So I've mentioned a few times this week about the UBOC tournament series running over a ten-period period over on UltimateBet. As you know if you read here, I do love the software, the players and especially the tournament structures at UB, with deep stacks and just generally more skill-favoring, slower blinds escalation than at any other major online poker site. By a mile. Even in the non-deep-stack events end up having better stacks and more time to play than most other online mtt's available today. So I've dipped my toe in to several of the UBOC events this time around, for the first time I have ever played in UB's version of FTOPS or WCOOP, and one that I was really looking forward to was UBOC #4 last weekend, the $120 buyin, 30k guaranteed sniper (bounty) tournament. I play the nightly 9pm ET sniper mtt with a $120 buyin most nights I play on UB, and it is one of my favorite tournaments out there and one I have had a lot of success in, so naturally this larger version of my nightly favorite immediately attracted my attention. And, while I'm too lazy at this point to do a full recap post for this run, here's what I ended up with last Friday:





So, it was $4758 and change, another awesome score, and now my second score in under two months in a major online poker site's periodic tournament series, building on last month's 27k win in the Mini-FTOPS on full tilt. Plus, I also managed to score 18 bounties by the time all was said and done -- as with my live bounty tournament win a couple of weeks back in AC, I was chip leader through most of the last three hours of this tournament -- for another $360 in bounties bringing my total cash over the 5k mark in Friday night's UBOC 30k guaranteed $120 Sniper Event.

All that said, as I mentioned I was the chip leader in this thing for most of the last few hours heading up to the final table, having built a massive stack when I made a straight on the turn against one guy's flopset and the other's pocket Kings when they both decided to bet and call tiny bets and easily priced me in for the draw based on pot odds alone, let alone the implied odds in a no-limit event like this. I lost the chip lead heading into the final table, but I got it back at some point around halfway through. I recall at one point I fought my way back to the chip lead again with 5 runners left. 25 minutes later, I would exit, out in 4th place, leaving 12k on the table between my payout and the 16k first prize. How did this happen to me again?

I've looked and looked and re-looked at my screen shots from the final table run, and I think my problem here is best attributable to an incredible run of bad timing when down to the last half of the final table, after about five hours of having great timing with my bets and raises to be able to survive this late along the way. I've written a lot about the importance of having great timing in any large-field nlh tournament, but so much of mtt success, especially late in tournaments, comes down to not pushing into the guy with Aces, or top pair, or AK, and not running any monsters into higher monsters, which are always crushers in final table play. But halfway through the final table in UBOC 4, over the span of 25 minutes, I raised preflop and then was forced to fold to an allin reraise before the flop 7 consecutive times. That's never good. UB is deep, but nowhere is it that deep that you can literally raise preflop and then fold to a reraise without even giving yourself a chance to see or win a flop after seven consecutive failed raises. I could not believe it, and this after raising pretty much with reckless abandon for over 7 hours to even have survived anywhere near this far (you don't eliminate 18 shitdonks without betting and raising a lot and mixing it up quite a bit). But two of those 7 raises were standard button-steals from me with two low unconnected cards, both of which were easy folds for me rather than risk calling off a big stack on. Two of them were also button- or cutoff-steals with decent cards -- one with KTs (I folded to a reraise from a guy who despite being a little short had not pushed his entire stack in for more than an hour and was clearly just in holding-on-for-dear-life mode), one with KJo (I knew the reraiser held an Ace, and at the time he had just under the number of chips that I held). And the other three were also standard preflop raising hands for 5 left at the final table, one A6o in early position, which I folded rather than call a large allin reraise with a likely dominated hand, and two were 44 and 77, also both easy raises pre in this spot but neither of which did I have any interest in calling an allin reraise with and then racing or being dominated for most of my stack. It was just a terrible run of I think the right play preflop and frankly the right play by me to fold as well, but it took my chip-leading stack and turned me into the short stack over the span of 25 minutes without me having any chance to even play some poker or see a flop to show for it. And as the short stack, I ended up raising a guy allin on a 9♠5♠3♥ flop with a flush draw and an over when I held A♠7♠, my opponent made the pretty much mandatory called with pocket Kings, I did not hit and IGH in 4th place.

So again, 5 large is 5 large, and to have the opportunity to make that kind of money from this game and have such a great time doing it -- knocking out 18 people from a single tournament is always a good time in my book -- is awesome of course, no doubt. But once again I find myself more angry than pleased with the result, as half an hour earlier I had been chip leader with 5 left and in line to nab 16 grand and change for first prize, and then boom, out in 4th for "only" 5 grand.

It's a good consolation prize to be sure. But I need to keep focusing on turning these 4-figure scores into 5-figure scores if there is to be any chance of me stepping up my game from here heading into 2010. It's been a great January so far for me poker-wise, but just one or two big wins here is what separates a good month from a good year in poker profits.
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As I said in the last entry, I am having some trouble recovering from some mouth surgery that I had. It’s now been 10 day since the surgery and I’ve been back to the doctor about five times. He’s been amazingly friendly and helpful about it. He even came into the office on a holiday Sunday (this past Monday was a Cayman holiday). But, unfortunately, he hasn’t quite been able to clear up the problem. To explain a bit, I had a benign cyst removed. It was blocking a salivary duct (ie, where saliva is let out into your mouth, particularly when you’re eating) so it had to come out. After it he took it out, things actually felt way better — for about 36 hours. I had the surgery done on a Monday afternoon and when I woke up on Wednesday, it was absolutely killing me when I tried to eat. Normally I would consider this to be standard considering I had an open wound in my mouth along with some stitches but… it hadn’t really hurt much the day before. After a few days of some really bad pain whenever I tried to eat/chew/swallow/etc, he eventually pulled out a stone (like a kidney stone but in the salivary duct) this past Tuesday. Yesterday it felt a lot better and the swelling went way down. But, today, it has kind of regressed and gotten a bit worse again — although not nearly as bad as it was over the weekend. I had xrays done and they don’t show another stone so right now his plan is for me to finish my course of antibiotics (started on Monday) and see how it feels in a few days. I’m still skeptical that there isn’t something else in there blocking the duct but I obviously have to defer to the doctor for the time being. We’ll see how it feels.

In another event in my recent medical woes, I had a pretty minor break on my left ring finger a few weeks back from a flag football game. Nothing too bad but it definitely hurt pretty bad for a week or two. It’s actually starting to feel better now and I’m starting to use it again (although no football yet). So I went to this new gym which just opened up a few days ago and got in a relatively short workout last night. It’s amazing how fast cardio goes. My cardio last night wasn’t even close to what it was even two weeks ago. I’m sure it will return quickly but I was struggling to even do two moderately fast miles on the treadmill. Before the finger & mouth problems when I was working out 4-5x/week, I was doing four miles at good speed without much trouble. I will work on it to get it back.

I also have recently been inspired to do some real strength training. I’ve lifted weights and whatnot for probably about 15 years now. I think I started when I was 12… maybe 13. So I have spent a lot of time in weight rooms but I’ve never really done “real” exercises. I have never done any serious squatting, deadlifting, power cleans, etc. I have done them on and off but never for real where I do them routinely, track progress and focus hard on form. And wow did it show. I actually did three sets of squats and three sets of deadlifts and the weights were pathetic. My legs and upper back are so sore. Granted I was really focusing on form and not on weight amount but I could barely do three sets of squats at 85 lbs. They were real squats though with a full range of motion. I can’t believe how sore my hamstrings are. I expect to make a bunch of gains pretty quickly as I improve my form and gain core strength to be able to stabilize the weight on my shoulders through the full range of motion. Then, of course, I will plateau and make more normal gains over the course of time. I’m hoping to be able to do 3 sets of 5 reps of body weight squats by the WSOP. Hopefully that’s a reasonable goal. I am not going to rush it if I don’t think I’m going to make it but it is the goal that I have in mind.

As opposed to the exercises I just rattled off, the one respected power lifting exercise that I have done before is bench pressing. I haven’t done it with a free bar in years because it is kind of scary to push yourself when you don’t have a spotter and there’s no safety bar to stop the weight. I am a big proponent of occasional sets where you go until “failure” in order to get stronger. And that isn’t possible with a bench, a bar and no spotter. However, when I was in college and I lifted with my friends, I would actually push myself pretty hard on benching when I had some help if I was about to drop the bar on my chest. Sometime during my sophomore year I weighed around 220 lbs and I was benching 275 one rep. I could bang out 6 reps at 225 without a problem and I am pretty sure I remember doing at least a few sets of 10 reps at 225.

So, as far as bench press goes, I actually have a decent background in it. And it’s part of my new strength routine so I started it out a bit higher than most beginners would do. I currently weigh 175 and I put it at 135. For most people of my weight, they need to train to get to this weight. When I was benching regularly, I could do 135 probably 20 times before I even felt anything. So I didn’t expect much of a challenge. I was wrong, it was actually kind of hard. Much harder than I remember it being. I guess, until I did that exercise last night, I didn’t realize how much stronger I was when I was 20 as opposed to now. Obviously it has a lot to do with training and weight but it was amazing how different 135 felt compared to six/seven years ago. I was able to do three sets of 8 reps without much of a problem but the bar felt heavy and I don’t think I could have done, say, sets of 12.

So, long story short, I am going to focus on squatting, deadlifting and bench pressing a lot. As well as some other of the big power lifts. I really want to build up real strength and, more specifically, core strength. I want to be able to do a full pistol (can’t come all that close right now) with either leg and there’s really nothing else like these exercises to build up that sort of strength. Things like yoga are great and all but I just don’t think they do it with the same level of efficiency and speed. I will update this over time with progress updates (or lack thereof)!

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A few days ago I wrote about Full Tilt Poker’s new innovating game called Rush Poker.  In the past few days this got me thinking to how Pokerstars was going to respond.  Would they try and buy rights to the game for Pokerstars or could they try and come up with something similar, or even [...]
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Still haven't had the time to do a proper recap of my score in UBOC Event #4 a few days back. It's just hard to find the time this week in the evenings with all the double-guarantee tournaments running all day long on full tilt in addition to the rest of the UBOC series on UltimateBet. If I don't get to do a real recap, I might just post the two or three most significant hands for posterity's sake, but hopefully this is something I will get to in the next day or two.

In the meantime, I had my first cash in a big mtt on full tilt of the past three days, a tiny score for just a few hundy in the 150k, which is double the usual 75k guarantee which runs nightly at 8pm ET for a buyin of $150 + $13. Normally this is a tournament I stay away from, because (1) I am rarely home in time to play it from the beginning anyways, and (2) even the few times when I have been able to play, I find the level of competition to be noticeably better than at the $50 or $100 level where my mtt play tends to focus. I think I've only cashed in this thing twice before in my entire life, so in that sense running through to the final 60 or so players was a nice feat, especially with the mtt being double its usual size, up in the 1200-player range on the day. But in the end, a run to the 60s just doesn't mean squat in terms of cash in a tournament like this, so I'll take my $300 profit and plow it back into full tilt's double-guarantee tournaments over the next couple of nights.

For the first night in a few, I did not participate in any of the UBOC events. They smartly have a "mini-UBOC" which runs the exact same tournaments as the big UBOC events at the exact same times, but at one-tenth the buyin. The problem with these events for me is that, for the most part, the mini UBOC events only have a tiny guarantee -- usually 10k or less -- and I just don't generally take the time these days to play any mtt without at least a 20k guarantee. I just don't want to go through the rigamarole and roller coaster of luck and timing that it takes to run deep in one of these tournaments, bust out in 4th place, and win what? $500? Definitely not worth it from my perspective. So I've been staying away from the mini UBOC events generally, but otherwise I think the variety of events in the UBOC has been pretty great, personally. They've had some rebuys at reasonable buyin levels, they've had some nice deep stack sniper (bounty) tournaments in the $100-$200 range, and they've had events in no-limit and limit holdem, both 6-max and full-ring, as well as plenty of Omaha and Stud events to pique my interest. As I mentioned yesterday I have built up a massive stack in a few of these other events but so far it has not translated to any big scores since UBOC #4, and on Wednesday night I was tempted by the $1000 buyin nlh event that seemed to be attracting all the big pros from UB's roster.

I originally registered for the 1k buyin tournament, but later unregistered after more carefully considering the situation. I have the money in UB thanks to my score last week in UBOC #4, but do I really want to drop a grand to play this tournament? It struck me how different buyin levels are at live vs online tournaments. In a live casino, a tournament with a $1000 buyin would be big, but nothing so huge in my experience that it would attract all pros or something. Not even close. For the most part, if I play a $1000 buyin event in a live casino in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, I would expect the average level of skill of my competition to be mediocre at best, with plenty of total donkeys in the mix ever-ready to get involved with subpar hands and try to suck out on someone even for $1000 a pop. But in an online tournament, the 1k buyin events in my experience tend to turn out a whole different level of opponent. I'm not trying to say these things are not beatable or anything, but in an online event, a 1k buyin tournament will generally speaking be comprised of mostly solid players, something I would never say about a live 1k buyin event. I've written about this before with respect to the Monday 1k mtt on full tilt -- that field every week is good enough such that my expected value from playing the tournament is measurably lower than when I play, say, the 5050 or a similar-level of buyin. The bottom line is that, for online poker play at the major sites available in the U.S., all the lower limits available make a buyin like 1k something that generally speaking only the best of the best tournament players are looking into.

With that in mind, I ended up unregistering from the 1k UBOC tournament and saving that dough for a better spot. Again, it's not a question of not having faith in myself or not thinking I can do it. I do have faith and I do think I can outlast anyone in the world in the right situation in a large-field mtt. But, that doesn't change the fact that my expected ROI of entering the 1k event is significantly lower over the long run that my expected ROI of entering the other tournaments I normally confine my play to.

Tonight's UBOC was much better as I recall, although I think there is only one of them instead of the normal two events starting simultaneously at 8:05pm ET. I think tonight's is a $200 or $300 buyin pot-limit Omaha event or something like that. Too lazy to look it up. But I checked on Wednesday night and I recall thinking that Thursday's UBOC would be a fun one to play, so I will definitely plan to be there at 8pm. I'm sure I'll make an appearance in the $26 buyin 28k guaranteed (56k this week!) 8pm mtt on full tilt as well, and you might even see me once again in the 40k (80k this week), $150 buyin mtt at 8pm as well. The 8:30pm ET 50k ($30 rebuy) that I won recently is also a distinct possibility. I haven't had a big cash yet in this week's double-guarantee festival on full tilt, but that won't stop me from trying. It only takes one great run to make up for several months days of mtt futility.
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Whew! With the UBOC going on over on UltimateBet -- and the events starting at actually playable times for Americans (mostly 8:05pm ET) as opposed to WCOOP at pokerstars these days -- as well as Full Tilt's double-guarantee week, I have been playing the most mtt poker I've played in probably a year over the past week or so. As I have alluded to previously, I made a deep run to the final table in one of the UBOC events earlier this week, about which I plan to get a post up later this week for sure recapping what ended up being another solid tournament score for me, albeit one where I -- again -- left a lot of dough on the table thanks to multiple bad breaks when down to the final few at the last table. But otherwise, I have been trying to get in on as many of the larger mtt's on full tilt in the evenings as I can, even taking it so far as to leave work a bit early one day this week to get in on the 7pm ET mtt's which I pretty much never, ever get to play anymore thanks to work and family obligations.

So far, as I mentioned I made a big hit in the UBOC a few days ago, but on full tilt I have just not been feeling the love yet after two nights of heavy mtt playing (heavy for me, anyways). I continue this week to amass some massive stacks in the UltimateBet tournaments -- some leading to small cashes and some to no cash at all, sadly -- but I have had very little luck getting anything serious going on full tilt so far, and I'm not sure exactly why. I think part of it is that, despite my hope that there would be tons of overlay in these events with the guarantees doubled, what we're finding instead is that every fonkadonk and his mother are joining in on these tournaments to try to get a piece of the swollen prize pools that this week offers. As a result, unlike past times when this double-guarantee promo has been run, I have literally yet to see a single tournament on full tilt with any overlay at all. The 50-50 usually attracts around 1000 runners for very close to the 50k guaranteed in the prize pool. So this week, they turn it into the "Fifty Hundo" with a 100k guarantee, and what happens? 2200 donklickers show up to try to slip on some banana peels and stagger their way into the money. The 28k at 8pm ET on full tilt, which usually attracts around 1500 runners at $26 apiece, this week suddenly sports fields of over 3000 runners every night. And like I mentioned, for the most part these additional players are not the more skilled players who you might normally find participating in the large-field $26 and $50 mtts available on line. No, for the most part I think these extra guys are by a vast majority flonkeys -- the kind of guys who would never normally play in an mtt at this level -- but you are just hoping to get lucky and get deck-smacked for a few hours and try to make a hundy or two.

With such a huge influx of flonkadonks in the big guarantees on full tilt, it's no wonder to me that I am not having success. I've never really done particularly well in the $26 level nlh mtts on full tilt. If you think about it, most of my success has either been at the next level or two up ($50 or $75 buyins or more), or in rebuy events which again distort the buyin levels up from just allowing anybody with $26 of scratch in their full tilt account to register to donk it up. As compared to a guy like, say, Chad, who has been called the King of Donks for a reason after he won the nightly 10pm ET 32k on full tilt like seven times in one year, I simply do not fare as well against the lesser competition as I do against just one level up from the bottom of the large-field mtts. I have written about this before and have long thought that this is because these clowns simply do not understand when to fold, be it preflop, on the flop, or afterwards. And you know what? I could not count how many times -- just in the past two days of double-guarantees week on full tilt -- I have been called down in a big mtt by an abject moron making a hideous play, even some times where they actually turned out to be ahead. Because I have noticed that, when the board comes down 9TJ with two suits, and then the river brings an 8 of the same suit as the other two sooted cards, there is just no way you're getting your opponent to lay down his pocket Kings, not on the flop, and not on the turn, and it just doesn't matter how much you're betting or how well you have told your story of strength right from the getgo in these things. I've always fared better against opponents who know how to fold at least a little bit, and that is exactly what appears to be missing from the fields this week on full tilt as opposed to the normal participants in these events.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying. I would love to say that I'm just not going to try to push anyone off a hand unless I am holding a monster for the rest of this week on full tilt, but in a nutshell I get dealt a monster hand only about once a week or two, leaving me with no other option but to make plays when I know more or less exactly what my opponent has that I cannot imagine him calling me down with. They just keep calling anyways. Thank god there's been UB this week to get my game on in sort of the opposite -- a smaller field of players where people are at least willing to fold if it is obvious they are beat, even if they started off with two good cards in the hole. I don't see this as much of an issue on full tilt in general, but this week it's just been painful watching these tournament morons call call call with shit, and then either suck out or just end up ahead because they aren't smart enough to fold their pocket pair to the obvious straight or flush on the board, etc. Unfortunately I do not think Wednesday's action in the UBOC is any good from what I recall, so I might be stuck playing a million full tilt mtts again, resigning myself to just hoping to limp to the min-cash like all the other monkeys while praying to get slapped in the face with the deck.

There's just so much money at stake, I feel like I can't stay away.
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A couple of weeks back I headed down with some friends to Billy's poker room in Bally's in Atlantic City and played in the $200 bounty tournament the poker room was running, which ended up having 45 runners and a total prize pool of a little over 6 grand. I knew going in this would be a real luckfest, typical of most daily tournaments in Atlantic City, with 20 minute blind rounds, usually lasting 4-5 hours from what I was told when I registered at the counter. And, never having played a live bounty tournament before, I learned that each participant would be given a single $25 actual casino chip along with 10k in starting $T chips, which would have to be given to the person who eliminates you along with your chipstack. Although stacks were deep for the first few minutes with starting stacks of 10k and blinds that would begin at the standard 25/50, those blinds would jump quickly in this aggressive tournament structure to 50/100 after just 20 minutes of play and then double again to 100/200 just 40 minutes after the start. Again, this is also typical in my experience of most of the daily poker tournaments available in AC these days.

Early on, not much happened with me for the first couple of rounds, so I tried to be patient while I looked for a way to double up early. I won a couple of pots with aggressive betting -- standard Super/System sort of stuff -- and quickly I climbed my stack up to around 12k in chips for the early chip lead at my table. But then I let my read get me into a very bad situation, one I was lucky to escape from. I open-raised from late position with ATo, the best hand I'd seen by about 45 minutes or so into the tournament, and the old man in the big blind, who had defended a couple of times before despite seeming very tight like most old men are, defended again by calling my preflop raise, and I put him on shizznit after he had already shown an over-willingness to defend his blind in just a few minutes that this tournament had run so far. From watching him I felt like I knew this old guy woulda reraised me if he had anything substantial in the hole, especially given how actively I had been open-raising already in the earlygoing, so I was liking my AT here, and I liked it even moreso when the flop came down AJ7. The old man checked, I confidently bet after his check, and he paused a bit before calling. I wasn't sure what this meant, but my best guess after this call was either a small pocket pair, or perhaps a low ace that he just got lucky with. The turn then brought a raggy 3, the old man checked again, so this time I made a bigger bet to try to end this right here with my likely-ahead-but-vulnerable top pair. And this was when the guy nearly fell out of his chair "thinking over" his response. I mean, he leaned back, took a very loud deep breath/sigh, stretched out his arms and legs very prominently, and just made a huge production of the whole thing as he considered his options. Eventually after a good, solid minute of very overt activity, the guy check-raised me allin. He had been a little short already before this hand began, mostly from defending his blind to liberally and then taking it too far, and it was all just such a stoopid production he made that I figured he just had to be bluffing. I mean, who would make such a damn production out of it if he was actually strong? I thought to myself, "That has got to be 'strong-means-weak' in action", even though I knew this guy was generally an old, tightish guy. I thought quite a bit over it, knowing that AT on this board is nothing to write home about, but in the end my gut told me he was weak since before the hand began, and so I decided to listen and called for half of my remaining stack. Old man flips up? The ever-mighty A3. So he defends his blind against a preflop raise with A-rag, and then he makes the very questionable move of also calling my c-bet on the Ace-high flop with his top pair no kicker. He lucksucked me hard by hitting his kicker on the turn after his bad flop call, made a ridiculously huge public production to further suck at poker and accidentally "trick" me into thinking he must be weak just because no one with even half a brain would ever want to make it so obvious that he had a strong hand. Anyways, he effed me and I would be down to just over 2000 chips from my 10k starting stack, and that's when the river rewarded the better player by dropping a miracle 3-outer Ten for the resuck. Ahh the resuck. Nowhere else in poker is something so unwelcome and unfair when done to you and yet so deserved and just when it works in your favor. And with the turn of a card I moved from losing 80% of my stack to nearly doubling up late in the first hour of what I understood was normally a 4-5 hour long event. A very good turn of events for me.

Early in Round 4, just more than an hour into the tournament, I called a preflop raise from across the table with my 66 in the big blind, against a guy who had open-raised almost every single time the pot was unopened when it got to him the entire way through this tournament -- I mean seriously, maybe ten different times in an hour -- and always c-bet the flops after he was the last raiser pre-. The flop came TT4 with two clubs, and I checked to the preflop raiser who led out with his standard c betty-looking thing, which I opted to call as I assumed my pair of 6s was at least as likely to be ahead here as to be behind, and the betting was still small compared to the stacks. The turn brought another miracle card -- a 6 to turn me a boat -- and of course I checked and of course the unstoppable aggromonkey bet again, smallish. I thought it over for a while, hollywooding as much of a thought process as I thought would be believable, and then I once again just called, eying the amount in the pot and deciding that I could still make a credible river bet or raise for most of his stack if necessary. When the river brought an offsuit Queen, I figured my best chance to really get paid here was if the guy happened to have a big, big hand, and his betting out twice after the flop supported such a conclusion. David Sklansky's No-Limit Holdem book a few years ago covered this same topic, but sometimes the best way to get paid big in nlh is to bet as if your opponent has a large hand, and assume you weren't going to get paid much anyways if he doesn't have a big hand, but this way you are sure to maximize your big hands when you are in fact up against another monster. In this case, I immediately moved in my entire stack, which was much larger than the size of the pot given my recent near-double, and just hoped for a call. When the guy started agonizing, I knew I had made a good decision; clearly, he had something he really liked, and he did not just want to give it up like that. As my ooponent kept thinking, the seconds ticked by and I began to worry that he might fold. So I tried to channel my very best bluff face by acting completely stone-faced, like I was afraid the guy might see through my ruse. I tried to put up the exact same face that I look for when I think someone is bluffing. Whatever I did, eventually it worked, as the guy turns to me and says "I can't find a way to lay it down."

As soon as I heard that, I knew I had his stack, and my second $25 bounty chip in just the first hour and a half of the tournament. No way he says that line if he also has a boat, and with anything else on this board I know I've got him beat. Turns out, he had AT and had flopped not only trips, but trips with top kicker. I probably would have had to really do something crazy to get him to fold, but I didn't, and I shot up near the top of the leaderboard before the end of Round 4 in a tournament that would end up finishing during Round 13.

At this point, with a nice fluffy stack of chips in front of me, I did what I do best and commenced operation bullystack. With my big stack and as close to full utility as I was going to get in this fast-paced tournament, I turned on the jets and absolutely steamrolled the table, garnering several comments over the ensuing hour or so in the process while I bet and raised everyone else out of pot after pot after pot. I raised pretty much every time the action came unopened to me, mostly with absolutely no regard to the cards I was dealt. I remember winning a pot with a raise holding 42o, another with 86o, and there were many more just like those as well. And I didn't just drop the hammer on these guys during this stretch, either; I dropped it twice. Within the span of maybe 7 or 8 hands. Most people do not know this, but live hammers -- in particular, when not done to other bloggers -- are so much more dramatic than they are online, by a factor of like ten. People get really taken aback by that shit for some reason, who knew. But I love the boost it gives my image, and I just need to be sure to be prepared to show down some better cards for a while if need be. Or, just keep on pushing and try to make more than I lose from the aggression, which is exactly what I did over the next couple hours of this tournament. The key was that without exception I managed to fold to any reraises I faced when I did not have the hand or the pot odds to back it up. Yes it caused me to lose chips after having raised preflop with some regularity, but again the key to playing the bully is to make sure tht overall I am making more chips from the times everyone folds to my raises then I'm losing from the times people keep pushing me off my largely bullshit hands. Playing first-in aggro but smart to reraises, I knocked out three or four other players along the way to the final table, but we finally consolidated around Table 1 -- the table I had started at a few hours earlier -- when down to ten left.

I entered the final table as the chip leader, as we took our second break of the tournament just after we re-drew for seats to start the run to the money in the top 6 positions. I know I was the chip leader -- I had around 87k in chips to start the final table out of the 450k total chips in the tournament -- because when I came back inside from my second smoke break of the event, they had removed the yellow 100-dollar chips and brought in a nice light-blue color chip denominating 10,000 dollars in its place. I remember it so vividly because I had left for my smoke with a massive pile of chips in front of my seat, so big and unwieldly from repeatedly scooping up tons of little pots with nothing in there, sprinkled in with a few stackings of shorties for good measure. The pile was so big that I remember I had been having trouble finding places to keep my arms as I reached down to peel up the corners of my hole cards. But then out of nowhere, when I came back from the 10-minute break, I had this tiny little pile of chips, and at first I was all whatthefuckjusthappened and ready to go find the Tournament Director, until I realized that the primary change in my stack was the switching out of 3 1/2 huge stacks of red 1000-dollar chips and replacing them with a pile of just 8 of these light-blue 10,000 chips. But I also knew I was the chip leader because nobody else around the table had more than two blues along with their remaining reds and the purple 500 chips, while I had 8 of 'em. The rest of the stacks around the final table ranged from shorties with around 10k to about 60k for the closest stack to my own.

Mercifully, mostly due to the silly structure of this tournament that had even me as chip leader holding just over 10 big blinds with blinds of 4000-8000 and a 400 ante, the beginning of the final table went fast as the shortest stacks were forced to push almost on their very first big blind when sitting with Ms of just around 2 or even less. Typical daily casino nlh tournament structure, with typical laughable final table pushfest ending. The good part of that at least like I said was that the first 3 final table eliminations happened fast, with me grabbing one of them when a shorty pushed under the gun and I found AJs in the big blind and called. He had A8s and I held to pick up my 7th knockout chip of the tournament and getting me back to break-even for my buyin (including my own bounty which I still held on to at the time). These first few elims took us down to 7 players remaining, with 6 slated to pay out, in amounts roughly equal to $500, $600, $750, $900, $1200 and $2100, give or take some change on each. So as the bubble loomed -- a bubble which lasted probably about 40 minutes thanks to at least three allin suckouts from the short stack as any self-respecting tournament bubble would insist upon, which is an extremely long period of time for when the average chipstack was about 65,000 chips while the big blind had risen to 10,000 chips -- I noted how much the payouts in this tournament were weighted towards the top two spots, increasing by roughly just a hundred bucks a spot between 6th and 5th and 4th and 3rd place. This would make it especially important to make it to the final couple of spots in this event, and in my mind it also increased my desire to do a chop if anyone was interested since with just an average M of 6 this was obviously anybody's game -- even I as chip leader had an M under 10 -- and it was clear we were going to be subject to the vagaries of poker luck, and who happened to pick up TT vs 88 first or who got the AK and won a race against JJ. So, after about half an hour of bubble play, as the blinds moved up to 6k-12k, further dropping the average M to near 5, someone suggested a save for 7th place, which I readily agreed to and literally took $20 cash out of my pocket and suggested that everyone do the same. Pretty quickly everyone left agreed as well and I offered to be banker for the $140 save to ensure that 7th did not go home empty-handed, and hopefully loosening up the action a bit among the short stacks. And it worked, as within just a few minutes a shorty with an M under 2 pushed KTs and got called by AK, sending him home with his $140 cash booby prize plus whatever bounties he had managed to amass, and launching us into the payouts for the final 6 finishers. At the moment I had slipped to second place after folding a couple of times to allin reraises from stacks big enough to cripple me (any reraise is crippling when even the chipleader's M is under 10!), but when one of the two super short stacks suggested a chop, even I figured it wasn't worth pushing for then as two or three of these guys would likely be gone very shortly and then would increase significantly the chance of us actually finding some unanimous agreement on splitting up the remaining prize pool.

We played a bit further, and as expected two more guys dumped out early when luck and the silly blinds forced them in with lesser hands, one of the running into AA as I recall thinking at the time how fun that is to pick up pocket rockets at the final table of any tournament. Unfortunately, I had had a couple of more times where I laid down questionable hands to reraises in an attempt to amass a stack to last until those lucrative top two spots, and finally when down to four remaining I found myself the short stack with about 65k in chips, a little under two-thirds of the current average. When the action folded around to me in the small blind a few minutes later, I felt compelled to push with any two cards to pick up the 12k from the big blind and try to increase my stack by almost 20%. I did so, and the big blind, who was the chip leader at the time and thus had the chips to burn, began to agonize over whether or not to call. That sucked for me, since I was holding 53o, and I tried to give off my best indication of strength, acting confident, strongly stating my chip count when he asked, and just generally looking around and being active like I picture someone with pocket Aces would be, as opposed to the stone-faced, motionless aura I try to work when I want someone to think I am bluffing. It did't work, the big stack called me and flipped up A9o. Whoops.

The flop was a whiff for both of us, still leaving me with 6 outs twice, and then the turn brought the most beautiful 3 I can ever remember seeing in a poker game, securing my double up and reallllly pissing the big stack guy off bigtime. He referred to this derisively as a "suckout" the rest of the way through the tournament, including while we waited to receive our payouts from the overworked TD as well, and I didn't bother correcting him that (1) his A9o -- a hand I imagine would have called there with as well -- was only roughly a 60% favorite when the money went in, not exactly a suckout-level beat, and, more importantly (2) when I pushed with the 53o, I was far more than 50% to win the hand given the likelihood that the big stack would fold there, plus my 40% chances of winning with what would surely be two live cards vs. just about anything the big stack was likely to call my push with. But no matter how you slice it, I had doubled up with 53o, and thanks to the extremely short stacks around the table, this put me slightly back in the chip lead, a lead I would lose a minute later when I once again folded a hand I had raised with preflop (KJs) when one of the other large stacks pushed in on a reraise. The guy to my right then eliminated the 4th place finisher and took a comfortable chip lead when his AQ bested the shorty's A6 allin preflop.

It was at this point, down to just three players left with me in 3rd place around 100k in chips, while the other two guys had around 150k and maybe 200k or so, that the big stack surprisingly offered to chop. He was a really good guy, someone who I had gotten to know a little bit over the past four hours where he was mostly at my table, as well as over a couple of smoke breaks along the way, and I was happy to see that he had enough knowledge and experience in casino poker tournaments (turns out he comes to AC a couple of days per week) to be willing to agree to a chop even when holding the chip lead. His immediate proposal was for each of the three of us to take $1200, and then leave the last $900 and change in the prize pool to play for. I always like a chop that assures everyone a decent payout of at least the minimum that the next player out would receive but then still leaves some skin in the game to go ahead and finish things up, so I agreed, and so did the 2nd place guy after a few minutes of finagling. We all shook on it and then moved on to play it out.

And that's when I picked up my only big pocket pair of the tournament -- a big fat pair of pocket Aces. So sweet. Long story short, the big stack raised ahead of me with what turned out to be QJo, and my allin reraise from my short stack wasn't enough for him to consider folding given the odds, and I ended up doubling to a nice fat stack. While I was still stacking my chips, the shorty to my left was eliminated in 3rd place on the next hand, his face still clearly smarting from losing his chip lead to my 53o, and as soon as we found ourselves heads-up, I offered the nice guy who had originally offered the chop to chop out the remaining $900 as well. Looking at our stacks, I had probably just under three times as many chips as him, and I quickly offered him a 600-300 chop of the remaining 900, with him being allowed to retain his own $25 bounty chip as well as part of the deal. He quickly reviewed the stacks, took a second to think, and then happily agreed.

Two smokes and a bunch of wasted time later -- the TD was just starting to pay out a 12-way chop in a turbo tournament that ended at the same time as ours when we agreed to our final chop -- we recieved our receipts to take to the cage for our payouts. 3rd place took our chopped amount of $1200, plus the three $25 bounty chips he had won during the tournament, and the nice guy in second won $1500, plus his two bounty chips and of course his own that he retained as part of our deal. And I cashed out with the remainer of the prize pool per our deal, which came out to $1890 and change. Plus, I had won a whopping nine bounties along the way at $25 a piece -- some nice booty for playing big-stack bully for about three hours straight to end this short tournament -- and retained my own as well, giving me a total of an extra $250 for my efforts on top of the $1890 cashout from winning the tournament. How I managed to eliminate more than a fifth of the total people running in this thing seems pretty incredible, but more than that, I played a solid game from start to finish. I made the one big mistake early on my semi-misread on the turn against the guy who had lucked into two pairs, but that's one of the big lessons I've learned over my time playing mtt's over the past few years -- the good players are the ones who not only play well, but the guys who make the most of the good luck that they do receive. I got lucky to get that guy in there willing to call a preflop raise and then call a flop bet with top pair worst kicker, I got extremely unlucky with that 3 on the turn, and then I scored a major resuck suckout on the river to not only keep from losing 80% of my stack, but to score an early double as a result. Would I go on to spew everything away over the next couple of blind rounds? Or, as I did, would I take that "second chance" to give serious consideration to every play I made, settle down and start playing my game the way I know best? That's one of the keys I am noticing more and more during my big tournament runs as well as those of most people I know: everybody gets lucky sometimes, but the best players make the absolute best of that luck when it does happen to them.

And so goes the story of my second live daily casino poker tournament win, good for around 2 large net of all expenses and the buyin. Most importantly, I had a blast playing live poker as usual, and once again I found myself throughout simply overwhelmed with all the information I felt I was picking up from these players after what seems like a lifetime of purely online play. Not only am I pleased to have a nice start towards my most important poker goal for 2010 -- to turn more of my rare final tables into victories instead of just top-4 or top-3 finishes -- but this only strengthens my resolve to find a way to play some more live poker during 2010, however that has to happen. It's very hard for me to get out to a casino and play at a time when they have regular tournaments scheduled, but I have just had such an amazing run of success in live poker tournaments of late that I am left feeling like I am straight-up leaving money on the table if I don't find a way to get in a little more live tournament action this year than I have in the past. In fact, after this win in AC to start off the year right, my thoughts have turned towards Foxwoods, where I know they run a major poker tournament series every Spring and again every Fall in what I understand to be the nicest, best poker room on the East Coast. I haven't been to Foxwoods in more than a decade -- certainly since before their WPT poker room was installed in the basement of the Rainmaker Casino -- but I'm thinking that 2010 should be the year that all that changes once and for all.
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Kostanza FTW!! That's right -- after going an abysmal 6-21 or whatever it was in my final 27 picks of the NFL season, including the first two rounds of the playoffs where I finished 3-5, it had become painfully obvious to me that I had turned into the Joe Bloggs of picking NFL games. There's just no other way to see it, and I am nothing if not introspective. So, being that I was still interested in picking these games, that left me with little else to do last Thursday night other than to pull a George Kostanza from undoubtedly the best Seinfeld episode ever, and just pick each game exactly as I normally would, and then bet the opposite of those picks. I mean, I literally won just 6 out of my last 27 picks, so that means I was reliably wrong in my analysis an amazing 78% of the time! Who in the world has access to an indicator that spot-on for NFL games, right? Just me. And the result?

A big, fat 2-0 on the weekend. And what a weekend it was of NFL football.

Where to begin? I suppose let's start with the Colts. I don't want to write a lot about what an amazing performance Peyton Manning had against the vaunted Jets defense, who coming in had only given up 8 passing touchdowns all season before Manning torched them for three on Sunday afternoon, mostly because I know everyone else in the world is gonna be gushing about the guy for the next two weeks straight. But it's pretty clear what happened in that game in my eyes. When the Jets played the Bengals in the playoffs, Darelle Revis essentially took Chad Ochocinco out of the game as far as big plays, and qb Carson Palmer and the Bengals couldn't get it going anywhere else enough to make a game out of it with the Jets. Then last week, when the Jets visited the Chargers, once again Darelle Revis essentially took Vincent Jackson out of the game from a big-play perspective -- V-Jack actually had a very productive day but he was not in the picture in the big plays and did not sniff a touchdown on the day. Although Antonio Gates also went on to have a similarly nice day in stats but never getting near the end zone, the bottom line is that Phillip Rivers and that team were simply not able to make effective use of their other players once V-Jack wasn't going to be catching any 45-yard touchdowns on the day, and the Jets' defense ended up totally stifling and embarrassing the Chargers in front of their home-town fans. So when the Jets brought Darelle Revis into Indy-town this weekend for the right to play in the Superbowl, they figured he would be able to essentially keep Reggie Wayne out of the end zone, and once again they were right. But unlike Carson Palmer and the Phillip Rivers before him, Peyton Manning had just the answer for the deletion of Reggie Wayne from his repertoire in this game: Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie. Two rookies. Rookies! And this time it was the Jets who just had no answer, as Manning absolutely lit up that defense for nearly 400 yards and 3 touchdowns just through the air, and as expected the Jets were just not able to keep up.

Think about the Jets' side of things for a minute, it hardly needs to be said out loud how clearly this was a very solid year for the beleaguered "second franchise" from New Jersey York. I mean, this was a rookie head coach in Rex Ryan who, by the end of the season, seemed to have more or less figured out this league, didn't he? What he did to the Bengals was one thing, they had a very good year and many expected them to win the game in the Wildcard round a few weeks back, but it was the Chargers game that really cemented this team's season this year as more than just a passing fancy. And they also played a rookie quarterback behind center all season as well, and even though there were a great many low points during Sanchise's 2009 campaign, he certainly finished up strong, winning seven of his final eight starts before losing to the Colts, and winning three out of four on the road in his final four games of the season to make it to the conference championship in his first season as a pro. This team has a long way to go to be able to best the likes of Peyton Manning, but at the same time, unlike some teams that played this weekend, it's not like they mistake'd themselves into losing to the Colts on Sunday. The best team in the AFC from start to finish is the one going to the Superbowl now, and the Jets made a nice effort but simply did not have what it takes to stop Peyton Manning, most likely the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. When you see a guy doing what he does statistically -- taking on all comers, including the NFL's best defense in the Jets this weekend -- and also clearly playing the role of offensive coordinator, audibling and calling the plays regularly on offense, and the offensive line coach, etc. it's easy to forget that no other player in the league does that. Manning is just mind-numbing.

Anyways, I promised myself I wouldn't write about Peyton like that in this post. So moving on to the other game, this was another great shootout-style of game like we've seen elsewhere in the NFC playoffs this year, only the point totals at 31-28 were not quite as high as previously, mostly because there were 87 turnovers in this game. And the New Orleans Saints are going to their first Superbowl ever. For those of you who have spent any amount of time in New Orleans over the years, can you even imagine the party going on there last night (and still now I am sure)? Or in two weeks if the Saints manage to find a way to outscore Peyton and the Colts? Wow. Drew Brees only threw for 197 yards, but his three touchdowns were enough to keep pace with the Vikings, who badly outgained the Saints on the day and seemed to move the ball at will before either AP, Brett Favre, or a combination of both AP and Brett Favre would fumble the ball, with the occasional interception thrown in as well for good measure.

And for the Vikings fans out there, what a sick, sick way to end the 2009-2010 season, obviously. The Favre haters out there -- and lord knows there are a shit-ton of you, you know who you are -- could literally not have scripted this thing better. I mean, the poetic justice of Favre coming back to the Vikings this year, having the year he had, with 30-some tds and just the 7 interceptions, to then end the team's run in a situation where his team basically had a long field goal attempt to win the game already, and really only needed 5 or 10 more yards to give their kicker a really good shot, by throwing that interception. It's like a movie, almost. A horror flick for the Minnesota fans out there, that is for sure. Favre actually threw too hideous picks in the game, as I've heard some monkeys on the radio since the game give Favre a pass due to the rush about to hit him on his first pick, in reality that's exactly what made that so horrible. He Eli Manning'ed it! The rush was coming in his face, and rather than chuck the ball away, or just tuck it in and take the sack, instead Favre leans back on his heels, falling backwards, and just sidearms the ball forward to avoid getting tackled with the ball. And it goes right to the Saints defender cutting in from the side, who of course Favre didn't see as he fell backward and lashed out his arm blindly at the last possible second.

And then Favre's interception with his team very close to field goal range with 8 seconds left in a tie game....I mean, if you're Brett Favre, how do you throwing a fuggin pick there? How? Your team is close to field goal range, your kicker's career long is the exact 57 yards that this kick would be right now if the Vikes cannot pick up any more yards. If you can get maybe 5, maybe 10 more yards, that would probably make a big difference. Just run the ball, maybe throw a real short, real quick screen or something. Whatever you do, just make sure you don't throw a pick. Not with a chance to win the game and go to the Superbowl already within our grasp. While Mark Sanchez of the Jets for the most part played a solid game against the Colts in the early game on Sunday, it turned out to be Brett Favre who played more like Sanchise, throwing just 1 touchdown but the two huge interceptions that kept his team from having a chance to win this game in a spot where they very nearly already had a chance to win if they could have only held on to the ball.

And while I'm on the topic, Brad Childress embarrassed himself so much as a head coach this year. I mean, he's actually worse than Andy Reid! Hands down. Not only was there the whole debacle this year where Favre bent him over and fire-raped him when Childress failed in his attempt to wrestle play-calling control back from Favre who was repeatedly changing running plays to passing plays all season long, but Childress single-handedly contributed to his team's breakdown at the end of regulation, and it was the kind of mistake that is so blatant, so overt, that people all over the country (yours truly included) were pointing it out right when he did it, as opposed to just after the fact. After Chester Taylor ripped off a nice run for a new first down in Saints' territory, Brad Childress made the unthinkable decision to just run the clown down until there was just time for one or two plays left, rather than using a couple of well-intentioned running plays to do that while also picking up a few more yards along the way. Instead, because Childress allowed time to whittle down to only one or two plays left, when his team then made an incredible procedure penalty to get moved our of field goal range, he put Favre in a situation where Favre felt pressure to make some kind of a play, and to do so fast. This doesn't absolve Favre from his shit throw or his penchant for ending seasons and dashing his fans' hopes with overtime interceptions late in the playoffs, but Childress deserves a huge amount of the blame for his utterly obvious, even-in-real-time evident gaffe that directly cost his team a trip to the Superbowl. Brett Favre might be careless in the clutch, but Brad Childress, you are a bona fide moron.

This week I should have two fun posts on stories of nice tournament scores I have made of late, one at Bally's in Atlantic City in their daily bounty tournament and one in the UBOC going on right now at UltimateBet.
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Just last week Full Tilt Poker added a new game to their site called Rush Poker and it is quickly becoming very popular.  Rush Poker is basically a sped-up version of normal poker that uses a pool of tables to constantly switch players around so that they are always in the action.  Unlike a normal [...]
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Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond has teamed up with PKR as a commentator on PKR TV.  Galfond will be playing cash games live this weekend on PKR as well as commentating on the games over at PKR.com. Here is the official press release from PKR: London, January 22, 2010 ? High Stakes cash game legend Phil ?OMGClayAiken? Galfond will [...]
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A few days ago there was an earthquake here in Cayman. No real damage to speak of. I didn’t even hear about anyone getting injured let alone dying. But it was a 5.8 and it was definitely enough to wake me up. A lot of people were understandably freaked out given what had just happened in Haiti. I went outside on my porch to a lot of screaming and yelling. Thankfully though, nothing really happened after that.

I’ve been dealing with this stupid dental surgery all week. I had a relatively minor procedure done on Monday but I have some stitches in my mouth and it’s causing a bunch of swelling. One side of my face looks a bit messed up but it’s been improving slightly today. It has caused a bunch of problems with stuff like eating because, pretty much, the whole inside of my mouth hurts. A lot of it is referred pain from the area with stitches but it’s definitely very unpleasant to eat right now. But, according to the guy did the surgery, this is totally normal and usually mouth surgery tends to heal very quickly. I guess it’s one of the good things about the human body that it makes the mouth a top priority to be healthy. He thinks I should be back to normal in a week.

In TV news, I am excited 24 is back. As usual, I was pretty bored with it for like the first hour or two. I was actually questioning whether I even wanted to watch it this season. But it has managed to suck me back in after four hours so I am definitely excited to see the rest of the season. I am also ridiculously excited for the last season of Lost so I am counting down the days until that starts back up. I also just finished rewatching every Curb Your Enthusiam. What a terrific show. It took me a few months to get through the whole series but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Does anyone know anyone who is a PHP/MySQL expert with experience working with vBulletin? I am not looking for someone who simply knows PHP/MySQL on a basic or even intermediate level. There are tons of those people out there. The person or group that I’m looking for is harder to find. I am looking for someone who knows hardcore MySQL optimization, how to integrate fast full-text search options into vBulletin (such as Sphinx, dtsearch, Lucene) and other more advanced procedures. Ideally, the person would also be an expert at finding slow queries in MySQL, knowing how to fix them (ie, which indices to add, how to change the query, etc), how to change server configurations to optimize performance, etc. Lastly, being a vBulletin expert would be a huge plus. And just having installed vBulletin doesn’t count. I am talking about having a detailed understand of the hooks in vBulletin and how to make serious core-level changes to the code. This is a potentially lucrative opportunity for the right person so please pass along my email (natarem@gmail.com) to anywho who might be interested. And, if you couldn’t tell, this is someone we could use to get the new PocketFives done faster.

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OK, we're going to try something new here with this week's NFL picks. After going something like 6-21 in my last 27 picks this season (including the playoffs), I've gotten to the point where I cannot make a good pick to save my life. In fact, that has become just about as reliable an indicator as any other pattern I'm seeing out there, to the point that I'm ready to put my money where my mouth is and bet on it.

That's right -- it's time for some opposite picks. Works like a charm.

So first, we've got the Indianapolis Colts favored by 8 points at home over the New York Jets. Here is where normally I would point out how incredibly well the Jets' defense has been playing, including completely stifling the 11-game-win-streak San Diego Chargers in San Diego last week to the tune of just 7 points scored before trash time in that game by one of the NFL's most prolific scoring offenses. I would also point out that it was just a 5-point game early in the third quarter when these two teams met a few weeks ago before the Colts pulled their starters and eventually lost to allow the Jets into the playoffs. I would mention how the Colts are simply not the excessive-scoring offense that they may have been in the past, looking at their schedule all throughout this year. Lastly I would point out how well Mark Sanchez has been playing here over the past month, in particular in not trying to do too much and in not throwing costly interceptions or making idiot plays. All of this leads me to the obvious conclusion that a spread of more than a touchdown simply is too much for this game.

And thus, the pick is? Indianapolis. Lay the 8. It doesn't make sense, but like I said picking the opposite of what makes sense to me would have been a very profitable strategy over the past month of NFL football.

In the other game this weekend, it's the New Orleans Saints favored by 3.5 over the visiting Minnesota Favres, and again I think it's pretty clear which way my sensibilities lean. Although both teams absolutely shat the bed at the end of the regular season this year, the Saints are the home team, they were the better team during the entire season this year, and they looked to have bounced back even harder last week in a 45-14 brutalization of the defending NFC Champion Cardinals than the Favres did in smushing the Cowboys. Especially given Brett Favre's penchant for stepping down in big spots late in his career, and since I have the feeling that this is finally going to be Drew Brees' time to shine, that line of barely more than a field goal seems a bit on the low side to me. Thus, since all logic dictates a pick on the Saints, take the Favres, plus the 3.5 points.

Should be a fun chance this weekend to see just how bad I am really running in these NFL games. Because, if you get every game you pick wrong for a month, so then you decide to go opposite of what you want to pick the games as, and you go on to lose those opposite picks as well, then you know you are *seriously* running bad.
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The tragic news of the earthquake in Haiti taking an estimated 200,000 lives and the struggle of 3 million Haitians to rebuild their lives in the face of tragic natural disaster has affected everyone and the poker playing community isread more…

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I was watching the video for Hard by Rihanna the other day (see below) and couldn’t help but notice a nice little product placement in the video for Pokerstars.com.  This is the first time I have seen an online poker site advertising within a popular music video such as this one (which is an amazing [...]
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So the recent movie I keep hearing Avatar compared to out there over the past couple of weeks is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. As I may have mentioned yesterday, in my opinion Avatar succeeded brilliantly in almost every spot where every LOTR film failed.

Ultimately, the recent LOTR trilogy basically boils down to Peter Jackson whacking off and ejaculating all over himself for about 10 full hours. I mean, this guy never saw a scene in his life that he wanted to cut. So he took a story -- admittedly, a long one -- and stretched it out into 10 hours of incredibly slow-moving, dragging-along action. Sure, he made a real spectacle out of it, with the costumes and the fight scenes and all, and those aspects of the movie were good. But you can't change the fact that I must have looked at my watch 20 or 25 times during the first movie in the theater, and I never even bothered to go see the second or third until they came out on tv and I could watch them over a couple of months which is how long it takes to get that much time together in one place to watch an epic like the entire LOTR trilogy.

I hardly remembered I even had a watch while Avatar was on. Although 2 1/2 hours is still a long movie, for another spectacle piece like this it's not too bad, and it moves very fast. You're just learning so much, experiencing so much, and really feeling like you are part of the action thanks to the filming and the 3-D effects, it's a more active moviegoing experience in a lot of ways than ever before, and the 150 minutes blew by except for maybe some parts as the last hour built towards the conclusion. In LOTR I couldn't watch an hour of that garbage without flipping the channel onto something else, just to get some fast-moving action. If Avatar was on tv right now, I would punch you if you even tried to pry the remote from my clenched hand.

The costumes were another comparison point between Avatar and LOTR from what I am hearing, and again, as incredible as this was in LOTR, ultimately I just don't see how using real people and real clothing and real costumes can compare to what we can now create using computers and cutting-edge technology to synthesize directly to the reel. This certainly was the strong point of Jackson's LOTR trilogy, and again he did a fine job with it, but can you really compare the way Pippin or Frodo or even the dwarves or elves looked, with how the Navi looked in Avatar? How can you? The Navi didn't even have to look, or move, or do anything like real people, whereas everyone in LOTR except for maybe Gollum and a few of the monsters was still restricted by the chains of reality, of humanity. The Navi could be anything. The CGI technology has finally gotten so realistic with Avatar that they created an entire planet of aliens and animal-like creatures that seem 100% as real as if they were real life things being filmed by a real life camera crew on real life Pandora. I mean, just this past weekend the first of the new Star Wars flicks came on Spike at night, and I watched a good hour or so of it in the background while I did some work and played some poker. And you know what? Not only is Jar Jar Binks annoying as shit with that idiot voice, but the animation really isn't that good. It's fine and all, but it's a bit like going back and watching the first Terminator movie now -- Jar Jar really kind of bounces a bit awkwardly when he walks, and there are multiple scenes where you can tell the other actors are really talking to nothing, and that Jar Jar was simply added to the scene later by computer. There was none of that in Avatar, none that I noticed anyways. Through a combination of the very latest in cameras and cutting edge computer and 3-D technology, Avatar comes off to the viewer as if you are right there in the thick of the action going on all around you, and like it is totally and completely real. LOTR? Not even close to the same thing.

On the overall creativity scale, Peter Jackson's take on LOTR once again falls woefully short of James Cameron's effort in Avatar. Although this would have been a golden opportunity for Jackson to set himself apart by taking some unique or particularly interesting takes on what has been done before in at least two other movies of the famous trilogy, instead Jackson pretty much stuck right to the script, including making characters pretty much the same way as they have been portrayed before without adding a whole lot in the way of true ingenuity or original conception. LOTR would have been a great opportunity to throw in things like the shiny-tail bugs or the wisps from Avatar -- they could have been all over the place, really, but that's not really what LOTR was all about the way that Jackson cast it. Jackson's attempt to recreate every scene from the book in more or less sequential order comes off just like that -- an endless 10-hour progression of scenes, each one done up to the nines as far as costumes and such, progressing towards a conclusion in the mountains of Mordor. And even the ending of LOTR would have been a great opportunity for Jackson to give his own vision of Hell, Evil, Satan, whatever you want to call Sauron, but I like most people I know was underwhelmed by the attempt. There wasn't much of anything in Avatar that was not depicted with the utmost of originality and flair. From the floating mountains, to the choosing of the bird-things, that early scene on Jake's first night on Pandora, etc., it was all just done on a level above and beyond LOTR. Frankly I think that is a tremendous insult to Avatar and a tremendous understatement of the level of ingenuity and detail that went into creating the best movie in over a decade.

As I think I mentioned yesterday, I think a much better analog to Avatar is 1999's The Matrix. Now there's a movie that rocked people's worlds like Avatar is. There's a movie I might have seen twice in the theaters. There's a movie I literally still talk about with regularity among friends and colleagues. Who the fike talks about Lord of the Rings? Other than you D&D loving, chain mail-wearing, King Richard's Faire-going dorks that is. Like Avatar, The Matrix is visually stunning, including fight scenes and chase scenes pretty much better than any movie before it. Both movies are captivating on a level not approached by any other normal movie, and I chuckle at the thought of anybody sitting in the theater back in 1999 watching The Matrix and continually checking their watch to see when the thing was going to be over. No way. I looked at my watch more than the screen when I saw the first 85-hour movie of Lord of the Rings!

Like Avatar, The Matrix also employed new technology and new direction with camera angles and such as compared to everything that had ever been created before it. As such, it changed movies forever, as since then about 30 movies have been made using the same floating-wire technology to enhance their own fight and chase scenes. It, like Avatar, was a completely unique piece of direction, something which a movie like LOTR cannot possibly say. LOTR was down-to-the-detail done-up, that is for sure, but it didn't really push the boundaries or send movies off in a new direction at all. It just did the same thing that had been done before, but on an extremely mega and detailed scale. Avatar and The Matrix, however, were as I've said, completely unique. The Matrix used wires and a new perspective on shooting to create the coolest fight scenes ever made. James Cameron invented his own camera technology and 3-D to place you literally right in the thick of the action in Avatar in a way that has simply never even been approached before.

As I said yesterday, I don't think there is any reasonable argument that Avatar is not the best movie of the past decade-plus. I think The Matrix back in 1999 is the last movie to come along that really can make a good argument to be as good or better than Avatar. It's definitely not as visually stunning as Avatar is -- ultimately not even close, really -- but the uniqueness, the originality, and just the awesomeness of that story surpasses the plot of Avatar for sure. It will always be difficult to compare a visual movie like Avatar to a drama like Shawshank or whatever genre you would call The Matrix, but in my mind there is no doubt that Avatar ranks among the top examples of films ever made by humankind.
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I'll be honest with you guys -- I have about four posts already mostly written, at least in raw form, waiting and ready to be posted about various topics. The large amount of poker I have played over the past few days. A recent trip to Atlantic City to the 1-2 cash tables. Another big weekend of NFL playoff action. But something happened to me this weekend that I just had to sit down and start writing about right after it happened, almost in an attempt to extent the experience for myself as much as to share it with the rest of you out there. What did I do you may ask that had such an effect on me?

I went to see Avatar.

Now, if you've read here for any considerable period of time, then you will know that I am generally a very harsh critic on movies. I don't like mostly any of the drivel that comes out nowadays, mostly because movies today for the most part only get made if they are expected to turn a profit, and in order for a big studio to expect to turn a profit, they have a certain formula, or "mold" if you prefer that term better, that they compare every screenplay they see to. If it fits the "likely to turn a profit" mold, then they make it, and if it doesn't, they generally pass. The result is that most of the movies that hit the theaters today are designed not to be great or to stir up your emotions, but rather, ultimately, to make money. They just target different segments of the population from which to profit is all.

But every once in a while, a movie comes along that seriously challenges the status quo. I mean, a movie that you would not consider going to the bathroom during, one that not only has you breathless all the way throughout, but has you buzzing with excitement for several days afterwards. The kind of movie that even regular joes like myself would be willing to see twice. In the theaters. At $20 a pop. That, my friends, is Avatar.

I will not give any specific spoilers at this point here in case anyone out there has not yet seen this movie. But suffice it to say -- and this is coming from a guy who has to this day steadfastly refused to ever see Titanic -- James Cameron is a stark raving genius. Avatar has finally made that obvious to me beyond all doubt. I have really liked some of Cameron's movies in the past -- Terminator 2 and The Abyss come immediately to mind as great examples of his directorial prowess, in addition to all-time top-grossing film Titanic which as I mentioned I have to this point in my life proudly and purposefully skipped. But I never thought of him in that absolute upper echelon, up there with the Speilbergs and the Scorceses, the master storytellers of their time. But at this point, there can be no doubt. James Cameron is a mad scientist of movies.

Where can you even begin to describe what Avatar is to the institution of movies. No matter how hard I try, words cannot describe that certain je ne sais quoi that Avatar has. Ultimately, I think it comes down to creativity. There has most definitely never, ever been anything like this in the history of life on earth. Nothing even close, really. It's not so much that most of the characters in the movie are computer-generated and yet move, talk and interact amazingly exactly as if they were real actors. And it's certainly not the 3-D, which is very cool and certainly something that helps push this movie over the edge of all-time greatness, but in the end the 3-D is actually quite understated compared to other 3-D movies and experiences I have seen in the past. I would estimate the 3-D is only about 5% of the coolness of Avatar, despite the technology being wielded extremely skillfully by Cameron as he weaves the story of the world of Pandora into the pop culture of the earth around forever.

No, it's not really the incredible, best-ever computer animation, and it's not the 3-D that make Avatar so special. And it's not the plot either -- the plot that I had heard from several sources was the weak link of the movie, a trite, many-times-over told story as predictable as the day is long. The plot that had me with such painfully low expectations going in to this movie, just like I usually have and am most often vindicated for. But not this time. The plot of Avatar is actually pretty good. It's not stupendous. The story itself isn't going to literally change your life forever on an emotional level like going to see Shawshank Redemption or The Matrix did. But it's good. It's interesting, and it does the job in a big way, having been executed pretty much flawlessly by an absolute perfectionist in James Cameron. Truth be told, the plot pretty much is the weak link of the story, but that is only because the plot is probably roughly a 7 out of 10 while the rest of the movie -- the execution of the movie -- is the closest thing to a perfect 10 I can remember in a long time.

Which brings me back to what that special something-something is with Avatar: creativity. That's what it comes down to. Did you ever see The Fifth Element? For true science fiction fans, The Fifth Element is to me about as truly original and creative of a flick as we've seen since the 1970s brought us Blade Runner and the beginning of the Star Wars saga. So many new ideas, so many new-looking aliens, with new powers and new outlooks. It's a thrill to watch every time it comes on TBS or one of the pay stations, and I rarely turn it off whenever I happen upon it during my surfing. But Avatar clearly surpasses The Fifth Element in the originality department -- both in the way it is shot but even in just some of the little details as well that the great directors are famous for covering so adeptly. Some of the "animals" (for lack of a better term) that we run into on Pandora are simply incredible, even right down to whoever thought up the idea for them in the first place. For those of you who've seen the movie, I'm thinking for example of those wisps that look like forget-me-nots that cover the main character at the beginning. Or those spiral flowers that all disappeared their entire stalk to quickly when he touched them at the beginning? Or what about that incredible bug we saw a few times that, when touched, erupted its tail in a brilliant spinning sprial of light? What they thought of to make the world of Pandora seem real, and alive, and yet completely alien, is truly amazing, really, like absolutely nothing I can ever recall seeing in my lifetime.

And it was more than just the visuals that Cameron worked so hard, and in fact waited for several years for the 3-D and other technology to catch up to the vision he has had for Avatar for the better part of a decade, that make Avatar the brilliantly original film that it is. The movie is just as rich in interesting and truly creative ideas as it is in visuals. Again, for those of you who have seen the film, but without giving any real spoilers, I'm thinking of the whole notion of linking the pony tails in their hair with the animals. Or the Tree of Souls. Or the whole Matrix-like use of avatars to begin with. As I keep saying over and over to anyone who will listen since seeing this movie this past weekend, you have most definitely never seen anything like this, period. Until now, no one has pushed the envelope quite this far in terms of what you can think of and then portray on-screen.

And I would be remiss if I did not as well mention specifically the way this movie is shot. If you read that link I had up above, it describes how James Cameron not only waited for years for 3-D technology to catch up with his vision for Avatar, but he also personally developed a new camera that shoots in hyper-realistic images directly to the human eye. Between that, the 3-D factor, and Cameron's impeccable taste for shooting all different kinds of scenes in just the right way, sitting back and watching this movie is like a huge palatial feast for your rods and cones. It's that simple. The fight scenes are tremendous, sort of combining the best of Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Evolution and The Matrix if that makes any sense at all, and the imagery, the characters, really everything are an incredible combination that you just don't see in movies today.

I think I've said all I need to right now about the specifics of the movie, but would love to hear anyone's thoughts on the movie if you've seen it in the comments. Hammer Wife and I are still talking nonstop about Avatar after more than 72 hours since leaving the theater, and we are already planning to drop another $50 to go see it for a second time in the IMAX theater, which will mark the first (and I bet only) time Hammer Wife and I have ever seen a movie twice in the theater, or even remotely considered doing so. But there is just nothing in the world today like seeing this movie, plain and simple. I don't think there is any doubt that Avatar is among the top ten movies of all time, although I think I will give it some time before I try to figure out where exactly to place it in the all-time pantheon of cinema. One thing is for crystal clear sure though: Avatar is not just the Best Picture for 2010. It is hands-down the best movie in at least ten years. The Matrix in what, 1999, definitely gives Avatar a run for its money, interestingly for many of the exact same reasons that make Avatar such an incredible and amazing gift to the human race. But I'm just thinking back to the films that have won Best Picture since 1999 -- Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, the third Lord of the Rings, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, The Departed, No Country for Old Men and Slumdog Millionaire, and having seen all of those but for Crash, it is honestly hilarious how badly Avatar. destroys them all. I am sure you will agree, if you don't already.

Please go see Avatar, James Cameron's gift to humanity.

Just make sure you have the $20 a ticket you are likely to pay to get in.
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Four more games this week, in the week where we usually see the blowouts but who knows as there do appear to be some compelling matchups to decide who will battle it out for the conference championship in the respective conferences. I went 2-2 last week, which as I mentioned is not a profitable way to be, but it was my best performance in a month and ultimately saw me correctly pick half the games when not being given a choice in which games to select, so I suppose I can be halfway-satisfied with .500 in the first round of the playoffs. Looking forward to getting back on the profit train after now five weeks away from that whole part of the station. So without further adieu:

1. Arizona Cardinals +7 at the New Orleans Saints. The early Saturday game has all the makings of an extreme shootout to kick off the divisional round of the playoffs in the NFL, as the Cardinals come in fresh off of their thrilling 51-45 victory against the Packers that included them giving up five touchdowns in the second half of that game alone. And the Saints have been reeling themselves, losing their last three games after a 13-0 start, and having not won in more than a month at this point. Given what the Pack did last week, one can only assume that the Saints will not have any trouble scoring the ball, and there is no way I am betting against Kurt Warner doing much of the same for his squad after his incredible performance last week and in the post-season in general over his career. Even though I believe the Saints should find a way to win this game at home, there is enough chance that the Cardinals could win outright that, when combined with all the ways they could lose but by less than 7, the value just once again seems to sit with the underdog in this matchup in my eyes.

2. Indianapolis Colts +6 vs Baltimore Ravens. The Saturday night game is one where I like the favorite, for the first time in this entire playoffs so far in fact. I picked Baltimore last week and I have a lot of respect for Joe Flacco, Coach Harbaugh and everything the Ravens managed to do this year in fighting their way into the playoffs out of a very crowded bottom of the AFC playoff race. And I do not think the Colts are some kind of an unbeatable team by any means, as we have seen year in and year out since Tony Dungy was the coach of this team and could only find the promised land once with Peyton Manning at the helm. But ultimately I have a metric shit-ton of respect for Peyton Manning, and I think his creativity, his awareness and his spontanaeity at the line will be enough to get the victory against a Ravens team that seems really undermanned in the passing game. With this explosive, quick-strike Colts offense playing in the dome at home, and with the Ravens getting a little old on defense, there is a good chance that the Colts drop behind early in this one, and I don't like Flacco et al to play well enough from behind to keep this quite to within one score.

3. Dallas Cowboys +3 at Minnesota Vikings. The Sunday 1pm game is another one like my first pick above where I just think there is more value on the underdog than on the favorite in the game. The Cowboys have looked great over their past several games, while the Vikes haven't played well against a real opponent in going on 6 weeks now thanks to a weak end of the season for Brad Childress & crew. And with as many weapons as the Vikings have on offense with Brett Favre, Adrian Peterson and all those good receivers, I honestly think the Cowboys are one of the few teams in the league that can go toe-to-toe with the Vikes on the talent front. Although Minnesota's rush defense is excellent, they have not faced an O-line like Dallas' yet this season, and the Vikings have been shown to be very vulnerable to strong passing teams. With Tony Romo playing very well lately and taking especially good care of the ball, I predict a big day for Miles Austin and especially for Jason Witten, and I suspect it will be enough to at least keep Dallas in this game heading into the fourth quarter. It's another example of where I think the chances of Dallas winning outright plus the chance of them losing by a field goal or less is just a bit greater than Minnesota's chance of winning by more than 3.

4. San Diego Chargers -7 vs New York Jets. I don't know exactly how this game plays out such that the Chargers win by a touchdown or more, but I just have a feeling that the Jets' run ends here on Sunday afternoon. Although I would not at all be shocked to see the Jets keep this one within 7 points, ultimately I think the Jets' defense is just not going to be good enough to contain all the myriad weapons the Chargers can throw at you (pun intended) on offense. Sure, Darrelle Revis is a beast and I think clearly the #1 cover guy in the NFL today, but unfortunately for Jets' rookie head coach Rex Ryan, Revis is just one man. So they can put him on Vincent Jackson and basically take Jackson out of the game, but then they still need to worry about Malcom Floyd and Darren Sproles coming out of the backfield (each with 45 receptions on the season), and of course let's not forget big Antonio Gates, the best tight end in the league today as well. And then there's always Sproles and LaDainian Tomlinson coming out of the backfield. I just don't think this Jets defense has it in them to hold by far the NFL's hottest team down for long enough to keep this one real close. And as I mentioned with the Ravens above, if the Jets fall behind early to the Chargers' juggernaut offense, that ruins the game plan of keeping Jets' rookie qb Mark Sanchez from having to do too much. They fall behind early and I could see a flat-out blowout in the making for San Diego.
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I don’t know which thing to lead off with. Given the size and devastation of the earthquake in Haiti I should probably start with that. What a bad spot to have such a violent and powerful quake. Basically the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and right by the most populated area. I’ve read some stuff like “well that’s what happens when you build really shitty houses” and, to a certain extent, that’s true. I’d like to see some criminal prosecution of those in charge of building codes (if they were not up to standards), contractors in Haiti who built houses with things like diluted concrete and engineers who didn’t follow code when designing buildings. I know the country was too poor to be able to afford things but that doesn’t mean they need shitty multi-story buildings in an area that is prone to earthquakes. The simple answer is to build them right or just not build them. Humans have gone millions of years without multi-story buildings… there’s no reason that we need them. Sadly, though, I’m pretty sure no one is going to pay the price for being pretty much directly responsible for the death of maybe over 100,000 people.

I want to make one thing clear: I am not broadly blaming the people of Haiti for this. I am blaming the Haitians and foreigners who knew better, had control over these things and made very very bad decisions. I don’t think the death penalty is out of line for the few people who were the most responsible for Haitian building codes and implementation. That may seem harsh but given the human toll and suffering they’re significantly responsible for, I don’t think it is. Hopefully that would force people in power around the world to wake up and realize what can happen when they disobey common sense and neglect their duty in such a blatant manner.

Obviously the focus for now is to get help to Haiti and hopefully rescue people who are still alive. People in Cayman are sending a container of goods this weekend and, luckily enough, I have a ton of clothes from losing weight over the last year. I am giving away all of my big clothes because I don’t anticipate needing them for awhile and someone in Haiti can probably use them. Although I don’t think many people in Haiti wear XXL I’m sure they don’t care about size. Here’s a picture of some of the stuff I’m giving away:

I’m also going to try to find a good charity online to give money to. I guess the default is the Red Cross but I want to do a little research before I commit. I’m wary of large organizations because I feel like a lot of them waste a lot of money on bureaucracy (see Parkinson’s Law) and don’t get a high enough % of my money to the people who need it. Anyone know of a good resource to tell me what % of money makes it to the intended recipients?

Anyway, for the less important news, I have a broken left ring finger. I hurt it playing football on Tuesday night. The doctor says I should feel better in a few weeks and I should have a perfectly good finger when it’s done healing. That’s a relief because I’m a lefty and I would prefer to have a healthy left hand down the line. Here is a pic of my ring fingers side-by-side. I couldn’t get the scale down perfectly but you can use the nail to figure out which one is zoomed in more — obviously there’s a lot of swelling on the left finger though. I’m not embedding it so anyone who clicks on it is basically saying they want to see a close-up picture of my two ring fingers side-by-side. You’ve been warned. I broke the bone near the nail where you can see the bruising. Annoying but I’m dealing with it. Already typing pretty well without it.

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I am so, so confused. So because Jay Leno is an unfunny clown who has cost the local NBC affiliates millions of dollars with his bomb of a 10pm Tonight Show clone, NBC is now kicking Conan O'Brien to the curb from his own long-promised "Tonight Show" hosting job? After just seven months? Of Jay Leno sucking? That is some promise right there, way to keep your word, NBC.

Somebody get NBC a poker blog right away please.

In any event, no matter how all this ridiculousness with Late Night shakes out, Conan O'Brien's commencement speech at Harvard back in 2000 was and still remains the funniest, best commencement speech ever given as far as I know:

I'd like to thank the Class Marshals for inviting me here today. The last time I was invited to Harvard it cost me $110,000, so you'll forgive me if I'm a bit suspicious. I'd like to announce up front that I have one goal this afternoon: to be half as funny as tomorrow's Commencement Speaker, Moral Philosopher and Economist, Amartya Sen. Must get more laughs than seminal wage/price theoretician.

Students of the Harvard Class of 2000, fifteen years ago I sat where you sit now and I thought exactly what you are now thinking: What's going to happen to me? Will I find my place in the world? Am I really graduating a virgin? I still have 24 hours and my roommate's Mom is hot. I swear she was checking me out. Being here today is very special for me. I miss this place. I especially miss Harvard Square - it's so unique. No where else in the world will you find a man with a turban wearing a Red Sox jacket and working in a lesbian bookstore. Hey, I'm just glad my dad's working.

It's particularly sweet for me to be here today because when I graduated, I wanted very badly to be a Class Day Speaker. Unfortunately, my speech was rejected. So, if you'll indulge me, I'd like to read a portion of that speech from fifteen years ago: "Fellow students, as we sit here today listening to that classic Ah-ha tune which will definitely stand the test of time, I would like to make several predictions about what the future will hold: "I believe that one day a simple Governor from a small Southern state will rise to the highest office in the land. He will lack political skill, but will lead on the sheer strength of his moral authority." "I believe that Justice will prevail and, one day, the Berlin Wall will crumble, uniting East and West Berlin forever under Communist rule." "I believe that one day, a high speed network of interconnected computers will spring up world-wide, so enriching people that they will lose their interest in idle chit chat and pornography." "And finally, I believe that one day I will have a television show on a major network, seen by millions of people a night, which I will use to re-enact crimes and help catch at-large criminals." And then there's some stuff about the death of Wall Street which I don't think we need to get into....

The point is that, although you see me as a celebrity, a member of the cultural elite, a kind of demigod, I was actually a student here once much like you. I came here in the fall of 1981 and lived in Holworthy. I was, without exaggeration, the ugliest picture in the Freshman Face book. When Harvard asked me for a picture the previous summer, I thought it was just for their records, so I literally jogged in the August heat to a passport photo office and sat for a morgue photo. To make matters worse, when the Face Book came out they put my picture next to Catherine Oxenberg, a stunning blonde actress who was accepted to the class of '85 but decided to defer admission so she could join the cast of "Dynasty." My photo would have looked bad on any page, but next to Catherine Oxenberg, I looked like a mackerel that had been in a car accident. You see, in those days I was six feet four inches tall and I weighed 150 pounds. Recently, I had some structural engineers run those numbers into a computer model and, according to the computer, I collapsed in 1987, killing hundreds in Taiwan.

After freshman year I moved to Mather House. Mather House, incidentally, was designed by the same firm that built Hitler's bunker. In fact, if Hitler had conducted the war from Mather House, he'd have shot himself a year earlier. 1985 seems like a long time ago now. When I had my Class Day, you students would have been seven years old. Seven years old. Do you know what that means? Back then I could have beaten any of you in a fight. And I mean bad. It would be no contest. If any one here has a time machine, seriously, let's get it on, I will whip your seven year old butt. When I was here, they sold diapers at the Coop that said "Harvard Class of 2000." At the time, it was kind of a joke, but now I realize you wore those diapers. How embarrassing for you. A lot has happened in fifteen years. When you think about it, we come from completely different worlds. When I graduated, we watched movies starring Tom Cruise and listened to music by Madonna. I come from a time when we huddled around our TV sets and watched "The Cosby Show" on NBC, never imagining that there would one day be a show called "Cosby" on CBS. In 1985 we drove cars with driver's side airbags, but if you told us that one day there'd be passenger side airbags, we'd have burned you for witchcraft.

But of course, I think there is some common ground between us. I remember well the great uncertainty of this day. Many of you are justifiably nervous about leaving the safe, comfortable world of Harvard Yard and hurling yourself headlong into the cold, harsh world of Harvard Grad School, a plum job at your father's firm, or a year abroad with a gold Amex card and then a plum job in your father's firm. But let me assure you that the knowledge you've gained here at Harvard is a precious gift that will never leave you. Take it from me, your education is yours to keep forever. Why, many of you have read the Merchant of Florence, and that will inspire you when you travel to the island of Spain. Your knowledge of that problem they had with those people in Russia, or that guy in South America-you know, that guy-will enrich you for the rest of your life.

There is also sadness today, a feeling of loss that you're leaving Harvard forever. Well, let me assure you that you never really leave Harvard. The Harvard Fundraising Committee will be on your ass until the day you die. Right now, a member of the Alumni Association is at the Mt. Auburn Cemetery shaking down the corpse of Henry Adams. They heard he had a brass toe ring and they aims to get it. Imagine: These people just raised 2.5 billion dollars and they only got through the B's in the alumni directory. Here's how it works. Your phone rings, usually after a big meal when you're tired and most vulnerable. A voice asks you for money. Knowing they just raised 2.5 billion dollars you ask, "What do you need it for?" Then there's a long pause and the voice on the other end of the line says, "We don't need it, we just want it." It's chilling.

What else can you expect? Let me see, by your applause, who here wrote a thesis. (APPLAUSE) A lot of hard work, a lot of your blood went into that thesis... and no one is ever going to care. I wrote a thesis: Literary Progeria in the works of Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner. Let's just say that, during my discussions with Pauly Shore, it doesn't come up much. For three years after graduation I kept my thesis in the glove compartment of my car so I could show it to a policeman in case I was pulled over. (ACT OUT) License, registration, cultural exploration of the Man Child in the Sound and the Fury...

So what can you expect out there in the real world? Let me tell you. As you leave these gates and re-enter society, one thing is certain: Everyone out there is going to hate you. Never tell anyone in a roadside diner that you went to Harvard. In most situations the correct response to where did you to school is, "School? Why, I never had much in the way of book larnin' and such." Then, get in your BMW and get the hell out of there.

You see, you're in for a lifetime of "And you went to Harvard?" Accidentally give the wrong amount of change in a transaction and it's, "And you went to Harvard?" Ask the guy at the hardware store how these jumper cables work and hear, "And you went to Harvard?" Forget just once that your underwear goes inside your pants and it's "and you went to Harvard." Get your head stuck in your niece's dollhouse because you wanted to see what it was like to be a giant and it's "Uncle Conan, you went to Harvard!?"

But to really know what's in store for you after Harvard, I have to tell you what happened to me after graduation. I'm going to tell you my story because, first of all, my perspective may give many of you hope, and, secondly, it's an amazing rush to stand in front of six thousand people and talk about yourself.

After graduating in May, I moved to Los Angeles and got a three week contract at a small cable show. I got a $380 a month apartment and bought a 1977 Isuzu Opel, a car Isuzu only manufactured for a year because they found out that, technically, it's not a car. Here's a quick tip, graduates: no four cylinder vehicle should have a racing stripe. I worked at that show for over a year, feeling pretty good about myself, when one day they told me they were letting me go. I was fired and, I hadn't saved a lot of money. I tried to get another job in television but I couldn't find one.

So, with nowhere else to turn, I went to a temp agency and filled out a questionnaire. I made damn sure they knew I had been to Harvard and that I expected the very best treatment. And so, the next day, I was sent to the Santa Monica branch of Wilson's House of Suede and Leather. When you have a Harvard degree and you're working at Wilson's House of Suede and Leather, you are haunted by the ghostly images of your classmates who chose Graduate School. You see their faces everywhere: in coffee cups, in fish tanks, and they're always laughing at you as you stack suede shirts no man, in good conscience, would ever wear. I tried a lot of things during this period: acting in corporate infomercials, serving drinks in a non-equity theatre, I even took a job entertaining at a seven year olds' birthday party. In desperate need of work, I put together some sketches and scored a job at the fledgling Fox Network as a writer and performer for a new show called "The Wilton North Report." I was finally on a network and really excited. The producer told me the show was going to revolutionize television. And, in a way, it did. The show was so hated and did so badly that when, four weeks later, news of its cancellation was announced to the Fox affiliates, they burst into applause.

Eventually, though, I got a huge break. I had submitted, along with my writing partner, a batch of sketches to Saturday Night Live and, after a year and a half, they read it and gave us a two week tryout. The two weeks turned into two seasons and I felt successful. Successful enough to write a TV pilot for an original sitcom and, when the network decided to make it, I left Saturday Night Live. This TV show was going to be groundbreaking. It was going to resurrect the career of TV's Batman, Adam West. It was going to be a comedy without a laugh track or a studio audience. It was going to change all the rules. And here's what happened: When the pilot aired it was the second lowest-rated television show of all time. It's tied with a test pattern they show in Nova Scotia.

So, I was 28 and, once again, I had no job. I had good writing credits in New York, but I was filled with disappointment and didn't know what to do next. I started smelling suede on my fingertips. And that's when The Simpsons saved me. I got a job there and started writing episodes about Springfield getting a Monorail and Homer going to College. I was finally putting my Harvard education to good use, writing dialogue for a man who's so stupid that in one episode he forgot to make his own heart beat. Life was good.

And then, an insane, inexplicable opportunity came my way . A chance to audition for host of the new Late Night Show. I took the opportunity seriously but, at the same time, I had the relaxed confidence of someone who knew he had no real shot. I couldn't fear losing a great job I had never had. And, I think that attitude made the difference. I'll never forget being in the Simpson's recording basement that morning when the phone rang. It was for me. My car was blocking a fire lane. But a week later I got another call: I got the job.

So, this was undeniably the it: the truly life-altering break I had always dreamed of. And, I went to work. I gathered all my funny friends and poured all my years of comedy experience into building that show over the summer, gathering the talent and figuring out the sensibility. We debuted on September 13, 1993 and I was happy with our effort. I felt like I had seized the moment and put my very best foot forward. And this is what the most respected and widely read television critic, Tom Shales, wrote in the Washington Post: "O'Brien is a living collage of annoying nervous habits. He giggles and titters, jiggles about and fiddles with his cuffs. He had dark, beady little eyes like a rabbit. He's one of the whitest white men ever. O'Brien is a switch on the guest who won't leave: he's the host who should never have come. Let the Late show with Conan O'Brien become the late, Late Show and may the host return to Conan O'Blivion whence he came." There's more but it gets kind of mean.

Needless to say, I took a lot of criticism, some of it deserved, some of it excessive. And it hurt like you wouldn't believe. But I'm telling you all this for a reason. I've had a lot of success and I've had a lot of failure. I've looked good and I've looked bad. I've been praised and I've been criticized. But my mistakes have been necessary. Except for Wilson's House of Suede and Leather. That was just stupid.

I've dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed. Your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Because success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way.

I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of The Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet, every failure was freeing, and today I'm as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good.

So, that's what I wish for all of you: the bad as well as the good. Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally. And remember that the story is never over. If it's all right, I'd like to read a little something from just this year: "Somehow, Conan O'Brien has transformed himself into the brightest star in the Late Night firmament. His comedy is the gold standard and Conan himself is not only the quickest and most inventive wit of his generation, but quite possible the greatest host ever."

Ladies and Gentlemen, Class of 2000, I wrote that this morning, as proof that, when all else fails, there's always delusion.

I'll go now, to make bigger mistakes and to embarrass this fine institution even more. But let me leave you with one last thought: If you can laugh at yourself loud and hard every time you fall, people will think you're drunk.

Thank you.


Now doesn't the guy who wrote and delivered that to a bunch of teenaged nerds in Boston deserve his own show during the prime time late-night slot? Especially one that was promised to him for nearly 10 years? I mean, at least for more than seven months, right?
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While I did not get a post update yesterday, I did use that time to do something else fun and exciting: I picked up my new car. I traded in my 6-year-old vehicle for the brand new 2010 version of the same model, and I cannot tell you how awesome it is already. Not so much the whole driving-a-new-car thing in its own right, but rather because I already realize how much my life had become a slave to all the little problems my car had after 6 years of hard use by me. That old thing served me well, don't get me wrong -- carrying me through about a year of a 60-miles-each way daily commute in its first year or so, then countless hours of city driving (and city parking) and road-tripping to the country, and then for the past year another 30-miles-each-way daily commute once again. It's been a horse for me, and I am thankful for it. But for whatever reason, this thing has had about a million things go wrong with it over the past few years, and I realize now after just 24 hours with my new car just how much I had simply adapted my lifestyle while in my car to work around all of the little problems, and just how utterly freeing and joyous the feeling of an immaculate new car can be.

To name just a few of the many, many things I won't be missing with my new car, and yet which I had simply grinned and bore it with the old one:

* Both the front and back bumpers of the old car were sliced and diced in a way that only someone who has parked on the streets of New York City seven days a week for many years can understand.

* There was a dent on the driver side front door where some jackass bent my side mirror into the frame of the window several years ago.

* Part of the door on the very bottom had been bent out and stuck out a couple of inches from the car down near the ground.

* Dent in the passenger side of the hood, probably where the teenagers hanging out at our 24-hour CVS in my town slammed into it on their skateboards one night when I ran in for a drink or whatever (god do I sound like an old man or what?)

* Driver side window only opened maybe 70% of the time when the electronic switch on the inside was pressed.

* Passenger side window only opened maybe 80% of the time when the electronic switch on the inside was pressed. You would think the previous two were the result of a blown fuse somewhere in the car and easily fixable, but when asked the monkeys at my car's service shop in Manhattan gave me some part names I could not understand, and then told me the repair would be upwards of two grand. No thank you, fuck you very much.

* Driver side window did not close maybe 25% of the time when the electronic switch on the inside was pressed.

* Whenever the driver side window did close, it never, ever closed fully, always leaving a large gap at the top left side of the window where air would pour in to the vehicle, even in the dead of winter. As a result, I had already gotten used to jiggling the window open, then shut, then open, then shut, at least two or three times every single time I shut the window, just to get the window back on the right "track" or whatever and actually make some kind of a seal with the window frame.

* Speaking of the driver's side window seal, I also had to cut away most of the outer seal on that window sometime last year because, due to the window never really staying on its track, the seal started bending inside and getting stuck in the window every time it closed. This of course only worsened the gap left by the window even when it did decide to actually close upon command.

* The visor on the driver side of the car no longer extended but rather would just stick in its original position no matter how hard it was pulled or prodded. So much for blocking the sun when it's low to the horizon I guess!

* After five years of no occurrences, suddenly when it first got hot (90's) in May of 2009, I took the car on about an hour drive from lower Manhattan back to my house, and it stalled for the first time while idling in the parking lot of a Dunkin Donuts in Westchester to get my kids something to drink. Throughout the summer and fall of 2009, the engine probably stalled out while in idle (on, but in park) maybe 5 or 6 other times, plus it even stalled one time while I was in drive, in the middle of an intersection near Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. That sucked. It had gotten to the point where I would not sit with the car in idle at all, for fear of another stallout and not being able to restart the vehicle. Sometimes it would need to sit for several minutes before it would restart after a stall.

* About a month ago, after moving my car up the driveway to let Hammer Wife out in her car one morning, when I went to the car to head to the gym that evening, the engine would not start. At all. Or, more accurately, it started, the battery worked, everything, but the engine would not roll over. I must have played with it for about an hour that night and again the following morning. Eventually some guys from a local garage were able to get the car to start, but especially with the cold winter we are embarking on here, I was not optimistic about future ignitions with the vehicle.

I think this just about covers the biggest, most annoying of the issues. And that right there marks the first time I ever sat down and listed everything that was wrong with the car over the past couple of years, because before that I just didn't want to deal with it. But I can't tell you how freeing it was to simply push the automatic close button on my driver's side window and not only not have to toggle back and forth for ten minutes to get it shut, but to not even have to think about it once I had pushed the button.

And this time, I don't plan to wait so long to replace this car when it is getting old and busted. Instead of buying like I did my last car, I am leasing this time around, with an incredibly low monthly payment thanks to my trade-in, most of the faults in which were not explicitly discussed with the dealer. So in just 36 months I will get to have a brand new car and go through this great feeling all over again.

Hopefully by then the American car companies will have gotten their act together enough for me to buy a fuel-efficient car made in my own country. Fat chance.
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As usual, the NFL delivered in a big way this weekend with its wildcard round of playoff games for the 2009-2010 season, games which I was actually able to watch most of for a change. I went 2-2 overall with my picks, which isn't great obviously but at the same time it is (1) far better than my picks performed over the last four weeks of the regular season, and (2) not as bad as it looks, considering that now I am "forcing" myself to pick each playoff game instead of just getting to choose my favorite lines and only cherry-picking those in connection with each week's games. Even in the two games I lost, I had a general idea of how the games were likely to go, but I just ended up on the wrong side of the bet in the end.

First on Saturday afternoon there was the Jets - Bengals game, which saw the Jets shock the world (but not you if you read my picks on Friday) in pretty much beating down on the Bengals for the second straight week, both games at Cincinnati. I don't know what much there is to say about this game for the Bengals, who I will show some respect to by not calling them the "Bungles" again even though the way this season ended definitely has me thinking they will be back to the Bungles come next season. Suffice it to say that this could be the poster-child for why you do not necessarily come out and give up in Week 17 for the purpose of "hiding the ball" a little bit when you know are are probably facing a team again the very next week in the playoffs. Turns out the Bengals hid the ball so much in Week 17 that they couldn't even find it again when it came to play in the wildcard round, and the Jets stuck it to them. On offense, the Bengals clearly have a problem passing the ball. Ochocinco is not what he used to be, and the loss of Chris Henry and TJ Houshmanzadeh over the past year is really felt by Cincinnati. And my guess is that Carson Palmer's injured thumb plays a much bigger role than he has been letting on, as he looks like a shadow of his former self. And give the Jets a boatload of credit here, as they continued with the game plan of the last few weeks of the regular season which involves not asking rookie qb Mark Sanchez to do much at all in the games. Instead they just pile up the rushing yards, which the Bengals were all too happy to cede for the second straight week at home, and in this game they only asked Sanchise to throw the ball 15 times total, which again is the only winning strategy for this team in my book. Sure, Sanchise only had one touchdown pass on Saturday -- not counting the wide open one dropped by Braylon "Butterfingers" Edwards in the first half -- but he went a very efficient 12 for 15 on the day for 182 yards, and more importantly, he had zero interceptions as well in his first playoff game. This one clearly went to the better team in the Jets, which I don't see how or why anyone would argue after the last two weeks between these two foes.

The second game on Saturday was the one game I did not see coming, but really, being an Eagles fan, I should have. For the second straight week, the Eagles could really get nothing going against the Dallas Cowboys, and doing nothing is not going to keep you in the game for long against this Dallas team, especially in their gorgeous new stadium. Sure in my picks I took the points against a team of proven losers in Romo, Wade Phillips et al on a Cowboys squad that hadn't won a playoff game since 1996, but betting with history was not the best idea in retrospect as compared to betting based on the game I watched the week before where the Cowboys also obliterated the Eagles. Anyways, kudos to Dallas for going out and grabbing this victory from the hated Eagles, but boy did the Eagles make it easy for them, starting, as usual with the head coach. Andy Reid has a stellar record over his career in the regular season as a head coach. As I mentioned previously, this is Andy's 9th trip to the playoffs in the last 11 seasons as head coach of the Eagles, a record that is truly remarkable especially given the parity year in and year out in the NFL of all the professional sports leagues in this country. But, as any longtime Eagles fan knows, Andy Reid's vagina shuts up tighter than a nun's heading into any big game, a pattern that unfortunately for Eagles fans has managed to repeat itself again and again and again over all those years of regular season success with Reid at the helm. For the second straight week, the Eagles came out listless on both sides of the ball, allowing the Cowboys to march down the field on their first few possessions on defense, while McNabb fired his patented bullets into the ground five feet away from open receivers on offense, and all through the game for the second straight week the team made almost no effort whatsoever to throw the ball downfield to big play receiver DeSean Jackson. Combine this with the fact that the Cowboys secondary stuck to Philly's wideouts like glue all night long, and the result was a confused McNabb looking repeatedly from one receiver to the next without anyone to throw too from beginning to end. Dallas will travel to Minnesota next week in a game that I could see being a real shootout, along with the other NFC playoff game which is almost sure to feature some high-powered offense next weekend as well.

The first Sunday game was without a doubt the highlight of the weekend, as the New England Cheatriots came out and shat the bed in a big way, more or less just like I thought they would against the Ravens even though they had not previously lost a game at home all season. After losing Wes Welker early in the game in Week 17, and with Randy Moss playing all lackluster already here late in the season, and no real running game to speak of, and a questionable defense, the Pats came out flat and deflated and ready to call it a season, allowing Ray Rive to scamper for 83 yards and a score on the very first play from scrimmage, and the Ravens simply never let up from there. In the end, Tom Brady threw for just 154 yards on 23 completions for an anemic 6.6 yards per completion, including a fumble and three picks on the day as Brady compiled his worst-ever playoff qb rating of 49.1 on the day, and while the Cheatriots could muster nothing on the ground either, the Ravens plowed ahead, outgaining the Pats on the ground 234 yards to 64 yards in what proved to be the crucial stat of the day. The final score of 33-14 does not even encapsulate just how bad of a blowout this game was, with the Ravens up 14-0 within the first five minutes of the game in New England, and up 24-0 in the first quarter before the Pats could even muster up their first scoring drive of the game. It was so ugly, and the Pats made so little effort to come back in any way, that Baltimore qb Joe Flacco only had to throw the ball 10 times on the day, with his team comfortably in front and able to wear the Pats down with repeated assaults on the ground, even when the Cheatriots knew that was exactly what was coming. It was as bad of a beatdown as you almost ever see in the NFL playoffs these days.

Worth mentioning with respect to the Ravens - Pats game was just how badly the referees tried to help the Cheatriots get back into things in the second half with some of the worst refereeing ineptitude you will ever see in the NFL. First they awarded the ball to the Cheatriots after a punt in the third quarter nicked the shoulder of a Ravens player before being recovered by the Cheatriots, only to see on the replay that clearly the Pats player had not taken possession of the ball before knocking it out of bounds. For some reason the Ravens failed to challenge this play even though it was as clear as the day is long that the call was blown and the referees had no business missing something so clear-cut. But only about 3 minutes of game time later, early in the 4th quarter, came perhaps the worst call of a season mired by utterly atrocious refereeing, when the Ravens scored to go ahead 33-14 and decided to go for the 2-point conversion. Baltimore's player took the ball and pounded ahead towards the goal line, reaching over and causing most of his teammates on the field to raise their arms in the touchdown motion as they thought the ball had in fact "crossed the plane" of the goal line. Apparently though that's not the actual rule, because the refs on the field said he did not score, and they even reviewed the instant replay play in the booth, where -- of fucking course -- the refs opted not to overrule the call on the field that he had not crossed the plane. This, while NBC is showing the replay again and again that shows not just the nose of the ball, and not just an inch of the ball, but fully more than half the ball, not just touching the beginning of the white goal line (which is a touchdown, for those who know the rules of the NFL), and not just nearing the paint of the end zone, but more than half the ball sticking over the other side of the white goal line and over the colored end zone grass. How any self-respecting asshat with eyes could watch that replay and possibly argue anything other than that it was an obvious touchdown is beyond me, and beyond the sensibility of every single other human being watching that game. Thankfully, the Cheatriots had absolutely no heart and no comeback in them whatsoever on this day, and no way that the refs intentionally tried to alter the outcome of this game was going to have any effect. Once again the better team won and the Ravens will now advance to play the Colts in Indy next weekend.

Lastly was the 51-45 all-time NFL postseason shootout between the defending NFC champion Cardinals and the Green Bay Packers. I picked the Packers in a pickem here, and this was one game that the oddsmakers basically nailed, as the game went into overtime at 45-45 after the Packers mounted a ferocious, incredible comeback that saw them score five touchdowns in the second half including the game-tying one with under two minutes to go in the game. Although the notion of defense is obviously completely anathema to either team in this matchup, the offensive prowess in this game was utterly sick, in particular the passing games which saw Green Bay throw for 422 yards and the Cardinals for 379. Kurt Warner has got to be the story in this one though, after finishing his day an incredible 29-33 for 379 yards and 5 picks, the only time I have ever heard of where a quarterback finished a game with more touchdowns (5) than incompletions (4) on the day. Zona's offense crushed so badly that they amazingly only faced five third down plays in the entire game, going 3 for 5 but showing just how well the Cards were pounding the Packers' laughable excuse for a defense on the first three downs of every series. I mean, can you imagine running up 51 points and 531 yards of total offense, while only facing five third downs in the entire game, including overtime? And Kurt Warner's postseason record is becoming flat-out ridiculous, with Kurt now sporting 31 touchdowns to just 13 picks in 24 post-season games against touch competition, inluding incredibly the three best yardage games in superbowl history (414 against the Titans, 377 vs. the Steelers and 365 against the Cheatriots), the most career super bowl passing yardage with 1156, while Warner's 1147 yards and 11 passing touchdowns in last year's postseason also has him the record for most yards passing and most touchdowns in a single post-season. Warner's 66.5% career completion percentage in the post-season is also an NFL record, while his 104.6 career postseason qb rating is second only to Bart Starr himself. And Warner is already only the second quarterback to ever throw for five touchdowns in a playoff game two separate times. And now Warner will ride his Cardinals into New Orleans for a huge matchup next Saturday afternoon with the NFC 1 seed in the Saints, in a game that could easily be a repeat shootout of what we saw last night in Arizona. How I cannot wait for that one.
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I am wrapping up my trip to Miami. It has been ridiculously cold here for this time of year. It’s been going down to like 30 degrees at night which is obviously not as cold as the northeast (where I’m from) but is still really cold for Florida. I guess it’s part of the high pressure system over the northern part of North America which is making so much news lately. I feel pretty bad for all of the farmers who are currently getting their crops destroyed but I guess shit happens. Hopefully they have insurance for stuff like this.

Unfortunately for a lot of people in south Florida, they don’t have heat. My grandmother claims she hasn’t used her heat since she moved into her current condo (something like 20 years ago) and when we tried to turn it on it didn’t work. Also, when we went out to a Japanese restaurant they sat us near the Hibachi grills away from the door because they didn’t have any heat. I guess this all just goes to show how unusual this cold front is in south Florida.

So last night I went to go see “Up In The Air” with my brother. It’s a movie with George Clooney where he stars as a frequent business traveler who goes all over the country firing people at various downsizing companies. In the movie he says he’s on the road for like 280 days per year or something ridiculous like that. He’s “elite” status at a bunch of different places like American Airlines, Hilton, Hertz and others. I won’t give away the point of the movie but I found a few things about it really funny and familiar. For one, I am a Platinum Elite in the American AAdvantage frequent flier program. It gets me upgrades to first class and a number of other things. I also sympathized with him on a number of levels. Things like his thought process for how to choose a line at airport security really resonated with me. Overall I definitely enjoyed the movie although I don’t know if I would bother to see it again.

The other funny thing about seeing the movie was listening to all of the old people in the theater saying “what did he say??” over and over. I am not making fun of old people for poor hearing as it happens to everyone but it was kind of entertaining to hear the whispering all over the place. Although, to call it whispering was pretty generous. I think the elderly stop whispering at some point because they know their spouse can’t hear it so they just say everything outloud even in movie theaters. It definitely would have pissed off the people in stevesbets’ movie theater if they’d been at this showing up Up In The Air.

Today I went with my brother to Sawgrass Mills which is a huge outlet mall like 30 minutes north of where my grandmother lives. It was a total madhouse. As with most outlet malls, there’s a reason why the merchandise is at an outlet mall. It generally sucks. I saw a lot of random stuff like neon green polo shirts and the like. Also, the Oakley store pretty much only had XXL tshirts. Lots of other stores had similar ridiculous selection. Nonetheless, my brother managed to find things at a number of stores and a I found a few good items as well. If you went to the right stores, there were definitely some great deals.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up the weekend. This hotel has horrible internet (even worse than the internet at the UB Aruba tournament — and that is saying something) so I am probably even more excited about getting home to good internet than I am about escaping this weather.

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After the way I ended the NFL season this year, I figured I obviously have to make my picks for the NFL playoffs as well. Just remember that I think I won exactly 4 games out of my last 20 picks of the NFL season. So these are probably better to fade than to go along with.

1. New York Jets +3 at the Cincinnati Bengals. I haven't made any bones about my disgust that the Jets backed into the playoffs after beating two teams who each did not play their players and really treat the game like one that had to be won. I don't think the Jets deserve to be in the playoffs, I think the way playoff-bound NFL teams lie down and affect other playoff races in so doing every single year is redonkulous, and I do not think the Jets had a particularly good year in 2009. All that said, something tells me that last week's 37-0 blowout by the Jets was not quite an aberration. The Bengals will play better this weekend, of that I am absolutely certain, but I think with the Jets' chances to win this game, plus 3 points to boot, the value is definitely on NY in this game.

2. Philadelphia Eagles +4 at Dallas Cowboys. I think Dallas has a good chance of winning this game, a better chance than the Eagles do for that matter given the situation and the location of the game in Dallas thanks to last week's Cowboys blowout over Philly. But four points sounds like a bit too much for me. Again I see the value with the underdog plus the points in Saturday's other NFL playoff game.

3. Baltimore Ravens +3.5 at the New England Patriots. Another wildcard round game, another underdog pick from me. After losing Wes Welker to injury last week, I just don't see how there is value in picking an inconsistent New England team to beat the streaking Ravens by more than a field goal. Welker catches about 10 balls a game and is an absolutely key part of his team's possession offense, and without him there is no chance anyone else on that squad can pick up the slack in any meaningful way.

4. Green Bay Packers (pickem) at the Arizona Cardinals. Despite a bit of a late-season turnaround, the Cardinals never got into a particular groove at home in 2009, while the Packers head into the playoffs one of the hottest teams in the NFC. Something tells me the Cardinals' quest to repeat as NFC champions ends on Sunday in front of the home town fans and at the hands of Aaron Rodgers and the overpowering Packers passing offense.

So there you go. Fade away!
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I mean, seriously. I get so sick of marching bands by the end of the bowl season. It seems like almost every halftime show is just marching bands. I don’t intend to be mean but they’re really barking up the wrong tree. Football fans and marching band fans don’t cross over that well. Maybe the parents and the relatives of the band members care. Maybe like a few fans of that specific school. But like… it’s really a dumb tradition to have them performing at halftime unless we’re just trying to make them feel good. Just my opinion.

So tomorrow I’m going up to Miami for the weekend to visit with family. This is going to be my first flight under the new rules so I’m kind of curious to see what will be enforce and what won’t. I know that they’ve loosened some of the requirements but it will be interesting to see how screening is different and what, if anything, is different on the plane.

As I’ve said recently, I am working on P5s a lot lately. We’ve got some decent designs done, we’ve done a lot of the forum migration stuff and we’re about to start on a lot of the custom features. I’m really excited about some of the stuff we’re doing but the launch is kind of far away so it’s also a little frustrating in a way. It’s just so far off (months) that it’s hard to see the finish line and get excited about taking the site to the next level.

Well, anyway, now that Bama just won (which won me a bet against sub — who I have been absolutely destroying lately) it’s time for me to pack up and head to sleep for this early flight.

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As I mentioned yesterday, I had a nice score in the Ultimate Bet nightly $120 buyin sniper (knockout) tournament with a 20k guarantee on Tuesday night. Really, Wednesday morning of course, but you get the idea:





Being that this isn't that big of a score, and it's only a third place finish, I just don't think it's worthy of the time it takes to do a full-out recap post. But this score, and this run along with some of my recent poker tournament success, can serve as a great jumping-off point for my post on goals for 2010.

Suffice it to say that in this tournament on UB the other night, I absolutely crushed it. In addition to the probably 12 or 13 bounties I won on my way to the end of the final table, I was basically the chip leader in this thing from about 100 players left all the way down until a couple of hands before my elimination, which I thought I would share here. We had been playing 3-handed for some time, probably a good 20 minutes or so without anyone so much as moving allin let alone being called for all their chips, and then the 2nd place guy won more than half the third place guy's stack to give him almost as many chips as I had. A couple of hands later, I picked up 88 in the small blind, and when the UTG short stack folded to me, I put in a standard pot-sized raise of the 5000-chip big blind to 16,500. My opponent, who had just 50k fewer chips than me at this point, called my preflop raise, and we saw a pretty flop of 632 rainbow, giving me the overpair and almost surely in front, so I led out immediately for the full size of the pot. My opponent thought for a few seconds and called, which on this board and given his play shorthanded up to that point could have been almost anything, as I had seen him call a flop bet with any pair, even third pair and no kicker, plus with an inside straight draw, and even two high cards conceivably depending on what he was holding -- though a hand like AK or AJ seemed unlikely since he had not reraised me before the flop. But he called my raise preflop, so he had to have something decent. The turn card brought a rainbow 4, putting four to a low straight on the board but not scaring me since my opponent had called my raise preflop and would not likely do that with any hand with a 5 in it other than 55. I was not thrilled with the connectedness of the board so I only led out for about 2/3 the size of the pot, which my opponent again called after just a few seconds of thought. I barely had time to ask myself "Could he have actually flopped a set?" when a miracle 8 hit the river, giving me top set in the most unknowable of ways, so I figured why not just go for the tournament win right now and put this guy to the test when he clearly has something he likes and cannot possibly put me on the hand that I have:



But no. Turns out, I had been what I affectionately* call "pokerstarsed":



and a couple hands later I was out in third place, winning $3300 but leaving another $4500 on the table for the first place winner, the guy who finished in the spot that I fucking owned in this tournament. It was mine, but then that hand above took it all away from me and left me winning over 3 grand but once again feeling queasy after it was all said and done.

* this is not actually done affectionately. I fucking hate pokerstars for creating this new concept in online poker lore.

The reason I find this hand and this run to be a good segue into the 2010 goals I've been mulling over this week is that it covers one of my main goals as far as my poker play for the coming year: my play at final tables. More on that in a minute, but for now let's begin with five goals I have cobbled together this week as I've thought about what it is I am really looking to get out of this game and where I am looking to improve (or keep improving) in 2010:

1. Play more deep-stacked events. This one is fairly simple, but the numbers do not lie: give me some nice, deep stacks, and my results skyrocket as compared to the regular-stacked tournaments available in most tournaments in most live and online venues. But just think of the success I had in 2009, most of which did in fact occur in deep-stacked events in one way or another. There was of course my biggest-ever win, the 50k in the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza back in June, a tournament that is so deep up front with its 15,000-chip starting stacks and 25-50 starting blinds that the entire tournament series even has the "deep stack" concept right in the name itself. But while that was the only large officially-named "deep stack" event I played in 2009, much of my other poker success during the year also came in other tournaments where the stacks were quite deep. There was this $3300 this week as well as a win of this same tournament at the very beginning of 2009 on UltimateBet, both of which are tournaments that feature much deeper stacks and slower, more plentiful blind rounds than the tournaments available at any time on almost any other poker site out there. And even on full tilt, I took 2nd place (thank you, suckout) in the nightly $30 rebuy for a little over 5 Large in the fadll of 2009, and of course there was my largest ever online win of 27k and change in the Mini FTOPS just last month, also in -- you guessed it -- the $30 rebuy, both of which feature extremely deep stacks thanks to the rebuy feature and the fact that people at your table can just keep buying and buying and buying as many chips as they need to survive the rebuy period.

So what does all this mean specifically with respect to my poker play in 2010? Well, I really need to find a way to get in more time in some of the deeper-stacked tournaments available to me. So I should play some more on UltimateBet this year, a site where my ROI is sick and yet I really don't find myself drawn to playing there all that often, probably due to the cheating scandal and really the I think shoddy way the company still continues to handle the fallout from that scandal. But this is something I should definitely think about for 2010, because as I've said here many times, no poker site out there offers tournament structures regularly as good as those on UB, nobody. This also means I need to try to play the special tournaments on full tilt sometimes, the ones with the special levels like 350/700, 3500/7000, etc., because those are the closest things to the deep, slow structures that have been so profitable for me over the past twelve months or so of my poker action. I would also like to try to head out to Atlantic City or Foxwoods for at least one of the large tournament series events, which in most cases are slower structures with hour-long blinds and lasting over several days. And, lastly I will definitely give serious consideration to participating in the Venetian DSE tournament series again if I do make it out to Vegas again this summer for my annual poker jaunt.

2. Play some more live poker. This is another goal I feel like I make every single year, and yet I never seem to meet my own perception of how that goal should work out, but I just cannot deny the skew in my results in live vs. online play. I made good money playing 1-2 nl cash at Bally's in AC last week, nearly two buyins in just over an hour and a half of play. In stark contrast to my results when I first set foot in a casino for a live poker tournament a few years ago, at this point I have cashed in my last four live no-limit tournaments in casinos, counting back to my last trip to AC, the win at the Venetian, and my preceding two visits to Bally's and the Taj in AC as well. And I crushed the only home game I played in as well during the year. I feel like I know I can win money playing online poker tournaments, but just like with the deep-stacked events as I discussed above, live play is clearly where my ROI's bread is buttered. This is going to be a hard one to fulfill as I mentioned above, in particular with a new baby at home and all, but at least some of the same things that will fulfill my first goal above will also work to fulfill this one. Sometime soon I will hopefully take a look at the big tournament series coming to the Northeast this year and see if there's something I can get myself involved in.

3. Keep playing less online poker. As I may have mentioned previously, this probably sounds odd coming from someone who just recorded his best year ever playing poker, just won his biggest-ever online score and who already won a few large here in just the first week of the new year. But the bottom line is, I played way less poker in 2009 than I did in 2006-2008, and yet I not only won at a much better rate in 2009 but I managed to win more money overall in absolute terms as well. So why would I not want to continue that trend heading into the new year? In addition to spending my time doing some other things -- including sleeping which is really at a premium these days, new baby and all -- this also takes some other forms in line with some little rules and guidelines I have been forming over the past year or so. First, I no longer sign up to play long, deep mtts one day after having a long night, whether due to work, baby, a deep mtt run the night before or otherwise. So for example, I played zero poker on Wednesday night despite being up working somewhat late, because I knew I was up until after 3am the night before at the UB final table and that I would therefore crash at some point around midway through any big nighttime mtt on Wednesday. Shit, I didn't play poker for nearly a week after my 27-hour 2-day poker marathon at the Venetian last summer, but that was a very smart thing for me given how fried my brain had become at the time from all things poker. Similarly, over the past year I have become much more in tune with my own mood and state of mind, and I plan to continue in 2010 what I started in 2009 of not playing the game on any night when I know my heart or my mind is not really into it. That one sounds simple but probably no one is as guilty as me of breaking that simple rule over the past four or five years. And lastly, I will most definitely keep those online poker balances low, another thing which I encourage everyone else out there reading this to do the same with, especially in light of the seemingly increasing threat of enforcement of UIGEA against the payment processors who still allow us to get money into and off of the major sites but who can disappear overnight (literally) if the U.S. government decides to make some examples.

4. Focus more on winning mtts. As I reviewed earlier this week, I did a solid job in 2009 with my stated goal of making sure to take advantage of my shots at the final table, to try to make sure I last at least until the top 3 spots where the real money is concentrated in most mtt payout structures. As I reviewed recently, I am sure I had fewer big mtt final tables in 2009 than in previous years due to playing just a fraction of as many tournaments as I had in previous years, but I did a much better job of making them all count, lasting until the final 3 spots in probably close to 80% of the final tables I made in the year. Now, surely a lot of this has to do with the fact that when I make a final table, unlike a lot of people out there I am usually one of the big stacks which already helps me to survive later into the leaderboard, but as anyone who's been there regularly knows, no-limit is a cruel, cruel game, and it only takes one mistake, one overplay of a hand or ill-timed push to bring it all crashing down in a hurry. But I managed to avoid that for the most part in 2009, really making my appearances at the final table count for me as far as making it to the top 3. But you know what? As 2010 rolls in, lets think about my last several significant poker tournament cashes. I chopped when down to four players remaining at the Venetian DSE last summer, taking just a shade under 2nd place money. I got the 5k payout for 2nd place in the full tilt $30 rebuy. There was of course the 27k payout for 3rd place in the Mini FTOPS. And now the other night's $3300 payout, again for 3rd place when first paid $7800 and I had the chip lead basically from 100 down to 3 players remaining. What is missing here? Tournament wins. Actually taking first place in the tournament, and, more importantly, winning first place money. Now, I'm not gonna kill myself over the Venetian thing -- that was a chop, there was serious money at stake and we were essentially playing a pushfest, and in the end there was no winner since we stopped playing with 4 left. But in those other big cashes, look at what I left on the table by not winning the tournaments. In the Mini FTOPS, I took that horrible river suckout to end in 3rd place instead of being 1 river card away from about 90% of the chips in heads-up play. Sure I won 27k for my 3rd place finish, but first place paid over 64k, meaning that I left $37,000 on the table by not winning that tournament. In the full tilt $30 rebuy, I won $5100 or whatever it was, but first place paid around 9 grand as I recall. So that's another 4k on the table. And just the other night on UB, again I won $3300 for third place, but first -- where my chip stack was for the previous three hours straight just about -- paid $7800. Another $4500 on the table. Are you seeing the pattern here? So yes, I am well aware that as far as problems go, this is a good one to have. But in the spirit of making some lofty goals that might be a real challenge to achieve, this is something I plan to make a concerted effort on in 2010. 2009 was the year of making the top three. Let's make 2010 the year of winning the whole damn thing.

5. Update my blog, blogroll, categories, etc. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this goal because I know I probably won't ever deliver on it just like I did not during 2009. I remember sitting right where I am now and writing about my big plans to update the blog in 2009. That shit feels like it was just last week in fact. But now a whole year has gone by, and I still am no closer to updating the blog than I was back then. So who knows. But suffice it to say, I would really like to do a complete update on the blog. Consider changing the background, maybe change the template, definitely add my categories to the left column of the page to make navigating my copius archives more fun and easy for everybody, change my blogroll to one of those nifty automatically-updating ones blogger now makes available, and a number of other things like that. Whether this happens or not during the year in anybody's guess.

OK that is all I can think of for now as far as goals for 2010. As those who have read here regularly will note, I don't put anything into these yearly goals unless I honestly plan to make a serious attempt to achieve them. As I mentioned these are definitely some lofty goals, but I've always held myself to a very high standard and I can think of no reason why I can't work towards these importance items over the coming twelve months. Here's hoping all of you out there also get whatever it is that you want in 2010.
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As I have alluded to here in earlier posts this week, I actually played me some live poker over my time away at the end of the year. Twice in fact, which for me is more live poker in a short period of time than I ever get to experience other than when I am out in Vegas for my annual summer poker run. The first was at a home game with a bunch of guys (and gals) downtown in New York City who I have played with several times in the past, but not for probably a good two years now at least since the last time, which is what I will focus on in this post. The second session was at Bally's in Atlantic City, where I went down with my brothers this past weekend to get my annual Christmas Vacation AC groove on, something I think I have done now three years in a row. Both sessions were profitable ones for me, and, as usual when I play the sparing live poker I get to experience these days, I truly enjoyed myself both times as well. Live poker is just so liberating to an online grinder such as myself I guess.

So a couple of days before New Year's, my brother in law invited me down to a home game he was having at his place in the city with a bunch of his friends, from his job(s) over the years, from other social outlets he attends in the city, former and current girlfriends, stuff like that. As I mentioned above, I have played with these guys before, although not for a good long while at this point. But every single person who was there that night -- save for a new boyfriend and a new girlfriend of some of the old standbys in the group -- was someone with whom I have played previously, and as I never really seem to forget the poker plays that people make in front of me, I still had a pretty good book built up on how each player plays from my limited past history with them, at least in general terms. But as a group, they all have probably played together maybe a hundred times over the past several years, while I could not have sat in their game even ten times in my life. So they all know each other and their games much, much better than I know how they play, which I figured going in would be a severe disadvantage for me, in particular given that I haven't played with this group probably since the winter of 2007 is my guess. And the other thing of note about the times I had played with this group of guys in the past is that I had an exceedingly good record of profitability over almost every single session I have played with this group, a fact which I know has been discussed by at least some members in this group in my absence previously.

Fortunately, there are a couple of things about this particular group of players that also put me at a significant advantage to them. First, they are not what I would call "serious" poker players. Sure, some of them have read Super/System and probably even a few other books, but I assure you that not one person there has read every poker strategy book ever written like yours truly, nor do any of them focus on things like hand histories, hand analysis and the like when they are away from the tables, at least not in any meaningful way like I do. A couple of the guys have played a lot of poker -- at least enough to have figured out that tight-aggressive is the way to be successful with the most regularity -- but many of them really only play a couple of times a month in their regular home games, if even that. The end result of this is that, for an experienced player who has spent hundreds and hundreds of nights over the past few years feeling out his table and getting to know the tendencies and what to look for in classifying his opponents, it's not nearly as daunting as it could be for me to get a read on what most of these guys are holding.

The other aspect to this particular group of guys is that, while this does not apply to everyone in the group, many of them are in fact what I would generally refer to as "starving artists". Now, that's not to say that any of these guys are actually starving, or so broke that they don't eat, or anything like that really. But, at the same time, we play for stakes that to me are more or less meaningless to me (one $20 sng and then a $20 buyin cash game), but which are not quite meaningless to most of them, many of whom have part-time jobs as short-term contract writers for some outlet or other, or who are perpetually pitching a script or a screenplay of some kind but who have yet to make any real big money from their chosen careers, etc. This also introduces some interesting wrinkles into the game from my perspective that I would not normally even think about, say, if I go down to AC and just play against a bunch of random unknown donks at the Borgata, the Taj or someplace similar to that, and I think it puts anyone at a major advantage if you don't care a whit if you lose your stack, but the other guy cares much more if he loses his.

So, as I mentioned, we decided to follow the usual plan and start off with a single $20 sng, and as there were 9 of us, it was perfect for one table. We decided ahead of time that the payouts would be 6-2-1 for the top three finishers, and things started off. I didn't get any playable hands for the first couple of blind rounds (we decided to go with 25 minutes, which was longer than I would have chosen for such a small tournament where others would be looking to get a cash game going as soon as people started to bust from the sng), so I mostly sat around and let my stack dwindle slightly. But it never got too far down, because, as I have often written about whenever I play live poker after countless hours of online-only play, I find myself simply overloaded with information from my opponents -- be it physical mannerisms, little habits they have, how they announce their bet sizes or even just the way they cut out their chips and move them to signify their bets and raises -- and I am usually able to tell if the players in a hand are weak, and if so, to apply sufficient pressure to win a decent pot here and there with nothing as I need it. So I was able to hold on all throughout the sng doing just that, picking up tells, making reads based on those tells, and then making moves based on those reads, and I never got one wrong on the entire night.

The great thing about this night at the poker tables is that I flopped a set. Two of them on the night, actually, strangely enough both with pocket 3s. My first flopset got me my first double-up and I think the second person eliminated from the sng when I checked to the preflop raiser on a 963 flop with two spades and the pocket 3s in my hand. Against a stronger, richer set of opponents I would definitely consider betting out here, but against this group of people, the lead-out is just likely to scare some people away and really I needed to effect maximum extraction with such a small field to play against in this sitngo. So I checked, one of the aggro guys in the group made his standard c-bet, which a player in front of me quickly called, causing me to put the second player on a flush draw. When the action came to me, I figured that given the stakes we were playing for and the aggro nature of the raiser in question, he would call if I raised or pushed in anyways with just his naked flush draw, so why bother raising here when I could maybe find a fold if a third spade hits on the turn or river. So I just called behind as well, and the turn came a stone cold rag. This time the c-bettor checked, the likely flush draw checked as well, and I wanted to lead out not so much to protect my hand by more to make sure the pot would be big enough by the river for an allin bet. So I did this thing I've been doing more and more with strong hands lately in tournaments, in particular nearing the end game -- where I look at my opponent's remaining stack and determine the size of my bet less in relation to the size of the current pot and more in relation to finding the right size that seems big enough, but which leaves my opponent with enough chips to make a large enough all-in reraise that he can reasonably expect me to fold. So I picked 25 chips for my bet, after eyeing aggroboy's roughly 80 chips behind (starting stacks were 100 chips), and not a couple of seconds went by before my opponent did indeed push allin on me. I called of course, shook my head and showed my set. He showed top pair Ten kicker and was drawing dead heading into the river.

That was really the only big hand I had in the first hour or two of the sng we played, but once again I was able to continually advance my stack even with no real cards to speak of for the next hour or two just by continually laying reads on people and relying on them with my play. With only around half of the starting field of 9 still remaining about 90 minutes in, I recall reraising the bet about 7x preflop when three other players had limped in ahead of me already, everyone reluctantly folded, and I got to show them the hammer which is always nice. Those guys didn't get why that move was quite so cool, but I know my brother in law did and we shared a secret momentary smile after I flipped up my cards and raked in another pot.

And all the while, like I said it was just as if I was flat-out overloaded with tells from all the players at the table, something you just don't get to experience in the same way during online poker play, and boy did I take advantage. I recall a hand where one of the guys who always does this fired a c-bet and then instantly a second barrel on the turn, but did so with far too much bravado as far as I saw it. Remembering perhaps the best piece of poker wisdom ever imparted by poker tell expert Mike Caro, that "strong means weak, and weak means strong", I just had a feeling that this guy was bluffing. It was like he was afraid that the table would sense that he was bluffing, so to overcompensate -- just as Caro says -- he was instantly placing his chips out there to make his bets, and slamming his chips fairly hard down on the table as compared to his usual betting style, and he was announcing his (large) bet amounts with significant authority. All of this told me he was bluffing, so when I flopped top pair and a decent kicker, I ended up calling him down on the flop and then again on the turn, and then I fired out a value bet on the river which he also called with his second pair weak kicker, giving me a very nice pot that under normal circumstances I would definitely have folded with just top pair middling kicker early in a tournament like this.

Another hand happened to knock out another of the players at the table where he made the #1 cardinal sin of poker according to Mike Caro -- the guy called another player's allin when the other player had bet after first making that clicking sound with his tongue that Caro does such a great job of describing in his seminal book on poker tells. I forget how Caro spells it, but essentially it is when a player puts his or her tongue on the roof of their mouth and then makes a kind of a clicking sound, normally indicative of disgust or disappointment with a given situation. Of course, again following Caro's "weak means strong" rule, when someone makes the disappointed tongue-click sound, but then goes on to bet anyways on that round, they almost always have a real hand and are trying to do whatever they possibly can to get you to call. Well, one of the guys did in fact call with top pair 3rd kicker in that spot, which I can basically assure you is never, ever good after the tongue-clicker bets, and he was up against a flopped set and headed out in 5th place.

Another one of the guys, again one of the more aggressive, Super/System type of followers, has a normal way of cutting his chips and announcing his bets when he actually has a hand and doesn't want a call, but he doesn't realize that he has a whole other way of moving his chips to the middle and making his bet known to the table when he is bluffing. In his case, I don't think its a "strong means weak and weak means strong" thing so much as just something that he doesn't think about at all when he's getting chips to make a bet with a real hand, but when he knows he is bluffing he tends to really think about his actions and ends up often giving off a major tell in the process. Twice during the middle portion of our sng, I was able to call him down on two streets based simply on the fact that I knew from the way he was handling his chips -- very carefully counting them out one by one, adding a few extra chips on top one at a time as he selects his bet size, and then lifting up the entire pile before placing it back down on the table in front of him as his bet -- that he didn't really have a hand he loved.

With all this help, I was able to easily coast into the final 3 spots, albeit as the short stack as one guy flopped a set over a straight to get a big stack, and then one of the beginner players knocked out the 5th and 4th place players on the same hand when her AA held up against QQ and JJ. It was shortly after this point that I recorded my one suckout of the night, when I got into a blind vs. blind pot from the small blind with just the beginner to my left and with me holding A5o, which I open-raised with preflop of course, and then when the flop came 999 I figured my Ace-high was likely good so I bet out again. Beginner Girl mulled it over for a while and then called. With all the mullage, and this being literally only the second or third time she had ever played an organized poker game, and of course this being a blind vs. blind confrontation, I figured no way she had an Ace or a pair under there as well, so when a raggy 2 hit the board on the turn, I announced that I was moving all in. She thought and thought, but eventually she called and flipped up AQo. Ooops for me. With just one card to come, I calculated that I was basically drawing dead to just eight outs -- the three other 5s in the deck to match my kicker and give me a full house for the win, and the two other Aces or the three other 2s to make a mostly-board boat that would give me a tie. But the river wasn't a 5, and it wasn't a 2 or an Ace either. It was the miracle case 9, making quads on the board and meaning that we both finished with hands of 9-9-9-9-A for a split pot. After taking some time to explain to Beginner Girl how she had just gotten screwed by essentially a 20% shot on the river (and being informed by her that it "just isn't fair" since she had that Queen in her hand while I just had a lowly 5 kicker, a sentiment I cannot really find any fault with), I had survived to play another day and Beginner Girl had lost her chance to gobble up my chips while they were available for cheap.

So I was still alive, in the money, and lucky for me the two other players in the money with me were both fairly inexperienced at the game. The one player was the beginner I mentioned above, and the other was someone who knew the rules of the game but clearly hadn't played much or at least not with a whole lot of seriousness, and who had shown himself to be a pretty severe calling station on several hands earlier in the night as I had registered early and often as any top pair and even most middle pairs were worth at least one call if not two or three if necessary with this person. So I simply waited until I picked up a good hand -- in this case, I called his flop bet with my pocket Tens on a K95 board after he had called my preflop raise, and then I turned a Ten to make my second set of the night, and here rather than checking like again I would be apt to do against more experienced opponents in a much deeper-stacked event, in this case up against a guy who loves to call and always needs to see that you have it, I figured I would just lead out in the hopes he would call. I led out for about 2/3 of the pot, which at the time was probably about half of his remaining stack, and he just called such that on the river I knew he was basically forced to call in the rest of his chips almost regardless of what he held. I flipped up my set and he showed third and fourth pairs, and we were suddenly down to two.

I recall that I was at about a 2.5-to-1 chip disadvantage as heads-up play began, and frankly I really don't remember how the action went from there to change things, but it did not take long for me to take the chip lead when I flopped KT6 with T6s in my hand and was up against Beginner Girl's K9o. I held and took the chip lead, which was awkward as it was because, due to her being a beginner, I repeatedly had to explain what her options were in the given hands, which made it hard for me in a way since some times I was bluffing and hoped she would fold, while others I really had a hand and wanted her to call. As she is a friend and I didn't want to do anything questionable, I tried my best to give fully uniform instructions regardless of the situation with my own hand, but who knows if I contributed in some small way by the way I presented things to the decisions Beginner Girl was making. There were plenty of others milling around and watching the action and helping Beginner Girl so I'm not actually concerned about the ethics but I do specifically remember a couple of times when I had already bet on a bluff and was then asked to explain what my opponent's options were in response to my bet. Anyways, once she lost the chip lead, my opponent acted like many beginning poker players do and started getting aggressive real quick with her bets and raises. So just a few hands later when I flopped KJ4 with KT in my hand, I checked rather than led out, and my opponent took the bait by leading out. I just called, setting up a properly-sized allin bet on the turn, and when the turn ragged out I immediately put Beginner Girl all in. She called pretty quick with second pair and a Queen kicker, but she did not catch, and I had won the sitngo. $120 back into my pocket, not bad for two hours of fun times.

Most of the group dissipated at this point in the night, as the sng had taken longer than usual due to the decision to use 25 minute blind rounds instead of 15 or 20 like I would have probably opted for, and we were left with just four players to play a cash game. We each bought in for $20 and received 100 chips as is our usual, and we played fairly short-stack no-limit holdem with 1-2 blinds. Lucky for me, early on I busted another of the most aggressive players in this group when I flopped my second set of 3s on the night after calling his preflop raise, and due to his known aggressive nature I managed to wait while he bet his entire stack with his pocket overpair before calling and flipping up my set for the stackage. And the other highly aggro player in the group also stuck around for our 4-handed cash session, and he too I managed to stack after I once again called him down on a two-barrel bluff with second pair and an Ace kicker in my hand, which definitely tilted him a little bit. Then the very next hand I was fortunate enough to pick up AKs, and when the same aggro player raised the $2 big blind preflop to $10, I reraised him straight-up to $40 just to clear out for my AK, a hand I love to reraise with before the flop in most situations as I have mentioned here previously. Aggro Guy made the call, and when the flop came King-high, I went for the check on the flop which was all Aggro Boy needed to cement his belief that he was ahead, and a few second later he pushed in the rest of his stack on the turn after my show of flop weakness. Not only was my TPTK ahead, but it turns out he had called my preflop raise with a classic Trouble Hand -- not even one of the stronger ones at that -- as my repeated calling him down on his bluffs throughout the night had finally gotten to him and caused him to tilt-call my preflop reraise with QJo. I felt a little bad as the guy literally emptied his wallet to me, but hey, that's poker, right? And again, we were only talking about maybe $30 total he lost to me overall in the cash session, so it's not like I personally bankrupted the guy or anything even close to that. But he was not happy, I can tell you that.

A short while later we wrapped it up for the night, and I was the big winner in the cash game just as I had been in the sitngo earlier that night. I won $120 for taking down the sitngo, and I left the cash game with a little over $60 after buying in for just $20 only maybe 90 minutes earlier. In the end it was a $140 profit or so for a fun night of poker, and I got to hear the same guys complaining that I once again was fleecing them for all of their money, that I was a ringer, a shark, etc. The quote of the night was definitely as I finished off Beginner Girl in the sng, one of the guys who had busted out earlier -- another lawyer, actually, as opposed to a writer as with most of the other players there -- says out loud to the rest of the group, "Of course the guy with the poker blog is taking all of our money!", as if this was the most obvious and natural conclusion in the world. Man, I wish this guy could play the Mookie one Wednesday night so he could see for himself just how great "guys with poker blogs" are at this game we all know and love.

What these guys don't know is that, while I definitely played great poker over the four hours or so I was at the game a couple of Wednesdays ago, I got extremely lucky flopping two sets on the night, and turning a third set, without which I would have had a much harder road to survive long enough to profit in the sng and to finish up ahead in the cash game as well. As I said, I think I played those good hands I made almost to perfection, along with most of the read-dependent plays I made all through the night, but ultimately I think my performance was more based on the cards I flopped and turned than it was on some kind of poker mojo that comes from being a blogger, or being awesome at the game. If I played with these guys ten more times, I bet I would come out winner in the end, but I'd get beat down plenty of times, in particular in a tournament structure where anything can happen and the blinds force you to make moves or perish.

OK so there's my writeup of my last live homegame of 2009. Tomorrow hopefully I will get up a post recapping my run to the final table of the nightly 20k guaranteed knockout tournament on Tuesday night on everyone's favorite poker site, UltimateBet.com.
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So the 2009 NFL regular season has now come and gone, and -- as usual -- what a crazy year it was. Once again the NFL shows why it is the king of all sports in this country -- this is a league that consistently seems to put together the best and most flexible schedules as far as televising their contests, and it's a league that showcases its stars, stars who are for the most part about as athletic as anyone in the sports world today. But the NFL has also figured out that parity is key to the long-term success of a sports league in America -- something the other major sports still seem to be trying to figure out, with varying levels of success. So the worst teams automatically get the best picks every year, and the result is that nothing is set in stone from one year to the next, something which fills the entire NFL fan base with excitement and anticipation heading into every year anew. And of course the league was full of the usual big stories that really provided heightened interest for all who enjoy taking in a game (or sixteen) during the weekends in the cold months for most of the country.

Without question one of the biggest stories of the NFL in 2009 has got to be Brett Favre's return to football in Minnesota. Although through 10 games the Vikings were 9-1 with Favre at the helm, and Favre was at the time a clear candidate for the league's MVP, the real story emerged in the final few games of the season when it came out that Favre had been systematically changing his head coach's running plays to pass plays in audibles and the line of scrimmage over the past several games. This culminated a few weeks back against the Panthers when Vikings coach Brad Childress informed Favre that he was to be benched in favor of Tavaris Jackson in a 7-6 game, after which Favre essentially told his coach to go screw, he wasn't leaving the game. Childress relented, and the parties later claimed to have cleared up their differences, but ultimately the Favre saga remains one of the key pieces of the NFL story in 2009, especially with his team heading into the playoffs losing 3 of its final 5 games.

Which leads me to my second big story of the 2009 NFL season -- the end-of-season collapse of the league's three biggest juggernaut teams. Although every year we do see the best teams sit players and not play to win in their final game or two if they can get some extra rest for their stars as a result, I definitely cannot remember a year when the league's best teams all entered the playoffs on such a shaky note. The Vikings, as mentioned above, were 10-1 after Week 12 but ended the season 12-4 after losses at the Cardinals, at the Panthers and at the Bears in the final quarter of the season. But this pales in comparison to the league's two real titans, starting with the Vikings' NFC rivals in the New Orleans Saints. Here was a team that was 13-0 after Week 14, but then suddenly the bottom dropped out and after trying to lose several games earlier in the season, Dallas stepped in in Week 14 and beat the Saints by 7 in front of the hometown New Orleans fans. Then the Saints followed that game up with an inexplicable overtime loss to the lowly Bucanneers, finally ending the season by pulling their starters and getting beat down on by a rallying Panthers looking to save their head coach's job for at least another year.

And then we come to the Colts. This might have become the story of the year after the Favre stuff died down in the final couple weeks of the season, as Colts head coach Jim Caldwell opted to pull his entire starting squad with a 5-point lead in the third quarter against the Jets in Week 16 despite his team sitting at 14-0 with a chance at football immortality and a 16-0 season. A whole lot of football fans have said they understand this move -- made to look even smarter after seeing Patriots' leading receiver Wes Welker blow out his knee in the first quarter of Week 17's more or less meaningless game against the Texans -- but personally, in particular as someone who has been actively involved in sports for most of my life, I am squarely in the camp that does not understand the move. Again, Peyton Manning, who has achieved almost every possible individual and team goal in his illustrious career as an NFL quarterback, had his chance at cementing football immortality by becoming the first team to ever complete a 16-0 season without the aid of blatant cheating, and the team had a slight lead against a strong defense in a game where the Jets had not done anything other than a kickoff runback for a touchdown early in the second half. At any time during the third and fourth quarter, Caldwell could probably have reinserted Manning and gotten his team the victory, but the Colts stuck to their game plan and pulled Manning along with many other starters and allowed the team to lose. This, from a team that has repeatedly sat its starters at the end of seasons during Manning's career and has gone on not to win the superbowl, while the one year that the team did win the superbowl was the season that the Colts were forced for scheduling reasons to play its way through all 17 games of the season. And the part that really pushes this decision over the edge for me is that Manning, in addition to being one of the great quarterbacks and incredible field generals in the modern-day NFL, hasn't missed a single start in more than twelve years. Twelve years! So the Colts management opted to pull their starters and turn a lead into a defeat to miss their chance at going 16-0, and in losing its chance to go undefeated for the year they also copied the strategy that has failed to produce a superbowl victory in the end several times in the recent past, and they benched a guy to protect him from injury when he hasn't missed a single game at the toughest position on the field to put together a longevity streak. It just doesn't make sense. And now the Colts, who played their starters in Week 17 only for a couple of short series, also go into the playoffs having turned their record around from 14-0 to 14-2 after two losses at season's end. So we're looking at the Vikings losing 3 of 5 to end the season after starting 10-1, the Saints going from 13-0 to 13-3 to end the year, and the Colts dropping from 14-0 to 14-2. How these separate losses of momentum for the NFL's three hottest teams through early December will affect the teams' playoff chances in January remains to be seen, but in all it really contributes to what has been another crazy, crazy year in the No Fun League.

The last thing I would mention regarding summarizing the 2009 NFL season are some of the incredible comebacks and turnarounds, the biggest surprises on the upside and the biggest disappointments of the season. For starters, you've got the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos, who started off 5-0 and 6-0, respectively, but both ended the season at 8-8 clips and on the outside of the playoff race looking in. Ultimately, although neither squad was all that great of a team in the end IMO, I see the issue with the Giants as being more related to scheduling than anything else. The Giants began the year 5-0 with games against Washington, Dallas, Tampa Bay, Kansas City and Oakland, once that schedule turned around after Week 5, the team faced 9 out of 11 opponents with at least .500 records on the year, losing 7 of those 9 games. Denver, on the other hand, I think more played over their heads in starting off 6-0 on the year, including wins against the playoff-bound Cheatriots, Chargers, Cowboys and Bengals during that streak, but once the Broncos passed their bye week after Week 6, they were a changed team and ended up spiralling down a 2-8 finish to miss the playoffs by a game and really leave their fans shaking their heads.

On the flip side of the equation, I was really impressed most of all with the Tennessee Titans this year, who started off the season 0-6, including bottoming out with an embarrassing 59-0 blowout at the hands of the Cheatriots before also taking their bye week in Week 7, but where the Broncos seemed to have fallen apart during their time away, the Titans made the move of the year in switching quarterbacks from Kerry Collins to Vince Young, and the result was visible immediately as the team went on a 5-game winning tear and finished up 8-2 in its last 10 games to eke its way back to .500 as well by season's end, including victories in that second half against .500+ teams the 49ers, Jaguars, Texans and Cardinals. The Carolina Panthers were another team that really turned things around and pretty much saved their head coach's job in the process in the second part of the 2009 season, starting off 0-3 and sinking to 4-7 before rattling off four wins in their last five games to also end the year at 8-8. So you had the Giants, Broncos, Titans and Panthers all finishing up 2009 with identical 8-8 records, although the teams could not have been moving in more opposite directions in so doing.

Other disappointments or impressive performances in 2009 in the NFL? Of course there's always the Redskins, who seem to spend at least $100 million every offseason on some big signing or signings, and yet who seem unable to generate victories no matter what they try and no matter who is leading the team. The Skins finished 2009 at 4-12, including early-season losses to the Panthers, the Chiefs and the Lions. And speaking of the Lions, that team still royally sucks but at the same time, let's give the team some props for finishing at 2-14, a full infinity percent better than the franchise's win total from 2008. Eric Mangini probably deserves some kudos as well for keeping his team from throwing in the towel and busting out with four straight wins to end the 2009 season and lift his team out of the NFL's cellar and to an almost-respectable 5-11 overall record. The Houston Texans finished 9-7 on the year after coming from behind to defeat the Cheatriots in the final game of the season, the Houston franchise's first-ever winning season, and the Atlanta Falcons rode on Matt Ryan's back to a 9-7 record, the first time in franchise history that the Falcons have posted back-to-back winning seasons. And, speaking of streaks, the two hottest teams in the NFL heading into the playoffs do not include the Vikings, Saints or the Colts -- it's the Chargers, who have won 11 straight in the AFC, and the Eagles in the NFC who won 6 straight games before getting crushed in Dallas in a crucial NFC East matchup to decide who would take the divisional title in 2009. More on that later in the week when I make my picks for the weekend's playoff action.

As far as my regular season picks, I picked five games against the spread in each week of the NFL regular season except for Week 1 and Week 17, and I ended up with a record of 39-34-2. Although anything over .500 means a winning season bet-wise, the way it happened was not pretty, as I ran that record up to 35-20 after Week 12 only to close out 4-14 in my final four weeks of utterly pathetic picks. I mean, I couldn't find a winner no matter what I tried in the final quarter of the NFL season. I saw a game that I thought for sure was mis-priced, and then the team on the other side of my bet would run back a late touchdown and snatch away a victory, or better yet, I even picked the opposite of who I thought would win the games near the end and even then I would push or be straight-out wrong. 39-34 is to tell the truth not much different than my past history of picking games against the spread, so the hot early start to my picks in the 2009 was sadly more likely the aberration than the norm, and the late-season nosedive was probably always destined to come. But I had fun picking the games and writing about them here, as I will continue to do heading into the NFL playoff rounds, and I know that my knowledge of both the NFL and of picking games against the spread grew as a result of the analysis I was regularly doing here at the blog.

Lastly, I wanted to take a quick look at my preseason predictions for the 2009 NFL season to see how they fared against reality.

In the NFC East, I correctly predicted the Eagles to go 11-5, I missed the Giants' win total by 1 with my prediction of 9-7 for the G-Men, and I nabbed the Redskins as well in the range of 4-6 wins. But the Cowboys surprised me big time, in particular with their strong 3-game December win streak to capture the East in going 11-5, as I had them pegged for an 8-8 season under country bumpkin coach Wade Phillips, who also grabbed the divison title away from the Eagles in what definitely came as a surprise to me on the season.

In the NFC North, my predictions were more or less a disaster. I figured the Vikings for 10 wins but they surprised me with 12, while I tapped the Bears and new quarterback Jay Cutler for 10 wins and the division crown in what turned out to be a horrible performance for both Cutler and the Bears on the year. I also figured the Packers to improve, but only to around .500 and to miss the playoffs, both of which were also wrong as the Pack made a strong run and was never really in doubt as a wildcard team behind the surging Vikings this year. But hey, I was spot-on that the Lions would win exactly two games on the year, so that means I basically got this division just about correct, right? Right?

In the NFC South I once again got swayed by the crowd and predicted the Panthers to win 11 or 12 games, although they inexplicably won just 8 despite fielding essentially the same team as the one that won 12 games in 2008. I correctly picked the Falcons to have another solid year behind Matt Ryan, Roddy White and Michael Turner, although injuries to all three of those players in several key games in the second half of the season kept the team limited to 9 wins instead of the 11 I was figuring them for before the season began. I tapped the Bucanneers to win 7 games this year, a far cry from the pathetic 3-13 record they ended with, and I figured the Saints for 8 or 9 wins, also a far cry from the 13-for-13 they put up in running the best offense in football before losing their momentum in the final three games of the year.

Lastly, in the NFC West, I predicted that the 49ers would steal the division with 9 wins vs 8 or 9 for the defending champion Arizona Cardinals. In the end, the Niners simply could not muster enough consistency on either side of the ball when it counted to make a late-season run at the division, and although at 8-8 I was very close with the Niners, the Cardinals came through with an upside surprise at 10 wins to defend their title as NFC West champions and give themselves a chance to defend their NFC Championship from 2008 as well. I also predicted the Rams to improve on 2008's 2-14 record by a couple of games (they actually got worse, finishing at 1-15), and I was one game ahead of the Seahawks' 6-win 2009 season, although at least I was on track that this would be a down year for both of the other teams at the bottom of the NFC West race.

My preseason NFL predictions were not much better in the AFC, unfortunately.

In the AFC East, I again went totally with the pundits in expecting 14 wins from the Cheatriots who actually finished the season at 10-6, though I was correct that they would win the division at the least. I predicted 10 wins from the Dolphins, who made a nice run but eventually succumbed late in the year and finished at 7-9. Although the words I wrote back in September about the New York Jets and their rookies at quarterback and at head coach sound spot on for how this season ended, the Jets were handed two wins that would have almost surely been losses at the end of the year against two of the toughest teams on their schedule to finish out the year 9-7 and with a miraculous playoff berth. And bringing up the rear I correctly had Buffalo in this division, for whom I predicted 5 wins but who actually came up with 6 thanks to again a final-week gimme game against a bunch of no-names as Indy sat everybody who might possibly contribute to a deep playoff run.

The AFC North was yet another division where I allowed the preseason pundits to cloud my judgment and have me predicting a two-team race along with the rest of the so-called experts, as I expected 12 wins from the Ravens and 11 from the Steelers in producing two AFC playoff teams yet again out of this division. Well, I was right about the two playoff teams, but I completey ignored the Bengals, who back then were still the Bungles in my mind and who I tapped for just 4 or 5 wins on the season, but who actually busted out with a 10-6 record and who easily ran away with the division while the Ravens and Steelers had to scramble until their final games to know if they would be in or out of the 2009 NFL postseason. But again I stepped it up at the bottom of the division, predicting the Browns' 5 wins exactly thanks to Mangini's late-season push back into quasi-respectability.

Yet again I went with convention to my detriment in predicting the AFC South, where I expected another 11 wins and a division crown from the Titans, who surprised everyone by starting off 0-6 before recovering strongly on the back of Vince Young to finish at 8-8. Being the genius that I am, I also predicted a down year for the Colts, who I figured would win just 10 games amidst a new head coach, the loss of their top wide receiver and a struggling running game, where obviously I misjudged just how incredible of a player, play-caller and a leader Peyton Manning really is. I was pretty close in guessing 8 wins for both Houston and Jacksonville on the year, although I have to admit that each team played better than I thought they would as this season wore on.

And lastly, there is the AFC West, where I predicted the Chargers would win 11 games and the division (they won 12), mostly due to just how horrible the division would really be, which it was. I figured the Broncos for just five wins (they actually won 8 after a 2-8 swoon to finish the 2009 regular season), the Chiefs for 4 (which was spot-on), and the Raiders for 2 or 3 wins, when they actually (somehow) won 5 games.

So in all, it was a pretty laughable set of predictions for me on the NFL season for 2009, as I was looking for division winners of Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco in the NFC, plus wildcards of Minnesota and Carolina. In reality it is Dallas, New Orleans, Minnesota and Arizona winning their respective divisions, while Philadelphia and Green Bay nabbed the wildcards, meaning that I picked exactly one playoff team correctly out of six picks during the preseason in the NFC. So sweet. In the AFC I fared only marginally better, predicting division winners of New England, Tennessee, Baltimore and San Diego, with wildcards of Pittsburgh and Miami, while the actual division winners proved to be New England, Indianapolis, Cincinatti and San Diego. The AFC wildcard teams of the Ravens and the Jets rounded out a better but still uninspired performance with my predictions for the AFC as learned a really important lesson here in my first year of making these predictions -- the pundits don't know shiat, so don't follow them anymore unless I actually believe what they believe. As I mentioned above, the NFL above all other sports leagues in this country has parity built in to its very core, and there are more worst-to-first stories in this league than in the other three major U.S. sports combined I am sure.

Later in the week I will post my predictions for the four playoff games this weekend, including three of which that are rematches of this past weekend's Week 17 matchups, in which all three were blowouts to end the regular season.
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This story is one of the weirdest things I have ever heard of.  Apparently the iPoker network has implemented a policy that fines sites on their network for winning too much!  Really???  I was always under the impression that the goal of poker sites was to create winning players because the more rake they generate, [...]
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So much to get to after a week away from it all, it's hard to know where to begin. I played a decent amount of online poker over the break, several runs of which would probably merit their own post in another time. The football season came and went, and I have my preseason predictions to review and laugh at myself over. College basketball has started up in force yet again as well. I saw some movies over the break and spent a ton of awesome time with my family. Shit, I even managed to play live poker not once but twice, something which I do plan to run a post about in the coming days as well. But I guess this first post of 2010 can serve as my 2009 Year in Review post, as I've done each of the past several years, focusing of course on this blog, my poker game and anything else of import to me as each new year rolls in.

I usually begin these posts by taking a look at my Goals post at the beginning of the year and seeing how I think I fared in each of those goals.

My #1 goal for 2009 as of this post was to withdraw more money from online poker. On this front I would rate myself a solid A, as I succeeded in keeping my balances at all the online sites I play at in the triple-digits throughout most of 2009. Despite several nice wins and a couple of gigantic ones during the year, I did not let myself get tempted by the dark side and start playing online with the won money, usually way above my comfort limit from right before the win at that. I regularly withdrew funds from my most active online accounts whenever the balance got noticeably above 1k, and my bank account really shows the difference which is something I am extremely pleased about for sure. And, at least as importantly, by keeping my account balances low, I am sure I also positively impacted my poker game, as I was not tempted to play recklessly with my funds due to having so much immediately available and viewable right on my cashier screen.

My second goal for 2009 was to continue my focus on multi-table tournaments, and build on my success from 2008. On this one I also scored a major A grade, as I generally stayed away from satellite tournaments in their own right and focused instead primarily on mtt's as an end unto themselves. Although for a lot of different reasons I did not end up playing nearly as much poker as I have in the past few years, and I generally did not focus on my recent standbys like the nightly 50-50 and 32k tournaments on full tilt, I did take my shots regularly at large-field tournaments like the $100 and $30 rebuy events on full tilt, the nightly 100k on pokerstars and several other of the larger-buyin events.

Along these same lines, my #3 2009 goal was to increase my focus at mtt final tables, and make the required adjustments to get me into the top 3 with a greater frequency. In 2008 I recall I had something like ten final-table mtt finishes where I ended up between 4th and 9th place on the final leaderboard, which is just not going to work if you are an mtt grinder and therefore need to get into those coveted top three spots where the real money is with as much regularity as possible. In 2009, although I am sure I had fewer large-field final tables in general due to playing far fewer large-field mtts in general, my top-3 percentage was far greater, in particular in the absolute biggest events I played in. In the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza this summer I rode a massive chip lead all throughout Day Two, entered the final table as the chip leader, and this time I made sure to focus and retain that chip stack long enough to make it into the final four-way chop of some $213,000 in tournament payouts. Similarly, in two rebuy mtt final tables on full tilt in 2009, I managed a top-3 finish in both, including a runner-up suckout elimination to nab over 5k in cash just a month or two ago. And of course then there was the big Mini FTOPS win just last month, where once again I rode a short stack early in the final table all the way down to 3 players remaining and a bad suckout to again ensure a nice payout. Focus at final tables is an area where I definitely improved during 2009, and once again it is something that really shows in my bank account as I take stock here heading into 2010.

My #4 goal for 2009 was of all things to use the stop-n-go more. On this one I guess I would give myself a C grade. I mean, after really focusing on this late in 2008 -- really only in late-stage mtt play where it's usually just one bet and then someone is all in -- I would say that I have better integrated the stop-n-go move into my regular poker repertoire late in mtts here in 2009. But to be honest with myself, this still is something I should probably focus on more in 2010. In the end, while I am sure I used this strategy more often in big spots than I had previously, the bottom line is that I am still finding myself busting late from mtt's most frequently when I push allin preflop -- either on a raise or a reraise -- and get called by someone, and then I go on to lose whether by being dominated, getting sucked out on, or most commonly, by racing. I still think I have room to improve on this score heading into 2010.

My 5th goal for 2009 was to write more about non-poker topics here at the blog, another area where I clearly succeeded during the past year. Surprisingly, the biggest area of this ended up being my sports predictions, as I found early in the year that one thing I really wanted to use the blog for was to track the performance of my sports picks, and more specifically, my long-term sports predictions, like over-under totals for the baseball and football seasons, NCAA predictions, etc. While some people may have been frustrated at the amount of posting I did this year about the Phillies, or the NFL, etc., I always remind myself these days that this is my blog -- my online diary, really -- and thus I get to write in it whatever I want about whatever or whoever I want, and by definition no one else's criticism of that decision has any meaning. I mean, can you imagine critizing someone for writing too much about topic X in their own diary? The whole notion is silly, really. So you can look for more of the same on this front for 2010, albeit still with my primary focus remaining all things poker and poker-related.

Funny enough, my last goal for 2009 was to bury the hatchest on some stoopid feuds with other bloggers that I have historically been all too happy to fuel here on the blog in the past. As you all know if you've read here with any regularity, I am not one to pull punches with people, and when I see someone make a horrible poker play, justify it with the worst poker analysis in history, go off on someone else's play without a good basis to do so, or otherwise generally be a cheat, or a dickhead in connection with this game, I tend to just say it. I have done a near-flawless job of keeping the focus away from personal comments in this blog, really over the past two or three years moreso than just during 2009, and in the end that's the only thing I can affect in any meaningful way.

So overall it seems like for once I did a fairly good job at attaining my poker- and blog-related goals for 2009. Generally speaking, 2009 was a banner year for me poker-wise, one that saw me record my biggest-ever live cash in the summer at the Venetian to the tune of just over $50,000, and then follow that up in December with my largest-ever online cash, my 27k takedown in the Mini FTOPS $30 rebuy event with 3500+ runners and over 10,000 total buyins to the tournament. Those two cashes along with several other nice mtt scores as well as a strong year in turbo sitngos -- the new-baby-daddy's poker structure of choice, believe you me -- also helped me to post far and away my best annual ROI since I've been playing this game, which combines with my best-ever total profit to make 2009 a really, really awesome year in poker for me.

And let us not forget, the one thing that I did not include in my goals for 2009 for the first time in at least three years but which I was able to attain finally in 2009 -- winning the Mookie. I won it twice last year, in fact. Once was just a couple of months ago, with under 30 runners as we were well into the post-BBT swoon in blogger tournament participation, which barely even counts as a real Mookie win. But I also won the Mook right smack dab in the middle of the BBT early in 2009, a tournament that I imagine had somewhere in the 60+ range of players, and even though I am straight up too lazy to go and look up the post, my lasting memory really is of pushmonkey72 seriously donating me the title, a couple of different times even as I recall. So thanks, Rich, I guess I owe you something for your performance in 2008.

Most interestingly to me about my positive tournament results in 2009 is that I played decidedly less poker throughout this year than I have in any of the past several years. I started off the year at a new job, with the economy collapsing around me and with a new president coming into office who seemed hell-bent on spend-spend-spending his way through his first term in office, and all of this combined to leave me feeling particularly vulnerable and just generally wanting to curtail my poker habit in favor of holding onto more of my money for the inevitable rainy day that I felt could easily be coming for me and my family. Later in the year, as the economy seemed to recover or at least cease its freefall from late 2008 and early 2009, that feeling of financial vulnerability subsided, but was soon replaced with a different kind of hindrance to my poker play, in the form of a bouncing baby boy. Now, with multiple kids already I won't even try to spin the new baby as the kind of life-altering, all-time-consuming debacle that a first child can be, but let's just say that life with an infant is not exactly conducive to mtt play and leave it at that. So I would not be surprised to learn that I played somewhere between a third and a half as many true mtts in 2009 as I did in, say, 2007 or 2008, and yet my results skyrocketed, both in total amounts won and in terms of my ROI. What does that say about my poker play going forward? I'm not sure, but I doubt it can be chalked up purely to circumstance or luck that my profits increased as the frequency of my play decreased. I will take some time this week thinking about what specifically that means or why specifically that may have happened, but it seems that the inescapable conclusion that I will bring with me heading into 2010 is that playing more and more tournaments does not necessarily correlate with increasing my ROI or my total profits won from the game.

I will look to do another post later in the week about my goals for 2010, assuming I can think some up between now and then. Tomorrow look for a post probably about the NFL, or perhaps a review of my two separate live poker sessions from over the break.
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Stox Poker is one of the first Poker Training Sites to hit the web, along with CardRunners. It is still considered one of the top training sites a poker player can subscribe to. It specializes in videos for Heads-up Limitread more…

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Blue Fire Poker is a relatively new poker training site but it is being speculated that it is going to be one of the best, if not, the best poker training site on the web. The site was started andread more…

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Leggo Poker was one of the first Poker Training sites on the web. The site was formed by Greg Brooks and Chris Tickner in order to increase the knowledge of their subscribers. Leggo Poker describes itself as an all-encompassing pokerread more…

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CardRunners the the first real Poker Training Site to hit the web and started the poker training site boom. While PXF is focused mainly on MTT’s, CardRunners is geared more towards cash games, although there is still a wealth ofread more…

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Deep Stack University is the newest poker training site to hit the market and it is looking like it has a very promising future. With state-of-the-art training software which reacts to how players play and tests subscribers on their skills,read more…

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DeucesCracked is a poker training website that is geared towards the online poker cash game player. The site mainly deals with No Limit and Limit Texas Hold Em. However, the site also features some very good videos on 7-card stud,read more…

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GrinderSchool is a poker training website that is specifically geared towards the payers with very small bankrolls, looking to grind their way up the ranks. The site offers its subscribers strategy and advice via videos and through direct interaction withread more…

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Oustanding Poker is aimed to teach its subscribers the fundamental poker strategies that will enable them to become better, profitable players in both the online and live arenas. The site currently has over 40 hours of videos which are gearedread more…

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Poker Pwnage is a relatively new poker training site on the market that is geared towards multi-table tournament players. It costs a player $35 to signup and $25 a month to stay on the site. There are mostly MTT videosread more…

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Today I was browsing one of the poker forums that I read on a daily basis and came accross a post discussing what players thought of late registration.  The general consensus of the posters was that they really hated late registration, so much to the point that the original poster was looking for other sites [...]
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Back in July of 2009 Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker were battling back and forth to be home to the Guinness Record for largest player field in an online poker tournament.  Unfortunately back then, both of these poker sites were putting caps on the number of players that could enter so we never saw the [...]
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Although my job does not appear to have figured this out yet, I am allegedly on vacation this week so the posting may be sparse until the new year as is usual for this week at the blog. But I wanted to leave you with a sweet, sweet image I captured around midway through the pokerstars 100k guaranteed tournament a few days ago:



I resolve to remember this one from time to time in 2010 when I experience my usual luck in this game.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and has a relaxing, bad beat-free week heading into the New Year.
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Another 1-4 week last week for my picks, which makes three crappy weeks in a row as my early-season magic appears to have disappeared here heading into the end of the NFL regular season. Last week's performance brings my total season record down to 39-31, still eight games over .500 but totally heading in the wrong direction. As it's a holiday weekend, just five quick picks for this weekend's games:

1. Baltimore Ravens +3 at Pittsburgh Steelers. Nothing complicated here. I think the Steelers are finished, it took them an absolute miracle performance to pull out a final second victory against the Packers last week, and even at home I don't see them beating a hot Ravens team by a field goal.

2. Miami Dolphins -3 vs Houston Texans. I don't love having to lay the three points here, but I'll take the team that is extremely hot during December and is playing at home with a chance to sneak into the AFC playoffs. I have a lot of respect for the Texans on offense, including Matt Schaub at qb and Andre Johnson, probably the best overall wide receiver in football over the past two years, but I'm going with the Fins to find a way to pull this one out as they have all season long since their pro-bowl quarterback went down to injury in Week 3 with the team still looking for its first win.

3. Washington Redskins +7 vs Dallas Cowboys. Yeah, I must be literally crazy to pick the Redskins + any amount after the performance they put in last week. But this Cowboys team is going to be in trouble this week after nabbing the biggest win of Wade Phillips' career in Dallas against the undefeated Saints. This team's record when they get any sniff of success speaks for itself under the current regime, and I'm not picking them to win by more than a touchdown on national tv on Sunday night.

4. Cincinnati Bengals -13.5 vs Kansas City Chiefs. Two-touchdown favorites are never fun to bet on, but the Bengals will be looking to bounce back against a terrible Chiefs team after two consecutive subpar performances for Carson Palmer, Chad Ochocinco and company. And one thing the Chiefs have shown again and again this year is that they can get beat down on hard, especially by good teams. This will be the Bengals' first game against a shitpiler team in a while and I'm expecting them to pour it on early and often.

5. St. Louis Rams +14 at Arizona Cardinals. Although this is matchup of the NFL's worst team against the defending NFC champions, the Cardinals haven't been playing particularly well over the past few weeks, whlie the Rams have been at least competitive more often than they were earlier in the year. With the Cardinals having performed far better on the road than they have at home this season, and with Steven Jackson to control the ball for the Rams and keep that potent Cardinals offense off the field to some extent, two touchdowns here seems a bit too much to take.
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Starting January 1st, 2010 Pokerstars will be making some changes to their VIP program which are finally much better for the players.  Players will be able to earn VPPs at a much faster rate, there will be MUCH BIGGER VIP freerolls, and a cool new rewards system that continously rewards you while you play (on [...]
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Sorry guys but no time on Tuesday for a follow-up post to the Mini FTOPS recap I put up yesterday, nor for a proper treatment of Week 15 of the NFL season. I am trying to bust out about ten different things at work, all of them urgent of course, and I'm also allegedly off for remainder of the year, though I have seen even that freedom slowly disappear over the last few days at my place of business. Oh well, gainful employment is gainful employment in this economy I suppose. But it certainly makes 100,000 words a day on the blog a difficult goal to achieve. So here I have the weekly Winners and Losers report, one day later than my usual.

Winners:

1. I have got lots of Winners this week, but let's start the list with something near and dear to my heart: The Philadelphia Eagles and DeSean Jackson. After five straight wins, and with the Saints' loss and the Vikings' recent troubles, the Eagles enter the final two games of the 2009 regular season as the hottest team in the NFC and now sit alone atop the NFC East and at 10-4 on the year, with head coach Andy Reid putting together another typical Andy Reid regular season. Reid has managed the incredible feat of winning five NFC Easts in his ten years as the Eagles' head man, with this looking hopefully to be the 6th in 11 years for the City of Brotherly Shove. And with this weekend's two-touchdown beatdown of the 49ers, the Eagles also clinched a playoff spot, their eighth postseason appearance in the last 10 years. And as well as Donovan McNabb has been throwing the ball this year in Philly (3008 yards, 21 touchdowns (2 rushing), and 9 INTs), I don't know when someone is finally going to start at least mentioning 2nd-year wideout DeSean Jackson as a viable MVP candidate for the season. After another 6 catches for 140 yards and a touchdown against the Niners this past Sunday, DeSean's season numbers are now up to 56 catches for 1087 yards and 8 touchdowns receiving, 9 rushes for 134ards and 1 touchdown running, plus 2 more punt returns for touchdowns on the season. 56 catches, over 1200 yards from scrimmage and 11 total touchdowns while becoming the first NFL player to score 8 touchdowns of more than 50 yards in a season in a couple of generations. What a season for the second-year pro out of Cal.

2. The Dallas Cowboys. It's hard to believe I'm sitting here typing this out right now, but just one week after blowing their second straight critical December game for the umpteenth season in a row, Dallas came out and shocked the world by besting the undefeated New Orleans Saints 24-17 on the road to do far more than ruin Drew Brees & Co.'s shot at football immortailty. The Cowboys also saved their season in a big way, getting win that nobody expected and leaving themselves in position to nab the NFC's final wildcard spot, where they remain one game ahead of the New York Giants despite the Giants having swept the Cowboys on the season this year. What's more, the Cowboys' big win on Saturday night also ensures that they remain on track to control their own destiny within the NFC East, now knowing that if they win out -- including at Washington this coming weekend and then at home vs. Philly to close out the season -- then the Cowboys will win their second NFC East crown in three years and send the Eagles to the wilcard spot instead with their own season sweep over a key divisional rival.

3. Josh Cribbs and James Harrison of the Cleveland Browns. Boy did these two guys have special games in Sunday's awesome 41-34 win over the Kansas City Chiefs. Runningback James Harrison, who had just over 300 yards rushing for the season prior to Week 15, out of nowhere had 34 carries for an incredible 286 yards against the Chiefs' porous defense, scoring three touchdowns and power his team to victory as he broke Jim Brown's single-game franchise record for rushing yards. Harrison's 286-yard outburst ranks him as the #3 individual rushing yardage effort in NFL history, which fits in very nicely with teammate Josh Cribbs, whose two kickoff returns for touchdowns on the day gave him 8 kickoff td returns for his career, which too is an NFL record for the just 26-year-old wideout. Could these guys have saved Eric Mangini's job in Cleveland this weekend? Probably not me thinks, with Mike Holmgren this week accepting the job of running Cleveland's football operation.

4. The San Diego Chargers and Phillip Rivers. When the Chargers drove about 50 yards in 50 seconds to win their 9th straight game against the playoff-bound Bengals this weekend, they did more than win their ninth straight game and move to 11-3 overall on the year. With the win the Chargers also clinched their fourth consecutive AFC West title after the Broncos' shocking loss to the lowly Raiders, and the team all but sowed up a first-round bye and the overall #2 seed in the conference behind the still-undefeated Indianapolis Colts. And despite all the great talent on this Chargers team -- from LaDainian Tomlinson to Darren Sproles to Vincent Jackson to Antonio Gates -- the biggest reason for the team's success this year has got to be 6th-year quarterback Phillip Rivers. In 14 games so far in 2009, Rivers has compiled 3891 yards and 25 touchdowns, with just 9 picks, for an overall qb rating of a very impressive 102.8. As a point of reference, the great Peyton Manning's quarterback rating through 14 games is 101.2. On Sunday, Rivers' 24-for-38 performance for 308 yards, 3 tds and 2 picks was enough as he led his team on a furious last-minute rally down the field to kick the game-winning field goal as time expired and keep the team's winning streak alive, including the Chargers' now 17 straight wins in December when it really counts. I've said it before here and I'll say it again, but the Colts and Chargers seemed destined for yet another great matchup deep in the AFC playoffs this season.

5. The Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens blew out the Bears at home on Sunday afternoon, with both the offense and defense doing their share to make Chicago's life miserable. The Ravens swirling defense caused Bears qb Jay Cutler to throw 3 more picks, causing 6 turnovers overall and playing with sufficient urgency to give the Bears no chance to keep the team from 8-6 and getting it the inside track to the AFC's 6th and final playoff spot. Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco, meanwhile, busted out with a career-high 4 touchdown passes, leading the offense to amass 24 points off of Bears turnovers in never giving the Bears a chance on either side of the ball. And with five teams just one game begind at 7-7 in the AFC, the Ravens appear to be peaking at just the right time, having won 48-3 over the Lions last week, meaning that the team has now outscored its opponents by a whopping 79-10 over its last two games. Bring on the Steelers this Sunday!

6. Vince Young and the Tennessee Titans. For the third time in the last seven weeks the Titans appear on the Winners list, as Vince Young has led the team back from 0-6 to 7-7 and right in the thick of the logjam one game behind the Ravens and Broncos for the final AFC playoff spot. In Sunday's overtime win against 7-7 Miami, VY threw for 236 yards and three touchdowns, getting into the end zone three times and captaining the team on its last drive in overtime to kick the winning field goal. It's a damn shame that the Titans are still a game out of the AFC wildcard picture right now, but as I've said previousl here, Vince Young and Chris Johnson would likely be the story of the year in the NFL in 2009 if not for one Brett Favre.

7. Ben Roethlisberger. Big Ben did a little bit to help his team to a crazy 37-36 victory over the playoff-bound Green Bay Packers on Sunday: try 29 for 46, for 503 yards and 3 touchdowns, including the last-second score to wide receiver Mike Wallace, in the utterly thrilling win. Roethlisberger's 503 passing yards is an all-time franchise record for the Steelers, and Big Ben joins Y.A. Tittle and Warren Moon as the only other NFL quarterbacks in history to throw for at least 500 yards and 3 tds with zero interceptions in an NFL game. The Steelers' win not only ended the Pack's 5-game winning streak and Pittsburgh's 5-game losing streak, but it kept the Steelers alive in the AFC playoff race, with the inside track among the 7-7 teams one game out of the final wildcard spot and a game this coming weekend against the Ravens who currently hold that final wildcard at 8-6.

9. The NFL's Week 16 schedule. Man I don't know how the NFL knows to do this, but just look at all these postseason-bound or at least playoff-hopeful teams faving each other this coming weekend. 11-3 Chargers at 7-7 Titans on Friday night. 8-6 Ravens at 7-7 Steelers on Sunday. 7-7 Texans at 7-7 Dolphins on Sunday. 7-7 Jaguars at 9-5 Cheatriots on Sunday. 7-7 Jets and 14-0 Colts on Sunday. 8-6 Broncos at 10-4 Eagles on Sunday. 9-5 Cowboys at their big rival the 4-10 Redskins on Sunday night. There are just so many big games this coming weekend, there aren't enough tv's in the house to watch them all. Well done, NFL.

Losers:

1. The Minnesota Vikings. There is so much blame to go around with this team right now that it's hard to pinpoint on just one player or decision, but things appear to be falling apart in a hurry for the team that just a few weeks ago was considered by all to be neck and neck with the Saints and Colts among the NFL's elite teams. Star runningback Adrian Peterson's role has been diminished to almost nothing over the last several games in Minnesota, with AP recording only three 100-yard rushing games this season and only one in his last eight outings, mostly it turns out because Brett Favre has been systematically increasingly audibling the plays called in by head coach Brad Childress, consistently switching up Childress's planned run plays for passing plays more prominently featuring Favre and his arm. Finally, with the Vikings getting beat down on by the 6-8 non-playoff-bound Carolina Panthers this past Sunday night and his Vikings unable to move the ball at all, Childress finally decided to do something to stand up to Favre and informed the all-time qb that he was being "rested" for the remainder of the game in favor of Minnesota backup Tavaris Jackson. Favre's response? "F you, I'm playin'." And so it was done. With the inmates running the asylum as the Vikings have now lost two of their last three games after a 10-1 start, Brett Favre has found a way to once again turn NFL fans all around the world against him and leave us just waiting and hoping to see his pomp and hubris catch up with him as the 2009 regular season comes to a close for the Viking team that Favre, apparently, is the real head coach of. Who knew?

2. The Denver Broncos. What do you even say about a team that had a comfortable 2-game lead in the wildcard race over the rest of the pack and a home game against the lowly Raiders, but then went out and let JaMarcus Russell of all people lead a last-minute drive to score a touchdown to turn the Broncos' 6-point lead into a 1-point loss in the final seconds. I mean, JaMarcus frigging Russell? The Broncos somehow failed to score a touchdown after a 1st and goal from the 2 yard line late in the 4th quarter, leaving room for the Raiders to win the game with a touchdown-scoring drive, and on the day the Broncos' vaunted rushing game could get nothing going as the team was outrushed 241 yards to 80, and the team allowed the Raiders more first downs, more total yards and more time of possession than they coud muster in this crucial game for their post-season hopes, all more unthinkable stats against this Raiders team. Now the Broncos will feel the pressure to win at Philadelphia and/or at home against Kansas City in their final two games or they could suddenly find themselves on the outside looking in to what is very close to becoming a hugely messy AFC wildcard race.

3. The New York Jets. After leading all the way from late in the first quarter until just a few minutes left in the game, and basically dominating on the defensive side of the ball throughout, the Jets let a crucial game to their 2009 playoff hopes slip away when they allowed the Atlanta Falcons to march down the field, eventually giving up the winning touchdown with a minute and a half to go on a 4th-and-goal play when they left all-pro tight end Tony Gonzalez wide open on a quick slant in the end zone. The Falcons' 73-yard, game winning touchdown drive from a 7-3 deficit came after the team had managed just 8 first downs and 167 total yards in the entire game prior to the final drive, including an incredible 25 consecutive 3rd downs where the Jets caused their opponents not to convert. After giving up the lead, Jets quarterback Ryan Sanchez then compounded the pain by throwing his third pick of the game with under a minute to go to end his team's chances in preditcably frustrating fashion after an 18-for-32, 226 yards, 1 touchdown and 3 interception performance on the day, the fifth time Sanchise has thrown multiple picks in a game already this season, and making his 20th interception overall so far in his rookie year in 2009. And it turns out the Jets really picked a horrible time to step down again in the 4th quarter, as a win would have left them tied with the Ravens and the Broncos at 8-6 in the fight for the AFC's final playoff spot. Instead, the Jets find themselves stuck right in the thick of the 5-team pile-up at 7-7 in the AFC, with at least the Dolphins and Jaguars holding tiebreakers over the Jets due to winning head-to-head against them during the regular season.

TO Watch: 2 catches for 20 yards, and no scores on Sunday. 2009 season stats through 14 games: 47 catches for 725 yards and 4 touchdowns. Not good at all my man.

JaMarcus Russell award: Brady Quinn, who was put on IR this week by the 3-11 Cleveland Browns, somehow won his last two starts despite throwing for less than 100 yards in each. In Sunday's thrilling 41-34 win over the Chiefs, Quinn limped his way to a 10-for-17 performance for 66 yards, 0 tds, 2 interceptions and a 27.7 overall quarterback rating on the day. But is that good enough to win an award named after JaMarcus Russell? Hale no, you guys know what JaMarcus thinks of qb ratings above 20! This week's clear winner has got to be Jay Cutler of the Chicago Bears, who added to his NFL-high 25 intercepton total this week in going 10 for 27 for 94 yards, 0 tds and 3 picks in his team's 31-7 blowout by the Ravens. Cutler's final qb rating on the day was a far more JaMarcus Russellian 7.9! Now that's what I'm talking 'bout.

The Mike Tomlin Award: Ever hear of Fancy Play Syndrome in poker? After declining to start this award a few weeks back when Bill Bellicheat very publicly made the wrong decision in going for it on 4th down from his own 30-yard-line late in the 4th quarter in a move that directly cost his team a win against the undefeated Colts, I just can't pass the opportunity up again this week thanks to Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin. With 3:58 to go in the 4th quarter against the Packers on Sunday, and with his Steelers having just kicked a field goal to nab back a 30-28 lead in a crazy game against the Pack, Tomlin inexplicably called for an onsides kick -- yes, with his team having just retaken the lead -- and naturally one of his players touched the ball too early and the Packers took over for a short drive to a go-ahead score with just 2:06 left in the game. From this day forth, when an NFL player or coach engages in Fancy Play Syndrome and outthinks himself into making an idiotic play to hurt his team, it shall be known here as the Mike Tomlin award.
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When you decide its smart to play it in the middle of a bull ring with an angry bull running around you!  I was watching one of those “World’s Wildest Videos” shows and came accross the sport of Bull Poker, or Cowboy Poker.  The rules of the game are a bunch of players get in [...]
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As I posted the screenshot of on Thursday, I did finish in 3rd place in Event #17 in the Mini FTOPS on full tilt the other night, which was the $30 rebuy nlh tournament, in 6-max format. The 6-max thing was an interesting trend here in this latest Mini FTOPS which just ended, where it seemed like every other event (or more) were suddenly 6-max, which I just don't understand or know the origin of at all. And to be honest, although there was a time a couple of years back when I was really in to 6-max nlh tournaments -- back when I used to focus on the nightly 30k 6-max mtt on full tilt every night, and when I played and cashed in the 6-max nlh tournament in the WSOP as well -- these days I find 6-max tournaments to be a bit of a drag, in that I think it caters more to my tournament game to get a little bit more time to play with some fairly deep stacks. I only registered for the event because I was just sitting down to the pc, it was still in the early parts of the late registration period, and frankly I've been beating up the $30 rebuy nightly on full tilt lately already, including my 5k score for second place in that event a few weeks back that I recapped here, and it seemed like something I would enjoy checking out on a whim on Wednesday night.

I should mention here that the other thing I really loved about the Mini FTOPS is that you could buy in to these badboys direct with FPPs. I must have had 30 billion FPPs stored up in my account last week, as I've been playing with some regularity on full tilt for more than four years now and yet have never even considered spending any of them on any of the little overpriced prizes in the full tilt FPP store. So in the three other events of the Mini FTOPS I played in this time around, I bought in straight for FPP points. 8000 FPPs here, 12,000 FPPs there, I barely notice the difference in my FPP account, and I certainly don't care about it, but I do get to spend my FPPs finally on something worthwhile, where the plan is if possible to turn these free buyins into actual cash money.

So anyways as I said, I registered a little late for this tournament, and as I sat down I noticed that there was one other regular stack (1500 chips), two double stacks of around 3000 and one quad stack of a little over 6000, so I immediately rebought to get my start at 3k in chips and be able to make a solid double with a little luck early in this thing. The immediate rebuy -- pretty much always the best bet of the night in any rebuy tournament as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, I lost my first buyin within the first few hands when my KQ on a King-high flop got allin to a guy holding pocket Tens, who natchy rivered a Ten to nearly felt me just minutes in to the tournament. Now that's just typical rebuy-hour bullshit, and the way I see it, I came to play in a tournament this large and so, especially with the ability to buy in direct for FPPs, I wanted to give it another crack. So I double-rebought in for another 8800 total FPPs, but unfortunately a short while later I was half-stacked again when my KK lost to a jackmonkey with A2o when he -- of course -- rivered an Ace after calling a couple of bets from me with nothing but Ace-high. Less typical, but still the kind of crap that goes on all the time during monkey hour. The rest of my second stack was gone maybe 10 minutes later when I got mostly allin with T9 on a KT9 flop but ended up getting -- you guessed it -- rivered by a queen to give a straight to the idiot who called a big flop bet with JT on that flop. In a split second I made the decision to buy in one more time and that's it -- a double-buyin of course, as my table suddenly had about 30k in chips around it to throw around and still another 15 minutes or so of rebuy hour.

Finally in the last 5 minutes or so of monkey hour I was finally able to make a move, as people typically tend to start pushing with crap if they have not amassed big stacks in an attempt to either make a move in the final few minutes of rebuy time or bust out trying. First I called an allin reraise from the guy to my left with the funny Asian name, and when my A4o held up against his K9 (even through the river, somehow), I was informed via pop-up window that I had just busted my 6th lifetime full tilt pro from a pro bounty tournament, this time a guy named Yongsuk Chang. $30 back into my full tilt account, so I'm only in for five buyins at this point, and then just two hands later a late position guy with just 3000 chips (average was over 6k at this point with rebuy hour just about to end) open-raised allin from late position, I found KQo in the big blind and decided to go for the double to get me at least around average heading into the rest of the tournament. The guy luckily turned up a dominated QJs, and just a minute later we broke, I took the add-on (so back in to the tournament for six buyins in total) and I entered Hour 2 right around average in chips of just over 6000:



Hour 2 started off relatively uneventful, with my only big pot being one where I called a preflop steal-reraise from a short stack and my A7s, was up against 99 and failed to connect, knocking me back down to around 4200 chips at the time and a good three-quarters of the way down the leaderboard with about half an hour to go in Hour 2. Near the end of the second hour I did manage to win a decent pot with AK on a King-high board and then with QQ on a Queen-high board, but both times I failed to get a call of my large bet on the river and found myself back around 6k in chips after I got rivered again a short while later by a naked flush draw donkey with ATs against my AK on the Ace-high flop. I chipped up a bit in the final hands of Hour 2, and I went into the break with just over 7k in chips, good for about two-thirds of the way down among the 1700+ runners still alive in the event:



I got my first real big hand of the tournament early in Hour 3, when I moved AJo allin preflop against a suspected stealer on a shortish stack, but then disappointingly I also got called allin by a third player whom I did not expect to stay in the hand. Turns out my JackAce was against Q8 and TT, and a Jack on the turn gave me more than a double to over 16k in chips, suddenly about 5k above average and good for around 350th place out of 1500 runners. At this point with the deep stacks afforded by such a large field in a rebuy event, I was for the first time in this event really able to start making the kind of moves I want to be able to make in mtt's, things like restealing on the flop, float-calling on the flop and then stealing the pot on the turn with a good-sized bet that is backed up by many big blinds worth of chips behind, etc., and with that I was able to slowly chip up to around 20k in chips, which was important because bad beat #5 against me was lurking right around the corner:



Obviously I'm calling this. And:



Not to blow this hand up into anything bigger than it was, but suffice it to say I do not believe I have ever been bad beat as much in any one tournament as I was in MFTOPS #17. Given how significant the pots during the latter half of my 11-hour run in this tournament eventually proved to be, I opted not to show screenshots of every single early bad beat I took, most of which I merely mentioned above. But they all took their toll, especially when experienced en masse all in one giant long sitting. Hands like this were so commonplace in this thing, the only saving grace I can come up with is that at least I managed to have a big enough stack to withstand each and every one over 11 hours worth, enough to make a nice big cash in the end at least, although bad beats would be a significant detractor on my total cash winnings in this thing before all was said and done. For now I was back at 15k, at this point right around average, and commenced trying to build a stack once again.

I got myself up over 20k with this river bluff-raise:



Hard to say why I did what I did here (both opponents folded), other than the generic sensing of weakness. With two guys in the pot, one of them raised preflop while the other just called, and then there was a bet and one of them called on the flop as well. In 6-max in particular, preflop raisers seem to get in there more often with Ax than wth pairs since the structure requires you to be so much more aggressive, and with all the calling going on in the hand, it just seemed like neither of these guys had hands they wanted to go to the felt with, and I sensed an opportunity to force some folds with my push with fourth pair. This time it worked. And then, just minutes before the third break, I got my first double-up with a big stack, against a guy who had been getting pissy with me in the chat after all my aggression no less, when I floated the guy on the flop, he failed to bet the turn with his top pair, and I ended up making runner-runner trips on the river with my lowly Q4o. The guy had been being such a dick to me in the chat, claiming I was on tilt after taking multiple bad beats right in front of him, so when the second Queen hit the river I opted for the major overbet, hoping if nothing else that this guy would be getting tired of me pushing allin so big on the river:



It worked. He had KJ, he couldn't fold, and not only had I doubled up again, but I had my first of what would prove to be many, many eliminations on the night who would be following me around all night berating me for my "bad play". Yeah. I was the one who made the bad play here by instacalling for 50 big blinds with top pair third kicker on a board with two Queens, three cards Ten or above, and three hearts. Yeah. With 36,243 chips at the third break, I was up to 100th of 873 remaining:



Got my first pocket Aces of the tournament about halfway through Hour 4, and although I won a decent amount of chips with it, it was only about half as much as it could have been:



The guy with the TT who we eliminated on this hand became the second guy who followed me around for the entire rest of the tournament insulting me in the chat. Because again, yes, it was my bad play I guess that led to his elimination. Next time I'll have to remember to fold those pocket Aces to action before the flop. Splitting the donk's stack lifted me up to over 40k in chips for the first time, and to the top 50 spots on the board with still just under 800 runners left.

Here's me getting coolered bigtime again a short while later in Hour 4, as I rivered the nut flush against one of these FTOPS gold jersey donks who are almost invariably the worst players at any table they are seated at:



I overbet-reverse-hoyed the guy, he called and, of course, that river card totally effed me:



Notice again, another guy calling me stupid in the chatbox. Good times. Meanwhile, I lost another 11k later in the hour when I called an allin with my AK, the guy flipped up JTo, and the Jack-high board once again cost me a shot to take a favored hand into the top 40 or so remaining stacks. Par for the course with all the other bad beats I took in this thing over the entire 11 hours of play, but my frustration level just kept rising and rising. I mean, even for me, this amount of bad beats was getting to be completely out of hand. So, back under 20k in chips again, I once had again to resume building a stack after surviving another sick setup and another dumb bad beat, but again I should point out as I have so many times in the past here on the blog that I was lucky to have as many chips as I had such that I would be able to survive the inevitable bad beats. Quite the number of beats I took in this was not really necessary, but to some degree they are always going to be inevitable and sometimes you just need to have enough chips to live through it.

Two-thirds of my dwindling stack disappeared on this hand just before the end of Hour 4, after the small blind called my preflop raise with my A7s, but I didn't put him on an Ace from the moment he had made the call. So when the flop came Ace-high, I bet, he just called. On the turn we both checked, which further fueled my thought that my pair of Aces was ahead in the hand, so when he bet out 8k on the river, I ended up calling with top pair thinking that I was best, and getting better than 2 to 1 on the call anyways even if I was beat. I was very wrong:



And with under 10k in chips, my run in the $30 rebuy Mini FTOPS event was suddenly in danger of ending early, well short of the money even, under the weight of too many coolers and, finally, one bad mistake on my part. Such is the way with no-limit holdem -- you play great for 6 hours, you make one mistake, and you're done just like that. Shortly after, I pushed allin preflop with QJo, not called. Allin with ATs on an Ace-high flop, not called. Allin preflop with the hammer, not called (shown). Allin with K5s preflop, not called. And then just before the fourth break I got back into the picture in the Mini FTOPS when I raised UTG with KJs, fully intending once again to get it allin but not wanting to push at that point since I had improved my stack 50% over the past few minutes. The big stack to my immediate left called my raise, and we saw this awesome flop:



In this spot, I knew I needed to achieve maximum extraction given my depressed chip position; this was double up for me or it was a total waste of a large flop. Having been the preflop raiser, I definitely wanted to c-bet here, so I threw in 3k into the 4875-chip pot, and the big stack smooth called (perfect!). Knowing I needed to double up here to get back into the race, I had to go for the bet-the-flop-then-check-the-turn move, hoping my opponent had something strong and would bet out here on the expectation that I was giving up after my turn check:



As soon as the big stack bet out as small as he did (3600 into roughly 10k in the pot), I knew he was strong and I was just hoping he didn't somehow flop the Ace-high flush, which would be so me. I repopped for my last 7k in chips, and the big stack had to call, and he showed this:



Goodbye, pocket Aces who only called my UTG preflop raise, and hello again to 31k in chips! Few hands later I added another 8k when the guy across the table called me down preflop and after the Ace-high flop with A2 despite my UTG preflop raise:



This, from the same guy calling me an idiot in the chat earlier. Good times, like I said previously. In any event, at the fourth break I was back alive, just under the 41k average chipstack and in 186th of 421 remaining.

Eight minutes into Hour 5, I had my new biggest hand of the tournament. I open-raised from middle position with AQs, and the big blind reraised me about 2.5x my bet, so I called. I don't love calling preflop reraises with AQ of course as anyone who reads here regularly knows, but in 6-max play again it becomes a more viable move due to the faster nature of the game, and with the hand being sooted it's something I would call with in most full ring games as well given the flush possibilities. The flop came with two of my suit, so I called my opponent's c-bet, and then the turn completed my nut flush. When my opponent checked the turn, I led out and he called my bet. Then on the river he pushed allin for his final 20k or so in chips, pushing right into my nuts. Turns out this time the river had coolered him just like the hand earlier when the river made my nut flush into my opponent's full house:



Now I had over 66k in chips and was up to the 60s out of just over 400 remaining. Back having a nice big stack again, I was immediately able to start aggressively chipping up, open-raising any Ace, any two face cards or really any two connected cards as well like 98o, QJo, etc. I even started doing some absolutely ridiculous things like floating two preflop raisers on the flop with the intention of stealing a bit pot later in the hand:



This is the only time in the tournament I did something this reckless, but these two guys had been playing and raising with shit at this table, and they had been talking smack about my play in the chatbox as well, so I figured I would take a shot with enough chips to hopefully hurt at least one of them. When none of these guys bet out on the Ace-high flop that also had a possible high straight draw and a flush draw, I figured these dickheads would definitely have led out with an Ace and at least one must have been on some kind of a draw. So, after the turn ragged out, I decided to follow through with my plan all along in the hand with a bet that looked like a guy holding a solid Ace:



And both guys folded, I'm sure with their anger increasing with every second:



I should note for the record that, in retrospect, my preflop call with this hand was pretty much the worst poker play I ever make, and it's really not something I would do again if given the chance. I can't explain it other than just that sometimes when I get a big stack and start to take over a table in nlh tournaments, I find it useful to figure out exactly where I'm at at the table, and just how far I can go and keep getting respect on my action. In any event, this hand put me over 80k and in even better position to make moves with now back up to 80 big blinds, in 45th place of 375 remaining. I called raises with 87o (had to fold the flop), A4s (won with a bet on the flop), and then of course I restole with this:



And I did my duty and showed as well as always:



I got up over 90k when I called a shorty's button push with QTs, he showed 86s and miraculously my QT held. I lost a race to another shorty, another guy who had been responding to the dickheads following me around in the chat after I had eliminated them earlier in the tournament for about 15k chips, so then two hands later I open-raised with the hammer again, took it down, and showed:



As an aside, I was into the final 80 runners in the 5050 on this same night at the same time. Wanna see how I got eliminated there right now?



How do I lose this? He's got just 4 outs twice, plus I have eight other redraw outs. I'm going to be top 3 in the 5050 at the same time as this Mini FTOPS run.



Or not. So, so sick. But such is the life of the mtt grinder. Ghey as it is.

So, back to the $30 rebuy Mini FTOPS. Just one minute after that sick, stoopid elimination from the 5050, I got involved in a blind vs blind confrontation when I called this smallish raise with third pair and no reason to believe I would be behind if I improved my hand:



I did improve on the turn, and of course I checked to the guy who had raised already on the flop, and when he bet out again I moved right in:



Turns out he had flopped two pairs with Q3, and he called for the rest of his stack, which would bring me over 100k for the first time on the night.

Or not, thank you river:



It's enough to make you cry, really. I mean, how many times can I lose to a 4-outer in one night? Sadly, that wasn't even close to the last time on the day. And there I was right back down to 43k. The chatbox lit up at this point with people speaking about four different languages, all laughing and enjoying that some guy hit a 12-to-1 shot against me. Classy.

Oh, and the very next hand?



quickly turns into this:



I'm really not sure why I didn't just pack it in, push allin blind repeatedly until I busted, and just go to sleep at this point. I'm really not. Here we were not even five hours in to what was sure to be a very long tournament, and I've already been bad beat about as many times as I ever get bad beat in an entire night. And all these asshats on the rail can do is talk about how lucky I keep getting? I guess that's why I was still alive in this thing while they were on the rail with the about 100 other people I had eliminated from this tournament already on the night. But to say that my frustration level was rising would be a major understatement. Those of you who've had the pleasure of girly chatting with me during a typical night of play -- which involves probably 5 or 6 bad beats on average spread over a few hours -- can imagine what my temperament was like after yet another bad beat, this one back to back with the last. 90k down to 33k in the span of about 2 minutes, against guys who I played circles around and didn't even know how far behind they were when they tried to gift me their chips. Playing mtt's regularly is just so sick for the psyche, take it from me. You have to be insane to really do this to yourself for any prolonged period of time.

I guess these guys convinced themselves through the chatbox that I was on some massive tilt, because it couldn't have been five more minutes before the assidiot to my left -- the guy who first four-outered me on the river with his lower two pairs vs my higher two pairs -- reraised me allin on this flop in a spot where I had to call my last 16k to win 50k. With top pair and a short stack after fifty billion suckouts against me, it was an absolute no-brainer call:



Yet another gift, and I was back over 66k in chips, with a fair amount of breathing room of about 35 big blinds, good for 86th place of 277 remaining. Although it felt like I had won about 500,000 chips already in this thing, I was still somehow in the top third of players after the idiot with the Q5 middle pair let me right back in this thing.

Few minutes later, obviously I called this:



I was up against pocket Jacks, and natch I could not pull it out either:



Back down to 56k as I just could not get a damn thing going in this thing. One minute before the fifth break, I once again felt compelled to call this against a confirmed aggromonkey on a perpetually short stack who had himself already sucked out on me once:



Donk! No part of the flush at all.



Ahhh, but this is against me, so no matter:



I mean can you believe this shit?!! Again back down to 54k instead of over 100k. Same ahole who 4-outered me once 8-outers me again here, plus fading my four redraw outs. I shoulda quit back four suckouts ago when it first occurred to me. The fifth break came, and I was in poor position yet again despite having won at least 750k in chips if things broke how they should:



After no playable hands for the first 20 minutes or so of Hour 6, I made a frustration play and finally got to experience the rush of sucking out on someone else, one of the uber dickheads who had been dirty chatting at me for over an hour at this table:





My god was that so effing sweet. I only wish I coulda called instead of raised allin, and done so on the turn instead of the flop, and then beat his ass. Gee, I wonder if I had this coming in this thing or what? Bastages. Anyways, finally I was over 100 grand, well over in fact up at 143k, and for the first time in hours I was back over 50 big blinds in my stack and with a litle bit of room to move. Up to 36th of 172 remaining.

I made another 15k in chips when I flopped trips with 62 on a 66x board, turning quads before failing to get a value call on the river. But I quickly undid that, buying a little advertising when I allowed myself to get called down on the river with the hammer after having bet on the flop already:



This only added to the general theme at the table that I was some kind of tiltmonkey, luckbox fishdonk. Which was of course a-ok with me. Especially when that same guy called my river bet puting him all in here about 15 minutes later:



The chat from the idiot I sucked out on up in that shot there probably didn't hurt either.



Bloom. Elimination number 5000 on the day. And I was at my tournament high, getting right up near 200k in chips for the first time, and into the top 20 with 144 guys left in the tournament. I quickly lost 40k in chips in a blind vs blind confrontation again with the guy to my right who had sucked out on me twice already when my A8s was no match for his AKo allin preflop, natchy. But when you catch a guy holding nothing but his cock in his hand basically eight other times in one night already, how can you possibly put him on a strong hand that ninth time, right? So frustrating. At least it made this one feel all the better, my second pocket Aces over 6 hours of play:



Which not only got me back up to 200k but also eliminated one of the worst, dirtiest chatting, generally biggest ahole players I met with during the night. And there were plenty to choose from, believe you me. And FrankTaylor3 would become the latest in a long line of eliminations for me who would follow my ass around until the wee hours of the morning just to smack talk me and my play as much as possible. I mean this f-up literally stayed up until at least 6am just to tell everyone else at my table late in this tournament how bad and lucky of a player I was. Till at least 6am!! Sure, I stayed home from work the next day. But I won 27 grand. What's this guy's excuse? I watched some guy win 27 grand and told about 15 other people how bad of a player he was all along the way? Wow.

Anyways, so I was back over 200k, and then right around the end of Hour 6, I jumped up over 300k in one sweet hand, where I had 85s in the small blind, a hand I was thrilled to get to play multiway when four players limped to me and I could complete for just 1700 more into a 17,700-chip pot. Mmmmmmmm. A no-limit player's dream. The flop came down Q97 with two of my suit (hearts), giving me a flush draw plus an inside straight draw to boot, for conceivably 12 outs into a very deep-stacked 5-way nlh pot. So I checked it with the four guys ahead of me and was surprised to see everyone check around on that flop. And then came the beautiful turn card:



As you can see I put in a standard turn bet of around 2/3 the size of the pot with my second nut straight plus redraw to the flush as well. I wasn't exactly sure what I was hoping for here, and frankly I wasn't sure what my opponents were on given the limited information I'd received so far, but I knew I was calling when I got this in response:



But it turns out I was in a bit of jeopardy here after all, as my opponent held J♥T♥. Amazingly I managed to dodge what, 13 outs once, between his higher straight and higher flush possibilities when the river came another 7, and after one more nice pot on a raise from me with K9 on a King-high flop, I headed into Hour 7 in 11th place of 82 left:



I treaded water right around the 400k level for the first half of Hour 7, blinding and anteing away (we were at 2500/5000 with a 600 ante halfway through the 7th hour) but then stealing enough preflop when the pot had not been opened in front of me to more or less recover those costs of playing the game at that point in the tournament. One such hand was J9s, another hand I love to play (as multiway as possible) in no-limit games, and when I raised it here on another typical steal play:



the big stack in the small blind reraised my 15k raise up to 45k. If I'm not suited and it's only heads-up I am likely to fold this hand in many situations, but with the hand being suited and the other guy being so, so deep, in no-limit I figured this is the kind of hand that I had to pay the price with and hopefully get lucky. And get lucky I did:



After first checking to make sure I hadn't accidentally fired up my pokerstars client instead of full tilt, I watched my opponent, who remember had reraised me preflop, lead out for 61k, less than two-thirds of the pot, and when I see a bet less than 2/3 the pot without a good reason for it, a little bell goes off in my head. So let's see, the guy reraised me preflop, and then he thought for a while and let his timer tick down to half before leading out for less than two-thirds of the pot on the flop. He's got a big pair. And I just flopped the nuts on him. And he's one of the few guys in the tournament right now who still have bigger stacks than I already do. Immediately it is obvious to me that this could be the biggest hand of the entire tournament for me if I can play it right. I considered how to get this guy's entire massive stack if he's sitting on pocket Aces. I figured if he's good -- and he's made it this far in a donkeyrific mass-marketed $30 rebuy tournament that had 3500 players and over 10,000 total buyins, so he could at least be reasonably good -- but if he's good, he might fold if I push in here. If he's good, this guy's gonna want to be pushing allin big with his Aces, rather than be put to the test for most of his stack and have to call off with his pocket pair. So you know what I did?



Yeah. I minraised, something I just about never do. But in this particular case, as strong as the minraise might make me look, I've got this guy on Aces and now, with this bet, I've put him into a situation where he can reraise me allin and expect to have significant fold equity with me still having 130k or so remaining after my minraise. I figured this was my best chance of getting this guy to get trigger-happy with his pocket Aces and see a chance to win a large pot where he is probably ahead, as opposed to if I push allin on him where he might (correctly) reason he is behind or at least where I am drawing very rich.

It worked:



My read was dead-on, and I held:



to win a massive, 850,000 chip pot, and just like that, I was the chipleader with 59 runners remaining, 7 1/2 hours in to the Mini FTOPS $30 rebuy:



For anyone interested in my stats through this point to make it from starting with 1500 chips to 850,000 and the chip lead, here they are as of that moment:



20% of flops, a little bit light for my preference in a 6-max event but acceptable I suppose. And especially impressive here is my showdown percentage being all the way back up to 47%. Believe me, when you take 9 bad beats or whatever it was over 222 hands, being anywhere near 50% in showdowns in a no-limit holdem tournament is to me the best stat on that board.

I picked up another 80k in chips when I busted the guy across the way from me who had gifted me such a huge stack with his pocket Kings, when my KQs bested his JJ which he moved his short stack allin with on a Queen-high flop. The rest of Hour 7 was pretty uneventful for me until the end of the hour when I called a preflop raise with pocket Tens and flopped a vulnerable-looking set on a KT9 flop with two clubs. I led out for the full pot, wanting pretty hard to take this one down right there rather than let some random club, Queen or Jack draw cheap to some dirty shit, and this time I was the victim of the dreaded minraise instead of the perpetrator. I thought it over for several seconds, and I figured I was probably currently head, facing some kind of draw to beat me, but that I probably held redraw outs to a winning boat. Thus, while I would not want to call allin from the chiplead position when I know I could just fold and still be 1st of 40-some players remaining, in this case I figured I was currently the favorite, and that I could obtain some significant fold equity given my opponent's large stack with a push. So that's what I did. The guy sat and sat. His timer ran down, and he requested extra time, which started at around 60 seconds. He let it get all the way down to 11:



before making what I can only assume was a big fold. Some kind of a shitdraw, or a pair-and-a-shitdraw or something similar. And just like that I was over a million in chips, the first guy to reach that point in this tournament:



At the 7th break I was still just over a mil, at the time in 2nd place with 41 guys left. We were slowly but surely getting down to the big time here, although in 6-max remember 41 players means almost 7 full tables still left. Given what I'd been through between the hours of 9pm and now 4am, to still be alive at all let alone to have such a large stack is more than I could ever hope for. I still can't believe I was still alive after all the suckouts, I really can't. And over the past hour as well, several more dickhead railbirds had come out of the woodwork to hate on me, including at least two guys I had eliminated from tournaments earlier in the week by severely outplaying their asses. I am still amazed how many people will follow someone around for hours, even days just because of one poker play, no matter what it was, how good, bad, lucky, unlucky, whatever. I can honestly say I don't think I've done this other than maybe one time when I wanted to see what it was like, and it very quickly became apparent that it did not make me feel cool at all to do so. Ahh well, the more the merrier I suppose, especially when I'm well on my way to my biggest-ever online score in front of all of them. and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.

With this huge stack and now with comfortably more than 100 big blinds, I was determined to play as aggressively as possible, and I stole a great many pots through Hour 8 as I fought to stay ahead of the 4000/8000 blinds and 1000 antes per hand. I think my favorite moment of haterism might have been this one (I literally have hundreds of screenshots of the highlarious stuff that was said to me), when I switched up tables and found myself salivating at seeing not just one but two gold jersey FTOPS winners at my table. As anybody who plays regularly in the larger tournaments on full tilt knows, almost without exception the gold jersey wearers are the worst pieces of shit tournament poker players on the entire site. Two gold jerseys felt like two golden spewmonkeys to me, and as I'm just digesting what I'm seeing having just appeared at this table like 5 seconds earlier, this pops up in the chat:



Just two more of my loving fans. Blizzuff I had busted from two tournaments earlier in the week, and McLovin had been one of my early victims in this tournament several hours earlier. Oh, and I liked this one a lot too:



He's referring to Jamie Gold there, having just said that I play like him and then I, ever the egger-onner, told him Jamie Gold was my hero. These guys literally made this run for me at least 2 or 3 times more enjoyable and interesting than it would have been otherwise.

In any event, most of Hour 8 was more of the same, me playing highly aggressive poker and bullying the tar out of guys with medium stacks who were focusing on trying to get closer to the big big money at the final table and did not want to mess with my open-raises and resteals preflop and my consistent flop and turn bets representing strength. Near the end of the hour, I reraised the small blind before the flop from my big blind with AKo, and he pushed allin on me in response in a move that is more common than you would think when I have the stack to be that guy at the table making it impossible for anyone else to get any traction because I'm just betting and raising so much that eventually people just want to lash out in response:



This guy picked the wrong time, as my own image is the thing that made me so unsure that he had Aces or Kings, or even any pocket pair at all for that matter. I had to call, and I was very pleased with what I saw:



But then the turn card had something to say about that:



and just like that, with yet another bad beat, I was back down to 800k in chips instead of 1.5 million and a commanding chip lead once again with just over 20 players left. In fact it slid me all the way down to 11 out of 22 remaining. So sick. I had a couple of nice pots in the balance of Hour 8, but I could not do enough this hour with my medium stack to stay ahead of the ever-advancing blinds -- which is much easier to do with a huge stack of course -- and I headed into Hour 9 in 12th of 19 left with about 2/3 of the average stack:



You get bad beat enough in these tournaments, and it becomes extremely difficult not to be affected in a meaningful way by them. Here my entire style of play was taken away from me, a style that was helping me to accumulate chips by leaps and bounds while I was just able to stay ahead when I got the money in comfortably ahead. I took a walk around the house, hit a home run derby on the Wii and came back for Hour 9 refreshed if not frustrated as hell at not just being able to follow through with my favored hands, basically all throughout this event.

Hour 9 did not start off well for me. My 680,000 chips quickly slipped below 500k, as anyone out there who knows me knows that I am never, even playing just to survive, never playing to make the next payout level, and really even never playing to make the final table. I want to win, and thus I came out firing in Hour 9, hoping to build back my stack like I had after so many other bad beats I had taken already in this tournament. Unfortunately, those attempts failed and as I mentioned I quickly slid down to 16th of 18 left and looking in poor shape to make even the final table:



From here it was just about stealing, stealing and stealing as much as I possibly could, trying not to get allin against a dominating hand but otherwise willing to go to the felt and take a shot with two undercards if the situation made sense given the shitty stack I was left with after the decimation of yet another bad beat. Finally, mercifully, after several steals and several folds by me to reraises after I had raised already to try to pilfer the blinds, I doubled through a guy who made yet another horrible call of this allin bet from me on the flop:



He called with pocket 8s, and somehow my 9s held to get me back up to 1.1 million and into 8th place of 15 remaining players. Then about half an hour later, my whole tournament changed when I reraised a preflop stealer with my big slick:



He pushed in response, and I felt I had no choice but to call:



He showed pocket Jacks, not a hand I would have folded in his spot, and check out that lovely board:



Ooooooooh. 2.2 million chips, with the turn of an Ace. On the turn. Sweeeeet. This was good for second place of 13 left in the tournament:



Sitting in 2nd place with just 13 left and in position to win a shitload of money, it was time to switch back into a bit more conservative mode, so I spent most of the rest of Hour 9 -- this being from roughly 5am to 6am my time -- sitting back and watching others slowly bust, stealing just enough pots to maintain my position at the top of the leaderboard as we inched closer to the final two 6-max tables, where the payouts would be a minimum of over $3000:



I had a massive suckout here, my second of the entire tournament, when I reraised a guy allin with pocket Tens, and he called with pocket Jacks for about half of my nice big stack. The turn card brought my salvation though in a big way:



and suddenly with just a few minutes to go in Hour 9, I was once again the chip leader, now with just nine players remaining:



Needless to say, the rail exploded afresh there with my second suckout of the 10-hour tournament. You woulda thought I sucked out 310 times though with the way all the haters were talking. It's comical, really. But I just laughed it off, not really engaging the monkeys like I had been a few hours previously, but not letting it get to me or anything at all either. I stayed above 3 million in chips while a few more people busted, dropping me down to 3rd of 8 players left, just two from the elusive final table, but still very close to the chip lead, where I remained as the ninth break came and went, with play resuming at 6am my time. Work on Thursday was quickly becoming a pipe dream I knew, but with 64k on the line and me so close at this point, some things are just more important, right?

Early in Hour Ten, I lost a race with 44 to try to bust a guy in 8th place, again much to the delight of the rail, dropping me to around 2.5M and 4th place of 8 remaining. Later in the hour, I open-raised preflop with A3o and had to lay down to a reraise, and then still later I called a 3-way preflop raise with JTo, tried to take a stab on the turn but had to lay down when my opponent led out big after the Ace on the river. Before I knew it, I wasn't in such good shape anymore on the leaderboard or for making the final table:



But then I won another key race here a short while later:



Yahtzee!



Which not only kept me alive but gave me back the chip lead as well, now just one spot away from the final table:



The final table bubble took forever, as usual in these things. People played tight as hell of course, and the full tilt rng always seems to be ready and willing to serve up rediculousness as needed to keep things interesting, as the short stack on the other table sucked out when dominated three separate times as we played hand for hand. And then, mericfully, the bubble burst when, predictably, QQ took on AK at the other table and this time the overcards won:



And here we were at the final table, just a few minutes before 7am my time in a tournament I had started at 9pm the night before:



And remember, this was a big-ass tournament after 10,000+ buyins at $30 apiece, and each member of the final table was already looking at at least five figures in payout:



I took over the final table chiplead when I called down this aggromonkey twice including on the river:



and then I busted the 6th place guy when I called his allin push on the Queen-high flop with my KQo, besting his AK:



And we were down to five. With me well out in front with over 7M in chips. All of us guaranteed at least 15k in cold, hard cash. The tenth break came and went, still with 5 of us in there, and play resumed with me knowing for sure I would not be working in my office on Thursday, having just watched the sun come up out my family room window while I still sat in front of the computer screen.

A short while into Hour Eleven I faced this situation:



and given how aggro this table was, there was no way I was folding here. I got heads-up against the allin guy, he showed AQ, and I held to eliminate #5 as well:



And then there were four, with me once again comfortably in the lead at over 7.5M in chips. And a short while later, the shorty across the table pushed allin preflop for 500k into my pocket 7s, I called and finally won the race to score a big elimination:



So we're down to three remaining, me with 9.8M in chips, the guy to my left with 5.6M, and the short stack across the way sitting on 1.8M. After not too long I raised with AJs preflop and the short stack pushed allin for only another 3x my bet, which I begrudgingly called with AJs three-handed. I was unfortunately up against AKs, and I could not hit to stop the shorty from doubling through me up to around 3.5M in chips, although I still maintained a slight chip lead over 2nd place. At this point I proposed that we deal, and eventually the other two guys agreed to work on a deal, so we activated full tilt's new final table dealmaking software. I was willing to go straight ICM for the split, proposing this deal:



which would have paid me 47k (first prize was slated to be 64k) and left $5100 for the three of us to play for. The shortest stack quickly accepted the deal, but after sitting for maybe a minute waiting for the other guy to accept, I grew impatient and decided to just play it out. Just like when I was in Vegas at the Venetian Deep Stack final table this summer, I am always in favor of a chop when luck has become a huge factor and we're down to the real big money, but I am most definitely not in favor of sitting around trying to convince someone to deal. Not when I think I'm the best poker player at the table regardless. So I clicked on "Reject Deal" and we resumed play.

We played aggressive, three-handed final table poker for a good long while, before finally I reraised the 2nd-place st
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What a week. I am still recovering from Wednesday night's big Mini FTOPS tournament where I managed to nab a cool 27 Large for my efforts, both emotionally and physically. I ended up having to stay home from work on Thursday, and I've experienced the same general burnout feelings that I've had after most of my other deep tournament runs, in particular ones where I've played the game for going on 12 hours straight or more. I am hoping to get a solid recap post up of my big score in the Mini FTOPS, but that is going to take some time and there's just no way I will possibly be able to do it in the detail I normally make my recap posts in, just due to the size of the tournament and the incredibly deep stacks which made for about a billion hands to play before getting down to the end. Hopefully on Monday I'll get that post up if at all possible as I really get a lot out of the process of reviewing my hands and screenshots, both in my successes as well as my failures.

For now, you'll have to be satisfied with my NFL Pick 5 for Week 15, as always in no particular order:

1. Kansas City Chiefs -1 vs Cleveland Browns. This one is pretty simple. Sure KC is not a great team this year, but they are decent and should be able to win at home against one of the NFL's absolute worst without too much trouble. 1 point should be doable for the Chiefs in this game, where I look for Matt Cassell to break out of his recent funk. The Browns got it way way up for their nationally televised game against their hated rivals in the Steelers who they could effectively eliminate from the playoff race with a win. This week Cleveland doesn't have a big reason to play for, and with word that the team is currently interviewing candidates to take over the team's operations, lame-duck coach Eric Mangini will probably be even that much more ineffective in this Sunday's game in Kansas City.

2. Buffalo Bills + 7.5 vs New England Patriots. This one is also pretty straightforward. The Cheatriots, mired in their worst season since their incredible cheating-fueled run began around the beginning of this decade, have yet to win a real road game in five tries in the 2009 season. Buffalo is bad, but they're a cut above the shitpiler teams in the NFL this year and have shown some spark on occasion on offense, and the Cheatriots are in a bit of a funk themselves. Many people have speculated that Randy Moss is going to come back with a passion this week after being called out for obviously not trying in last week's game against the Panthers, but in reality IMO Moss is a head case and I don't think he can just turn it off and on like that. And I especially like this line because it's more than a touchdown, which I think is favorable against a team like the Pats whose defense has let them down repeatedly here in the 2009 season.

3. Denver Broncos -14 vs. Oakland Raiders. I can't stand laying 14 points with just about anybody, but I really think this shapes up to be a great matchup for the Broncos. Although it's not quite as good as if JaMarcus Russell was going at quarterback for Oakland, Bruce Gradkowski's injury means that they will be starting Charlie Frye who hasn't thrown a pass in the regular season in over a year. The matchup of Denver's corners and generally strong defense against a rusty, inexperienced qb like Frye playing with poor receivers and very little running game I think spells very bad things for the Raiders. Oakland has only scored more than 16 points one time without Gradkowski at the helm this season, and against the shitpiler teams in 2009, the Broncos are 3-0, with wins by 21 points (vs. Cleveland), 20 points (@ the Raiders) and 31 points (at Kansas City). It's a risk but I'll take Denver and lay the points at home against a horrible team starting a totally inexperienced guy at qb.

4. San Francisco 49ers +8 at Philadelphia Eagles. Obviously this one goes against my personal fandom, but I try to be nothing if not objective about these games. I expect Philadelphia to win what is proving to be a crucial game almost every week as the rest of the NFC East continues to stay within striking distance of the Eagles even with just three games left to play in the season, but 8 points is just too much for me to ignore. This pick comes down really to reviewing the 49ers schedule more than anything else, and in particular how they tend to play on the road against good teams: At Arizona in Week 1 (Won by 4). At Minnesota in Week 3 (Lost by 3). At Houston in Week 7 (Lost by 3). At Indy in Week 8 (Lost by 4). At Green Bay in Week 11 (Lost by 6). Basically, when the Niners go on the road this year, they tend to play reasonably well, at least enough to keep it close if they aren't able to pull out the victory as has been the case so often on the road this year. And if they haven't lost by 8 points at the Vikings, at the Colts, at the Cardinals, etc. this year, then I'm not picking them to lose by that much at the Eagles either.

5. New Orleans Saints -7 vs. Dallas Cowboys. I'm doing the same kind of thing here that I did with the San Francisco pick above. In six home games this year (all wins, obviously), the Saints' smallest margin of victory has been 8 points, against the Falcons who always play them tough in the division no matter how good the respective teams are. The next smallest victory was already double digits, 10 points to the Panthers, another divisional rival. In the other four non-divisional home games in New Orleans this season, they played some pretty decent teams, some with formidable offenses and others with solid defenses, and beat them all pretty badly, including by 14 points over the #1 defense-having Jets early in the season, by 21 over the crosstown Giants in the middle of the year, and most recently also by 21 points over the Patriots just a couple of weeks ago. These guys get it up for home games, especially the nationally televised ones, and in this case the Cowboys are pretty much worse than those other teams I just mentioned, and they're playing the Saints at a bad time of year for them when they are near the low point of their season and battling history to boot. Oh, and Dallas's coach blows goats. I like the Saints by more than a touchdown here.
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After nearly 11 hours, a failed attempt by me to chop with the chip lead and three players left, and three sick suckouts against me when down to four or fewer at the final table, I present to you my largest online score ever:



I'll get a proper recap post up at some point when I can. But right now my ass is fried.
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OK ok, enough with the emails and blog comments. Quickly I will give my opinion here on the whole Tiger Woods fiasco, and then on to more important things, this week's trade of Roy Halladay to the Philadelphia Phillies in their attempt to become the first National League team ever to appear in three consecutive World Series.

First -- Tiger. There's a reason that I haven't really mentioned this here before, and that's because, generally speaking, I just don't see what the real story here is. I mean, yeah it's another man in a position of extreme power, influence, fame or riches who it turns out is a raging pig-ass immoral bitch. Tiger isn't anywhere near the first, and he'll be nowhere near the last. Sure it's always a little disappointing to see a guy knocked down from the top of the world like this, but again, I am at this point far beyond the point of surprise when it comes to the illicit sexcapades of anyone with a modicum of recognizable success these days. It's more or less just like baseball players using steroids at this point -- I just assume that any man who again occupies any position of power, influence, fame or riches is in fact cheating on his wife. Repeatedly. And often it's with totally freaky-deaky people like hookers, porn stars, transvestites, minorities or others somehow different from the person involved, etc. It's just the nature of the beast.

Basically, what it comes down to is that men are weak, in particular men who have 18 billion pounds of pussy thrown in their face every single waking hour of every single day. It's real easy for me to sit here with my feet up on my desk and claim that I would never, ever cheat on my wife. And I believe it too. But throw a hundred hot pieces of ass at me every single day I am alive, all of whom would do basically anything I wanted them to do at any time, any position, in any way whatsoever, and have them be not only willing but really begging to get it on with me, and you just can't say in a vacuum what you would actually do in that situation. It's the sad truth about the way men are. And that's not intended to be any kind of an excuse. It's just a realistic observation about what I see in the world today. I doubt that Tiger set out to marry Elin but then immediately fuck as many other bitches as he could find. I bet for a while he believed he would stop womanizing along with his decision to get married. But it's just so much pussy, all the time. It's wrong as hell what Tiger has done, and frankly I cannot believe how reckless he has been with the voicemails, the sexts, etc. he has sent, but in the end this just shows that Tiger is no different from most other mega athletes, famous people or incredibly rich people in the world today.

I should also mention how much more this sort of thing seems to be happening since our own acting president got busted chasing blowies instead of fighting Osama Bin Laden back in the late 90s. I've said this a million times but I'll say it again now -- the worst result of the Clinton presidency was not the breakdown of oversight and regulation of areas that are in need of such oversight and regulation, and it wasn't even the lack of attention placed on very real enemies that were quietly amassing forces to launch attacks against our country. The worst result of the Clintons (and I do mean both of them, because Hillary staying with that pig for her own personal gain is just about as bad and unthinkable as what Bill did in my view) was the loss of morals that that entire regime based on lying, cheating and selling out set as an example for Americans -- really, for humans -- all around the world. When people see the acting leader of the greatest, most properous nation in the history of the earth fingering his fat young interns with cigars, splooging all over the White House, accepting millions of dollars to free outright serial-killing criminals in his last days of office, and going before Congress and before the cameras and outright lying under oath, this has a severe and long-term effect on morals of everyone alive. And I definitely blame the Clintons as a significant factor in the seeming growing habit of the rich and famous acting with absolutely no morals whatsoever, giving no respect whatsoever to the lives of their wives, children, other loved ones or the millions and millions of people who look up to them.

The last point I would make about the whole Tiger rigamarole is just how funny it is that men will cheat on any chick, no matter how hot she is. I mean it's great being a man, really. Elin, the hot, young blond thing that she is, gets cheated on a million times by Tiger Woods. He goes to hookers, porn stars, even Perkins waitresses for crying out loud, just to avoid boinking her one more time. Christie Brinkley has had like four husbands cheat on her hot ass. Frigging Hugh Grant cheated on Elizabeth Hurley with a transvestite hooker for crying out loud! You ever wonder why women paint their fingernails and toenails, have every hair painfully ripped from every nook and cranny of their entire bodies, color their cheeks, their hair, their lips, outline their eyes, extend their eyelashes, and get fake stomachs, fake tits, fake lips, eye jobs, chin jobs, elbow jobs, and I could go on and on and on? Because it's true what they say: for every super smokin hot chick you can show me, I can show you a man who is tired of fucking her. It's just the way we are as men.

Now on the real business of the day, which is the trade of Blue Jays pitcher Roy Halladay to the Phillies. In a nutshell, this looks to be a three-team deal that essentially involves the Phillies sending former Cy Young winner Cliff Lee to Seattle, along with top pitching prospect Kyle Drabek and another top prospect to the Jays, in exchange for the Phils receiving Roy Halladay and the Mariners' two top pitching prospects. There are various reasons for the Jays and the Mariners to do or not do this deal, but I'm only concerned here with the Phillies's motivations, which in this case relate to securing an appropriate long-term commitment from a staff ace. Here, Cliff Lee had indicated that he would be looking for a 5- or 6-year deal similar to the one signed by CC Sabathia with the Yankees before the 2009 season when Lee's current contract is up after the 2010 season, and the Phillies as a franchise prefer to keep starting pitching contracts to fewer than four years -- a strategy which I strongly agree with, as long as you can effectively continue signing good pitchers for shorter agreements over time. Halladay, however, had already indicated an extreme interest in signing a long-term deal with the Phils, among other things due to the team's spring facility's location just a few minutes away from his family's Clearwater, Florida home, and he has since done so, negotiating a 3-year extension with an option all at roughly $20 million a year in connection with this trade.

So what the Phils are getting out of this trade in a nutshell is swapping out Cliff Lee, who was going to pitch in Philly for just one more year and then would have left the team as a free agent since the Phils already knew they were not keen to giving Lee the deal he is looking for to make his millions now, and bringing in Roy Halladay instead, for the next four years instead of Cliff Lee's one year. As I said consistently all through last season, I believe that, even with as great as Cliff Lee pitched in Philadelphia, Halladay is still that much better overall of a pitcher. His career numbers are slightly better, and he is that much more of a workhorse than even Lee has been in his time in Cleveland and Philadelphia. And in contrast to Lee's shaky 8-9 beginning to the 2009 season in Cleveland, Halladay has been one of the most consistent pitchers in the game, finishing in the top five in the AL's Cy Young voting in each of the past five seasons. Halladay throws about 8-10 complete games a year, he goes deep almost every single night when his GM hasn't totally messed with his psyche by promising him a trade to a contender and then not following through with it, and the guy is absolutely awesome at all aspects of pitching in the major leagues. But Cliff Lee has been awesome as well, and ultimately again this is not a deal that says that Halladay is a far better pitcher than Cliff Lee. Instead this deal says that Halladay can be a Phillie at a "reasonable" price for four more years after 2010, whereas Cliff Lee is only staying there for one more year at most and then he will be gone to more lucrative waters (located in the Bronx, New York most likely).

The big question right now I think is how the people of Philadelphia will react to this deal. It does seem that Phillies' GM Ruben Amaro has made a shrewd long-term decision for his team, locking up one of the greatest pitchers in the game today for the next five seasons instead of retaining a slightly lesser pitcher for only one more season. But that's not necessarily how the Philly fans are going to react to it. Cliff Lee, even in his short time in the City of Brotherly Love, was beloved by the hometown fans. He came in at the midpoint this season and immediately took over the mantle that had been held by Cole Hamels in the Phils' run to the championship back in 2008. He pitched so good for his first several starts as a Phillie that he was the absolute talk of the town, and that only magnified with Lee's incredible shutdown performances in the 2009 postseason. The Phanatics love this guy, and now he's gone, seemingly swapped for a roughly equal talent in Halladay, but not someone who has done anything yet for this city like Lee already had. Shipping Lee off unceremoniously like this as part of this three-team deal is not necessarily going to make Ruben Amaro a beloved figure in the city, at least not until Halladay goes nine innings in his first three starts for the Phils in 2010.

And then there is the small aspect of Amaro giving up top pitching prospect Kyle Drabek to Toronto as part of this deal. You may recall that talks for the Phillies to acquire Halladay before the trading deadline last season eventually stalled out because of the Phillies' refusal to include Drabek in the deal. So, back in June Amaro turned down trading Drabek for Halladay, acquired Cliff Lee and kept Drabek instead. And now here we are some six months later, and Amaro is giving up Cliff Lee, getting Roy Halladay and giving up Kyle Drabek to the Jays after all. This, in addition to giving away the other top prospects the Phils traded away to Cleveland to acquire Cliff Lee last season when the Halladay deal eventually broke down. So to all those out there who say this deal is a slam dunk, I think that is a silly position. It seems like Amaro made a short-term decision in acquiring Cliff Lee last season without really thinking through (or knowing about) Lee's future contract plans, and now Amaro is trying to undo that trade and go back to the deal he had wanted all along for Halladay, except that now he has to give up Kyle Drabek as well to get himself back to where he preferred to have been last summer anyways. Only time will tell how good this deal really is, although my suspicions are that the Phillies would not be giving up Drabek to make this deal happen if they truly thought as highly of Drabek as they have led others to believe over the past season or two in Philadelphia.
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My winter of discontent continued with my NFL picks in Week 14, as I followed up Week 13's season-worst 1-4 record with a 2-3 performance as I opted for the wrong underdogs in three of the five games I had going on. The Broncos basically hung with the Colts as I suspected, but their defense was a little bit soft and as a result they lost by 12 instead of the 7 that Indy was laying. Bruce Gradkowski messed up first one knee and then the other and was soon replaced by the dreaded JaMarcus Russell in Oakland, dooming my chances on picking them as a home dog to a bad team. And I was totally wrong about the Bengals, who got thumped in Minnesota as the Vikes got back on track while the Bengals fell to 9-4 with a very half-hearted effort on both sides of the ball. After going an abysmal 3-7 over the past two weeks, the overall season record now sinks to 38-27 over 13 weeks of picking five NFL games a week against the spread. And I am left looking for answers as I felt very confident in mostly all of my picks for the second straight week, and normally in the past I've been comically bad at picking NFL games early in the season but generally very strong at the end.

OK enough whining from me. On to this week's Winners and Losers report, on a weekend with a lot of fun stories both on the individual and team level.

Winners:

1. Brandon Marshall. Not sure how I can't start with this guy, who posted an incredible 21 catches for 200 yards and 2 touchdowns, breaking TO's NFL record of 20 receptions in a single game. Amazingly, you'll never believe whose name is at #3 on that all-time list of most catches in a single game. Brandon Marshall! Yep, B-Marsh now holds the #1 and #3 spots all-time with 21 and 18 catches in NFL games over the past two seasons. Unfortunately his efforts came in a 28-16 loss to the undefeated Colts on Sunday, but anything that unseeds TO from the record books is ok with me.

2. DeSean Jackson. After his 72-yard punt return for a touchdown in the 2nd quarter and a 60-yard touchdown reception in the third against the Giants on Sunday night, Eagles' second-year playmaking wideout DeSean Jackson now has an NFL record 8 touchdowns of 50+ yards this season. In the Giants game on Sunday, Jackson absolutely tore up the opposition, ending with 6 catches for 178 yards on the day, plus the punt return to power the Eagles to their 45-38 victory. DJ has not-so-quietly established himself as the premiere deep threat in the NFL today. Can you imagine this guy with Peyton Manning throwing to him and all day to wait DJ's routes out? Scary.

3. Wes Welker. After torching the Panthers' defense for 10 catches and 105 yards in the Cheatriots' key win on Sunday, Cheats' wide receiver Wes Welker reached 100 receptions on the season for the third straight year. Only Marvin Harrison, Jerry Rice, and the less famous but still potent Herman Moore have accomplished this feat before Welker, moving himself into some serious company in terms of all-time NFL wideout consideration, made even more impressive by the fact that Welker missed Weeks 2 and 3 to injury in compiling those 100 receptions so far here in 2009. In Sunday's win against Carolina, Welker accounted for well more than half of Tom Brady's 192 total passing yards, and he goes into Week 15 as the player with the most receptions (105) through 11 games in a season in NFL history.

4. Peyton Manning and Drew Brees and the March to 16-0. As both the Saints and the Colts moved to 13-0 this weekend, I figure it is time to start showing a little love to these guys among the other weekly Winners. I mean, we probably should have foreseen this early in the 2009 season when it became obvious very quickly that a good quarter of the total teams in the NFL this year are absolute horseshit. Other than the Titans, that hasn't really improved throughout the season so far, and one of the unexpected but directly related results is we are looking at a very real possibility of not just one but two undefeated teams over the regular season. And this time, teams that don't even cheat! Both the Saints and Colts are led of course by their awesome quarterbacks -- Drew Brees and his 3832 yards, 32 touchdowns and 10 interceptions for a qb rating of 112.3 and perhaps the single worst hair in the history of sports, and of course Peyton with his 3905 yards, 29 tds, 14 picks and 98.9 qb rating (and perfectly normal hair, although kind of a funny accent now that I think about it), and each one is looking good to captain his respective team to football immortality, joining the 1972 Dolphins as the only teams to go undefeated for an entire NFL regular season without brazenly cheating every other team in the league. The Colts' final three games on their march to 16-0 are at Jacksonville this Thursday night, then the Jets at home and finally at Buffalo to end the season, certainly all winnable games and ones in which the Colts are sure to be solid favorites. Meanwhile, the Saints have a similarly mediocre schedule the rest of the way out, with games at home against Dallas and Tampa Bay before ending up in Week 17 at Carolina, also all surely winnable games for the class of the NFC. The likelihood in my view that we have at least one undefeated team in the NFL this season has risen to around 75%, with the possibility of both teams going the whole regular season without losing also inching upwards into the more-likely-than-not camp with every passing Sunday.

5. The Miami Dolphins, the New York Jets, and the Philadelphia Eagles. These three teams were each effectively one game out in their respective divisional races in the AFC East and the NFC East, and each found a way to win a crucial matchup here in Week 14 to require the team ahead of them in the division to stay on track and keep winning in order to remain out in front. If you don't put the pressure on the teams close ahead of you -- see the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos this weekend -- then obviously you've got no chance of passing them, and with just four games left in the NFL's 2009 regular season before this past weekend's games, trading losses is not a viable strategy either if you're one game out. The Dolphins came up with a big win -- one of the underdogs next on my list for this past weekend who I opted to avoid -- at 7-5 Jacksonville to remain alive in the AFC race, and the Jets' defense beat the crap out of an inexperienced Tampa Bay offense to also claw their way back to 7-6 and again just one game behind the Cheatriots who have yet to win a true road game this season. And the Eagles meanwhile came out on fire, scoring almost immediately on their first drive of the game, running back a fumble, running back a punt, scoring on a 60-yard bomb to DeSean Jackson, and even getting Mike Vick another touchdown run in a play well designed for him to roll out and take it in to the corner himself from deep inside the red zone in their super-entertaining 45-38 victory to sweep the Giants and take their fifth straight game from the G-Men, the third straight in New Jerseyork.

Losers:

1. The Pittsburgh Steelers. Wow. I mean, wow. Talk about a team that just shut it off in a hurry. Five weeks ago the defending superbowl champion Steelers were sitting at 6-2, with the best defensive player in the game and one of the best quarterbacks in the league as well, and looking like a solid bet to make a run at defending last year's title. But what's happened since then in the Steel City is enough to make even Mike Rowe yak in the bushes. In their last five games, the Steelers are 0-5, and have found a way to lose to the Raiders, and Chiefs and now the Browns within that 5-game span, an unthinkable trio of suckitude that certainly no other team in the NFL can claim this season. On Thursday, the Steelers could not get into the end zone against the Browns as Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger picked up his first loss in 12 games against the Browns, and the Browns' defense repeatedly threw Ben Roth to the carpet in what was a pretty thorough beating at the line by the fired-up Browns on the day. At 6-7, the Steelers are effectively eliminated from playoff consideration in the AFC absent a modern day miracle.

2. The Dallas Cowboys and head coach Wade Phillips. Wade Phillips inched ever closer to his own firing this weekend as his Cowboys lost another crucial game in December, this one at home, as his team fought back to tie the game in the fourth quarter before allowing the Chargers to march up and down the field for two fourth-quarter scoring drives before another meaningless trash time touchdown for Dallas qb Tony Romo made the score look a lot closer than it really was. The Cowboys, who are quickly becoming the story of the NFL here in December, lost their second straight game to also drop out of first place in the NFC East for the first time in over a month, slipping to 0-2 in December yet again this year while their opponent the Chargers improved to 16-0 in the final month of the year since Phillip Rivers became the team's starting quarterback. With their final three games now at the Saints, at the Redskins and finishing at home against the Eagles, the Cowboys' flagging playoff hopes are in doubt since they need to finish a full game ahead of the Giants due to having already been swept by the Giants this season.

3. The New York Giants. Talk about stepping down in a big way in a huge spot. Here the Giants are fighting for their literal playoff lives, finding themselves in a situation where a win at home against bitter rival Philadelphia in Week 14 would almost assure the Giants of first place in the NFC East due to their favorable tiebreaker positioning. Win one game on Sunday night against the Eagles at home, and they basically win the NFC East. And how do the Giants react to the enormity of this game for their entire season? They let the Eagles storm down the field unchecked for a quick score, and then immediately fumble on a rushing play and give up a defensive touchdown, going down 14-0 within the first 6 minutes of game time. Later in the first half they again allowed the Eagles to march down the field before an uncalled blatant pass interference in the end zone caused Philly to have to settle for a field goal, they gave up a punt return touchdown to Eagles' spark plug DeSean Jackson, and then they allowed the Eagles to march down the field in the final 1:23 of the first half for yet another touchdown. Thanks to a missed extra point, the Eagles tallied 30 points by halftime in New York on their way to a 45-38 rout which seriously hurts the Giants' playoff hopes in 2009. As I've been saying here for weeks, that Giants' defense is an abomination, giving up 40+ points on Sunday night for the third time this season, twice to the rival Eagles, and they have now allowed at least 21 points in eight straight games once they got through the pancake part of their regular season schedule after the Raiders in Week 5. The Giants can still make the playoffs, though, if they can pick up just one game on the Cowboys over the teams' final three games, since the Giants own that tiebreaker thanks to sweeping the Cowboys in the regular season this year.

4. Randy Moss. With just one catch for 16 yards on Sunday afternoon against the Carolina Panthers, this is now Moss's second game this season with fewer than two receptions. What's more, there was at least one occasion on Sunday where Moss clearly short-armed an open slant pass in the red zone with the game with Carolina still in doubt, and it stuck out enough that Brady was over on the sidelines clearly trying to talk Moss into getting his head back in the game just a few minutes afterward. People will be talking about him starting this week, just like the Panthers' backs were after the game, with multiple named Panthers explaining their strategy of hitting Moss hard early and then watching him stop trying, stop running routes when he was not in a given play, etc. With the Pats still not having won a true road game this season (their only win away from home came in England), they're clearly going to need Randy Moss at 100% if they expect to go to any of the AFC heavies' stadiums and win a key playoff game in January.

TO Watch: TO had just two catches for 15 yards in a 16-10 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday afternoon, but one of them did go for a touchdown, TO's fourth receiving td of the season to go along with his one rushing score as well. Still, TO's lack of real involvement with the team's passing offense persists despite a two-week push where he looked to be possibly breaking out, and TO's stats for the season so far through 13 games sit at a mediocre 45 catches, 704 yards and four touchdowns.

JaMarcus Russell award: Week 14 had by far more worthy competitors vying for the award going to the worst, least efficient, overall loseriest quarterback in the league for that week, as even the Namesake of the award came in due to injury and put forth a valiant effort. Some guy named Keith Null started for the Rams in place of the injured Kyle Boller and the injured Marc Bulger, going 27 for 43 for 157 yards, 1 touchdown and 5 INTs, for a final quarterback rating on the day of 37.8. In a bit of a blast from the past, Duante Culpepper took the snaps for the Lions and completed under 50% of his passes in finishing 16 of 34 for 135 yards, 0 tds and 2 INTs, for an even lower qb rating of 33.3. Chief's quarterback Matt Cassell continued with his disappointing season in Sunday's loss to the Bills, putting up numbers of 26 of 43 for 224 yards, 0 tds, and 4 INTs, for a similar 35.4 rating. Brady Quinn of the Cleveland Browns even found himself back on this list after two straight quality starts, going 6 of 19 for just 90 yards against the Steelers, but the lack of touchdowns was at least complemented by a lack on interceptions which combined for a less disgusting 48.1 qb rating. As I mentioned, Raiders qb Bruce Gradkowski got injured in the second quarter and JaMarcus Russell himself made an appearance in relief, going a shockingly efficient 10 of 16 (!!) although for just 74total yards, 0 tds and one interception, giving Russell a (for him) lofty 47.8 rating. But despite all of those very honorable mentions for the the Week 14 NFL JMA award, I think the winner has got to be Tampa Bay's rookie qb Josh Freeman, who faced the tough Jets defense and finished the day 14 of 33 for just 93 yards, meaning that Freeman completed a very inefficient 42% of his attempts, for an equally inefficient 6.6 yards per completion , 0 tds, and three interceptions. All of the above combined for Freeman to post a final qb rating for Sunday's game of 12.1, and basically anytime you can keep that rating below 20 for an entire game, even JaMarcus Russell thinks you deserve his award that week.

NFL's Best Team: Take your pick, Saints or Colts. Both are 13-0, the Vikings are still a step behind in my view despite a nice bounceback against the Bengals this weekend, and the Bengals too are still behind after letting Minnesota walk all over them in Week 14. If I had to guess, I am going to go with past history and my own observations of the teams and still lean slightly towards the Saints here, based on the Colts' recent history of losing to lower seeded teams and underdogs in the playoffs who play a hard-nosed, ball-possession type of game. This Saints squad continues to impress, and they still seem to be the best combination of a stellar passing game, a solid running game, and a very impressive team defense that makes them very hard to pick against when facing any other team in the NFL this season.

NFL's Worst Team: With the Browns' big step-up in Week 14 against the superbowl champs in the freezing cold, this leaves the Rams standing alone once again at the bottom of the pack. That 47-7 shelling by the formerly shitpiling Tennessee Titans on Sunday afternoon doesn't exactly help the Rams' case either.
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According to several sources, Party Gaming and BWIN are currently in talks of merging their companies together.  If the 2 do merge together, the new group would be worth approximately 2 Billion Pounds. Stories were first released last week in The Times and The Sunday Times stating that the 2 companies are currently in merger talks.  [...]
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