tp's table talk

As expected from bloggers on April Fool’s, there were a few tall tales spun today. Here are some of them from across poker bloggerdom.

Badblood – the first blogger to report an arrest.
F Train – underground clubs are called that for a reason.
Double As – now you see it, now you don’t.

Frankly, I expected a few more of these. Of course, my reading list isn’t as large as it used to be, so I may have missed a few.

And unfortunately I did not win a trip to the WSOP last night. But I do have to confess it’s much easier to write an interested tournament report when you are making it up as you go along. I was supposed to play in the tournament, but the casino host I mention in the beginning once again managed NOT to get my invitation sorted out.

In other news, Pauly just announced an amazing new gig over at Tao of Poker. At first I thought it was just another fake, like most big announcements made today, but then I realized that he couldn’t possibly start an April Fool’s post by saying it wasn’t an April Fool’s post. Oops. Congratulations Pauly! It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow.

In non-poker related April Fool’s news, the best effort of the day had to be the new production diary over at KongIsKing.net where Peter Jackson and crew announce two sequel films to the new King Kong where the Son of Kong ends up in Germany during World War II fighting mutated Nazi creatures. A very elaborate prank pulled off masterfully.

Last week I posted that I had booked tickets for the June poker blogger event and was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately the excitement did not last very long as I discovered the discount airline I’d booked the tickets with (JetsGo) had shut their doors, stranding hundreds of passengers looking to escape for the March break but also leaving me without a flight to Vegas and with a sizeable hole in my pocketbook.

The initial panic began to wear off as I got confirmation that I would be able to recover the money through my credit card company, though I was still angry that JetsGo had been taking bookings all the way up to the day before they closed down. I mean, I hadn’t had my ticket for a full week before it became worthless.

But after chatting with a bunch of bloggers Sunday night at the tournament, my enthusiasm for the trip was rekindled so I began searching for alternative arrangements. Yesterday I finally nailed down the last details and booked my hotel room at The Plaza, which seems to be blogger party central. I also bit the bullet and paid a little more to get a direct flight with Air Canada. I could have probably saved a hundred bucks or so taking another flight, but they were almost all twice as long with a stopover. Because of the flight prices and cheap hotel, it actually ended up working out that it would be cheaper to fly in Thursday night and pay for the extra night in a hotel. So, my buddy and I will be arriving on a 10:20 flight into Vegas and should be checking into The Plaza by 11:30. I can hardly wait!

The new year is already a few weeks old and still I have not made good on my New Year’s resolution to post to my blog. I was almost there last week, but was laid low by one of the nastiest colds I’ve had in recent memory which I am only now recovering from.

So, without further ado, let me begin tp’s Poker Year in Review. I’m going to talk about some of the notable poker related things that happened to me over the course of the year.

January 2004
My poker career dalliance began a year ago. I’d run a bi-weekly home game for a few years at this point, but with the all the poker coverage on TV, I was having some serious poker urges over the holidays. I did a quick bit of research and loaded $50 into Party Poker. The night I turned my $50 deposit into $98, including my bonus, and I was quite pleased with myself. I had dreams of turning it into 4-digits by the end of the week. The very next day I managed to blow through all $98 courtesy of some poor play and some really bad beats. When I put the first $50 in, I told myself that would be it, I would either win, or that would be what I pay to learn that online poker was not a profitable proposition for me. I was very wary of addiction, fearing that it is in my personality. But I still managed to justify adding another $50 to my account and I haven’t looked back since. Nor have I lost more than that first 100 bucks.

January also marked the beginning of the EPT, a tournament home game series that has been running for nearly a year now. It’s just a bi-weekly $20 buy-in pot-limit hold’em tournament, but it has been my only option for live poker, and I have managed to work on some of the skills that you just cannot hone at the online tables.

February 2004
Poker was now in my blood. I thought about it all the time. I bought read books. I read Card Player online. And I followed more poker blogs than was healthy. And in February I decided that I would also write one. I purchased a domain and started this very blog. Not two weeks passed before, from out of nowhere, I was mentioned on Guinness and Poker. Iggy had stumbled across my blog somehow and given me a small mention as well as a spot on his blogroll. Suddenly I had readers.

March 2004
I participated in the World Poker Blogger Tour II event. I finally got to chat with some of the other poker bloggers out there and my finish of 14th out of 28 was better than I expected. Afterwards I got to chat with Felicia and hdouble, two of my favourite bloggers.
March also marked my first multi-table cash and 3-digit win. I won $120 in the Choice Poker new player freeroll, but it would be over six months before I would see a dime of that money. But even sweeter was my cash in the first weekly blogger game organized by Felicia. Finishing ahead of a bunch of chumps in a cheesy freeroll is one thing, but finishing ahead of a bunch of chump bloggers was quite another. *grin*

April 2004
Full steam ahead. Still playing poker, still growing my bankroll. April did feature the post that has received the most search engine hits over the lifetime of this site. I’m glad people come for the poker content.

May 2004
I finally took first in my bi-weekly PLHE home tournament. I believe I had four cashes prior to this, but it was my first victory. It was followed two weeks later by my second. There was other big news in the poker world this month (I wonder what that was), but I was just plugging away at the low limits, growing my bankroll.

June 2004
For the first time, my ill-gotten poker gains were put to another purpose besides driving chips across the table. They funded the purchase of a new laptop, which is on its way to paying for itself.

July 2004
Internet outages at home introduced less frequest blog posts and even less poker time. The withdrawal symptoms were not pretty.

August 2004
My first live casino experience. Well, not a real casino, but played at the CNE Charity Casino down the street from my office while it was in town. Managed to drop nearly $200 in five hours of $5/$10. I think I played well, but I really need to get a bit more casino experience.

October 2004
Another Poker Blogger event this month, and the bloggers and readers tournament attracted 133 participants. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I played excellent and horrible poker, managing to accumulate the chip leader mid-way through the tournament before making a few bad decisions to bust out in 29th, nine places out of the money. The highlight of the tournament was busting out Wil Wheaton when my TT hit a straight on the river to beat his JJ. It occurs to me now that I never did receive the bounty he promised, though I did received a signed book from Coach, of Blue Parrot fame over at Tao of Poker.

November & December 2004
My poker was falling off a bit in October, but it takes a nose dive in November and December. Other interests keep me away from the online poker tables and without tales to tell this blog languishes.

–

At the end of the year I have played over 50,000 hands of poker at 15 different online sites and have posted profits of nearly $5000 US. I have played great poker and I have played horrible poker. I’ve learned many lessons and made a few friends along the way. I want to say thanks to anyone who’s read this blog over the past year. I write for myself, but my ego appreciates the attention. Particular thanks to all those who have offered poker advice and support the past 11 months. I have to single out Felicia Lee for all the help and kind words she has shared over the year. For someone who refers to herself as a no-nonsense bitch, she is one of the nicest people I know. It is my intention to renew my commitment to poker and this blog in the new year, but I’ll take talk more about that next time.

For now, it’s time to catch a nap for a couple hours so that maybe my cold isn’t so bad when I go out later.

Coming soon, Poker Resolutions for 2005.

I’ve been taking a bit of break from poker play. I’ve been very stressed by the work I’m doing right now and my mind has been constantly churning trying to solve some fairly involved technical issues. This has led to a good deal of insomnia and I’m feeling particularly run down. So, I’m trying to avoid making the mistake of sitting at the poker table with low energy and concentration. I am currently reading Winning Low Limit Hold’em just to keep things fresh. Some decent advice in there, but so far there is nothing that is going to dramatically change the way I’ve been playing. I’m likely not going to get to the tables until some time next week, though there is a small chance I might get a few hours in on Saturday afternoon.

In other news, my volleyball team won it’s third game in a row last night. We started the night playing simply abyssmal volleyball, but managed to turn it around by the end of the night to pull out the victory. It would have been nice to have played a more solid game, but it at least it is not as disheartening as a sub-par game AND the loss.

Well, for a while now Wil Wheaton has been giving the poker blogging community a run for their money in terms of great poker tales. But today I read an excellent
post from Otis at Up For Poker that shows that poker bloggers can sometimes match Mr. Wheaton with touching life stories.