2nd

Poker time has been hard to come by lately but today I came home to an empty house and decided to hit FTP. Just a $20+2 SnG. Nothing too exciting. Managed to take 2nd without ever catching a big pocket pair or coin flips. What I really need to work on is my heads up play. I'm just not picking my spots well.

Iggy busted from the ME. The magic run is over. But what a run it was, and thanks to Iggy and Pauly we bloggers got to live vicariously through the whole thing. Even more inspiring than Moneymaker, he makes me want to take my shot.

I remember the first time I ever played poker in Vegas I hit a bad beat jackpot at the Luxor. We were playing 7-card stud and I had quad fours on 5th street. The bitter old rock at the other end of the table made a straight flush and I couldn't understand why the guy next to me was telling me I had won money, a lot of money (for me at the time). I was so shocked and stunned when they counted out my $1,400 that I literally couldn't speak and had to go back to my room and lay down. If I cashed in the Main Event they might have to carry me out on a stretcher.

Congrats to Iggy. But it sounds like he's been bitten by the bug and is already dreaming of next year.

Go Godfather!!!

Iggy, the godfather, or maybe more appropriately, Blogfather, of the poker blog made the money in the main event. Nice parlay of pokerstars satellite. According to Pauly, Iggy might get some TV time as he was playing at a table with some pros. It will be exciting to see how far he can go.

Running Bad

Not poker, but Scrabulous. Gone 3-5-2 over my last 10 games. I've been catching some terrible tiles- plenty of times where I've had either no vowels or all vowels while my opponents have caught good tiles. Scrabulous must be rigged. At least I'm not losing money.

3/45

After losing a couple of heads up Sngs - in one match there were two straight flushes, including the last hand that knocked me out- I decided to try my hand at a little MTT. Decided to play a 45 player MTT on FTP. Got knocked down to a pretty small stack but managed to battle my way back to be in the top 5 for most of the later part of the tournament. With 2 tables left, the top four stacks were all at our table. When we were down to 10 we had the 4 biggest stacks and the smallest stack. He managed to hang on for a while until I made the comment "cue the Rocky theme song" after he won a hand. Of course that was the kiss of death and busted out on the very next hand.

Not only does it feel good to cash, it feels even better to have hung tough and protect a small stack and manage to make it to final table, especially considering I never had aces, kings or jacks and only had queens once and that wasn't until the final table.

0 for ...

Haven't played much lately but found a few minutes last night to jump on UB and lose three straight heads up SnGs. Basically I sucked and the coin flip didn't go my way. My last hand of the first sng I I shove with pocket 4s and get called with AJo, flop a set and then go down in flames to runner-runner straight.

Hard to believe that the WSOP has run for three weeks now. I've given up my frantically trying to read every single blog out there and now just read whatever I feel like. It is great to have so many choices, though.

Euro 08 final Germany vs. Spain. I didn't see Russia v Spain, but Germany looks strong and will be tough to beat. The Turks were great and gave us one hell of a show.

Go Celtics

I'm not a big basketball fan. Although, when I used to play people would call me the Asian Dennis Rodman (without the dyed hair, multiple piercings and body art). I could rebound and play D like nobody's business. I can't shoot worth a lick, but that's another story. If there was an under 6'0 league, I could probably have been a pro.

I did watch parts of last night's game and was rooting for Boston. Not that I'm a big Boston fan, but I'm rooting for Ray Allen. He suffered long enough at Seattle, if anyone is due, it's gotta be him.

Of course, Father's day dinner is going to be a rather chaotic affair. Half the people will be glued to the TV screaming and yelling.

Euro 08: Sweden v Greece

Is it just me, or does Zlatan Ibrahimovic look a lot like the Dungeon Master on "Good Eats"?

Great games today. Spain and Sweden looked good. One of the perks of being a stay at home dad is that, baby willing, I can watch a lot of the matches. When I was watching the Sweden v Greece game I thought the stands looked mighty empty and then I realized that it was just the Swedish fans were all wearing jerseys.

Watching Poker After Dark right now. This is the week where Gus Hansen takes on 5 women. Why does JJ Liu insist on wearing those hideous outfits? Clonie Gowen and Jessica Schoenberg, yummy. Vanessa Rousso just doesn't do it for me. I just can't see past her bad playing.