REV777

Absence makes the blog......

2008-06-12T15:27:00.002-04:00

Boring!

Been away. (sfobv) Took some time off from on-line poker after cashing out before the whole netteller fiasco. I have taken 3 checks since my return though, so things are looking good.

Counting down the days until our next Vegas trip!! WooHoo!!

Hope to get back on here soon.

Free Bar Tournament - Year End Event

2006-12-18T18:20:00.000-05:00

As many of you know I play in a free bar league, where you accumulate points during 6 week events, and then play in a 6 week final. These 6 week finals have 60-70 players, and if you make the top 6 you qualify for the year end event. You can also qualify for the year end event by adding all your points up for the whole year, and the top 80 qualify.

Well the year end event was yesterday 12-17-06, at noon. There were 95 players that qualified/showed up to play with a total prize pool of $4000. Final 9 places paid. They also had plenty of door prizes to give away during the event. One of there announcements before the tournament was that they had a new sponsor.... Full Tilt!!! So, many of the door prizes where Full Tilt items. I won an early door prize, a bag with a Full Tilt WSOP hat, t-shirt, and license plate cover. Woohoo.

They started everyone with 800 chips and 5/10 blinds, with 20 minute rounds. As with any free tournament play can reach all extremes of craziness. My plan was to avoid trouble situations, get my big hands paid off, and build my stack on a nice and steady pace. Very first hand I am in the BB, we have a couple of early limpers, the button pops it up to 30, I look down at KK. What better time than the first hand to send a message about raising my BB, I make it 130, everyone folds. Avoiding trouble means folding, and then folding some more. So that is what I do time and time again.

The next big hand I get involved with I am in the SB. The cut-off min-raises, brilliant!, I look down at 88. I call BB calls. Flop comes J83 rainbow. I check, BB checks, CU bets small. We both call. Turn is an ace, somebody had to hit that. Again we both check to the cu. He bets again. I raise, BB re-raises. Hmmm. Cut off decides to fold. I call. River makes a flush possible, in hind-sight I should have re-raised the turn to protect against this, but I don't really think he was raising the turn on a flush draw. I bet big, and he goes into the tank. What a relief. He agonizingly calls, stating that I probably have the flush, but he wants to see it. I tell him "no flush, set of 8's". He turns up pocket 3's for a set over set battle of the blinds. This was about a $1200 pot. This pot allowed me to flex the big stack at the table a little, but I still avoided any problem situations.

The next big hand I had 10/10 in late position. Blinds where now 25/50. A quiet player, that had not played many pots, raised from early position. I called. Flop came xAx. He bets out 100. I took plenty of time here, deciding on what I should do. Should I fold to the Ace high flop? I took a long look at my opponent, and he was not looking real comfortable with my delay. I announce a raise, and stack out his 100 plus another 250. His body language lets me know right away that this was the correct play. He folds.

With the blinds going to 50/100 we take a short break. I scan the room for the chip stacks. I have about 2000, and appear to be sitting at slightly above average. When we return from break, I tell myself to keep playing well, look to build chips and avoid bad situations. Sometimes the later is easier said than done. After the break the cards don't seem to want to cooperate. I begin the exciting roller coaster ride of chip stack management. Up, down. Up, down. I am looking more to survive the ride than anything else. In the meantime players keeping busting. 9 tables 70 players, 8 tables 62 players, 7 tables 56 players. Somehow before the next break, I end on an up-swing and have about 6000 chips. This is a decent stack against the remaining field, but the blinds are gonna become an issue pretty quickly.

Shortly after we resume, I get moved to a new table. The table with the chip leader. I keep looking for spots, and cards, to get some more chips, and players keep droping, 40, 30, 20. As we get down to 18 players left, I am in the same situation as most of the other players. Nobody wants to bust out this close, but the blinds are going to force some descisions. A player here, another there, and we are down to the bubble. 10 players left. I have managed to maintain my stack. Picking up the blinds to survive. I am in the BB, 500/1000 at this time. Everyone folds to the button, who calls. SB folds. I check with A7. Flop comes 279. I move in for about 5K. The button calls, and I show my A7. He had been calling himself the bubble boy since we went to 10 players. He flips up AQ, 3 outs. No help on the turn or river, and his self-fulfilling prophecy comes true. In the $$$ nine players left, final table.

The prize structure was set as, 9th $40, 8th $80, 7th $120, 6th $160, 5th $200, 4th $240, 3rd $520, 2nd $1020, 1st $1620. We have one monster stack, the same chip leader from my prior table, and then the rest of us stragglers. After a couple uneventful hands, the 2 short stacks move all-in, and the CL takes a shot at them both with her K10. In one swift flop, turn, and river 2 people are gone. I am again looking to maintain my stack, and get my chips in when I have a hand. The only real big lay down I had to make all day was during the final table. I had about 15K and the blinds where 1500/3000. I was the BB, it folds around to the button, who raises All-In for another 7K. I look down at 10/10. I again go into think mode. He starts to talk, asking me what I might have. Almost goading me into calling. I lay down my 10's and he shows KK. I keep the extra 7K in my stack.

Somehow I maintain, and survive, and we get down to the final 3. The big stack still has us dominated in chips. The other player and I try to chip away at her stack, but are mostly just trading chips back and forth. Finally the other short stack and I get into a hand together, and I eliminate him from the tourney. Sorry I don't actually remember the hand. I think a guaranteed 1K pay-day fogged my memory. The big pay-day also got to the chip leader, as she started crying at the table. She had lots of family that was also in the event, and it seemed like the whole crowd was rooting for her. Her sister said something about getting the kids bikes for Christmas. I offer her a chop. HaHa. My 15k vs her 65K. She declines. Her mom, a player I know well, yells out HELL NO!! We play a few hands, her win then mine. I offer a chop every hand. Finally I get her to call my All-In and double up. I offer again. I win another hand, and offer again. My feeling is if I am going to offer as the chip dog, I may as well now that it is even. She accepts the chop. $1320 each. And we play it out for bragging rights. The final hand comes down to my K10 vs her K7, and she turns a 7 to take the win.

What an incredible 7 hours of play!! A Free Bar Tournament, and now $1320 in my pocket. This is my biggest poker payday, so far. Just thought I would share as many of the details as I could remember. Hope you all have as much fun and luck as I did in your next poker game. Enjoy your holidays!!

Indy PokerPalooza

2006-10-24T17:57:00.000-04:00

Well the Indy gathering has come and gone. It was great to see many of the people I have met at our other gatherings as well as some new people making their first gathering. We even got our name on the hotel welcome sign in the lobby.

The first night was just a small gathering, and we played a single table sit-n-go. Mrs. Sly was the big winner of our little five dollar game. Had we only known that she would pwn the whole weekend.

Tina & I played one more late-night game with the youngins, after the other, shall I say, ehem, older players went to bed. This one came down to Tina & I heads up at the end. She is so competitive and was thrilled when she took me out to win the last game of the night.

Saturday night was the "big" game. With some of my local card freinds joining in on a $20 buy in tourney.

quick post

2006-10-13T18:23:00.000-04:00

Off to Indy PokerPalooza.

But here are some quick pictures of the halloween stuff, I just had to post.

Indy PokerPalooza

2006-10-06T11:28:00.000-04:00

Some of my on-line poker playing degererates, I mean friends, are coming to Indy next weekend. We have met up a couple of times now, and if the last meeting in Chicago is any indication, this Indy gathering should be another great time of playing poker, and general douchebaggery. You should be able to follow much of the action at FullTiltForum. I will be sure to post some pictures here after the event.

Keeping a poker log

2006-10-06T10:49:00.000-04:00

I play a fairly regular home game, with a base of about 12-15 regular players. I had thought about leaving this game, admittedly after suffering some bad beats, thinking that we were merely passing the money back and forth between the players. We typically play NLHE freeze-out style tournaments, and may run some small cash games on the side when people bust out.

I decided that before I left this game I would keep a log of all the games and track my record. Let me just say that I am glad I did. I am using CardPlayer's Poker Tracker. While I have had smoe short streaks of losing, over all I am killing this game. Here are my stats from the tournament games since May when I started tracking.

Tournaments Count : 45
Total Buy-ins : $546
Total Payouts : $1,070
Total Won/Lost : $525
Average Won/Lost : $12

I have cashed 23 times of the 45 tournaments played with 16 of those cashes being 1st or 2nd place. Now don't get me wrong, these are not tournaments with hundreds, or thousands, of players. They are small home games with 6-20 players. Our average game probably has 12 players.

If you haven't been keeping a log, I suggest you check out the CardPlayer Poker Tracker. It allows you to make modifications, and customize some of the inputs as far as game locations...etc. You can also filter your results to check your stats at a specific location, or game type. You can track tournaments & cash games. I have found it to be a pretty handy accessory.

thanks for stopping by, and good luck at the tables.

Homemade Halloween Decorations Pix

2006-09-25T22:25:00.000-04:00

OK I couldn't wait for the yard to be decorated before posting a couple pictures of the homemade halloween items. So, here are the head of the corpse and the toe pincher coffin.

Halloween Decorations

2006-09-25T21:05:00.000-04:00

Fall has officially started, and the Halloween season is upon us. I think it is absolutely horrible that the stores are putting out their Christmas decorations before Halloween. One holiday at a time people!

It appears that many stores have cut back on their Halloween selection this year. I like to buy a couple new things each year to add to my collection of ghastly, goulish decorations. We actually live in a pretty fun neighborhood, and many of the homes do some extensive Halloween decorating. I added a new tombstone, some spooky caution tape, and some more light up eyes to stick in the windows. I also found a pretty neat site on-line for homemade decorations. Spooky Blue is an awesome sight for the do-it-yourselfers. I really liked several of their ideas, and chose to make a 6' Toe Pincher Coffin, and I also am making a corpse that appears to be crawling out of the ground. The coffin was pretty simple, and you can get all the supplies for about $25. The corpse is a lot messier, and is a good way to get rid of any extra newspapers you may have laying around. I have the coffin finished, and I will update later with some pix of the decorated yard. If the reaction of a couple neighbor girls is any indication, I may not have any trick or treaters this year. They will all be to scared to come up to the house.

Spreading the Word

2006-09-25T20:54:00.000-04:00

No this is not a religous post. Amen. Religion, Politics, Sex all fun topics to discuss, but that is not my intention at the this time. I have started spreading the word about the blog, and I just want to thank everyone for their kind words. It is kinda cool to get some comments.

Speaking of the comments, to answer the most pressing question, Tina still insists that she had the pocket aces. I am trying to believe her, but I think it would be funnier if she bluffed me. Also in reply to squib, the tracker thing sounds kinda neat. Maybe you, or T, could give me a little more information.

Now for the most important news of all..... In a battle of winless teams, my Fantasy Football team won their first game this week!!! 1-2 and on the move up. With just the Monday night game still to be played it also looks like the other 3 teams in my division will all lose for the first time. Fingers crossed.

Tourney or Cash Game?

2006-09-18T19:25:00.000-04:00

Our regular home game tournament had 14 players Friday night. I managed to bubble out when my AK caught a K on the flop, only to run into runner, runner flush from the crazy new guy that was playing. He seemed to hit every %&!$#(@# draw. We play with a bounty on each player, and he had 8 bounties when there were 5 players left. I don't have a problem with the way he played, I believe everyone has the right to play their hand anyway they want, but it was pretty amazing how often he got involved with the worst hand, only to hit on the river. His run couldn't last forever though. His big stack got taken down, and he came in second place.

In the second game we only had 11 players, with no bounties, and decided to squeeze everyone around one table. Tina & I got into a mini battle on the 1st hand. She kept firing on every street, and I had to lay down my K's on the river. She claimed she had pocket Aces, but I guess I will never know. I managed to hang around till near the bubble again, going out in 5th place.

Out $45 from the tournaments, it was time to get the side cash game started. At first there was only 3 of us, who bought in for $20 apiece, with the blinds at .25/.50. We soon added a 4th and then 5th player. Now the cards start hitting. Not just hitting, but hitting hard. I knew my time would be limited, as the 2nd tournament was down to 3 players, and as soon as Tina won the damn thing, I guess I taught her well, she would be ready to go. Seemed like every big hand I had got paid off at the cash game. Once the tournament broke I announced I would play one more orbit for the cash game. I really hated getting up, but when I did I cashed out at $86. So I was able to recover my tournament buy ins, and end the night up $21. With her cash in the second tournament, Tina was up $60 for the night. Not a bad night of poker.

My Fantasy Football team was able to improve there scoring output this week. But I had a terrible match-up. My opponent had Peyton Manning, Tiki Barber, & Warrick Dunn as a pretty solid base for his starters. Needless to say, even though I improved, I still lost by 20 points. Sucks to be my team.

We also finally had the garage sale we have been trying to have for the past month. Tina had problems getting the ad placed in the local paper. Well I should say they had problems running the ad correctly. She would call the ad in, we would check the paper it was suppose to be in, and there would be no ad. This happened like 3 times. I had hopes of selling it all, but as is usual with a garage sale we still had plenty of stuff left. Damn it people buy our junk!! Ha ha. We did take some of our money and buy us all sleeping bags, and some other camping accessories, so we can take the kids camping.

That's all for now. Good luck at the tables!

Blogging, a little O8 and Fantasy Football

2006-09-13T10:25:00.000-04:00

I think I am gonna mess around a little with the html of the blog. I want to change the skin and will be looking at some new templates to get me started. I don't actually know html but from what I have seen, so far, I should be able to fumble my way through it, and come up with a decent template for the blog. I just wish I had more time.

I went on FullTilt to play a little poker last night. Thought I would be playing NLHE at the Forum table, but Khanwoman had started a little gathering at a Limit O8 game, so I went there. At .50/1.00 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo, I wasn't to sure there would by any true winner except for the rake. HugeGuy proved me right in one of my 1st hands, as we were heads-up and he kept firing bets into every street, raising the rake. He had the High and I had the Low so we split both losing .05, gg rake.

I played for about 2 hours before I had to get to bed, damn job. Ended up +$8.00 for the short session. Had fun with several of the FullTiltForum regs at the table, including Khan, Huge, Sly, Zerb... It was a little odd when we had two Am's at the table, Am & AmSlim. Illinifan was also there for short time, along with some others I am sure I am forgeting.

What I really want to know is how can a Fantasy Football team only score one touchdown for a game? I mean come on! It's not like it was a bye week and my star players had to sit out. Maybe that is the problem I don't seem to have any real star players. Oh well, on to week 2.

cya

rev777

Fantasy Football Team

2006-09-08T18:21:00.000-04:00

This is the 2nd year of our Fantasy Football League on ESPN. It is a keeper league so we all had to select 2 of our previous years players as keepers. I kept Lamont Jordan & Carnell Williams. The scoring system has been changed slightly this year, making it less QB & WR friendly & more a RB league.

Here is my line-up.

QB Dante Culpepper
RB Lamont Jordan
RB Carnell Williams
WR Chris Chambers
WR Joey Galloway
WR Nate Burelson
TE Ben Watson
D/ST Philadelphia Eagles
K Lawrence Tynes
Bench
QB Brad Johnson
RB Reuben Droughns
RB Mike Anderson
RB Ryan Moats
WR David Givens
WR Devery Henderson
TE Alex Smith

There are also some pretty cool new features to the ESPN Fantasy sight this year. There game previews which outline your upcoming match-ups & even predicted lines vs your opponent. I am a 5.5 point dog in Week #1. We'll see what happens.

I knew I couldn't let it go another 5 months before I came back & posted again. I even got into a little of the formatting of the page. Pretty basic stuff, I know. But I haven't done any programming in years.

Until next time...

5 Months, Not Bad

2006-09-07T13:33:00.000-04:00

It has been about 5 months since I opened this Blog account, and this is my 1st post since it's inception. Not bad if you ask me.

Things have been pretty busy & crazy. I have not been playing much on-line poker lately. Though I did sit down at the FTF table last week. Left up $33 so now I can x-fer my Fantasy Football fee for my league.

My oldest daughter went off to college a couple of weeks ago. Moving her down to her dorm room was both exciting, and sad. I can see how excited she is, and can remember my own excitement when I went off to college. I was able to spend some alone time with her, and tried to give her some incouraging words. All-right I told her not to screw up!

That is all for now. I will try to make sure it is not another 5 months before the next post.

Welcome

2006-04-28T11:56:00.000-04:00

Welcome to REV777's blog.

I will be sharing my thoughts on Poker related material, Sports happenings, and possibly life in general.

rev777