Singing a tune and promising the moon

Well it is going to come to pass I fear and man is it gonna be ugly. Our President is so bound and determined to push through this monstrosity of a health care "reform" bill and I cannot understand why he wants this so much. Well I wish I didn't understand it but he wants to push something major through so that he can go to his constituents and say "See, I told you I would reform health care and I have" Never mind that it won't be reforming anything, it will just be telling more people what to do. Never mind that it won't save any money but will cost more, add to our budget deficit when we can least afford to do it, and will cut down on choice and availability. None of that matters to him. But instead of me ranting on and on, let me direct you to this post which says it much better than I do: http://www.newsweek.com/id/234953?GT1=43002.

Of course everything that goes wrong is blame it on Bush, blame it on the Republicans, etc. He's been President for over a year and still it's blame Bush, blame the Repubs, blame this, blame that. Just don't blame him or you're racist. You would think someone would get the message when as democratic and liberal a state as Massachusetts actually elected a relatively unknown Republican who campaigned on going against this bill. Hello? McFly? Anybody in there??

You know he talked a good game after Scott Brown was elected. "We will do it in a bipartisan way and get everyone involved" I remember hearing. Of course I heard that during the election in 2008 but once elected what did I hear? Hey we won, someone needs to remember that. Then he invites all the dems to the White House and basically shuts out the Republicans. After that he goes to the Republican Retreat and tells them they aren't willing to work with him and the Dems. Well that's a two way street. If this health care bill had included tort reform as well as extending health care to the uninsured, the Republicans would have had to support it. As it stands now it's just an Obamanation.

Well enough for now. It's bed time. Long past actually but that iced coffee I had a couple of hours ago really charged me up I guess. Anyway good night and good luck. We're gonna need it I fear.

Not a good weekend sleep wise. Not a good weekend to make money playing poker either. It started on Friday night/Saturday morning. I stayed up too late goofing off on Friday night which wouldn't have been so bad but I also woke up pretty early on Saturday. Ok, no biggie, I'll just take a nap in the afternoon or sleep in Sunday Morning. Fat chance of that. Ran some errands during the day and went to play poker at Derby Lane Saturday night. I would have been better off not playing probably.



Early in the tourney we were playing short handed. Neither the small or big blind were there yet. Everyone folded to me and I just called for 50. Gal on button raises to 200. Since there is no one in the blinds, she might have a hand or she might be stealing. Probably she has something. I am sitting on A-4 of spades. Flop comes A-9-4. Bingo, top and bottom pair. I check and she bets 200. I raise to 500 and she calls. Ok she probably has an ace, maybe AK or AQ. Turn is another 4, big bingo. Made my boat. I sneakily check again and she bets 1000. Was thinking of raising but I just call. River is a 3. I debate checking to her again but want to get more out of her so I bet another 1000 which puts about 2/3 of my chips into the pot. She calls and I confidently turn over A-4 and say "Fours full." Imagine my shock when she flips over AA for Aces full of fours.

I was lucky not to lose my entire stack but that was only because she was afraid I had 44 for quad fours. Unfortunately I didn't damn. But my goose was basically cooked and soon after I lost with 10-10 to KQ off suit and that was the tournament or as Hootie Johnson (former head of the Masters golf tournament) that was the toonamint.

Soon after that I was playing straight $2 limit holdem. I hate $2 limit holdem for the most part but the poker room was giving away $500 every half hour to the best holdem hand. Needless to say I didn't come close. We did have fun though as my wife joined me soon after I got to a table then a couple of friends of ours came to the table a bit later. There was a lot of bantering back and forth and as pots were stolen, rivers were ugly or saviors, and suckouts went around the table. I got down about $70 but made it all back up before we left. Unfortunately our daughter has now failed history from 2 years ago as one of our friends teaches at my daughter's high school and my wife took two good sized pots away from her. She nailed me on two pots as well as she rivered me twice with horrible draws. Still a splendid time was had by all.

Sunday was Superbowl sunday. I was rooting for the Saints only because I dislike Peyton Manning (intensely) and thought it would be nice for the Saints to finally win something. Otherwise I have no use for the Saints as they are one of the division rivals of my Bucs. Not only did the Saints win but it was a very profitable SB for me on the betting front. I took a number of different prop bets hitting one for first player to score (Pierre Garcon at 10-1) and also a freebie for $25 from the site I bet with for first player to make a first down (Dallas Clark). I also won taking the Saints getting 5 points and betting the under. I lost only one bet (outside of the other props for first TD I took) and made a very sweet profit for the day. The commercials were also better than last year which isn't saying much and I didn't have to see a Manning in every other commercial. I even like their Oreo commercial against the Trumps, that was pretty funny. No commercials really stood out to me but most were not lame like last year. I do think Bud Light lost a lot of their commercial magic. They had been pretty dependable for good SB commercials but not this year. Any thoughts on the SB or the commercials?

Well that's enough on last weekend. I will update Valentine's Day weekend later today I hope.

The difference between rights and privileges

Been thinking about this for a while but could not figure out how I wanted to say this. Say you lived in Chicago. You have never had a drivers license. Hell they got the El etc and you probably didn't need it. But you decide you want one now. So you read your book, you go to a driving school just to make sure you understand the rules of the road. You take the written test and ace it and then go out on your driving test. You pass it with flying colors. Someone at the DMV then tells you that you can't have a license because a few of your fellow citizens are afraid of you when you drive that 1965 Chrysler New Yorker tankmobile on the highway as you might flip out and crush their little Prius or Civic with your 4 ton steel monster.





What would happen in this instance? Do you think the person denied a license would be able to sue and have just cause? He isn't guaranteed a license now is he? There is no right to drive listed in the Bill of Rights, no amendment was passed to the Constitution. We are told time and again that driving is a privilege and not a right and yet to be denied a license on such grounds is unthinkable and a lawsuit resulting from it would be granted pretty quickly I am willing to bet.





All this is a lead in to my thoughts on a right we are supposedly granted by the Constitution, the Right to Bear Arms. Read it sometime. It's number 2 on the Bill of Rights which leads me to believe the Founding Fathers thought pretty highly of it. And yet, try and buy a handgun in Chicago or New York City and see how hard that is. Try to get a Concealed Carry Permit and not to have your permit revoked in Philadelphia (see how pissy they are too that because of reciprocity, Pensylvanians are getting concealed weapons permits from here in Florida and they can't revoke those unless the holder actually breaks a law) when your home is broken into. Apparently your gun "scares" some people so badly that they want to do what they can to ban you from even having a handgun. Some areas of the country pass restrictions on how many bullets your clip can hold or try to make every bullet be microencoded and trackable from the people who sell it to you. Which would make the cost of bullets very expensive. Or they refuse to issue a concealed weapons permit to you but won't tell you why.





What I'm trying to tell you is there are a lot of people out there who want you to believe that they know what's best for you. They want you to rely on someone else to help you when your life is threatened but they certainly don't guarantee someone will be there to help you in your hour of need. They tell you women especially that your body is your own to do with as you like but won't let you carry a concealed weapon to protect that body. And let's face it ladies, we may all be equal but in 95 cases out of 100, a man will outphysical a women in a confrontation. Cuz thankfully we aren't all built the same and as Pepe LePeu says "Vive la difference" We live in a free land supposedly but it's not as free as you think. You can't let them take away what you are guaranteed in the Constitution "for your own good" Keep that in mind boys and girls as its a dangerous world we live in. Remember the Boy Scout motto and Be Prepared.





On a lighter note, I mentioned I would talk about Valentine's Day in my last post, I believe. It is a tradition in the Cavemann household for Mrs Cave and I to play in the Valentine's Day couples poker tourney at the local dog track/poker room. We have played in all but one since they inaugurated the thing and about 6-7 years ago and have hit the money twice before. Though the Mrs has not had great luck in playing, I have done pretty well. It's a time limited tourney so everyone left at the end of 3 hours of play is in the running. Each couple (if both people are still left in the tourney) totals their chips and the top 5 out of 50 couple make the money. It's a fun tourney and like I said, we have had some success.





This year unlike other years, the entire tourney was No Limit Holdem. Other years it was either all Limit Holdem or Limit for the first half and then No Limit the rest of the way. I started out pretty well, didn't get much hands but make the most of them to be a little over my starting stack. Early on I was playing an A-10 in late position from seat 10 against the two blinds. The woman in the small blind in seat 4 I didn't recognize but I had played against the guy next to her in the big blind before. Older Asian dude who played loose aggressive. Flop came 3-9-10 the lady in the small blind who I had tabbed as pretty aggressive earlier checks and the guy bets out for 500. Blinds were only 50-100 and there was only 400 in the pot at this time. I put him on a pure steal or maybe a pair of 3s or 9s. I didn't want to screw around with him and have him suck out a second pair so I raised him to 1500. All folds and I pick up some chips. Then the cards were dead for a while. The lady in seat 4 hit some hands mostly against the Asian guy and played very aggressively, me and the guy next to me kept it pretty tight and dumped most of our hands. Everyone was having a good time except the Asian guy who was pretty short stacked by then and the chatter was pretty light around the table.



A little later on I pick up AA middle position. I decided to risk it everyone had folded to this point and just call. I was hoping the aggressive lady in the big blind would raise me. Unfortunately the aggressive lady just called along with 2 others. Not what I wanted with AA. Flop wasn't bad with Q-8-2. Checked to me and I make an almost pot sized raise. Seat 4 calls of course but everyone else folds. Next card is a J. I don't put her on 9-10 for the straight but QJ is a possibility. She checks and I bet 2/3 of the pot which she calls again. Not sure what to put her on but definitely a queen, hopefully not something like QJ or Q8 suited. Next card is a low blank. She thinks and then checks. Wasn't sure if I was ahead or behind but felt if I bet and she raises all in I'm screwed so I just check. She showed a queen and I breathed a sigh of relief when my AA held up. This I think set me up later to win a very big pot. Got AA again in early position and this time I made a normal raise. It gets folded around to seat 6 who thinks for a minute and pushes all in. I think he put me on middle pair or AK or AQ and even if I have JJ or QQ he is not much of a dog. Boy was he surprised when I called and flipped over AA to his AK. Took him out and almost doubled up.

By now I had a nice chipstack going. Played carefully but made a few moves to steal some pots and keep my stack up. People are getting knocked out by my wife is hanging in even though she is short stacked. She saves herself a couple of times with all in bets. Later on I get KK and raise. Get reraised all in by a guy with half my stack then two short stacks push in. I call and am ahead of 6-7 (reraising me with this?? ) KQ for the shortest stack and JJ for the other short stack. Unfortunately the one short stack gets a J but the 6-7 does not make his flush and so even though she almost quadruples up, I still get more chips from Mr 6-7 than I lose to her and two more people are gone.

Not long after our table breaks. We are down to 3 tables now. And the new table is not good to me. Lousy hand after lousy hand and people are making some crazy moves since time is running out. The short stack gal from my table who quadrupled up is hitting all kinds of stuff and passes me in chips. I am getting worried about not making the money the way the chips are flying around. Finally last hand comes around and 4-5 people get all in. A guy makes a sick straight with 8-5 and takes a massive amount of chips. He ends up with the biggest stack at my table and his wife was still in so they have a lot of chips. They end up finishing first. A guy at a different table had a monster stack and would have finished first but for that last hand. His wife was knocked out though so they got second on his chips alone. The short stacked gal ends up finishing third even without her husband as he was knocked out. Luckily Mrs Cave had enough chips to get us up to fourth so it turned out to be a good Valentines Day.

Enough of my life from a month ago. Next post will be more up to date I promise.

Where Have You Gone Joe Dimaggio?

After realizing last night that movies like "The Breakfast Club" and "Sixteen Candles" are almost unknown by a large segment of the population, especially that segment that drives much of the advertising and spending dollars in this country, it is a good bet a much larger part does not recognize the origin of this post title. Then again I doubt anyone will be reading this and it amuses me so that's what counts. I just wanted to say, I have been gone for quite a while but now I am back.

I have been gone from blogging for quite awhile now, I know when I started to blog a bit I didn't realize how much work it really was to create and post a new blog on a regular fashion. After reading so much more blogs I think I am a little better prepared to write more now. I hope. A lot has happened since my last blog. The economy, led by the reckless policies of the Fed, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and some major Wall St players (AIG, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, The entity formerly known as Lehman Bros, Citigroup, et al) has completely tanked and is now just a shadow of what it was. And that wasn't so great either because as Financial Genius Bill Fleckenstein kept saying, the economy was built for the last 8 years on the housing ATM and sooner or later that was gonna run out of cash. But the players I listed certainly didn't help matters with their foolish and utterly dangerous policies. Also the "Great" Alan I can't see any bubble Greenspan let this happen and in fact aided and abetted it. Just like his follower Ben Bernanke did as well.

What else has happened? For starters, a black man was elected President. Hope and Change y'all. After a year in office, many of the people who voted for him are still hoping for some change. The only change I see is the record deficits of the previous temp employee in that office are but a pale imitation of the ones now upon us. That and the fact he keeps trying to foist off a completely insane health care "reform" bill on the populace. Anything being opposed this loudly by this many people cannot be good. Also all of the back room deals being cut to get dissenting Dems on board cannot mean this bill is what they claim it is. Lets not even go to the supposed savings this bill will (not) produce. And the fact that it only covers HALF of the people not currently insured makes it a complete boondoggle that will cause much more grief than it cures. Of course they don't tell you anything about that.

A Republican was elected senator from Massachusetts. I thought I had seen the last of those in my lifetime when Edward Brooke (the first elected black senator btw) was defeated in 1978. Goes to show you how much of a backlash there seems to be going on against Washington. That will probably change between now and election day 2010 not to mention 2012 but it is refreshing to see none the less. Though I am a card carrying member of the Republican Party, I am coming to see more and more that the elected nimrods of both parties are much to blame for the mess our economy is currently in. I am favoring voting against every incumbent in the next election, throw them all out, and let a new set of thieves take their place. The current ones are so entrenched that all of the lobbyists have their private numbers. I am tired of seeing quasi governmental agencies like Fanny and Freddie putting money in their pockets and then watching the Congresspeople we elect to protect our interests rolling over to help Fannie and Freddie steal. Not to mention the big investment banks. Much of the blame for the current credit and housing fiasco should be laid right at the feet of Congress. Both Pres Clinton and Bush tried to rein in mortgage financing but the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee both ignored them. Why? See how much Barney Frank et al got from the people they are supposed to be overseeing. Wanna see a hoot? Watch the YouTube video from 2003 of the Federal Regulators testifying in front of the House Financial Services Committee. The head regulator (Schultz maybe? I can't remember) is castigated and basically called a liar when he told the Committee of the shenanigans going on at Fannie and Freddie. Of course the Repubs are almost as much to blame. After all they were in charge of Congress back when these hearings took place. As much as the Dems went after the regulators, the Repubs did nothing to stop them nor to overhaul the bad lending going on as they should have. So throw them all out. I want fiscal conservatives in charge who don't want to spend more money, not people who want to create more programs and entitlements for their constituents.

Enough ranting for now. I didn't want this first post back to become a long discourse on what I want or don't want to happen, just a reintroduction of ME. I just want to say it's good to be back and I hope to become a much more diligent blogger like my heroes across the bloggerverse. I'll be back soon, thats a promise.

"There are no atheists in a foxhole"

I wanted to use that title in homage to one of my favorite bloggers, Rachel Lucas, who used it as her title last week and immediately started catching flak from .......... ATHEISTS. She was referring to some bad things that had happened recently in her boyfriends family and how desperate she felt at the time. The atheists apparently took umbrage to that title because according to them, there are atheists in foxholes. Lets put aside the fact that this is just a saying, and she did not coin the saying but felt it applied in her situation as she is not a religious person. Like many of us, she is feeling her way through the minefields of belief in what cannot be known and the hope that there is something more to existence. She and her boyfriend and his family were going through a very rough time and she decided to share that with her readers which is something I'm not sure I would have done, or at least not so fully. But she thought it would be important so she did.



I'm sure she regretted it once the emails and comments from various atheists started rolling in. They really got offended by her title and the fact that according to them, there are actually atheists in foxholes. Yes, I'm sure there are some atheists in foxholes just like good fences don't always make good neighbors and the early bird doesn't always catch the worm but come on people, what ever happened to common decency??? Is it that uncommon?? Do you have to come down on someone going through a bad time over the title of her post? I swear the country is getting stupider all the time. The smartest people say the dumbest things and common sense is so uncommon that it should be on the endangered species list. So you people who decided to take offense because a woman in pain felt it applied to her should be ashamed of your reaction and the way you went about telling her how you felt. You should wonder why you cannot even feel the basic human emotion of sympathy for someone going through a bad time when she needed some support from her friends and had the guts to put it out on cyberspace for all to read instead of keeping it to herself. Take a look at yourself. Is it that important to "defend" your point of view at a time like this? If you answer yes to that question, buddy I don't want to know you because obviously you care more about your own needs than anything else.



I don't read a lot of bloggers but I have a set rotation of those I enjoy for their intelligence, their humor, and their warmth. I don't always agree with them but I always enjoy reading what they think and they usually make me smile as well as think about what I believe too. There are some amazing people blogging today and Rachel Lucas is one of the best. So you asshats who feel obligated to give her a hard time take note, there are a lot of people out here like me and we don't take kindly to people who would insult someone in their time of need. If you do not have the common decency to act like a civilized human being then do the next best thing and shut the fuck up. The world would be a kindlier place if you just did that.

Weekend Update

It was a pretty quiet weekend on the home front this weekend. No major poker tourneys to play in, or minor ones either. Was a little money tight so didn't want to spend a lot. I did play a fair amount online actually. Lately I have been playing this tourney that is half No Limit Holdem and half Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo. I'm a decent hold em player but I play a lot of Omaha and I think I have an advantage against most of the players when we play Omaha. Last 2 times I have played this tourney I have finished 4th and 3rd. I would have made the money time before that if the guy I had caught bluffing hadn't caught a runner runner straight to almost knock me out too.



So I have been slowly building a stack online now mostly playing low stakes Omaha Hi Lo ring games and these occasional tourney cashes and I have played enough to qualify for these bigger freerolls. Saturday there was a $1000 free roll that payed a top prize of $150 that I qualified for. I managed to last 4 whole hands in that one lol. I had AQ, called a raise to 80 and flopped 2 pair on A-Q-10 flop only to lose to the raiser with KJ who flopped the nut straight. Sucked to be me. I feared the straight but thats the way it goes. But I noticed I had almost qualified for a $10,000 free roll on Sunday so I played some Omaha and made a few bucks that night and played enough Sunday to qualify for the 10K tourney. That was fun I must admit. I managed to suck out a straight on the river with AK when a Jack fell. The guy I beat was PISSED. He was going off on me being a donkey, etc etc. And it was a slightly donkey play but he forgot one cardinal rule. Make sure you bet enough to not make it worth my while to stay in.



He raised to 150 over blinds of 25-50. I raised to 450 with Ace of hearts and King of Diamonds and he called along with 2 other guys. Flop came Q-10-8 with 2 diamonds. He bet 600 into a 2 thousand chip pot and I thought a second and called. I figured him for either a low pair or maybe AQ or QJ and he caught the queen. The way I watched him play, he was easily capable of raising on QJ and calling my reraise. But a king or jack wins it for me I figure. Next card is the 9 of diamonds. If he has something like QJ he has the straight already. But I have the king of diamonds along with 3 others on the board and a jack still makes my straight so at worst, unless he is holding the A of diamonds which I sincerely doubt, I have 3 jacks and 9 diamonds that will win for me, or maybe only 2 jacks if he has QJ. As it turns out, I was wrong and he had flopped a set (so he said, he never showed) and he bets 1200 on the turn. The pot had 3200 before he bet and so I figured my odds at 34-12 or a little under 3 to 1 to get a winner vs his bet of almost 4-1 pot odds and called him again. Next card is a lovely jack of clubs. He thinks a second and bets another 1200. I wait a second and raise him all in. He folds after thinking for a while and says AK so I decide to show I did have AK and that sets him off!!



He starts talking about what a donkey I am for calling, that I'm a calling station etc etc. And it was a little donkeyish as he pissed me off for calling my raise on inferior cards (I felt) and he had raised me off some other pots before when I didn't catch. But it all came down to money and odds. He gave me too good odds to stay in the pot. Yes he apparently flopped a monster, my guess is he had 8-8 or 10-10 preflop but maybe he had QQ. He wanted to keep me in the hand to suck out as much money as he could so he kept the bets reasonable but by the turn, I was getting decent odds to stay in with 3 diamonds and a gutshot straight draw. So it was proper for me to call him down. I mentioned to him that he bet 1200 into a 3200 pot and asked him what kind of odds he gave me. Well he didn't want to hear that now. Of course most players don't want to hear it when they have goofed and allowed someone to suck out on them. But unless you have quads or a straight flush, you are often times taking a chance on exactly that happening if you underbet a pot. He bets 2K on the turn and I have to let it go because I'm not getting good enough odds to call. I almost let it go anyway because the one thing about pot odds in tourneys is that you can play the pot odds perfectly right up till you go bust. Then you cannot reload and try again lol. It's not like playing in a ring game. Our table broke before I was able to watch him go bust which was too bad. What really pissed me off was someone else sucked out on him another time and he went off on that guy being a donkey etc. He may have been right as I don't remember if the guy played good odds or what, but take your beats like a man.



On Saturday night I also played some Omaha at the Dog track. I had some good luck on my first hand and won a decent pot so I was up all night while we played. I turned my $60 buyin to $160 but then went card dead. A lot of bad hands and the good hands caught crap. A-2-3-6 and the flop is JJ9 and crap like that. Twice the dealer flips one of my cards over while dealing to me and both times its a freaking Ace. When you aren't getting decent cards and the best card possible keeps getting burned it irritates you. The first time it happened I just laughed and then the very next hand I look at my cards and its A-J-A.................. and the last card is ANOTHER FREAKING ACE. If you don't play omaha, hands that contain 3 of a kind are really bad hands because you can only use 2 cards in any hand so it's hard to win with it. I was in the small blind so I called the $1 to see the flop but the last Ace didn't hit and neither did K-Q-10 to complete a straight for me so I immediately dumped to the first bet. But I stuck it out and stayed in with mostly solid hands and eventually turned it around. I did stay in on a hand that wasn't very good and got proved why you don't play crap. I ended up turning a full house 9's full of J's but lost to J's full of 9's and I had to call it down even though I figured him for that hand just because it was possible he had something else. There are some really loose players in Omaha who think any flush or full house is the nuts (it's that holdem background again, where full house over full house is nearly unheard of but in omaha you can see it quite often, especially if you play shit cards lol) and they win some big pots but if you watch, they lose it all back.



I was losing enough chips back that I was getting ready to quit if I lost enough to fall back to 60 again but the cards finally turned and I flopped a flush with an A-5 low. If someone had A-4 they had a better low because a 2-3 were on the board but the flush held up and I had a number of callers on the hand that it turned out was a winner for both ends. That pulled me from 80 to 130 bucks. I fell back a bit but hit a winner on my last hand to finish out at 130 when the table broke. So it was a successful stint on the tables even if it wasn't as successful as it could have been.

Well Whoopdee Doo

So, apparently our Democratic challenger for president is a black man. Barack Obama. Let me get this out of the way. Yippee, hip hip hooray. Ok that's done. Now if I don't hear anything more from him for awhile, or from his stupid wife, I will be fine. Because I have some very serious doubts about his candidacy that's for sure.

First off, what has he done? Nothing at all. He's a very junior senator who has no clue about foreign or domestic policy running on a platform of "change and hope" Change for what? Hope to do what? Well according to him and especially his wife, change the tax laws to take more money from people who work for a living and give it to people who don't. I mean if you are running on a platform of "change" don't you think you want to put out some concrete plans about what you want to change? Oh one thing he is willing to change is he wants to sit down with the leaders of outlaw states N. Korea and Iran and negotiate. Negotiate what? Is he gonna negotiate Iran from sending people into Iraq and causing trouble. Thats a big duh. But then he probably doesn't believe Iran is doing anything in Iran. Ole Nancy Pelosi is even worse. Instead of giving credit to the administration when they get something right like the troop surge and General Petraeus' handling of the war over there she credits Iran for negotiating an end to hostilities in Basra. Yes that's right, I fucking RAN. She didn't credit our troops, she didn't credit the Iraqi troops who did a lot of the work in Basra, she didn't even credit the Iraqi people who have turned on Al Qaeda, nope it was due to the good will of Iran. I suppose that means we should be happy if Iran reduces it's terror operations in another country and give it credit for doing less of what it shouldn't be doing in the first place. Nancy Pelosi is a miserable excuse of a California politico who is more interested in winning elections than in supporting her own country. People like that in positions of power are what gives aid and comfort to our enemies.

Now don't get me wrong, we have a right to disagree with each other, hell this country was founded on dissent. But come on people. Some clown saying that from a soapbox on the corner is one thing but the highest ranked member of congress saying that is completely bogus and she is patently doing a disservice to the people who have gone overseas and sacrificed, some of them have sacrificed their lives, to allow her to say stupid shit like that.

Now on to other stupid shit. Seems to me Barack Obama is getting a major free pass on his affiliation with Rev Wright and the Trinity Church. Oh sure, now that he has disassociated himself from the church and from Rev Wright (and Fr Phleger too who as a lapsed Catholic really really sickens me) we are supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about him. Yet I was reading an interview he gave a few years ago when he was a newly elected senator. The interview was mostly about his beliefs and his church association etc. In the interview he specifically says he goes to that church "every week, 11 am service" So you tell me how he misses all of those anti American, anti white diatribes ole Rev Wright is spinning out from the pulpit. How does he sit there, as a senator, a representative of his country, while Wright is going on about how the government is responsible for AIDs in this country and in giving it to black people? And he does nothing about his associations with these people until he gets called on the carpet about it by the press, amazing they even noticed considering how far over they are leaning on his candidacy (must have been the NY Times since they were big Hilly supporters) and now we are supposed to think he doesn't feel the same way? Let me tell you, if I go to church and the pastor is going on about how the government is doing all these bad things, and is telling falsehoods to get his point across, I'm not going back. I expect politicos to lie, but I don't expect the people who interpret the word of God to do that right in front of me on Sunday morning at 11 am.

So in 6 months we have the election. I know a lot of conservatives are not sold on John McCain who they call a Republican in Name Only. I know he doesn't thrill me to tears either. But I also know some other things. Like he was a man who was willing to give his life for his country. He comes from a naval family, both his dad and grandad were admirals in the navy, I think his great grandad was too actually. He is a man of principals who could have gotten released from prison camp early since he was son of an admiral but chose to stay until people there longer than him were released which meant he stayed till the end of the war. I know he supports the troops and what they are trying to accomplish in Iraq. He won't pull them out before Iraq is ready to take care of itself and as much as I don't want them over in Iraq, now that we are there, we better do the job right. He supports America's friends and won't negotiate with outlaws. I think I'll take a chance on his not being as conservative as I would like over the chance Barack Obama fucks everything up and I end up paying for the rest of my life. Cuz in 4 or 8 years ole Barry won't be around for me to kick anymore but his policies, his taxes, and his screwed up foreign policies will haunt us long after he is gone.

A donkey by any other name .....

Sure I felt ready to play in the WSOP qualifier this past weekend. I had been patient, avoiding trouble hands and big pots when I didn't have the goods, and playing aggressive when I was in a hand. Funny how things can change



We started with 10,000 chip stacks and 30 minute blinds so there was no pressure to play fast and loose to build a stack. That can work for or against you. If you are picking up some nice hands and people feel pressured to make moves with marginal hands, you can make some big chips fast but if you are on the other end, it can cost you fast. This way, you get time to settle in and play.



I started off slowly, making a few calls with suited connectors and either not hitting or getting raised off the pot. I made sure I wasn't doing anything in early position as that's just suicidal. And I'm not catching anything either. There are a couple of aggressive players at the other end of the table and so I am avoiding calling and having them raise me off it. Then I get 7-7 from early position. I want to play these and I don't want to be raised up if I limp so I raise to 200 (blinds are 25-50). I get 3 callers. Haven't raised a pot yet and as soon as I do, everyone wants to call. Flop comes A-5-4. I'm sure at least one guy has an ace and I hope he is weak like A-8 and not A-4 so I bet 400 trying to represent a big ace. Guy folds and the aggressive guy further on raises to 800. Now I'm fairly certain I am up against either a set or 2 pair because if I am on AK, he would be foolish to raise me on Ace anything else. Everyone else folds and I decide to call him. Next card is a 6, a good card for me giving me both ends of a straight draw. I check and he bets 600, which puzzled me a bit cuz it looked weak. I thought he would bet more into this one as he had been pretty liberal with his chips. If he makes a bigger bet, I probably have to chuck it as the pot odds aren't good enough for me to play this hand. To me this narrowed his hand down to a big ace or a small 2 pair as a set or top 2 pair would try to move me off the pot. Of course he may be afraid I have a set too, though I don't see that. Anyway final card is a blank. I check, he is obviously confused by my wacko play and checks showing me AQ to take it down. I felt pretty stupid and wondered if I should have pushed the last bet but I just didn't want to get involved in a huge pot on a bluff. Not at that point.



The next 2 hours or so is a blur of lousy hands and decent cards that hit nothing. I did get to see 9-3 and 10-5 a number of times each but never saw AK or a big pocket pair. I am slowly bleeding chips as the antes kick in after the first break but still have some chips at least. By time of the second break I am down to 5400 and haven't played a hand past the flop in well over an hour. The only hand I thought about playing and didn't, K-9 suited in middle position, I decided to dump because I couldn't stand a raise then. Of course no one raises, the flop is K-9-9 and I want to shoot myself.



We come back after the flop and I'm talking to the guy on my left who is also short stacked. Guy next to him has made some big chips and the guy next to him is the one I want to play against. He is obviously used to playing in low limit tables as he is making some very thin calls with 2nd and 3rd pair against raises. And winning when other guys have AK and don't catch. He knocked out the first guy on my left when he called his healthy raise with A5 suited. Flop is 9-10-J, guy makes another good sized bet and he calls that. Next card is a 5 and the guy pushes all in and Mr Low Limit calls with a pair of 5s. He has to put this guy on a complete bluff which it was cuz he had AK but still, he could have had QQ in that position too. Last card is a 2 and he takes the pot and knocks this guy out. That was the 3rd time I had seen him go to the river on a hand I wouldn't have called originally. Of course I never get cards up against him cuz I know if I have top pair, I'm going all the way with him.



But of course he gives away all his chips before I ever get a hand so I don't taste any. I do win a couple of pots from the blinds, once with 5-5 which held up all the way to the river and another with a 7-3 when I river a 7. So my stack is building back up slowly to about 7K. Then I pull AQ in the small blind. 4 people call to me and I decide to just call the blind too. I hate playing AQ in early position and if I raise it and don't catch an A or Q I probably have to fold it cuz I'm not going broke with that hand again!! Since blinds are now 300-600 I would need to raise it to at least 1500-2000 and thats a good chunk of my chips so I would rather see the flop first, then make a decision. Flop comes down Q-7-3. I bet out 1800 and get one caller, the big stack 2 places to my left. Next card is a Jack. I was going to bet another 3000 but that only leaves me a little over a thousand behind so I decide to push all in. He calls and I wonder if he has QJ but he tables Q8 so I am ahead by a good bit. Last card is a 9 (thought it was an 8 when it first flipped) and I pick up a good pot which gets me up to 17K.

After that I lose some blinds and one hand when I flop zippo with AJ. Guy to my left gets AA, guy to my right also gets them, but they keep avoiding me, as do KK and QQ. I'm down to about 14K when I pick up 10-10 on the button. Guy who is new to the table raises to 1500 from 3 seats to my right. He had just raised a couple hands ago and picked up the blinds. I raise him to 4000. He goes all in for about 11K and I start to think. I really put him on a steal on that hand. He was fairly late in the hand and it just feels right, but maybe he has a big ace. I'm favored over either hand though not by much over big ace. For some reason I didn't think he had a big pocket pair. So I call him for most of my chips and of course he has AA now. Sucks to be me. Needless to say a 10 did not hit the board and I was crippled. Not long after that I was out.

I'd like to say I played well except for that hand or I was unlucky but really, I was a donkey and I made a few mistakes during the tourney. Usually unless you are all in, you can come back from a couple of mistakes if you play solidly. But going all the way back to the 7-7 debacle earlier and the 10's near then end, I really did not play all that well when I had a good amount of chips riding on it. I'd like to think I could have gotten away from the last big hand if I had just called his raise and seen the flop but in reality I probably still would have gotten hammered. The flop was 9 and below (I actually had a straight draw on the river) and one of us would have bet after that flop for sure. And I probably would have put him on big ace then too. Maybe I would have gotten away from it but there was a pretty good chance I wouldn't have. And that's on me, I had made up my mind and didn't look at the range of hands. And I should have. His initial raise was not that big, could easily have been for a big hand. Still in the middle I didn't play poorly, I stayed out of hands a lot and when I did make something decent, I got all my value out of it. So I would grade my self a C+ or maybe B- for the day. Unfortunately I would have needed A- to hit the money that day. And some luck lol. Oh well it was a learning experience.

Omaha in Florida? who'd a thunk it

Because of the holiday weekend and being a little flush with cash from finishing second on Saturday night, I decided to play in the Sunday night Omaha tourney at the Tampa dog track. I don't usually play there because it's a little bit of a haul for me to go that far and they almost never have an Omaha Hi/Lo ring game going and I don't care for low limit holdem anymore. They don't usually have that going there either come to think of it, its almost all 1-2 no limit going there. But they do have a Sunday night Omaha Hi tourney. It's not my best game by a long shot but I do enjoy it so I decided to play it.





Only about 40 people sign up. You start with 2500 in chips for $25 and you can do 1 rebuy for $20 to get 3000 chips and 1 add on at the end of the first hour for another 3K chips for $20. So I start playing. A lot of young players at my table. As Teddy KGB said "Aggresyeve and Strong like a bull". I of course folded most of my hands because I was getting utter horseshit and when I had a decent hand, someone is raising the pot and I don't have that good a hand to put my whole stack in on at best a draw and not even 50/50. You know in Omaha a lot of times you'll fold a hand and the flop will come and you are wishing you could take that hand right back out of the muck because it hit you so well? I wasn't even getting that! My hands were so bad, so many times I had stuff like 2-3-7-J all different suits and crap. So I just kept dumping hands. I played a couple and the closest I got to winning was a having a 5-6 to go along with the 7-8-9 on the board but another guy had 6-10 for the higher straight so I lost that one too. Fortunately I didn't put many chips in so it didn't cost me much.





We get to the end of the hour and they ask if I want to rebuy and/or add on. I'm thinking if I shouldn't just say the hell with it since my cards are running so bad but I take the 6000 chips for $40. We start back up and it's more of the same except now the blinds are up and it's costing me chips every go round to fold. I do get to see some of the these young guys do some stupid crap with their chips though. 3 people call the $400 big blind and the button pots it to something like 3300. He has about 20K and is one of the chip leaders. All 3 people call. Flop comes 10 and two low cards and he pushes the rest of his stack in. 2 people call, guy to my right is all in with Q-Q-9-8, guy to my left is all in with J-10-10-9 and the original raiser is in with A-A-7-3. There is no flush draw on the board to speak of and he is pissed cuz 3 people called his raise and the guy with pocket 10s makes a boat and wins a monster pot. I can tell he is normally a holdem player just from his cards and his reaction. Yes having AA in Omaha is good but not so much with a 7 and a 3. Also he thinks these people called with crap but a good wrap hand like the winner had was probably a better hand than Mr AA had, especially after the flop. Even the guy who busted with QQ had a good enough hand to call the raise with, though maybe not the all in after the flop. Anyway, this guy could have gotten away after the flop with losing less than a quarter of his stack. Instead he is down to 4K after the hand, in my range now lol, and he immediately pushes all in on the next hand and loses the rest of it. I'm thinking, I can't even sniff a decent hand and these idiots are going busto with them.



So I'm still getting blinded down but we are down to 15 people or so. We've been playing for almost 2 hours and I have not won a hand. This is getting sad. I finally get into a hand from the big blind and I've got the nut flush draw and a back door straight draw I'm not even looking at, up against a set of 8s. Turn and river are the 3 and 5 and I make the wheel I wasn't even looking for to win the hand. This puts me up to the lofty amount of 6K in chips. Guy next to me is sitting on 25. Luckily people are going bust left and right it seems. I am still bleeding chips from the blinds trying to get some kind of playable cards when the director announces we are down to 11 people and one more bust puts us at 10 and the final table. I'm down to 2K in chips again, when some guy at the other table goes all in and loses and they break the action to seat us at the final table.



I get seat 4 and luckily they redraw the button and it's at seat 6 so I have a few hands to play before the blinds come my way. The blinds are up to 1000-2000 now so I have just enough to play one hand. A couple of hands after we start up, I look down at AK of clubs and 6-9 of hearts. Not a great hand but not bad either, especially compared to what I have been getting. So I push all in. There are 4 callers at this point so I can turn my 2000 into 10,000 if I get lucky. Flop is perfect for me, 5-7-8 and I pull the nut straight. I'm sweating because there are 2 diamonds and I'm just sure someone has 2 in his hand. A couple of big stacks start betting and 2 other guys get all in on the hand. Turn is a black 10 and now I'm worried someone is sitting on a J-9 for a higher straight than I have. Last card is a 4 of hearts. Big stack lady to my right bets 10K and gets called by the remaining big stack across the table. He flips over a set of 10's, she has 5-6 for a low straight and takes the side pot (which is a lot bigger than the main pot lol) while my 6-9 hold up for a bigger straight in the main pot and 2 guys are knocked out.



So we're down to 8 people, I have a few chips though only enough for 5 big blinds, and I finally start seeing some playable cards. I get all in on another pot with one of the big stacks and another guy who is also all in and pull it out though I cannot remember what I had. I pull it out though and increase my stack to 30K while the other guy goes bust. I'm still not a big stack but I'm not tiny anymore and people are respecting my bets, some of the time at least.



A few hands later I'm on the button and look at a beauty hand, AAQJ with the AQ of hearts. Guy 2 places to my right calls the blind and the lady with the large stack between us also calls. I raise the pot which bumps it to 11K and both of them call. Not what I'm looking for at all. The flop was also not what I was looking for either as it's 7-7-6 with 2 clubs. Guy bets the pot, lady next to him repots it and I know I'm up against it now and unlike the idiot at my last table, I can put down AA in this situation which I do. Guy pushes back all in and the lady calls him. He shows 8-9-10-J for a massive straight draw and he might have had 2 clubs for the flush too but the lady shows 6-6 for a made full house and he is drawing almost dead and goes out on that hand. The lady is now the massive chip leader with something like 90K cuz he had a fair stack and she got 11K out of me too. I am down to 19K now and in last place still but at least I avoided going bust. I'm talking to the lady telling her she has the money made now as she is such a large stack that she can fold down to final 2 or 3, but she doesn't want to play that way.



We go on break and a couple of guys are giving me a hard time telling me that everyone hates me because I have been all in 3-4 times now and not busted and we are one away from the money now. We are having fun but I am sweating it cuz I do want to hit the cash too. Next lowest stack to me has between 25 and 30 K so I am a fair amount behind and blinds are up to 2000/4000 now. I fold a hand when the guy to my left raises and the lady to my right calls him. He pushes all in on the turn, all low cards with 2 hearts and the big stack lady next to me thinks about it then calls him. He had a big straight wrap that he hit and she had 2 hearts and was trying to knock him out with a flush. Now he had a little over 40K preflop so she had to put in a nice chunk of change to call him but she didn't even think about it. Heart doesn't hit the river and he doubles up and becomes chip leader on that hand.

I don't know what is going on in this lady's mind to call that hand down and to play like that with such a big chip lead. I konw she won some races and marginal hands, maybe she felt invincible or something, but in her situation I would have been avoiding going all in with anyone unless I had the nuts or a massive draw with straight and flush. Or if she was up against a small stack like me, then the risk is minimal. Instead she gives up half her stack on one shot with just a flush draw. Next hand the 2 of them tangle again. She pushes on the flop and he calls her with a big straight draw again. Which he hits on the turn. She bets, he raises her, and she pushes all in. This time she has top set but he already has a made hand so she only has 10 outs. She doesn't catch and it's good night irene for her. From chip leader to bubble girl in 2 hands. And ole lucky Kevin is cashing now. Yippee!!

We shake our heads and talk a little bit after she is gone cuz we all can't believe she donked off all her chips like that when she was this close to cashing. Then play gets intense and I keep catching some good cards. I win a small hand with a set that I couldn't bet because of all the straight cards on the board. Then one guy goes all in against the chip leader next to me and damned if he doesn't catch another straight and take him out. I then manage to take out a guy in 4th place when I flop the nut flush and the board doesn't pair up to give him a boat. He was in the same position I had been with the lowest stack and the blinds eating him up and he found a decent spot to push it, just was unlucky I had already made my hand. We play 3 handed for a while and I am getting plenty of respect when I push now as I have been all in 5 times and won every one. And they can see I'm not pushing garbage either. Even though I am small stack now, I have 50K now. One guy has about 65 and the leader has about 130K and he isn't ready to chop as he has enough to cover us both right now.

Finally I flop top two pair with AJ and bet the pot. The next bigger stack raises me all in and I think about it a second then call him hoping we have a split or he's on a draw. Nope, he has bottom set which puts me behind. Unfortunately he also has a jack which is one of my outs. I don't catch on the turn or river and finish in 3rd. I am plenty pleased by this, especially the way the first 2 hours or so went, but I really felt I had a chance to win this one if I kept playing. But enough about that, I went about 6 places further than I should have lol. And that's 2 cashes in 2 days for me which is unheard of.

Now I felt fairly ready to tackle the WSOP satellite tourney I qualified for at Derby Lane. I'll post next about that.

Weekend Wrap up

The wife and I get started in the 7 pm tourney. I'm sitting in seat 1 at table 31. I love seat 1 and 10 usually but I hate table 31 as its always first to break. Sometimes I end up playing at 4 or 5 tables and it makes it hard to get a rhythm going when you're constantly moving. Unfortunately there was only about 70 people in the tourney, usually there is 100-110 people and they pay top 10 or so. This time only top 7 get paid.





I take a hit early and lose almost half my stack when I raise with a pair of jacks and a queen kicker and get pushed off the pot. Almost called the all in but it didn't feel right. Guy had been fairly tight and he pushed hard. Either he bluffed me or he had me, think he had 2 pair. Either way I don't want to make that decision that early. After that I catch nothing for a while. After the first break I'm the big blind. I have 100 in the pot and 950 left. Guy under the gun raises to 350 and gets 1 caller when I go over the top of him all in for 1050. I'm sure at least one has a real hand but both have been playing a lot of hands and I didn't think either had a big pair. I had 8s. I figure one will call me but both of them call without hesitation. Now I figure I'm gone but the flop comes out 8 K 7 and I catch a set. First guy immediately pushes all in and second guy immediately calls. Both flip over AK so now I'm really happy. Last 2 cards are blanks and I more than triple up.





They broke the table soon after that and I got moved to a really loose table. That was sweet cuz I started catching some cards for a while and I made a few people pay for loose raises and calls. I doubled up on one guy who loved his KQ against my pocket Kings then took a huge amount off a guy with K-5 when I had K-9. A small stack pushed all in with a straight draw after he bet and then I went over the top of them both and he called me with top pair - lousy kicker and my 9 played and I won a massive pot. Next thing I know I am sitting on 14 K and am one of the chip leaders with 3 tables to go.



That's when I decided to start giving chips back. I made a dumb call with just a flush draw against an all in short stack which cost me a few thousand and then another one with top pair against 2 smaller pair which cost a little more. Suddenly no cards are coming my way and I am just folding every hand. I did make a couple of steals to keep some chips coming and the people kept falling by the wayside. Before I know it we have 11 left and are just waiting for someone to go busto to make it to the final table. I am still not getting much to play but because I have been playing solidly, people don't want to tangle with me when I do bet. However I am still bleeding more chips than I'm making due to the accelerating blinds. I really need to steal more often later in tournaments. Finally 1 guy goes out on each table on the same hand and we move 9 people to the final table. I am 8th in chips and know I will need to make some moves to get into the money.



The 2 guys sitting to my right both have big stacks and have been playing pretty solid poker so I am giving them some leeway when they bet. Good thing too as the guy right next to me becomes an Ace magnet. Twice I pick up AQ, which I generally hate playing as it's just good enough to lose with for me. Guy to my right raises a fair amount both times and I reluctantly fold. The first time he gets a guy all in then flips over AA and busts the guy putting us down to 8. I make an all in raise over 2 limpers with QQ and get a walk from the big blind which puts me in a lot safer territory as some of the others are just bleeding away their stacks. I steal again from the button and I'm still getting a fair amount of respect because no one is tangling with me when I raise but I'm also making sure to avoid the 2 big stacks to my right and the asshat across the table who is the biggest jerk in the room. Finally one of the big stacks busts the guy to my left in 8th place who really called on a marginal hand. We had taken up a collection for the bubble boy and everyone put in 5-10 bucks so he actually made a few dollars over his buy in for going bust.



Now that we got down to the money, play really loosened up but the best part about it was the asshat pushed all in from early position with AK and the Ace magnet to my right instacalled and turned over AA of course. Goodbye jerkoff, enjoy that 7th place money. He had a fair sized stack too, was 3rd in chips and didn't need to push that big a raise but he did and it's sayonara. I am still playing patiently and not getting much for cards. I luck out when I push all in on a flush draw with 5-8 of clubs on a flop of J -6 of clubs and 3 of diamonds. Guy on the button thinks for a minute and calls turning over AJ offsuit. Next two cards are both diamonds but they are the 4 and 7 completing my straight. Boy he was not happy about that but I sure was. Took me out of the bottom in chips. Guy went bust shortly after that. I folded AQ of spades a couple of hands later, very reluctantly, to a big raise from the Ace magnet and when we talked later he told me he was making a pure steal on crap but I just hate hate hate going bust on AQ. And I've done it often enough thats for sure. We get down to 4 players when I flop 2 pair with 10-8 on a K-10-8 board. Guy to my left bets out, folded to me and I raise to put him all in. He calls with KQ and I sweat the last 2 cards which are blanks and bust him. Guy 2 seats to my right busts the guy in 4th place and we're down to last 3. I have about 25K in chips and the guy to my right about 60K while the guy to his right has 55K so I am at a decided disadvantage. Blinds are now 2-4K so I don't have a lot of time left. I pick up AJ on the button and take both their blinds when they fold to my raise. Next hand the guy 2 places to the right raises and the guy next to me raises him back. They both get all in and Ace magnet takes it down, though not with Aces, I think it was KK actually but can't remember now. I was really surprised the other guy was willing to risk his whole stack at this time when he could have waited for me to go bust and been in at worst 2nd place and he was close to him in chips. But thats how it goes sometimes.



Now the guy to my right has 110K to my 30. He tells me he doesn't want to chop since he has such a big lead, and hell I understand that for sure, but he is willing to talk about it if I come back on him. Thing is, if I come back, I might not want to chop because maybe he finally is going card dead and I can take him out. I hold my own for a while but he calls my all in raise when I make top pair with a Q4 and of course turns over AA. Good night to me lol. I had a feeling too but I couldn't throw it away when I flopped the Q. Still I made over $400 on a $45 buying so I was not complaining. It was fun and profitable.



Since it was Memorial Day weekend and I had Monday off I decided to play in the Sunday night Omaha Hi tourney at the Tampa dog track. But I'll make that a later post.

Pardon the Interruption

God, has it been well over a month since I last posted. Even though it took me about a week to finish my last post, that's still like April 9th and today is May 28. Sorry about that chief.

It has been a hectic time at work and home over the past month. At least work is now slowing down, tax time is over and the phones are not ringing off the hook. I have been working on one problem though for well over a week now and it's still not done. I have about 30 copies of handwritten pages from one of our clients with a bunch, but not all, of her stock purchases and sales since 1969 and I'm trying to get the cost for all these stocks. There is about 50 of them in her account now. The bad thing is, she bought AT&T before the break up in 1984 and held it all the way up to now. So there are numerous shares of AT&T along with all of the spin offs that have not merged back with AT&T (Lucent, Verizon, Idearc, Fairpoint, LSI, NCR, Teradata, and Vodaphone and I'm probably forgetting some too) not to mention having to figure out how many shares of Bell South became AT&T and SBC (Southwestern Bell) also. Some of the Baby Bells even merged with each other and then with AT&T. Needless to say it's quite a mess and since I am sure there are some purchases missing, not to mention all the splits, spin offs, reverse splits, and mergers, I cannot come up with a number for many of the stocks that agrees with the number of shares the lady transferred into us in 2006. I did manage to get a couple of them to come out right, but most of them are not right. But enough work talk

Outside of work, I have been spending a fair amount of time playing poker. I did manage to referee a spring football game last week and had a lot of fun, but most weekends I have been playing poker. My main game when I am not in a tournament is Omaha Hi/Lo. It is rare when I play that and don't make money, especially if I play at the Hard Rock in Tampa. That is one loose game. I refuse to play low limit hold em anymore except when I am waiting to play Omaha because I feel you just cannot consistently win at it. Due to the rules of the state of Fla, you generally cannot play in a limit game with a high enough betting structure to raise people with totally inferior hands out of the pot usually. Thats not an issue in Omaha because you know no matter what your hand is, you need help from the board to win anyway. But in Holdem, no matter how good your hand is, you can lose it to anyone if enough people stay in the pot. And most of these yahoos do it very often.

Anyway this past weekend was poker nirvana for me. Saturday afternoon I started playing at Derby Lane which is the closest place to my house to play. The spousal unit and I were gonna play in the 7pm tourney that night but I went to play some Omaha in the afternoon while waiting for the tourney. Before going to play ( the place doesn't open till 2 on Friday and Sat) the wife and I, along with the money pit, err teenaged daughter, went to see Indiana Jones. After the movie, which I will get into in more detail either later on or in another post, they wanted lunch but I wasn't hungry at all as I have had a cold since last Thursday and my appetite is way down. So they dropped me at the track to play poker while they went to eat and shop. I got there about 15 mins after they opened and the only Omaha table was full with 4 people waiting so I put myself on the list. While I was waiting I decided to play $2 limit holdem. I could have played 2-4 or even 1-2 no limit but I don't carry enough of a bankroll for the latter and I was just wanting to kill time till I played omaha so the 2-4 could have gotten expensive (though I usually do not lose much playing at that level either)

The poker room was running a couple of promotions, one if you got pocket 3s and played them to showdown and won, you got $100, and if you lost you got $50. You had to take them all the way to showdown though, you couldn't bet everyone out of the pot and then show them. I hit that twice in a row a couple of months ago and even though I lost both times, the extra hunny was nice. My buddy Dan hit them like 4 times in one sitting and won a couple of them so he got an extra 300 one day. Nice. So I'm playing for a while and I'm not playing too many hands because I don't want to just blow a chunk of change before I play the game I am best at. I win a hand after being down a bit to get myself close to even. Then I pull pocket Js. I was on the button and the pot wasn't raised when it got to me so I didn't raise it like I should have. Still it all worked out lol. Flop comes K J 8 with 2 diamonds. Lady in first seat bets, one other guy calls her, and I raise which they both call. Next card is a black 2. Lady bets again, guy calls, I raise again and they both call again. I'm wondering what they both are holding to bet into me and then call my raises. I am just hoping for one of the low cards to pair and make my boat when that beautiful final jack hits the river and I got quads. Again the lady bets, the guy calls her, I raise and they both call. I think the guy was just flabbergasted when I showed quad Jacks. He couldn't believe I had the goods. I said to him "Hey, I raised on every street, I had to have something"

That qualified me for the 2nd promotion, which is the high hand on all the holdem tables each hour gets a free entry into the WSOP tourney this coming weekend. It's a 200 dollar buy in tourney and the top 4 finishers win a seat in the WSOP main event plus a week of hotel, airline tickets, and 2 grand cash. NICE. Unfortunately my Jacks were beaten when someone made quad Aces but I didn't care. I won a nice pot and I already qualified for the tourney a few weeks ago. I HIT A ROYAL FLUSH for the top hand one hour. And you can only win once so I couldn't win again with the Jacks and sell the other seat anyway. The bad thing about the royal is they no longer give cash bonuses for royals. I missed it by about 10 days. Sucks to be me, prolly would have gotten 3 grand for the royal if I had done it earlier. The other bad thing is the guy who had the high hand before I got my royal, had a King high straight flush. How would you like to get a hand like that and NOT get the hourly high hand lol.

Not long after that I got called to play omaha so left the table with a profit of about 20 bucks which for low limit hold em is a huge amount for me. I played for a couple of hours and couldn't get it going. Not much in the way of hands and when I got a good hand, the flop never seemed to agree with me. So I was busy pissing all my holdem winnings right down the drain lol. But slowly as I folded a lot of hands. I started getting hungry right before 6 and since I was gonna play in the holdem tourney at 7 I decided to quit soon. Finally picked up a playable hand. Flopped the nut flush and it held up and even though it was a split pot, I still made a nice amount, enough to put me ahead for my time there too. Had a quick dinner, the wife met me while I ate, and we went to play the tourney. Think I'll pick up from here a little later.

A Better World Part 2

Continuing with my theme from Monday concerning a better world for my kids, I really want them to be able to have more, especially in the way of opportunities, than I had. Not to say I didn't have opportunities because I did, but I want them to have at least as much chance as I have had. I also don't want them to live in a world of constant fear of terrorism, or to be taxed like mad because of debts my generation has handed down. And I'm really afraid they will get that.



What happened to being responsible for what you did, what you signed for, what you caused? Nowadays, as soon as one thing goes wrong, no matter who is at fault (if anyone), the first words out of someone's mouth is "who do I sue" and the second words are "it wasn't my fault because..." I am totally fed up with it. When I hear people saying how they were never told, never informed, didn't know, etc, I just want to take a hammer to their heads.


That's not to say that if you get something defective and it turns out the maker knew there might be an issue and sold it to you anyway, you shouldn't clean their clock. But more and more it seems that completely random accidents or things that happen where we KNOW the possible consequences, still end up going to court and sometimes even winning. I'll give you a case in point before I go on to the one thing that is really getting me mad. First off, we all remember the McDonald's coffee case. How this 79 year old woman put the hot cup of coffee between her legs as a passenger (not driving as many have stated), spilled it on herself, and sued McDonalds for getting burned because the coffee was too hot. The car wasn't even moving and she managed to do this to herself. Now how do you manage to do this when you aren't driving and the car isn't moving? Because you hold it between your knees and pull the lid off. Everyone knew the coffee was super hot, thats one reason I almost never got McDs coffee myself, but to hold it like that while trying to put cream and sugar in it was inviting disaster. Why not ask for a few ice cubes in your coffee? Why not go inside to get it or wait till you can put the coffee down at a table or something? It's not like the lady was gonna be late for work or something.



McD's knew this was a problem because they had something like 700 claims for coffee burns in the 10 years before this, and thats a big reason why they lost. They could have settled for 20 grand but refused to do it and so they got waxed. But the thing is, the lady knew this coffee was really hot and still did something dangerous with it and ended up burning her genitals. How much was this the responsibility of the person? A hell of a lot more than 20 percent (which is what the jury said). You think I'm gonna put something that hot near my groin??



Now this brings me back to what's really under my skin. During the recent housing boom, too many unqualified people bought houses that many of them knew they could not afford. They finagled the numbers, often times with the help of the mortgage brokers, and took out adjustable mortgages with initially low interest rates that they knew would reset higher, and thought nothing of it. They could barely afford that payment and yet bought their "dream house" and now that rates have adjusted, they are screwed. And what do they want? They want a bailout. They want help. It wasn't their fault, etc.



While you cannot assign them all of the blame as mortgage brokers knew they couldn't afford that house and many banks and mortgage companies didn't even bother to check up on the customer to see if they could afford it or that they showed decent credit. Hell many mortgage brokers would fudge the numbers to make it look like they could afford the home when they knew they couldn't. Ultimately though the responsibility lays with the person buying the home because in the end, they are the ones being foreclosed on. But instead all you hear is how terrible it is that they owe more on their mortgage than the home is worth and that it's the government's fault, the economy's fault, etc.



Now I have no issue with people who lose their job and now cannot afford their house. That's bad and it does happen. But many if not most of the people who are being foreclosed on have the same jobs they had when they bought the house. The problem is THEY BOUGHT TOO MUCH HOUSE AND PAID TOO MUCH FOR IT!!! We all get sucked in from time to time, we see something and we gotta have it no matter how much it costs. But you're talking about something you're gonna have to pay on for the NEXT 30 YEARS. And the kicker is, if some scum sucking unethical mortgage broker fudged the figures enough and stuck him with an ARM or even worse, an option ARM mortgage, as soon as the rates adjust he's now in a house he can't afford anymore. So he loses his house and his credit is fucked. Does the real estate agent or mortgage broker care? Hell no, they go their money. The bank or mortgage company probably doesn't care either. That loan has been sold to someone else so they got their money too. And then it's packaged as a bond and bought by some guy nearing retirement as a safe place to put his money and get a decent interest return, except it's not safe anymore. Moody's says it's AAA rated but it's actually built on junk, on mortgages without much documentation given to high risk home buyers who are walking away from their houses and now this guy isn't getting paid and can't sell the bond for anything near what he paid for it, if at all. So 2 ordinary people (the homebuyer and the bondholder) are taking it up the wazoo and everyone else who sells this shit is making a killing on the deal. Which is why I am not worked up at all about the Bear Stearns fiasco. They made their bed and reaped HUGE monetary rewards from it. Let them take it up the wazoo for a change, especially all the high execs with their now worthless stock options. I say fuck you all. The only ones I feel sorry for in the mess there are the guys like me, coming in everyday and doing their jobs. At least half of them probably won't lose their jobs. But BSC was one of the big dogs in this mortgage mess. Let them roll around in the shit for awhile.

Anyway, the long winded point I am trying to make in this disaster of a blog is, when does someone point the finger at themselves and take personal responsibility for this mess. At least their own little portion of it. Of course the homeowner is gonna have to take some he works like a slave in 2 jobs to pay for a house he doesn't get to stay home and enjoy or his credit gets crapped on when he loses said house to foreclosure. To make matters worse, check out this site: http://www.youwalkaway.com/ of some ass holes catering to people walking away from their mortgages and even counselling them on how they can live in that house for another 8 months while not paying for it. Again, let me restate for the record, people who lose their jobs, get sick, etc, and cannot pay for their house is entirely different than what I am talking to here. I am talking to the majority of the buyers who spent themselves into a gigantic financial abyss and now are staring into the black hole hoping against hope it won't swallow them up. Ultimately they are the ones who are taking a financial bath, along with the unfortunate investors who purchased investments based on mortgages like this and also did not understand there really was risk in this "riskless" investment. These are the people who have to look in the mirror and say to themselves, "well I really screwed the pooch that time" and who want a bailout by your tax dollars to save themselves from the hole they dug. And they ain't getting it from me if I can help it.

So if you are one of the people so named in this story, I better not find you pulling this You Walk Away bullshit in my neighborhood. You better be working 2 jobs to pay for your McMansion and your wife better work too, not to mention how much I want to see your kids cutting grass instead of playing their WII. If you bought into these investments, you better be planning on how to cut back (if you're already retired) or delaying your retirement until your finances improve. Because only by taking some responsibility for the part you played in all the hype, hoopla, and fiasco of this housing bubble is this all going to unwind without my government trying to shove a huge debt onto my kids backs. I'm gonna do my damnedest to prevent that from happening and I hope enough others are too.