Deal or No Deal?

Watching Deal or No Deal on NBC is like watching that high priced stripper cousin at your family BBQ, its fun to watch the bouncing boobs but you feel dirty doing it. This show is dumb on many levels yet I continue to scream at the contestants not to take suitcase #9!!!!! Yes Howie is a tool and could use a little comedy workshop, there’s so many chances for him to do a little improv yet the show relies on pre-arranged family and audience meetings for comedic “value”. Bor-ing. Cut those, the 15 million commercials, and let everyone hear the Banker actually laugh when the $750,000 prize gets wiped off the board. Maybe the Banker could throw in a few quips (“nice pick lady, I’ve seen better decisions made by a blind man at a trailer park brothel”). All in all its good, mindless content that people need after a day at work.

Speaking of mindless… how does Tuan Le win? I know the taped shows of the World Poker Tour are paired down so they have a two hour show, but good god I haven’t seen a luckbox that size since some factory workers bought a bunch of Powerball tickets. I still feel I had the winning ticket but the drawing was rigged. Is it bad poker to play AJo for a raise? Not necessarily, or as most players would put in “it depends”. Is it bad to call a re-raise and an all-in? Probably. Again, I couldn’t see all of the hands that were not aired but Danny Boy looked like he was gritting his teeth during his bustout interview while singing the praises of the aggression level that Le showed. Win lucky or win dumb, either way, Le won the coinflips and the dished out the suckouts to take home the prize in the WPT Battle of the Champions III, which marked a new year of airing the WPT tourneys on the Travel Channel. If you don’t like it when the worst hand wins, at least Courtney Friel is easy on the eyes, as she can also be seen in a pictorial in March’s issue of FHM magazine.

Since we’re on the issue of playing poker, congrats to Joanne for taking down the Chicks vs. Champ tourney last night. Maudie the Bloggin Bulldog, showed everyone how to play big stack poker and was one card away from first prize, but Joanne’s set of fours on the river turned the tide. The Champ held on to his rusted Ford F-150’s bumper long enough to not spill a drop of his beloved Budweiser and take a third place finish. Despite the long odds against (and the peanut gallery rooting for the ladies) his finish could be the springboard performance needed to finally make the decision to go pro especially after the historic Kid Rock ticket tourney win at his local Buffalo Wild Wings. Patient Zero (who was sick… again) and the always enchanting Mrs. Blood (who also plays under BadBlood_44 but lets her husband claim he plays the account so he has something to write about) rounded out the mammary mob. Everyone played an excellent game, thanks to all the contestants for a fun tourney to watch!

Seeing all that pokery action made me lust for a little myself as I popped into some high stakes action on a .02/.04 LHE table with Mike and later on a .02/.04 LO8 table with AlCantReadRayZeeWhileBreakingUpBarFights. I lost 53 BBs at the Hold Em’ table as Mike’s suckout power was stronger then mine, despite me hitting a 25 BB pot with the hammer. In true hammer fashion, the second deuce hit the river. As for O8 I manged a decent 71BB score when the Omatards decided that me and Al were capping the betting with air, only to see us split the pot with identical wheels. If only people played like that at the $5/$10 LO8 and PLO8 tables (sometimes they do, but it’s rare).

In honor of the Nerd, I tried out these multi-tabling SnGs thing. Basically you stack them and thanks to Stars’ wonderful software, the table with the most urgent action magically pops to the forefront when its your turn. Very cool. My finishes with two “sets” of four: 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 7 and no I wasn’t squeaking into the money, all but two of the bustouts were due to me having the advantage when the money went in. Playing these didn’t seem like Poker though; it was more like playing catcher in a baseball game with a pitcher who threw some decent heat.

Sit and react.

Granted there are some decisions to be made, and with my gaming background it helped that I was able to make the decisions and click rather quickly but it took the depth out of game. Is the 3 seat passive after raising, what does a min raise mean from the 5 seat, what the fuck is the 8 seat doing watching midget porn while holding that 2-liter bottle of pop and a jar of peppermint lotion? Since this was only my first time bringing up a “set” of SnGs I cannot bias against those who profit from doing this but doesn’t playing like this seem hollow? I’ll try it again tonight and go for a “set” of 8 and maybe 12 if I have positive results from the first set.

Thanks for dropping by, now if you haven’t noticed my blogroll to the right has grown in recent weeks please check them out!

And just because this damn song is in my head... Peanut Butter Jelly Time!!