Wednesday, March 02, 2005

The new Party

If you haven't heard all the buzz, PartyPoker has expanded its tables in size and amounts. They are now offering $400 and $1000 NL/PL Hold Em' and Omaha tables, as well as a greater amount of high stakes tables. Another nice edition is the 100XBB buy-ins now. I was hoping to see a $10K stack at the $1000 tables but I was too busy knocking down the recent re-load bonus on four tables.

More on the poker night in a bit...

After getting home from work I was ready to collapse on the couch due to a long day but the wife exclaimed "we're going out to eat!". What perked me up is we were going out with my sis-in-law, and my good friends B and E (no actual homes were broken into). Off to Claddagh, a friendly Irish pub with authentic Irish dishes and a decent beer selection to boot. The little ones were restless during the meal but its always good to catch up with friends. Cheers to the wait staff for giving us a little side room in which the little ones couldn't get into too much trouble but tried to anyway. I had the Traditional Pub Burger and some sour cream dip for the fries (which is usually good but tonight tasted skunky) with a red Irish beer (the name eludes me at the moment).

After the meal it was time to hit the hot tub, which really hit the spot because this chair at work isn't made for a 6'4" guy and it kills my back. We chatted with the sis-in-law and B for awhile and made some plans for hooking up to go to the Mall of America on Friday (instead of playing poker all day, sigh). Hmmmmm wingies at Hooter's!! Boobs or virtual cards you make the call.

After they left, me and wife checked out start of The Amazing Race. I'm rooting for Rob and Amber despite their sneaky ways of getting help last night in Lima and going from worst to first in the process after taking what seemed like 30 minutes to open the trunk of their car at the start. I went to go fire up PartyPoker after the first hour and my wife came down to inform me that the hillbillies from SC lost. Major disappointment, the guys with the best personalities lost before the show barely started.

Ah yes, poker content.

I immediately fired up 4 tables (2 $25NLHE and 2 $50NLHE). I wanted to get a feel for the level of competition at the $50 level. Basically it was one or two more decent players at the $50 rather then the $25 and people didn't push as much (not to say they didn't try to bluff though). After playing for 15 minutes I finally took note that I was sitting with Helixx. This made the bonus grinding go by MUCH quicker. We chatted about the up coming WPBT event in Vegas and he's still in limbo as to were to stay as I am. I'm still leaning towards staying at Imperial Palace but downtown sounds like fun too. I watched him take down a nice size pot with Q7 hitting a boat on the turn and waiting out for someone to catch his Ace high flush, nice job! Then the blogfather himself took a seat, and I'm fairly sure he dropped the hammer on a few unsuspecting fishies but resisted to show. FTrain dropped by to sweat Iggy about the new book (which I will be reviewing once I get myself untangled from this bonus whoring mess). I resisted the urge to sweat the Minnesota TiVo expert as I'm sure he didn't need any more of my bad luck that I seem to give him. All and all a fun night thanks to Iggy and Helixx, thanks guys and I can't wait to meet you in Vegas!

Since poker is mostly a result-orientated game.... I did make 30BBs but it should have been more had I not made some bone-headed calls when I made the right read. Case in point... dealt KK raise it up to 6XBB and get one caller, flop is Q 6 4 rainbow, caller bets $1 (I put him on AQs or AQo at this point) and raise to $4, he flat calls, next card is an Ace (sigh), he bets $2, I flat call, river is a blank and he bets $10, why I hit the call button on the river is beyond me because he flipped over... AQo. Poorly played on all streets as a famous sage would advise. Its a leak in my game still. Perhaps more Irish beer would plug the leak :P

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