It’s been a long time, been a long…

So, it’s been a while since last I blogged. That’s mostly because not much is going on in the way of poker and the rest of my life hasn’t been all that exciting as far as writing goes. I haven’t gone to the casino since my $300 losing session at $1-2 NLHE, but I have been playing quite a bit of the uber-nano stakes online at Cake. It’s been a rocky road type of month as far as results go. I had a great June and then when I moved up to some .10-.20 short handed LHE, I was cold decked hand after hand. Losing sets to flushes on the river, over pairs to runner trips, that ol chestnut. With rake back I am close to $20 in my BR, which as a reminder, began at .39 cents. I am dabbling a bit in some NLHE at the lowest stakes just so that I can keep my mind on that strategy in between outings to the Brick & Mortar.

There’s a new casino opening up about 15 minutes from my house, but I just learned that they don’t have any poker tables, which is quite disappointing. The good news is that I have gotten the green light from my wife to go to Las Vegas in a couple of months with some friends. I don’t plan on this being a big poker vacation as I would prefer to relax as much as possible which would be sitting by the pool with a nice libation in hand, preferably a Pina Colada. It looks like I will be going with 5 or 6 other guys that I am friends with which should be a lot of fun, unless they decide to act like they did when they were 24. There’s been a lot of talk of strip clubs and happily ever endings, if you get my meaning. I am a normal heterosexual guy, so of course I enjoy looking at beautiful naked women, but I just don’t feel right about it and I think that it would be personally disrespectful to my wife even if she didn’t know, so I plan on playing poker at those times.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been thinking of different poker and non-poker related subjects that I would like to talk about, but they’re quite in depth, which requires some research, which requires research time, which requires free time, which I don’t have being a stay at home dad of 3 boys under the age of 5. I’ve been disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm in the uLHE forums on 2+2, especially by the old veterans when it comes to strat threads. It basically resembles an abandoned tourist town with the exception of one bar where everyone hangs out. I can see why this is happening, obviously due to Black Friday, but I still want to be on my game when it comes to playing live and the little bit online, so I try to respond to threads that I find interesting and have started a few of my own in the past few weeks. MODs aren’t responding to obvious situations that they would normally take care of in a matter of hours. Old regs are only posting in the NC thread and new players are putting up a few hand posts each week, but they don’t get many responses as the situations have been discussed over and over again during the past 4 years. One thing that really sticks in my craw is a MOD who was all about the uLHE forum when they first started and became a self appointed dictator of sorts upon being MODed green a few years back. About 10-12 months ago he got sick of LHE and took up another variety of poker and basically packed up shop and moved on to what he considered greener pastures, I can only assume looking for a new wife. Most of his posts in the uLHE are either administrative or condescending in tone (IMHO). I think he’s a nice poster and did a lot of good work “Back in the day”, but I feel like he divorced us when he found a new younger model and just packed up one day, leaving with thought that it was our fault. Perhaps I am being petty.

It doesn’t look like I will be getting to the casino in the next few weeks, but whenever I go, hopefully it‘s in the black this time. If anyone has suggestions on great package deals to Vegas, please let me know. Good luck!

Some poker and some truth

Well, my online challenge was doing rather well as I had been running 9+BB/100 until I got greedy which always seems to be the morale of the story. I have been posting quite a bit in the SSLNL forums on 2+2 and I haven’t had a chance to go to the casino to play some NLHE lately. Due to my small online bankroll at Cake Poker, I haven’t been able to play any NLHE games even at the lowest limits due to the fact that I only had about 4 buy-ins and didn’t want to risk losing all that I had built up playing LHE. Like I said, I got greedy and started to play some NLHE with a buy-in of 50 BBs and like Louis jamming on the Riverboats…

So, now I am back down to a little under $8 and will begin grinding it back up in LHE like I did before.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of older archive posts in the 2+2 uLHE library as of late and I really like some of the old wells and I really enjoyed reading Aaron W’s and Scary_Tiger’s. I am rather envious of how fearless he is, especially back then playing all sorts of nosebleed LHE games. The other interesting aspect was that he didn’t really play with a poker bankroll at the time and just had a certain amount for the level he was taking a shot at with a little extra for the next level down in case he ran bad. Needless to say he didn’t run bad often and he went on to do quite well for himself in many poker variants. According to some poker tracking sites, he’s made over $500,000 playing tournaments online. Amazing. Unfortunately, the uLHE forums on 2+2 seem to be fading rather quickly and could be merged with the next level up if things to get better which are unlikely due to Black Friday. Oh well…

As I am sure many of you have read, one of the stars of the “Jackass” movies and TV show, Ryan Dunn, was killed in a car accident a few days ago. Apparently he had had enough alcohol to put him more than 2 times above the legal limit. He then got in to his Porsche along with a friend who had worked on the second “Jackass” movie and was driving down a Pennsylvania road going more than 130 MPH. He went off the road into a guard rail and plowed into a bunch of trees which ripped apart his car and set it on fire. Needless to say, Ryan Dunn and the passenger were killed.

I am in no way a huge “Jackass” fan, but I have seen the first 2 movies as well as the first 2-3 seasons of the TV show. It’s amazing what these guys were willing to do to themselves and not have one of them killed already. I also liked their sense of humor and how down to earth (as much as a crazy person can) they were. These guys have cheated death more than their fair share which makes this accident all the more upsetting. If you are Ryan Dunn and want to take your own life in your hands by attempting crazy stunts then more power to you, but forcing others into your real life stunts are comparable to shooting a gun into a crowd.   

Another aspect to this story that I don’t like is the whole Roger Ebert involvement. By involvement, I don’t mean that I disagree with what Roger Ebert had “tweeted”, but his message was lost given the timing of it being posted. Basically, Ebert said, “Friends don’t let Jackasses drive drunk.”

Now there are 2 ways that we need to look at this. First is on a more personal level and the other is a more macro level. On the personal side, Ryan Dunn’s friends and fans are most likely devastated that he was killed, especially in the way that it happened. His close friends and family are going through incredible shock and most likely are aware of the painful truth that what he did was incredibly stupid and irresponsible, whether they’re willing to admit out loud or not. They’ve got to be angry for many reasons and the last thing they want to hear is the obvious truth about how Ryan Dunn decided to conduct himself in the hours before he died. Roger Ebert then tweets his 2 cents the day after it happens and sparks begin to fly. I think if Ebert wanted to send some type of message, then he and everyone else has the right to do so, but I also think that it could’ve been done with some tact and sensitivity to those who loved and cared for Ryan Dunn.