I lost a bet with Veneno at the Orleans bowling alley in Vegas. She had 70 pins of handicap (and I bowled like crap)! I didn’t break 163. Since then, I’ve done this:

Almost a 700 series on the first three games of my four game set. Fell one pin short, 699. Losing the bet means I had to rename my blog for a week.

I really do want to do some sort of writeup from the weekend, but so much happened that I just don’t know where to begin. Sorry, I suck.

In the meantime, go congratulate Shane, Byron, and CJ for their recent nice cashes and Ryan and Zeem for winning seats in the WSOP main event yesterday!

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What a difference one night makes. Tuesday, I threw a great series, my 679. Last night, only 193 pins lower for a 486. I don’t remember the last time I was under 500. I guess it goes without saying that we lost the rolloff and finished in second place. Tonight, I play my first softball game in forever.

Billy Wagner blew his third save of the season last night, giving up two runs to the Pirates in the top of the 9th, and costing Pedro another win. The Mets hung on to win it on a Delgado homerun in the bottom of the 12th, though. They’re now 18-9, and still 5 games ahead of Atlanta. The offense seems to be struggling a bit, and they’re still winning. When the middle of the order catches fire again, they’ll be almost unstoppable.

Thanks to Shane, I’m writing this post directly in Firefox, using Performancing, yet another Firefox extension. I’m now running 17 extensions. The Performancing metrics statistics are pretty neat, too, but I really would like Google to give me an Analyitics invitation code already. Not that I really use the stats for anything useful, anyway.

No poker news to report, as I haven’t been playing much. No real reason for that, except that I just haven’t been in the mood to play. When I feel like that, I get bored quickly, my play suffers, and it’s usually just a waste of money. I’m sure I’ll feel the need to play again sometime soon. In the meantime, go read some better poker blogs linked on the left there.

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Plenty happy with a 679 series, but dammit, it should easily have been over 700 again. The 5 spares I missed were (in order): 10, 6, 3-6-10, 6-10, 4-7. All spares I shouldn’t miss. Make them all, and I shoot 58 pins higher (with a strike as the fill ball in the third game.)

Oh well, maybe next time. Tomorrow night is the roll-off for my Wednesday night league. My team won the first half, so this is against the second half winner for overall first place. Hopefully, I can put in a performance like I did tonight.

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That is all.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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…and too lazy to type it all out.

I got my new receiver, and then promptly killed it in less than a day. Warranties are good. Before it broke, though, it’s speaker autosetup detected that two of my speakers were hooked up out of phase. Cool.

I have a desk and a makeshift monitor shelf. My house is actually almost clean.

I’ve been getting killed at the cash game at Stars. I seem to do fine anywhere else, but just can’t make money there, even though the play looks just as bad. People always just seem to catch their card on me. Two days ago, the money got in when I had top two pair back to back hands, and the idiots promptly hit their flush and straight cards respectively. Today, second nut flush on the turn, and a guy calls a ton to catch a four-outer with his two pair. I am paying them off too much when they hit, though. The only things I seem to do well at on Stars are the WWdN tourneys. One win, and four final tables at those. Just the right mix of reliable play and fish for my liking.

Vegas! I leave in less than 48 hours. Things I want to do: Tournament at the IP, of course. Gracie’s geeky thing to do. We must drag Wil along. Storm the Castle. Play lots of poker. Bowl with bloggers.

Preparing for that, I got myself a nice smaller bowling bag that only holds two bowling balls. I still have to check it on the plane, but at least it’s lighter and easier. I also got a new ball. I’d seen a few people use it, and only throw great games. It’s called The One. I used someone else’s last night, and like the way it moved, so I bought one today and had it drilled. I then threw my highest ever four game series with it, in my first four games. 247-185-255-268 for a 955. Unbelievable. All prop bets we make regarding bowling have to be on me. 🙂

I think that’s it. I have to get back to cleaning. I said it’s almost clean.

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This time by the damn ten pin, again in the 8th frame. Of course, I didn’t finish out the game with four more strikes, so I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. But all three of those 9s were solid pocket ten pins.

Dammit, I want my 300.

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