Aquathon, Round 7

It's that time of year again; I'll be heading up to San Jose to swim in my 7th (really? I've lived in California long enough to do an annual event SEVEN times? I tell people I've lived here for "about 5 years" lol) Abilities United (formerly known as CAR) Aquathon. The charity supports people with development disabilities, providing them with programs and training to help them become happy and productive members of society. I think it's a great charity, but can understand arguments from people who would rather save the whales, dogs, tornado victims, or any other more maligned group. Nonetheless it is my blog and I am the one who will be swimming for half an hour, so I'll ask for donations if it so pleases me. Here are some relevant links:

Aquathon Home - You can read about the event and Abilities United here.

My Page - Donations of any size graciously accepted here.

If you decide you'd like to contribute, thanks so much. If not, that's fine, too. If you have any questions about Abilities United, tax deductions, company matches, or even participating in the event, don't hesitate to contact me.

Softball Update

My softball team is sick good. I'm not an awful player (actually I'm probably above average defensively, but well below average with the stick), and I'm pretty easily the 8th or 9th best guy on the team. We have a dude who played freaking low A ball for crying out loud. What's he doing now, you ask? Slow pitch softball, obviously.

Tonight we started off slow, like always, with our 1-2-3 hitters going oh for their first 6 at bats and digging us into a 10-5 hole. Our captain wasn't in attendance, we had a back up guy pitching, and were missing at least 1 useful outfielder and were consequently a little weak out their in the right half of the field. But just wait for it....We scored 12 runs in the bottom of the 4th to take a 17-10 lead, from which we never looked back (the final score was 24-12), and turned an 8-2-4-3-8 triple play in the top of the 5th.

Go ahead, read that again. Men on the corners, nobody out, we're up 7 runs (you should think of softball scores sort of like football scores, really...7 runs is pretty much one good inning), and we turn an 8-2-4-3-8 triple play. Fly ball to left center, caught, thrown to the catcher for the tag, that's two, guy on first is somehow caught in the middle, catcher zings the ball to me at second, I chase the dude back then flip it to the first baseman, who executes his portion flawlessly, flipping the ball to the left center fielder (who is poaching the shortstop's play in his excitement to complete a FUCKING TRIPLE PLAY IN SLOW PITCH SOFTBALL).

My only regret is that we have no video, as I think we honestly would have had a shot at top plays.

Running Hot

Post on 2p2 I made:

Live 40 7 way limped pot I have 22 in the big blind flop 662hh I lead the dream calls the lawyer raises the other lawyer calls 2 cold (you have a six this is fantastic news) I 3 the dream eats them the lawyer...folds. The other lawyer calls turn 7r. I bet the dream calls the other lawyer raises I 3 the dream calls the other lawyer calls.

Peanut Gallery: "Jesse what do you need?"
Jesse: "I know what I don't need"
The Dream: "put a heart"

662-7-6

The other lawyer donks I fold the dream mucks J8hh.

Squeaky, Part 2

First of all if you haven't read part one, you should do that first.

Our last entry found our intrepid hero seated next to almost literally a man on fire, the one and only Squeaky on raging banana tilt from a losing the absolute maximum to Kim's Q3s (for the record that hand is known as the gay waiter, since it is after all just a queen with a trey....like I always say if you're not careful, and reading my blog definitely counts as not being careful, you learn something almost every day). A few more hands transpire and the game is just redonkulous as usual, with people 3 betting and capping really with anything that resembles a hand. Players like this can be dangerous, because they've figured out a maxim of limit hold 'em that gets them like 80% of the way to correct play; if you don't want to fold, just raise. The game can be fun, but once a session or so I find myself mis-assessing the ranges and making what turns out to be just a preposterous fold. Sorta like this one, except not so brazen and usually not so funny. The hand goes down like this.

Somebody limps and somebody calls then a raise or a raise then a call I don't really remember and I make it 3 bets with AK and Squeaky just caps it with a great flourish right behind me. John the Asian prop who's been there forever because they pay them so much that he simply can't find a way to get broke tries to show off how tight and good he's playing by folding AQ in the blinds, but obviously fumbles it on the way to the muck (casino employees out there you really should know better than to be such a retarded ass hat and do something like that...just fyi) which is pretty important information. Just how important will become clear in a minute. I don't really remember what the other 15 people in the pot did with their hands, but I know we saw the flop like 4-5 ways and it was:

K76

My hand is even more nut like than usual, since the flashed ace reduces the pairs of aces Squeaky can have from 3 to 1. Assuming his range is even as tight as TT+ and AK, I beat 18 combos, lose to 4, and chop with...a few. So anyway we all check and he bets and someone raises and I 3-bet and he just calls and the other guy calls and now we are only 3 handed and the pot is freaking hunormous and the the dealer digs way way down deep into the deck and turns:

K76-A

I mean really, ace ball, right up there for everyone to see. The passenger checks, I bet, Squeaky declares "This is the sickest pot I've ever played in my entire life" to which I respond "That's just really hard to believe" and he looks at me kind of funny and says "Oh yeah? I raise!" and splashes chips hither and dither and just fucking every where he pleases (which is hard to believe since it's a 3/6 structure he shouldn't really have that many chips but somehow he's always just splaying them halfway across the table). Our passenger folds and I tank for a second. Normally I'd just call down here, but with the extra ace missing my hand is just so strong, I convince myself that he can actually have AQ (somehow, someway) and after a few seconds put in the 3 bet.

Squeaky immediately berates me. "This isn't TV, this isn't Hollywood! You don't have to make a show for the cameras! I know you have sevens let's just see if I can catch up". As he says this he turns over AK and flings something like 6 chips into the pot. I am stunned and try my best to look it as well as a little sheepish and maybe embarrassed that he has such a good read on me. The river bricks off, I fire a bet, and he...

Folds.

The instant the dealer has the hand in the muck I of course show my hand and suddenly Squeaky is very, very quiet. He racks up and leaves on his blind, with everyone basically yelling to the floor men "Lock the doors!" as he's on his way to the cage. I didn't partake, however, as I spent the those 6 minutes being very still and trying to avoid making any sudden movements, lest Squeaky just back hand me right upside my face.

Squeaky

So for some reason I found myself playing 30/60 at HG on Tuesday night. The Bike 40 was terrible (and I have another story entirely here about how exactly we went about giving Wayne another iPad as he put on a fucking laser show to win 42 pots in 5 hours of live at the Bike) and the 20 was meh but I had some scouting that declared the HG 30 juicy and it's on my way home so one thing led to another which led me to Squeaky.

I sit down in seat 3 and immediately met with bitching from the entire table about how long seat 4 has been lobbying. "He's been gone an hour, at least" says seat 8. "How long?" asks the floor, "really"? The next response comes from seat 1 who says "Not an hour, more like 3 or 4" which gets a good chuckle. I can't resist and say "Actually he's over at the Bike" and we all have a good laugh. As the floor pads off to find our player I ask John the nice white prop who has been there for a long time who we're bitching about and he informs me that it's the one, the only....Squeaky. I look John dead in the eye and say "How do I run THIS bad?" and he laughs hysterically. I mean really, it's pretty awful luck to show up at HG basically on a whim for the first time in almost 8 weeks (I checked my books) and be seated next to perhaps the single most irritating player in all of Southern California. Squeaky, you see, is a fucking freak show. Every pot is a contest to see how slowly he can play it, and how much attention he can draw. It's just a disaster, really. The only reason he plays anywhere but Commerce, I think, is that he frequently winds up barred for days or weeks at a time (which I can assure you takes some serious effort).

Sure enough Squeaky returns and the shenanigans continue as if he never left. He's betting and raising a lot (Squeaky is a decent player when he's at his best, which fortunately for the rest of us seems to be almost never) and I can tell things are just a little a miss. Some small pots happen, with him making a show of it all, showing one card to random people at the table (who usually, but not always, are not not in the pot), saying all manner of ridiculous things, gesticulating wildly as he slings chips into the pot, the works basically. Then two pots "of note" transpire in quick succession. The first is innocent enough...to a point.

Kim (aka the machete aka howmany's ex aka the girl who silver medaled a wsop event this year who has never been anything but pleasant to me) opens late (ish....for Kim really anything other than UTG is late) and I make it 3 bets with an ace and a 9 of the same suit in the small blind. Squeaky is upset....he declares that it's personal between him and Kim, this robbing of each other's blinds, and this is the 3rd time I have interfered and unsurprisingly (as he did the first two times I interfered) puts in another raise. Kim calls, I call, we flop:

654r

Come to think of it, I probably should have just folded this flop, but I knew Squeaky was go going bananas and well I'm not really sure what my plan was other than what it always is at HG which is to peel light then get blown off the potentially best hand because I suck at poker. And I probably had flopped a set of diamonds, which is as good a reason as any to continue, so we get to the turn for one bet a piece:

654r-A

Ding ding ding. I check the Squeakster fires Kim calls (at this point I'm putting her on just utter silliness....but even I end up surprised here) and I put in the raise. Squeaky is out of his chair 3 betting me declaring "UPSTAIRS ONCE MORE WE GO" and Kim just eats two cold instantenously and I'm sitting there pretty sure I'm beat but staring down a 15+ bet pot and decide I'm going to spike a 9 and it's going to be fun and call.

654-A-2

That looks harmless enough. I check, he fires with a great flourish and Kim raises without even a second's hesitation. I fast track my hand to the muck (which arguably could have been done two streets and 3.5 bets ago) and Squeaky declares "So sick. Did you take all that heat with pocket 3s? That's so sick" and calls. Kim's response is "It's way sicker than that" and rolls the Q3s for the head shot. Squeaky goes ballistic, ranting and raving about the fact that that's exactly how Kim did so well in the tournament and how he had the chip lead at the final table (which Kim later confirmed meant he came in "about 30th" which I agreed was about how far I downgraded his statement) and I decided it was basically worth the 6 bets I spent on the endeavor.

Hand 2....will be posted tomorrow. I promise. It's time for bed.

...

This is roughly a post I just made on 2p2:

I open jacks only 5 people call because I'm locked out of the 40 (where 6-7 would call) and we flop

665cc

I bet/3 and he's confused as he only has 1 more chip. I take 3 back cuz we are amazingly headsup

Him: I have a 6
Me: you're in good shape
Dealer: blank blank

He rolls T6dd

Me: A premium holding
Him: I had no money
Me: I can't imagine why
Him: ....

Explanation of Bounties

I realized I cut that a little short so here's why you win $100 for catching me playing 20 deuce or drinking a coke zero at the Bike. The caffeine is obvious; it's a drug and I'm using too much of it which is having negative effects on my life. I'm sleeping poorly and having states of extreme tiredness for seemingly no reason. My intake was up to 250+ mg/day which and I think it was actually making my life worse, so I'm stopping.

On the draw games I have a lot of reasons. When we play I'm always tired and not playing well, so it's not like I'm learning; I'm just fucking around. And it's a waste of time (I should go play lhe at commerce) and when I lose (which is always cause I draw bad) I end up on screaming tilt (as per Pete's theory of tilt...the further you are from your comfort zone the less tilt armor you have). So I quit for 2 weeks minimum, and will likely renew the bounties on August 1st.

Bounties

First of all, posting from my iPad is still an epic fail. You just can't click in the "put the text here box" and bring up the keypad. It just doesn't work. I am holding Steve Jobs personally responsible. But now on to more pressing business.

I am setting a pair of bounties on myself, good for now through the end of the month of July. All you need to do to collect on either is catch me in the act and demand payment. They are, quite simply:

1. Playing a draw game with 5 or 10 dollar chips.

2. Drinking something with caffeine in it while inside a casino.

Both bounties are set at a single fun ticket, payable on site, to as many people as show up to collect.

Bucco Fever

As you may be aware, the Pirates charged into the All Star break not only not out of it, but actually in the very thick of it. Here is a recent email from my father summing up the situation:


When they send these 7 Little Indians back to Indy, Indy is moving to the NL Central and the Strohs are going to the International League.

You people better get all those wild fires put out cause we need the Smoke Jumpers here cause the Burgh is on fire.

And I am tired of all those fucking assholes who say we don't need pro sports teams and stadiums. I have not seen so many smiling, happy people since the pigs ate Doc Benko ( I will have to explain that one to you sometime). I am in such a good mood I saw one hummingbird the other day and I went out today and bought a $17 hummingbird feeder and went the whole way up to Giant Iggle to get red food coloring. Now this is the way to stimulate the economy. Convince every city they are still in it.

Vegas Was Fantastic

I cannot stress enough how fantastic of a time I had in Las Vegas. Leo Doc rented a super ballah house for 4 nights and about 8 of us stayed there for the course of the trip. He hosted what could possibly have been my new favorite meal of all time on Friday night (perhaps replacing the steak I ate at the bottom of the Grand Canyon) where we basically doubled the number of people at the house and had a veritable who's who of live mid stakes limit hold 'em (at least from my point of view). In no particular order we had leo doc, surfdoc, howmany, Hammerin' Hank, Joe Tall, Death Donkey, Big Bad Babar, DosXX, DougL, Captain R, myself and perhaps some people I'm forgetting. Surfdoc jumped off the balcony into the pool, then off the wall separating our house from the one next door into...the neighbor's pool. 12 or so bottles of wine were consumed, along with enough steak, lobster, and peach cobbler to sustain some small towns. It was, in short, just fantastic.

The rest of the trip wasn't too shabby either, with the shenanigans ranging from $10 Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em to straight razor shaves at Mandalay Bay to 4/8 mixed game action at the 2p2 meetup. My favorite hand of poker of the trip was scooping howmany and bugstud in a hand of Stud 8. I can't really remember their boards that well cause I mean it was freaking stud, but I had four baby clubs up and had spiked a set on like 5th street, then scooped the entire thing with exactly that; no low, no flush, just a set. It was gross. I probably gained 5 pounds throughout the weekend (lol I just weighed myself at 174, which I think means I've officially gained 10 pounds since the end of the weight loss prop bet, which means it's definitely time to basically do it again), but other than that it was just full of win.

As for poker...meh. Things have been going well, but I've played exactly 7.5 hours of 40/80 in my last 5 shifts, which is simply not enough (especially given I'm winning something like $120/hour in the game for the year). Hopefully things will turn around soon, or else something is going to have to be done.

For a Brief Prelude

Check out the LC thread on 2p2:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/53/medium-stakes-limit/july-low-content-thread-1060977/

Vegas

My trip to Vegas has been just amazing so far. Details will follow once I get home tomorrow.