IPODS, Poker Stars, WSOP and July 4th

I have been steadly increasing my music on my IPOD for the whole month. I'm probably about 2 days to being done importing. It is such a tedious task! I thought I would have about exactly 30 gigs once all of my "store-bought" cd's were imported, but I think it will be more like 35-40. Plenty of room to grow! I have been contemplating importing some of my live shows, but I haven't decided one way or another. I'll probably go through them all and pick out some of my favs that are MUSTS.

Speaking of music...Mo was flipping channels the other day and stumbled upon "We Have Arrived", which is basically the documentary to 2004's Bonnaroo. I watched it the other day and it was "ok", and somewhat interesting for the most part. I thoroughly enjoyed the section about Trey Anastasio conducting the huge orchestra. But, the best part to me, was the very end, when Jim James from My Morning Jacket comes out to do a solo acoustic set that was just for the media. Unfortunately, I was not very impressed when they spliced in the ending to the "Electric" version that ended their set during the torrential downpour. I have had the two most recent MMJ albums for quite a while, and sorta forgot about how much I liked them. The guy can sing. That is all. Great lyrics, and exceptional musicianship. The latest album, titled "Z", was produced by the same guy that did some work on older Pink Floyd albums; Echoes and Animals. Both of which are pretty damn WICKED! Now I see why that album is so hmmmm...fluid.

Last night I bit the bullet and deposited on PokerStars. I had to take advantage of their very rare first-time deposit bonus. I played one SnG on their and took it down for 1st place. This being my second time playing a tournament on this site, I have to say I actually like it. I don't really mind the blind structure, which I thought I would hate, since I've always been a UB guy. We'll see how things go on here. There MTT's have huge fields. I think I might try a couple 5.50 + rebuy sats to the 160 double shootouts for the WSOP. What the hell right?

Speaking of the WSOP! I am sooo geared up for this year. It probably sounds like i'm going to be out there, but unless some miracle happens, I won't. It's just so exciting to see the updates from all of the bloggers and from Cardplayer.com. I think Cardplayer is actually doing a pretty terrible job at it. The Pokerstars blog and a number of other bloggers updates are much more interesting. Plus, Cardplayers site is so damn slow! I have been d'ling "The Circuit" podcast daily, which I think is pretty entertaining.

Next week is July 4th and we are going to take a few extra days off and relax and go to the beach and pretty much hang out. Since we really aren't taking a "vacation" this year, I think it will be good for us. Summertime blues ya know?!

Well it WAS fun....

So the WBCOOP wasn't quite the success I was hoping for...sure I got through about 2100+ people, but the last hand hurt a bit...here it is:
PokerStars Game #5293925825: Tournament #25183930, Freeroll Hold'em No Limit - Level XIII (1000/2000) - 2006/06/18 - 19:22:35 (ET)
Table '25183930 31' 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: HoodedMan (38074 in chips)
Seat 3: Snoops44 (63537 in chips)
Seat 4: dj tim (91805 in chips)
Seat 5: PhenomPoker (40326 in chips)
Seat 6: ZbjaffeZ (106675 in chips)
Seat 7: ctwxman (72414 in chips)
Seat 8: Tbone19 (39250 in chips)
Seat 9: jamfreek (28850 in chips)
HoodedMan: posts the ante 100
Snoops44: posts the ante 100
dj tim: posts the ante 100
PhenomPoker: posts the ante 100
ZbjaffeZ: posts the ante 100
ctwxman: posts the ante 100
Tbone19: posts the ante 100
jamfreek: posts the ante 100
Tbone19: posts small blind 1000
jamfreek: posts big blind 2000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jamfreek [6h 2s]
HoodedMan: calls 2000
Snoops44: calls 2000
dj tim: folds
PhenomPoker: folds
ZbjaffeZ: folds
ctwxman: calls 2000
Tbone19: calls 1000
jamfreek: checks
*** FLOP *** [8c 6s 6d]
Tbone19: bets 4000
jamfreek: raises 10000 to 14000
HoodedMan: folds
Snoops44: folds
ctwxman: folds
Tbone19: raises 23150 to 37150 and is all-in
jamfreek: calls 12750 and is all-in
jamfreek said, "nh"
*** TURN *** [8c 6s 6d] [Kh]
*** RIVER *** [8c 6s 6d Kh] [Kd]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Tbone19: shows [8h 8s] (a full house, Eights full of Kings)
jamfreek: shows [6h 2s] (a full house, Sixes full of Kings)
Tbone19 collected 64300 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 64300 | Rake 0
Board [8c 6s 6d Kh Kd]
Seat 1: HoodedMan folded on the Flop
Seat 3: Snoops44 folded on the Flop
Seat 4: dj tim folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: PhenomPoker folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: ZbjaffeZ folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: ctwxman (button) folded on the Flop
Seat 8: Tbone19 (small blind) showed [8h 8s] and won (64300) with a full house, Eights full of Kings
Seat 9: jamfreek (big blind) showed [6h 2s] and lost with a full house, Sixes full of Kings

Pretty much a cooler huh? I guess I was stuck in the hand, I mean there aren't many better flops. Oh well, it was a good tournament, and I hope I can play as well in future WSOP sattelites. 104 out of 2247? I'll take that...too bad no cash or any kind of prize...till next time...

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 3475832

This should be fun!

I should've titled this blog "POKER"

I don't think I've really blogged that much about music or really anything else since I started this thing. Oh well, I guess I can talk about my brand spankin new 60 gig VIDEO IPOD!! This thing is great. I didn't really want one of these things for a while until I talked to my boy MIKE G (AKA Smokebreak) and he really got me excited about having one of these. Since I work all day on the road and listen to music pretty much all day (with some poker podcasts along the way) it really is a no-brainer. I am having a hard time doing anything but importing my cd's. I have done about 10gigs so far and theres a ton more...I think i'll probably have the thing full in about a week. Then I'll probably have to par it down and take out old stuff like "Hootie & tthe Blowfish" LOL!

Speaking of music, while in AC last week, I played at the tables while listening to my mp3 player for the first time. It was actually quite nice, and i'll probably never play at a table without music again. I figure that if I play at home with music it can't really hurt me. I try to stay pretty concious of whats going on at the tables and when i'm in a hand I try to tune out the music a little. I enjoyed it!

And now...POKER! AC was such a BLAST! Mo and I got in on Sunday night around midnight. We checked in and my baby gave me my last birthday presents...two pairs of sunglasses and 3-4 cigars (my favorite brand!). We then promptly hit the boardwalk and a blackjack table. I swear I don't want to play anymore blackjack. I just don't really have any fun! I mean sure it's fun when you win, but i've won and it still doesn't have the same effect as taking down pots at pretty much any poker table. Monday morning we woke up and had some room service breakfast. I want to mention a bit about The Tropicana and their new tower (The Havana Tower). UMMM, not that big of a deal...it's a new room, but nothing that special, aside from it being new and CLEAN! We walked around a bit and I got in touch with NeccoWafers (Casey) who was sleeping. Snadly and SnadlysGirl (Brad and Melanie) were out eating lunch and sightseeing (LOL - sightseeing in AC :^> ). I went down to the poker room and bought in to the 2/4 limit game. A nice start...low-limit poker. After about 2 hours or so Brad and Melanie walked by and I recognized them immediately. They hung at my table for a while and Brad brought Casey over and we talked a bit before Melanie sat down two to my right and Brad and Casey went over to the the NL tables. I played some good hands the whole session and sucked out a couple times for a win of $75 over about 2.5-3 hours. A nice solid session. Mo and I had a reservation at Red Square for a beautiful and delicious romantic dinner. We loved that place! I had some great vodka drinks and one semi-girly martini (but tasted delicious). After dinner we caught up with the Snads and the Wafer for some drinks at Ri-Ra, one of my favorite Irish bars ever (hell you get my vote if you have Boddingtons on tap). We ended up playing some NL for about 4 hours or so and I stumbled into the room around 4:30am up $60 or so. Here's a pic from the night:

Tuesday morning I had planned to play the $50+15 11am tourney. It only had about 30 people with 1st taking down $500+. Sadly none of us cashed. I basically played 3 hands: AA, QQ, JJ. I went broke with QQ when on the shortstack, but lost the monster pot that had me down to nubbins with JJ. Basically it went like this...blinds are around 150/300 and 4 people limp in and I look down in the bb at JJ. I raise it up to 1500 (with about 7K behind), one mp limper calls and on other (who is on the ss) goes all-in for 750 more...At this point I look over at the first caller and she has about 3500 more, so I push her all in and sure enough she calls...i'm up against 88 and KQ...of course an 8 comes on the flop and I go from above avg stack to the shortest stack. Two hands later, on the button I push with QQ and run into KK...IGHN! It was fun and I played with Brad to my right the whole time. He ended up busting about 30 minutes later 1 from the final table (only 4 payed). All in all it was a fun tournament,and I actually came back with an extra little cash as well!

I know in my last post I mentioned that I am considering depositing into a new site...so far, I think i'm going to put a little cash into 'Stars and go for some WSOP qualifiers...I'm pretty excited about giving it a shot!

Not much to report - End of May

I guess the end of the month wasn't really "swingy" for me. After the debacle of drinking and playing poker, and learning my lesson...I have buckled down. I am thinking about focusing a little more on MTT play. I think with my last final table I figured something out about my game, at least in the $5 spot tourneys. I have sooooo much more to figure out about mtt play, and I hope to get some help from some of the plus one soon!

I am about 1/3 of the way to re-building my bankroll. I am trying to stay as positive about this as possible. My TD play (other than my over the bankroll play) has been outstanding, and I may even incorporate a little A-5 here and there, rather than focusing on ONLY 2-7. The end of the month was not very kind to me on the SnG front, but I made some mistakes that I have learned from.

Sunday I am leaving after my birthday party for Atlantic City. Mo and I are really looking forward to it! I am also looking forward to meeting up with Snadly and Snadly's Girl as well as NeccoWafers. It should be a great time, and hopefully profitable.

After the AC trip, I have contemplated putting some cash on a couple other sites again. It seems like I have this thought about every month or two. The real reason is that I want to get in on some of the action, and while I have been a very LOYAL customer to UB, they just do not have the player representation that the other guys have. It's not like I am going to take my $$ off the site, I just want to explore other opportunities like FullTilt or PokerStars...we'll see how AC is!