Brag: X-box!

I just won an X-box and Guitar Hero 3 from Cake poker. A nice 2 chip freeroll that I started while working on dinner. Glad I joined it. Of course, I already have both the X-box and GH3, but we have friends that are X-box-less and we needed another guitar for GH3 anyway.

Edit to add: I forgot to mention. Early in the tournament, during the 15/30 blinds, I took a chance against a donkey that backfired and ended up being crippled down to 300 chips. So I made a comeback all the way to second. Also, the donkey was the guy who came in first!

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Omaha H/L

Wow, what a crazy game. And I am a super donk too! It was a TP league night last night and the game was O8.

Unless it's for the forum, I don't think I ever want to play that game again. I couldn't see my straights, I missed a few flushes. I would think I had a low when I didn't. And what's with not being able to use more or less than 2 cards in your hand?

Although, there was one good thing about the game. I came in second! I'm sure I sucked out a lot. I know I made TP crazy with my plays, but it's all for fun anyway.

First!

Last night was the final game of the Poker at Rob's league. It was definitely a smaller game with only 11 people turning out. But of course since it's almost Christmas, it's understandable we didn't have many players.

I started out the game well. Last couple of games, I've tried loosening up preflop and limping with hands I normally fold. This is for the early stages only though, I tighten up later on. I think based on the type of players we have, it's helped me get deeper in the tournaments. Even with being loose, the hands I am playing are still stronger than those most others are playing. Plus I'm in more pots and getting more chips early, which is definitely a plus.

The game started out fast. We were down to four players and still at the 20/40 blind level. We were all joking that we would have to start another tournament since this one was lasting not much more than an hour.

All of us spoke too soon. Until the blinds reached 250/500, we were still at 4 players. No one was able to die. There were all ins and calls, but the chips just seemed to move back and forth between players. I finally ended up eliminating Rob with KQs. I had raised, but he was so short that essentially put him all in, so he pushed. I of course called. My hand held and we were finally three.

The game finally sped up after that. Blinds are 300/600 and Brett goes out and it's me and Mike H head's up. It only took about 3 or 4 hands, but I took out Mike with A2o. He had AKo. We were allin preflop and I ended up sucking out a 2 on the turn. So a nice FIRST for me.

Unfortunately, even with a strong finish at the end of the league, I still finished 5th for league points, so bubbling the money for that. First ended up being Adam, Rob was second, Brent came in third and Mike C was fourth.

The league was great fun and we are going to do it again next year. I'm looking forward to it and maybe next year, I will finish top four for the league.

Time to Bitch

It's time to bitch about Cake again. If you've been keeping up with my blog, it quite upsets me that I don't have a Gold Card and, yes, I am STILL cardless! But that's not what I want to bitch about.

I read 2+2 on a semi-regular basis so I knew from posts on there that withdrawing via cheque was a hassle. A lot of personal info had to be mailed in first to be verified. Mostly, this was to protect Cake from credit card fraud. I understand that, it's a huge issue with online poker sites.

Well, I didn't want to go through those hoops, so I set up a Moneybookers account and tried a test withdraw for $50 from Cake to the new account. And then I waited and waited and waited and waited. Four days later, I gave up on waiting. Something was obviously not going through and I was worried it was my Moneybookers account as I didn't plan on funding it first. I already have money in the poker sites I play at, I don't need more.

So anyway, I emailed them. Now, I'm actually impressed with their response time. I think I received an email back within a couple hours. What I'm not impressed with is even with a Moneybookers account, I have to send in a whole bunch of crap. Photocopy of my credit card, front and back, copy of my statement. Copy of a utility bill. Ugh. I didn't want to have to do this. And what the hell? Why did it take an email from me first about my withdraw before they tell me how to get it processed? Why not an auto email or notes on the withdraw page so I didn't have to wait four days to find out I couldn't get my money?

Now this doesn't really piss me off--too much--what really makes me mad is that yes it's to protect against fraud, but I was only taking out $50. Now I'm not saying small amounts should go through, but what gets me is I have a ton more money still in my Cake account. So if they really did have an issue after my withdraw, they still have the rest of my funds to confiscate. There is no risk letting me take that $50! Plus, I deposited ages ago. If there was going to be a dispute on my deposit, it would have happened already!

Let me have my damn money!

Back Up and Running

Almost. I have a new Hard Drive, replaced under warranty, so I'm back on the internet. The only thing I don't completely have set up is PokerTracker and PokerAce. I just need to get new registration codes for them and then everything is complete.

Well, except it will be a brand spanking new database. I can easily request all my tournament summaries from Pokerstars, but from the looks of it, I can only request HHs for cash games for the last 100 hands. I think I'm going to email support and ask if they will send histories for my lifetime or even the last year would be really helpful. Cross our fingers and hope they will help me out.

Lost Everything

Everything is gone....

Sorta. Yesterday, I was surfing the net when my computer froze. Suddenly, I was blue screened. Oh oh. I do the usual reboot, but when the computer comes back on, it doesn't load properly. Not even the screen where it says, your computer was improperly shut down, do you want to go to safe mode. There was a message on the screen. On the top left corner all it said in regular text Err1 Err3. I have never seen that type of thing before.

After showing my screen to Rob and his fiddling with it for a bit, he tells me my hard drive is dead. I've lost everything. Booooo.....

There were only a couple things I'm disappointed in losing and can't just reinstall to get back. One is Quicken. Not the program of course, but the data I had downloaded to it. And the other is PokerTracker. Again, it's easy to get the software, but I've lost my entire database. That's a real piss off. All my stats are gone and all the hands on other players as well. Really, really, crappy.