Homeless, Poker

Date: Fri, Aug 24, 2007

Well, at least for the next 12 hours I'm homeless and wandering the streets of St. Pete. I have the day off from work today and have contractors at my house laying down new hardwood flooring. Actually, it's a high quality laminate, but it looks just like the real stuff. The workers lectured me first thing this morning, because I didn't disconnect my TV and surround sound yesterday, like I was instructed. I think they are going to hit me with an extra labor charge for that. Fuck! Anyways, I got to find something to keep me busy until about 7pm. I already had a traditional breakfast at Bob Evans, only my second real breakfast this year. And visited Starbucks downtown where I read the paper while downing a triple expresso and watching all the poor sob's commute to their offices. Now I'm sitting on beautiful beach drive, leeching off of someones unsecured WiFi network, and watching hot rich bitches with pink ipods, in athletic shorts, walk their professionally groomed dogs, along the water. I just got caught up on my work email and figure this is the perfect opportunity to blog. Also a good day to play some free poker on BoDog :)

Online poker has not been real kind to me this month. I dedicated August to no limit play only. My intent was to work at my NL game online, so that I could transition to the live NL games at Derby Lane. Ain't going to happen anytime soon. I started out strong, posting 3 fairly large winning sessions on the FullTilt's $.50/$1 game and nearly doubling my original roll. It went downhill from there and as of yesterday I lost most of my winnings and original bankroll. I have also observed the NL games at Derby Lane, and the play there is very different from the online game. The live game is much looser and the players much worse. I've lost count of the number of times I've shaken my head in disgust watching someone call their entire stack on a gutshot draw - and hit! Sorry, I'll stick to the $1 - $5 spread limit game, see cheap $1 flops, and drag nice sized pots when I hit. I have been playing live a couple days a week, and have been winning. My live play success has helped counter my online failures and has allowed me to keep a positive attitude towards poker. I'll be giving it another whirl tonight.

I've made it into the playoffs of my city tennis league, and I fully expect to win my division. If that happens, It will be the highest level division I have ever won, and it will move me into a higher division then I have ever played. If I do move up, I will most certainly get slaughtered next league. After losing my first two matches this season, I rallied, and as of last night, I've won 9 straight games. I have not lost a set in my last 4 games. I'm on fire. My most satisfying point was with a younger very fit opponent who has beaten me on numerous occasions. We were deep in the second set when I returned a wide out serve on the ad court, leaving me dangerously out of position. He hit a beautiful shot to the deuce court that forced me to traverse the entire distance of the court - fence to fence, and barely reach the ball for a weak shot back. He had advanced to the net and sat waiting for the perfect set up shot. He hits a nice one to the opposite side of the court (the ad side again). He thinks it's a winner (an unreturnable shot - and in most cases it would have been). He turns around and begins walking away from the point, wrongly assuming that it was over. But wait - The 40 year old man pivots and sprint towards the ball. Villians turns around just in time to see my racquet make contact with the ball, two inches off the ground, and return a cross court backhand winner. A true winner. It's one of those points that demoralizes your opponent, and pumps up your confidence. After that point, the match was mine.

this hijacked WiFi connection is going in and out. Time to end this. Have a great weekend

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Tampa poker

Date: Thu, Jul 26, 2007

Just realized I never wrote about the 970 WFLA freeroll and my visit to Lucky's card room, at the Tampa dog track.

Got to the track about 30 minutes before sign in time, which was good, because I hadn't eaten lunch yet. I walked in an realized I wasn't at Derby Lane. This place looks it's age, which is old. I don't know a nice way to put it: it's dirt and ill maintained. There were no signs pointing me to Lucky's cardroom. I wandered aimlessly for about 5 minutes, before I swallowed my pride and asked a track employee where it was. Around a corner, up a flight of stairs, and two minutes later, I was there.

The room was nice looking. The tables, beautiful. The staff was well dressed and the room, in general, appeared to be well organized. Since I had time, I ducked into an adjoining room that was labeled "Cafe", hoping to find something other then a pretzel or month old slice of dog track pizza, to eat. Once in the cafe, all I saw was a few tables, and a few people watching horse races on the TV's. I plopped down at one of the tables and waited. A few minutes later a "waitress" appeared and offered me a menu. I ordered wings and they were delivered in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, I could only stomach about 5 of them. As I gave up on the wings, the line began forming for the freeroll. I grabbed my celery (which was quite good) and blue cheese, and took my place in line. Once it started moving it went quick. The 970 staff has all our names on a sheet of paper and simply checked us off and handed us a seat card as we passed by.

The tourney nearly started on time. I woke up about 30 minutes into it and won a couple decent pots. Remember, each table has a 970 WFLA employee sitting in seat 4. Knock out the WFLA employee, and win their swag bag. Our 970 employee was Andrew, and it was pretty obvious that he had played before. Nevertheless he found himself short stacked and desperate, at about the same time I looked down and found AA. He called PF and so did I. Of course I would normally raise, but I wanted him in this hand. I wanted the swag bag. The flop came 955, and Andrew pushed all in with his few remaining chips. I call as does one other. Turn is another 5, at which point I insert the rest of my chips into the pot. Remaining player folds, and Andrew is drawing dead against my boat. My bag contained a heavyweight 970 WFLA T-Shirt, $40 cash, $10 certificate to Crazy Buffet restaurant on Dale Mabry, and a DVD of Mickey Mantles Greatest hits. I attempted to give the DVD away at my table, but got no takers.

As the tourney progressed, I built up a nice stack. But not as nice as the stacks I was about to run into. When we made it down to the final two tables, I was sandwiched between two WFLA folks. One was the guy who seemed to be in charge and the other was a smoking hot brunette, with beautiful man made tits, and legs that wouldn't stop. She later shared with me that she actually worked for 98 ROCK, not 970, but since they are owned by the same company (Clear Channel), she was asked to help out. I would like to thank whomever asked her to help. This girl was good. Definately knew what she was doing, and was not afraid to push all in, at all the right times. I tried to bully her a bit, until she went over the top of me, and forced me to humbly fold my cards. Yeah, she bitch slapped me. I nearly won my second bag of the night when I pushed all in against the guy who was running the thing. I took the hand, and he handed me the bag, but as the dealer counted out the chips, it turned out he had me covered by just 150 units. I never got another chance at him. Blinds were getting down right nasty and the hands were moving fast. I pushed with AK and got called by 99. Obviously, I got no help and exited table in 17th place.

I gotta say, the room seems to be run very well. The tourney's are extremely organized. I spent some time watching a 3 table tourney and was impressed to see that there was a Supervisor doing nothing but monitoring that tourney. He was hovering over the tables and was easily accessible to players or dealers.

My only gripe (other then where this place is located) is to few games. If you want to play anything other then NLHE, I wish you luck. No other table could be kept alive. This might have been because it was Sunday afternoon, or because of the freeroll, or a combination of both, but the room did not seem to be well trafficed.

I'm looking forward to returning to Derby Lane on Saturday night.

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Poker

Date: Sun, Jul 22, 2007

Made it into the 970 WFLA freeroll today, so I'll get to share my opinion of the new Lucky's card room. I hope this thing is organized a little better then the last freeroll they did at the Silks. I get very impatient sitting at a table waiting for staff to get their shit together.

I never forget a face. It's one of my unique traits. So late Wednesday night I'm playing some $1-$5 spread HE, and downing vodka/sodaswhen a new player comes in a sits to my left. I knew I recognized him. It took me a few minutes before I realized who it was. I think I caught him off guard when I asked him if he worked for the St. Pete. Times. Along with a cohort, Scott co-writes the Times poker blog and also co-host their podcasts. As far as I know thehttp://blogs.tampabay.com/poker/">Ante up poker blog is the only other Tampa Bay local poker blog. However, I was dismayed that he had never heard of my blog.

Here's an interesting situation that happened Friday at Derby Lane. I'll spare you the hand history. There had been a lot of maniac betting, capping, etc. The pot was huge and the river was down to two people. RIver betting was capped also. This was byfar the biggest pot of the night. Seat 7 is an obese and very obnoxious New Yorker. Hadn't shut up all night, and he was pulling in pot after pot by hitting miracle draws. He was also working on his 10th or 11th Bud LIght. The dealer says "Show them" and Seat 7 flips over the straight. The other player in seat 1 is a regular and is a smart ass in his own right. He studies seat 7's hand and turns his hand over face down- effectively folding his hand. But wait! The obnoxious New Yorker says "Yo, lemme see what he had". Since the bet was called, he had the right to ask to see the other players cards. The dealer exposed seat 1's cards, and lo and behold the dumb ass had a set of jacks the whole way, and when the river paired the board it gave him the boat, which he didn't realize. The dealer begins to push the pot to the bewildered seat 1. This is where all hell breaks loose and hilarity ensued. The NY'er begins screaming "but he folded, he folded". The Dealer explained to the NY'er that the cards had not yet hit the muck and that just turned them over, did not take them out of play. A supervisor was called and confirmed the ruling. I mentioned rather loudly that I bet seat 7 is going to kick his own ass out in the parking lot tonight. He shot me an evil glare, and ordered another beer. For the rest of the night, he had to repeat this story to every dealer that sat. Each one sympathized, but gave him the same answer everyone else had. You might want to think twice before asking to see an opponents cards as their folding.

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Tampa Bay Poker, 970 WFLA Freeroll

Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2007

I've been playing quite a bit of live poker at Derby Lane since the new limits went into effect, two weeks ago (in fact, I'll be there this evening). I won the the second hand of $5 straight limit hold'em ever dealt at Derby. The first pot went to some college kid who hit a three outer on the river.

As I predicted, it's the new $1/$1 No Limit games that dominate the room now. On a Friday night there is usually only one $1-$5 spread Hold'em game. A couple Stud and Omaha games, and the rest are NL games. I haven't seen a $5 straight be LHE game since the first day. That's okay, because the $1-$5 spread games are practically the same, save for the fact I can often see a cheap flop with marginal starting cards.

I am having mostly winning sessions at the new limit spread game. For the most part, the play is pretty bad, and a patient player can do very well at this game.

Sooner or later, I will test out my NL game. I jumped into a $1/$2 NLHE game last night on FullTilt. Bought in for the max, $200, and in two hours ran it up to a hair over $500. Beginners luck? Yeah, probably, but a confidence builder nonetheless. I'll mess around a bit more online, before I play live.

Play Online Poker

Our local news talk radio station, 970 WFLA, is sponsoring a freeroll at the new Lucky's Poker Room in the Tampa Greyhound track, Sunday 7/22 at 1pm. They are selecting 90 players at random (enter on their website), and also putting in 10 of their employees. One at each table. Knock out a WFLA employee and get a $100 bounty. Winner gets $1k and an entry into a 25k tourney taking place in August. One of the questions they ask, when you enter the drawing, is who your favorite poker player is. If you enter the drawing, please tell them Mr. Decker is you favorite player :) It's true, right?

I haven't been to Lucky's since they opened two weeks ago, but I have only heard good things about the room. They apparently went all out this time. I hear the staff is friendly and professional. And the decor is unique. Let's hope I make it to next Sunday's tourney so I can give a proper report.

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Tomorrow is a huge day for poker in Florida

Date: Sat, Jun 30, 2007

At least for poker players in Florida, it's a big day. Starting tomorrow, July 1st, poker rooms in Florida will be able to offer higher stake games. I was at Derby Lane last night and learned that they are expanding their already large poker room. The old Heart's Martini bar, next to the tourney room, never took off. It will now be home to higher buyin tourneys - up to $500 buyin, I believe. Currently every tourney is a $45 buyin, so this is big news.

Additionally, cash games options are growing. In addition to the current $2 -$4 limit games, Derby Lane will now be able to offer:

$5 Straight bet limit
$1-$5 Spread limit

And maybe the most eagerly anticipated addition:

$100 buyin No Limit games.

The Seminole Hard Rock casino in Tampa will be offering even higher limit games, up to $10-$20, I hear. And $1k buyin tourneys.

Derby will also be adding Razz, 5-card stud, and 5 card draw games.

I'm sure most Florida poker rooms will offer games similiar to what Derby is doing.

The Silks at Tampa Bay Downs horse track has moved their room to a larger area. They have been doing quite a bit of marketing over the past couple weeks, and seem poised to challenge Derby Lane as the premier Poker room in Pinellas county. The Tampa dog track is also jumping back on the poker bandwagon and will be debuting their new room "Lucky's Card Room", on July 1st.

I can tell you the players and dealers at Derby are ecstatic over this expansion. I'm feeling a little giddy myself.

Most of you reading this are probably thinking "What's the big deal?", but for us Florida players, it is a huge deal. When I started playing at Derby Lane, soon after the room opened, the only games offered were $0.25 - $0.50 limits and no tourneys. Not only that, but once the pot reached $10, you could no longer bet. The main game was 7 card stud, with maybe one Hold'em table, if enough people wanted to play. Then came the poker boom. My how things have changed.

Several years ago we got tourneys (the $45 buy in ones) and limits were raised to $2 -$4. That was a big deal then, but this is even bigger.

I am imagining the $100 NL games will become the game of choice here. That concerns me a little because I have never played a live NL cash game, and have played NL online only a couple times. I will definately need to do some studying.

I am most excited about the $1-$5 spread limit games and the $5 straight bet limit games. I am hoping that enough players feel the same way, so we can keep the limit games rolling at Derby.

I plan on being their tomorrow. I was told it is a mandatory work day for every dealer and every supervisor. Without a doubt, it's going to be chaotic.

******************

I played one tourney last night. It was a four table turbo that paid four places. I played a great tourney, and built up a pretty nice stack going into the final table. Once we got down to eight players, I took a couple of nasty beats and ended up bubbling in fifth place. That hurt.

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Decker's Journal - 2007-06-13

Date: Wed, Jun 13, 2007

I still remain among the breathing. Still plugging away online and sustaining bankrolls on both FullTilt and Cake. The more I’ve played, whether I win or lose, the more I realize just how much luck is involved in this game. Had you asked me the percentage ratio of luck to skill, in limit poker, when I first started blogging 4 years ago, I would have probably naively told you it was 70% skill, 30% luck. Obviously, I hadn’t a clue (but then again, I was winning, is there a correlation there? No clue = winning?). It’s what I wanted to believe. More then a million hands later, at various levels, I am much more inclined to give luck a much larger chunk of the pie. Maybe 45% of limit poker is luck? Maybe more? I still feel skill will prevail in the long, long, long, long, long run – Did I mention in the lonnnnnnnnnnngggg run, but luck is definitely a huge factor in this game. Bigger then I would like for it to be. I don’t like gambling, I like competing. Lately I feel like I am just gambling, again, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. I admit, I have become a little disenchanted.

My last live session was last week. I was fourth out in my first single table, when my AA went down to QTo, courtesy of a runner, runner straight. The following tourney I bubbled in third when my AQs fell to ATo. If it weren’t for the social aspect, and the fact that I need to get out of the house and talk to real live people, I’d probably spend more time sitting at home pointing and clicking.

I am not sure about the future of this blog, or much else for that matter, but I do have an obligation that I need to honor right now, and it is the real reason for this post.

I was sent three copies of Anthony Holden’s new book "The Bigger Deal" by a Marketing Manager at Simon and Schuster. I was asked to give my thoughts on the book and then give away the other two. I’m actually pretty honored that someone thought this blog was worthy enough of actually sending some promotional material to.

Well, I just finished the book. It was a good read. If you read Holden’s first book “The Big Deal”, expect more of the same. “The Bigger Deal” chronicles Holden’s time preparing and trying to qualify for the 2006 WSOP. He talks a lot about the poker boom and how the game has changed since his first book. Holden come across as a regular guy, not a high wheeling poker pro, and that is part of the appeal for me. This is not a book on poker strategy, but more an account of the author’s experiences at and away from the tables.

So I got three copies I am giving away to the first three to post a comment that you want one. Two are brand new, the third was read by me, and has a few dog eared pages. I’ll need your mailing address, and I’ll cover shipping. First three commenters get one. Leave me your mailing address. If you are not comfortable with that, leave me an email address, and if you are one of the first three commenters, I will email you personally for your mailing address.

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Survivor

Date: Sun, May 13, 2007

Down to the Final 5, I'm predicting Yau-Man wins it all. Go Yau Man!

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poker, 40 is old, crisis

Date: Mon, May 7, 2007

Finalt table of a fouty person tourney. I am 2nd in chips and a cinch to be in the money. I'm cutoff preflop, and I make a big raise with my ATs. Next player goes all in, player after him goes allin. If I was smart and sober, I would have folded, instead, since I had them both covered, I called, thinking they both had A-rag. Wrong, my AT ran into AA vs KK. Now KK had hope, because I held an A, I was only able to sit there like a fucking donkey and watch this hand playout. Of course, the AA hand won, and I went from second in chips, to a parapalegic. Nothing to blame there but a terrible call. I should have layed those cards down faster then waffles tilts on a tourist. My bad, and I have to live with that. After that it was over for me. This was the worst hand I played in months. I knew it was a bad call when I did it, so why then?

Cakepoker roll continues to grow, when I play. Had a great session tonight, but lately the motivation to play has wained. As has the motivation to eat or sleep.

In less then a week Mr. Decker turns 40. Never thought the day would come, and I'm none to pleased about it.

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Poker, Florida poker law, etc

Date: Wed, May 2, 2007

I finished 15/58 in the Blogger Bracelet Race on Sunday. The good news is I made it a little over two hours, which allowed me to savor my Arturo Fuente Corona, along with about six Miller Lite. I was becoming short stacked and pushed all in from MP (no limpers) with A8s. One caller has KQo, and properly made the call. Flop came KQx – stick a fork in me, I was done.

Let me tell you fuckin ACH is the man. Since we didn’t raise enough money for the $1500 WSOP buyin, Al did some wheeling and dealing with the final table players, who all agreed to make this a winner take all event. Still, we came up short, so Al covered the difference, and brdweb will be playing at the WSOP. One of these days I’m gonna let Al drink me under the table. Brdweb’s site is worth a view, if only to see his small pair banner.

+++++++++++++++++++

Good news here in Florida, The new Florida Poker bill (that’s not what it’s really called, but close enough), SB 752 has passed through the Florida Legislature. It now sits on Governor Christ’s desk awaiting the final signature. Unlike Christ’s predecessor, Jeb Bush, who vetoed similar bills before, I believe Christ will see the benefit of signing this bill into law as it will help generate a lot of money for our education system. I am optimistic that it will be signed and put into effect later this year, maybe as soon as July.

What does it mean to degens like me? Bigger tourney buyins, $100 Buy in NL games, $5 max bet limit games (was hoping for $10 max, but the $5 max sure beats our current $2 max), Expanded operating hours, various high hand jackpots (which I could care less about), and also the video slot machines, which I could care less about.

++++++++++++++++++++

Sunday I had a poor online session on Cake Poker. To keep funded for the games I’m playing I redeposited that $200, sitting in Epassporte, that I had taken out days earlier. Monday I had a very small winning session, but when I logged on Tuesday, my BR seemed a little higher then I remembered. I went into the cashier history and found an $85 deposit from Cake Poker, that was simply labeled “VIPPLAY AWARD”. Sweet! I got no email alerting me to this, couldn’t find anything on their site about what this might be, and there does not seem to be any restrictions associated with it, but I cannot be sure. I’ve logged quite a few multi-tabling hours on it in the past two weeks, and this might just be an incentive for me to stick around.

++++++++++++++++++++

One of the biggest boxing matches of 2007 takes place this Saturday night: Oscar De La Hoya VS. Floyd Mayweather. I would love to see Oscar win this one, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think we’re going to head out to a local “classy” sports bar to watch.

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Poker

Date: Sun, Apr 29, 2007

My Cake Poker roll has swelled from an initial $45 (+$45 bonus), to a little over $400, in just a week and a half. I peaked at $515, but had a bad run last night that set me back a bit. It's been a hell of a long time since I have had a sustained winning streak. Granted, I'm mostly playing 1/2 and 2/4 limit, but in light of recent results, I am ecstatic that I am beating these games, for the time being.

I requested a $200 withdraw, on Wednesday evening, to my Epassporte account. I did this because I saw some chat complaining that withdraws were taking forever, and I wanted to see for myself. Mine took almost exactly 36 hours to hit Epassporte. I can deal with that. I think check requests are taking a little longer then they should.

I'm registered for the Blogger Bracelet Race Tourney this evening, at 7pm. I'd play a lot more of these blogger tourneys if they started at 7pm as opposed to 9pm. I'm a pussy, and 6am comes way to early for me. Hit up Al for the particulars on the tourney.

I have an Arturo Fuente Cuban Corona and a 12 pack of Miller Lite ready for this one. Chances are I'll be bounced from the tourney before the cigar is half done, but that's okay.

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Michael Jackson is playing in the WPT championship!

Date: Wed, Apr 25, 2007

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Decker's Journal - 2007-04-22

Date: Sun, Apr 22, 2007

I got to Derby Lane just in time to get behind the guy who got the last seat in the three table tourney. Already I bubbled. I quickly settled for a single table tourney that got under way at 7pm. It turned out to be the longest single table turbo I ever played, lasting just over two hours before my opponent and I decided to chop ($160 each), after jockying back and forth for ten minutes. I was short stacked when we got down to 4 and made a couple of nice hands to get back in the game.

The highlight of the night was during my first tourney. We had a very talkative, very obnoxious maniac in seat 2. I think he said he was from Rhode Island, but he had a very thick Boston accent. He was calling with complete crap and telling us how he hopes to bust Negreanu out of the WSOP this year. He hit a couple of miracles and managed to take a pretty sizable lead early in the game. At one point when he decided to take a break from lecturing the table, and slipped his Ipod on. We had a few moments of piece when suddenly he burst out in song to Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger", except when he sung it, it was "Eye o da Tigah. His voice could be heard throughout the room, and he was totally oblivious. I'm usually real good about maintaining my compusure, but when he started wailing, the whole table broke out in laughter. It was so horrible, it was funny. Unsuprisingly, he busted out soon after the show, and moved on.

I ended up playing a second tourney and busted out 5th.

I cleared my little bonus on Cake Poker. I only started with $45 and have grinded it up to about $250, mainly playing 1/2 and 2/4 limit.

One interesting feature on Cake, is that when you are looking at a previous hand history there is a button that allows you to create a shareable webpage for that hand. Below are two examples.

http://cakepoker.com/HandHistory/?Hand=xcXFxcTFxcbMzMTExMfBxIjGzcTDwsM%3d

http://cakepoker.com/HandHistory/?Hand=xcXFxcTFxczHw8TExMDCw4jGzcTDwsM%3d

They had a bunch of server problems earlier this afternoon. I emailed them to find out WTF was going on, and got a reply back in less then 15 minutes saying they were working on it. It's been good for the last few hours. I'm gonna hang around there for a bit and see if the cards continue to go my way.

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TGIF

Date: Fri, Apr 20, 2007

I started my Friday morning out by stumbling out of bed and in to the office. I sit at my new L-shaped computer desk and start pulling up my usual morning reading websites. My laptop was sitting on the desk, with the charger strung across the room to the nearest available outlet. I know, I know – an accident waiting to happen. I hear my expresso finishing up, and since I like to get it when it’s still quite hot, I jump up and rush to the kitchen. I was fully aware that my laptop cord was between me and the door, but in my still pre-expresso state, and trying to avoid stepping on a 150lb Dingo sleeping on my floor, I must have mistimed a step, or a hop, or something. I stumbled fairly hard over the cord, resulting in it being forcibly ripped from the laptop itself, at an angle it wasn’t designed to accommodate. Luckily the rubber foots on the laptop kept it gripped to the desk, and I was able to recover before I crashed to the floor, or on top of the Dingo. Unfortunately, the end part of the power cord that plugs into the laptop, stayed in the laptop, while the rest of the cord did not. FUCK!

I had to break out the needle nose pliers to try and extract the little piece that was now embedded into the laptop. Obviously, I’m furious, as any of you would be, if you were dumb enough to pull off such a stupid stunt. Just as I’m close to getting a good needle nose plier grip on this thing my wife shouts

“where are my keys?”.

The pliers slip. I have no clue where her stupid keys are, and I have more pressing concerns, so I don’t respond. Seconds pass:

“I need my keys!!!, where are they?”.

Again the little piece just slipped from the grips of my needle nose pliers. I clench my teeth.

“I don’t know where the fuck your keys are!!!”.

“I’ve looked everywhere and they’re nowhere to be found. What did you do with them?”

“Did you look outside in the front door?” I say that sarcastically, but I also know there is a damn good chance that is where they are.

I hear the front door open, and keys jingle as they are being pulled from the lock. I smile to myself. I immediately feel better and secretly hope that she is feeling as stupid as I do.

I finally get a good grip and the part is extracted and disposed of. The laptop appears to have not suffered any internal injuries. I surf over to the HP site to find out how much a new charger is going to set me back. $79.99 – highway robbery if you ask me, but I don’t have much of a choice.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Cake Poker must have temporarily turned on the “win switch” for me, as I have been taking down most of the $10+$1 sit and goes I’ve played. So far, no server issues and I have quickly adapted to the software, which is a bit outdated, but certainly adequate. I’m still trying to figure out their various promotions (gold cards, gold coins, raffles, freerolls, etc), but for now I’m just happy to be winning again, albeit temporarily.

Going to hit up Derby Lane tonight for some unwinding. The single table tourneys there are a virtual goldmine. If’ things work like they should (which we know they rarely do), I’ll win enough to finance my new laptop charger.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering what a Dingo looks like:

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Poker

Date: Tue, Apr 17, 2007

I thought hoped my luck might change if I took a little break from Full Tilt (especially since they were down again yesterday afternoon when I wanted to play), so I am trying out a newish room that accepts us Americans.

Cake Poker has a bunch of different promos going on, including a 100% deposit bonus. The software is not the best, but it has been stable for me for the past two nights that I have been playing there, and yes, my luck has improved slightly. I'm cashing in sit and goes again, and actually took first in a 20 person tourney last night. Traffic is okay, they've got quite a few ring games and S&G's going on. At this moment they have 1770 players on and 261 active tables.

I'm sure I'll be back to Full Tilt once I clear this bonus. Hopefully it will give them some time to fix their recent server issues...

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