Total Prize Pool: $3600.00
Tournament started – 2005/12/29 – 17:26:39 (ET)

Dear penner42,

You finished the tournament in 15th place.
A $43.20 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 79.90 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at
http://www.pokerstars.com/tlb_tournament_rankings.html

Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

I finally broke through in one of these things. I won THREE races in a row! After losing last night with AK vs 33 and AK vs 44…

I had a 5% (of net) swap with both maigrey and -EV, so I sent them both $1.06.

Tonight:
The game formerly known as the West Coast Warmup has been created at PokerStars.

Tourney#: 17214575
Buy-in: $10+1
Time: 7PM Pacific (2200 in the lobby clock) tonight
Password: monkey

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In three hours, on Stars.

http://tripjax.blogspot.com/2005/12/donkeys-always-draw-invitational.html

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My hole cards. All 81 hands.

Q4o, K5o, 73o, 55 (won!), 84o, T7o, 95o, T6s, 76o, 73s, Q8o, 62o, Q5o, 55, J9o, T8s, 62o, J8o, J7o, 44, 52o, Q2o, A3o, Q7o, KTo, AKo (outflopped by AQo), AJs (folded preflop to all-in), Q5o, K4o, A7o, 43s, 75s, J9o (won! checked down in the blinds), ATo, T9s, 72o, 98s, T9s, 73s, J9o, J6o, 86s, 83o, 63s, 54o, Q8o, T9s, A7s, 22, J9o, QJo, 62o, JTo, Q5o, J9o, AQo (won! the blinds), 82o, J4o, 42o, JTs, A9o, 83o, J9o, 86o, K5o, T7s, J4o, Q5o, 72o, 65o, T3s, 93o, 54o, T5o, 57o, T6s, J6o, 54o, 94s, 32o, J8s (pushed, ran into KK).

Wow. Fun tournament. 😉

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Well, my little poker hiatus failed miserably. I pretty much didn’t do anything but play online poker over the holiday weekend. I don’t really feel bad about it, though, because my reason for taking a break was that I was losing, and that stopped. I had a great run at the .50/1 6max NL tables on Stars, and even made around $100 playing .50/1 limit at FT. I also turned a small profit playing $25 PLO.

I played far too much to even talk about any of the hands or sessions at this point. It’s all such a blur. I also sweated JoeSpeaker and Drizz kick ass in a couple of tournaments each, and Gamecock finish well in one, too.

Here’s my attempt at a list of bloggers I played with: April, helixx, xennor (welcome!), Pauly, Heather, Marty, Shelly, April, Derek, Scott, factgirl, Drizz…

Sorry if I left anyone out. There are a lot of you.

I also had some fun with the bot in IRC, making it do useful poker things.

pokenum -h Th Ts – Jc 9c — 2c 8s Tc
<_hammer72> Holdem Hi: 990 enumerated boards containing 8s Tc 2c
<_hammer72> cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
<_hammer72> Ts Th 591 59.70 399 40.30 0 0.00 0.597
<_hammer72> Jc 9c 399 40.30 591 59.70 0 0.00 0.403

harrington 500/1000/125 22595 8
<_hammer72> your m is: 9

_hammer72 rules.

In a little over a half hour, the Obie34 Invitational at Stars.

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I did it again.

I played some online poker. But it wasn’t real online poker, honest (it was .50/1 limit, and the fishiest I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t remember the low limits being that bad when I started). And I wasn’t playing it to play poker, I was playing it to test out wine. I swear.

I was chatting with helixx in IRC, and he said he was playing at FullTilt. They just released a Mac (beta) client, but sadly nothing for Linux. Not that I’m surprised. That market is probably all of a couple dozen people, if that. 🙂 Anyway, it got me playing with wine and really banging on it until I could get things to work.

Then of course, once it was up and running, I had to actually test it. I successfully played at FullTilt on my Linux desktop for two hours. It crashed once, but that computer has other issues and other things (Firefox, for one) crash on it, too. There are some graphics and drawing issues, but for the most part it is very playable. I ended up losing a little bit of money, but the side chat about the other players at the table was hilarious and worth it. April also sat down at the table for a bit while we were there.

I got Party and Stars going, too. UB is sort of halfway working, but I don’t really plan to play there much in the near future anyway. I’m seriously considering setting up a “Poker on Linux” website with instructions on how to do all of this (complete with affiliate links to all the poker sites, of course). Here’s a nice little screenshot of me not actually playing poker:

On a totally unrelated topic, I took some more pictures of my house. They’re up in the gallery.

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