Need an update

Man, it's been a while since I posted anything on this blog, so I figured I'd see what comes out. The last thing on here was our 1 year anniversary picture, which was a great night. We had a lot of fun and ate a ton of excellent food. Eating is like our hobby. My gut proves it! I finally got a bunch of new music though and actually went to a show last night at the 9:30 club in DC. Mo got me a $100 gift card from Tower Records (one of my favorite all time stores of course!), and I have about $20 left on it. I bought the newest Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon CD, The Bad Plus' newest release, Trey Anastasio's great new album called "Shine", Drew Emmitt, and Robert Walter. Chris and I went to see Umphreys McGee last night, as I said, and it was rockin' as usual. I have been listening to the show all day today since I bought it right after the show. These guys are seriously on fire! They just don't produce a dud of a show ever! It was Chris' second UM show and I think he had a good time...i don't know, didjya Chree? We spent a lot of the preshow chatting and drinking beers. I love that the 9:30 has such excellent brews on tap. Of course at $6 a pop, it can get pretty expensive.

I have realized something this month and October in that I really haven't played much poker, or should I say as much poker as usual. I have actually been doing a little experiment on Party Poker, and I have played nothing but $10 SnG's. I haven't had a very good run after about 15-20, but I think I am in a little bit of a funk. I believe I know the best course of action in these things, it's just my hands aren't paying off as much as they should be or I am getting a little unlucky. It's weird, but I don't think i'm paying enough attention as I should either. I will look at my results after about 50 and see what comes up. I really want to get 100 under my belt to really look at my PokerTracker statistics, which should be interesting. I did get to play two live home tourneys though, one of which I placed second. It was a really good mix of players about 20 or so, and three of them I had played with before. This was a $100 buy-in tournament that was possibly going to have a couple of "The Junkies" of WJFK playing in. Somehow they were all friends with these guys so I was looking forward to playing with them, cause they are funny as hell! Alas, they didn't show, but I took down 2nd place in the first tournament for a payday of $300. I was pretty pissed at myself when it got down to heads up. I feel like i've played so many SnG's and HU SnG's that I am comfortable with the cards and how to play in that situation. The problem was that I can't remember a time when i've played heads up live. I felt that my opponent had an excellent "read" on me and could tell when I was weak or when I was strong. At least I read the last hand correctly and got all of my money in with the best hand. It went down like this. I was sitting with a little less than my opponents stack, he had me covered but only by about 300-600 chips. The blinds were 500/1000 and I was in the sb/button with J5s. I doubled the bb and my opponent re-raised me to 4x the bb. Here I sensed that he sensed that I was weak, which I was...LOL. I thought it out and decided I'd call and see a flop, leaving me with about 1/2 my stack. The flop was an insignificant rainbow except for a 5 that gave me middle pair. My opponent immediately went all in and I beat him to the pot and called. He turned over KTo and I was ahead at the moment, but he had 6 outs to beat me. He turned a K and I got no help on the river and it was over. Not a bad beat really, but unlucky nonetheless. I went on to play the second tournament, but went out after something like 10-12 hands. My JJ ran into AK after an A Q x flop that I had to muck (he later told me he did indeed have AK). And then I was left with a short stack that I donked off when I had top pair to a made straight. I was just happy to play some live poker and actually make a profit. I can't wait for another chance to play with those guys though, they were a good group of players and nice and friendly to boot.

So I look forward to playing some more online soon, as well as the much anticipated poker night with our good buddy Aman. He is in town with his wife for Thanksgiving and we a tournament scheduled the day before. I really don't care how well I do, I will take it seriously, but I am just looking forward to watching "Shmee" in action!