Titan and PokerSavvy League

Good news, it looks like the Titan League has been moved to 8:30 EST. Maybe this will get more participation. It is a $2 rebuy on Mondays and Thursdays. Come knock me off my temporary first place pedestal. Hope to see you there.

I had fun at the Mookie last night and I hope Marx knew I was kidding about his river accomplishments. He knocked me out on the flop when I was a slight, but certainly not overwhelming, favorite. I then started to give him some ribbing about later hands, not about mine, but something like 3 hands in a row that he was able to catch his cards. I think I was getting lumped in with SLBs comments especially when Marx had flush draws and SLB kept calling him a donkey . MiamiDon had enough and told the "cry babies" on the rail to shut up and "the rail is closed." I know it shouldn't matter, I just didn't want anyone to think I was chirping about a bad beat, I was just messing with Marx and his good fortune, not his play. I was quite surprised, not appalled, at his graphic comebacks to SLB and that's when I made my comment about winning friends and influencing people. Now SLB on the other hand......he seems to have someone new in his sites each week. I don't have the skills to ever question someone else's play, let alone justify my inner donkey. If I got that upset about other peoples' play, I don't think I could ever enter a MTT. I will just have to make sure I'm not on the other end of any future encounters. LOL.

Ernesto...Go Away!

I swear to God you better not eff up our trip to NYC this weekend! Go Away, Go Away! Just die over North Carolina somewhere at let us enjoy our site seeing.

Must. Learn. To. Fold

Folding can easily be the right thing to do. Simply put. I jumped back in to Wil's weekly game and had great cards and timely bluffs to put me in good shape through the first break. Shortly after the break, I over estimated my hand with the board pairing my King and gave Aquaverse all my chips on the river with his pocket Aces. I had them twice earlier in the night and couldn't get paid because of scary boards, but this one worked out great for him and he played them perfectly to exact all of my hard earned tournament chips. I know his brother would be proud and that's why I phrased it that way.

Start Spreading The News

Stacie and I are heading to NYC for a short vacation / long holiday weekend over Labor Day. We are flying up on Saturday and coming back home Wednesday. We are staying in Manhattan across from the museums and Central Park. It seems like a good location and we aren't breaking the bank for lodging.

We're not totally sure what we are going to do while we are there. Stacie has spent a day there before, but I have only seen it from the car while riding through one summer on the way to Cape Cod from D.C. I want to do the usual touristy things like some of the museums, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Bldg, Central Park, Tiffany's, FAO, the financial district, and maybe a show on Broadway. We're thinking of checking out a game at Yankee Stadium (while wearing my Braves jersey of course) or watching the Braves play the Mets on Monday or Tuesday night. We are also planning on going down to Ground Zero and Rockerfeller Plaza. Does anybody have any "can't miss" suggestions for us to do?

Finally.....A Final Table

I had a rough start with the Mookie last night. I got tangled up with Smokkee within the first 5 minutes and took a huge hit. His full house crushed my nut flush. I'm lucky that he didn't just put me out right there. I lost a few more chips shortly after this and was down to 280 in just 10 minutes of play for a nice ranking of 41st out of 42. Go me!

Stacie came in to say good night and asked where my chips were. I told her to look across the table at Smoke and I might be in bed very soon. I told her I wanted to be patient since the blinds were still low enough for me to wait for hands and see what I can do. I channeled my inner Surf and Waffles short stack play and added the patience of Mow.

I won a coin flip shortly after this to double up and then had a good run of cards to shoot to 1st place with 4400 after doubling through trkfix with QQ and then hit another Q on the flop. trkfix was able to take some back soon after I called his all-in with the dominate hand that did not hold up. He just wouldn't go away and was able to hang around pretty well with his push bets, but ran into my 4 tits (I did this for Stacie, she had never heard QQ referred to this way) with the 3rd on the flop again and that put me back in the top 3 and I stayed that way to the final table.

At the final table, I stupidly got involved with Xanthius and managed to let myself fall to 7/7, then 6/6 with 5 places paying. With Xanthius your only hope is to have the nuts and even then I'm not sure that would be enough to beat him. I was not going to play another pot unless I had a dominating hand. I was able to survive / pick up my round of blinds and more importanly, I made it past the bubble and into the money. After we were in the money, I was hoping to double up with my flush draw on the flop, but it gave Smokkee trips and I didn't catch my club. It's the first PokerStars cash I have had in months and my last 10 days have been positive cash flow for the poker accounts. Let's see if I can continue tonight with the Titan League. Wish me luck.

New Is Good, or More Likely, New is Lucky

I was invited to a $100 tourney in the north 'burbs on Saturday. This is 5X my normal homegame amount, but with 20+ players normally, just getting in the money would be a nice payday. Unfortunately, only 7 of us were able to make it. This was going to make a very expensive SNG for me and I thought about bailing, but decided to make the stretch.

When I got there, they decided to start off with a 1/2 cash game of some limit hold'em and Omaha. Now I'm really shittin' bricks because:

1) I have never played a live cash game that wasn't 5 card draw for less than $20.
2) I have never played limit or Omaha.
3) I certainly never put that much money on the table to "learn" new games.

I didn't want to display my weakness too early, I would save that for the tourney, so I said I was game. We all bought in for $50 and agreed that after a couple of hours, we would start a $50 NL tourney. They were all very nice to the new fish and I was able to luck my way in to a $90 profit after we ended with Omaha high/low. Our last hand was the big one when I had a Q high boat to my neighbor's J high and that alone gave me almost enough for the tourney buy-in.
We ordered some pizza and changed from the cash game to the NL tourney. Stacie had one requirement when I left the house....don't bubble! So naturally I came in 3rd with 1st and 2nd getting paid. The night didn't turn out too bad. Since I did so well in the cash game, I still walked away with $40 more than I started.

Poker Can Be Fun

I had a blast playing with Guin last night in the Titan League presented with PokerSavvy. It was a $2 rebuy event that only had 14 registered and probably only 12 actually showing before they were blinded away. One rebuy was all I needed to get to chipleader status and Guin was not far behind after his rebuy. We were having a good time with some very tame trash talk and tried to include the rest of the table. The rebuy period lasted until the 1st break and by then we were all at 1 table with 2 still sitting out for a while. One guy (Rambo something or other) finally did show and became a player pretty quickly. When there were about 5 of us left, I got jokingly arrogant and told Guin I looked forward to our heads up match. I was catching some good cards and using my big stack was able to knock out a few players in a row. It did end up being the 2 of us at the end, but not before I tried to land the knockout punch earlier on him. I think there were 3 of us left and I had the button with Guin in the BB. I got Aces and just called the 400 blind. Well my sneaky little trapped seemed to work because Guin went all in before the flop and I called. He turned over A 10, so naturally I was thrilled. Guin wasn't worried though as he gets his 3rd ten on the river. LOL. Fortunately, I more than had him covered and it didn't knock me out, but this definitely made him a force at the table. The funny thing Guin told me was "If I push, I have the nutz, or I'll get there" and he was usually right. I've always enjoyed being at the same table as him and we had a fun little HU before I was able to beat his same two pair with a better kicker. It was good for a $10 profit to make up for my abysmal play at the Mookie. I only hope Guin had as good of a time as I did. I'm sure he is looking to kick my ass in the rematch next week.

Random Thoughts

Sometimes I think about weird stuff. No, not how many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop stuff. Here are some questions and general thoughts:

When you win a large sum of money (5 figures or more) on online poker and want to cash out, how do you claim it on taxes if it is not legal in the U.S.? Does the website give you a 1099 (or European equivalent) and it's treated like you were overseas when you won it?

If you win your seat to an event ($10,000), either live or online, are you responsible for taxes on the 10 grand. That would suck to win a satellite for entry, get knocked out before the money and still have to pay taxes on the entry fee. I guess best case is you got in on a discount.

What a pain in the ass it must be to keep track of your finances if you are a pro gambler! Loans gone bad, paying out shares, losing big pots, winning big televised pots, airfare, hotels, buy-ins. I'm surprised we have not heard any stories come out yet about some pro that is being charged with tax evasion. They would seem to be a likely target with the money involved and the highly televised profiles of the players now.

Congrats to all of those that "invested" in Ryan at the Main Event, and of course congratulations to Ryan as well. I wanted to buy a piece, but by the time I had decided to do it, he had sold all his shares. For some reason, it never really seemed like a gamble because of his experience and talent. Oh well, maybe I'll try to race that horse next year.

Weekend Movie Recommendation

If you are looking for an excellent, suspenseful movie to watch this weekend, we highly recommend Derailed. It stars Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston. *Warning - There is an intense rape scene that is integral to the movie* It's not a movie to have on with the kiddies around. We didn't know anything about the film, I'm just a big Clive Owen fan, so it was a very enjoyable find.

Chasing Dollars

Mansion sent me an email saying that they had added $20 to my existing account, so I decided to try out their poker rooms. I sat down to a 5/10 cent table and proceed to lose $5 real quick. I got my Aces cracked when I was down to $2.30 and we got it all in preflop. That has knocked me out of my last two games. Since they gave me 20, I decided to play in a 20+2 tournament that had around 55 people in it. It paid out for the final table and they added 200 to the pool. I played conservative and got knocked out in 17th. This is about how I do when I don't make any moves or catch cards. It's kind of like when you see people sitting out of a tourney and still make it in the top 50% and they never sat down. The part that really bums me is I don't see how to use my $20. I see it under the casino dollars section, so maybe I can't use it in the poker room. I'll try to clear it playing blackjack or video poker and then move it to the poker room side if I can. I'm really not very happy with Mansion because they made it a pain in the ass to get back my original $37 and then when they send me an email telling me that I have bonus cash, I can't tell how to use or earn it. I realize that I'm the dumbass for spending 27 last night without clearly knowing how to use the bonus, but live and learn. I didn't see a transfer to another player option, because I thought about a trade for some Pokerstars moolah. I realize I am still ahead in the deal with the 88 that was put in Neteller for the sign up bonus through Pokersavvy. Any suggestions would be appreciated if you have had experience with a Mansion bonus.