HORSEing around

Been playing some .50/1 HORSE on Full Tilt and play money Badugi on Stars just for shits and giggles. I've been having a good time brushing up on the mixed games and managing to book a couple of wins at the same time. It's also been a good exercise in patience. I'm sure I'm not the only one who experience this, but it seems like I get rolled up pairs in Razz (especially Kings and Queens) way more than I do in Stud. I think my record was 5 bring-ins in a row at one point. Razz and Stud are especially fun when the table gets short-handed and people are winning with a J low or A high. The turnover at the tables is pretty high. People sit down with $10 and burn through that pretty quick and leave. Good starting hand selection and patience resulted in 1.5 buy-ins in a couple of hours.

I'm still trying to figure out Badugi. I could see how there could be some big swings if you were playing for cash. Right now I'm just playing with play money so people are chasing and drawing 3 and 4 cards regularly so I'd be interested to try my hand playing for real money some time.

FTP cash for PS cash?

Anybody have some money on PokerStars that they would like to exchange for Full Tilt or Ultimate Bet cash? I'm looking for a 1-for-1 exchange. Maybe $100 or so.

A beautiful sight.

My son recently emptied a deck of playing cards onto the floor. Without coaching he first picked up the joker and then the Ace of spades. I almost cried. I don't agree with Norman Chad on much, but I do think that the Ace of spades is the most beautiful card in the deck. Unfortunately by the time I grabbed the camera he had dropped the cards and was playing with my car keys. Now if I can only teach him to say "All in."

WBCOOP

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 258691

I should just stick to MTT

Took down another 45-man MTT on FT today. Nothing too exciting, just stuck to sound, fundamental poker until I had established a tight image and then loosened it up a bit to steal a pot here and there. After my first steal with T7o I mis-clicked the "Show cards" button and gave away a little more information than I would have liked. When we were down to two tables, the short stacks started a shove-fest right about when I went card dead. I managed to stick around and finally pick up AA to knock out the 10th place guy and get us down to the final table. I went into heads up with about a 3-to-1 chip lead against a Danish guy who liked to type "ups" whenever he won a big pot. Once I moved him off a pot I typed "Fed Ex." I guess they don't have Fed Ex in Denmark because he didn't get the joke.

end of a drought

Took down a 45-man MTT on FTP tonight. It felt good to go deep into the tourney. Never caught aces but had kings twice. A couple of well-timed bluffs really made the difference and even when my bluffs got picked off, I made my bets look like value-bets and was able to lose a little instead of my whole stack. Once we were at the final table I was catching a lot of big aces. I think I had AQo twice in a row and maybe 3 times in 10 hands with an AJ in there as well.

Poker and Politics don't mix

A sure sign that I've been playing too much poker and that I'm constantly being bombarded by news of the Presidential race:

Last night I had a dream where John McCain was at the final table of a major tournament. I don't know what tournament, but it was a big, multi-day event (probably because I had been following the WSOPE final table all day). As I was watching the tourney I realized that if McCain won the tournament, it would be a great argument that he was fit to run the country plus it would give him an extra boost of media attention.

And then I woke up.