July 29, 2010

Seven days of summer flu makes one weak

Greetings.

Yes, one week later, and I am finally well.

Unfortunately for me, I caught a flu bug on Thursday night, and it dragged me down for all of the weekend and the better part of this week.  I am finally feeling well enough to get back to the blogging.

Because I spent the better part of the weekend in bed and under the covers, I did not do any poker playing or beer drinking.  I was completely miserable.  At one point during the weekend, I would have easily traded my worst hangover for this bug.  It made me ache all over, stretching and tightening muscles that I have not worked out in a gym in quite some time.

Now then, where does that leave me?  It leaves me with some catching up to do.  August 1st is a coming, and I would like to try to do my "poker for an entire month" type of challenge.  I have an idea of what I want to do, I just have to push myself to do it.

One side note - I am moving out of my neighborhood at the end of August after a nine year stay.  It is time to move.  I have been stagnant, and I need some fresh faces and some fresh air.  That shouldn't interfere too much with my poker/beer stuff until near the end of next month.

That's your quick update for today - a better update tomorrow now that I am back and feeling much better.  Thanks for reading.

July 23, 2010

Freerolls are exactly that they say they are

Greetings.

Four in a row.  Let's keep the ball rolling.

Last night I went out to Full Tilt to see what was happening with the poker room.  I had not been out there to mess around for at least the last two weeks due to a mess of things going on with my 'personal life' (or lack thereof, depending on which of my friends you talk to)(you know who you are).

Full Tilt is in full pimp mode for their upcoming 'Little Big Tournament", which is where you pay $2 for a shot at $100K.  There were a number of super turbos available to play with small chip stacks of 300 to start.  I played three of them, and although I did well I guess when you are only risking 5 FTP points to enter the tourney, you're not going to win the entry unless you are very, very patient.

I have a lot of patience when playing with my own dinero, but when playing with points or playing in free rolls, I usually tend to be a bit of a donkey more often due to boredom.  Case in point was the nightly $250 USA free roll.

I had managed to get one of the 7500 seats after the tourney was full - somehow I managed to time the click on FTP's web site right when someone left the tourney.  Five minutes into the tourney, I had lost 1/3 of my stack when my pocket Jacks ran into pocket Kings.  Not three hands later, I was all in with Ace-King suited against a pair of 3's, and the 3's held up.  That's poker.

All in all, it was nice to wet my feet a little and wade in with the fish and donkeys.  I'll be out there again tonight.

I'm looking to pick up some new brews tonight so I can do a little blogging about what beer has made its way to the Northeast Florida area.  This area is usually among the last in the USA to get a certain type of beer.  In my opinion, it is probably somewhat related to the fact that we have a huge Budweiser brewery on the north side of town, so they may have their hooks in the distributors when it comes to bringing in new beers.

Okay, enough typing for now.  I'll be back tomorrow with more poker and beer to talk about.  Be safe and I'll catch you tomorrow sometime.

Thanks for reading.

July 22, 2010

Updating the other half of this site

Howdy again.


Three days in a row.  Wow.  I am trying to be a man of my word.


Now then, as the title suggests, there is something else I should be blogging about here, and that is your favorite and mine:  beer.


I have been rather sporadic on doing my beer ratings, but I aim to change that.  I have rated 625 beers (so far).  Click this link to check out what I have sampled:


See Don's beer ratings at Rate Beer


I was ready to do a full review on a beer that only recently has turned up in Florida:  Fort Collins Brewery - Rocky Mountain IPA


...that is until I went to my RateBeer account and found out that I had already rated this beer two years ago.  Apparently on one of my many trips up to North Carolina, I had acquired a single and brought it home to drink and rate.  Oops.


Okay, so making no excuses here, I will have a slew of ratings to post this weekend.  I aim to have beer reviews on each and every Sunday, but I might slip in some beer news or reviews during the week if the beer is that great/awful.


Awful beers need reviewing too - you need to be warned!


Okay, that's my little beer update for today, I will be back with more poker stuff tomorrow as I hit the tables with the usual gang of super-donkeys that play on Full Tilt.


Special thanks to Waffles for his $.02 on my last post about 'minor league' poker sites. It was greatly appreciated!

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow!

July 21, 2010

A Brief Rant about the "Minor Leagues of Online Poker"

Greetings.

Yes, two days in a row for posting.  I'm already way ahead on my own expectations. 

Now then, I wanted to do a little post about what I consider the 'minor leagues' of online poker. 

You see, we are all very familiar with the "Big Two" of online poker (Full Tilt and Poker Stars).  What I am referring to is the 'little guys'. 

What has prompted this little foray was an e-mail I had received from another poker forum, who was pimping their weekly tournaments.  They used to do all of their tourneys on the "Big Two", but now they were using some other minor sites that I had never heard of.  Sites like, well, apparently Phil Laak now has his own poker site, called "Unabomber Poker" or something like that.

This is where my thought train starts.  Phil Laak, his own poker site?  Really?  There are maybe 5 top pros who should have their own site:  Doyle Brunson, and then pick any four of the founders of Full Tilt. 

Why on earth would anyone go to Phil Laak's site to play poker?  I don't know, I am asking.

Poker Stars and Full Tilt both offer something not seen at most little sites:  the chance to interact and play against real poker stars.  I imagine that Phil Laak's site has him, and that's it.

In the past, we have seen other name brand pros start their own sites, only to have them crash to the ground.  Namely, Daniel Negreanu, whose site was absorbed into Poker Stars, and Johnny "Fucking" Chan, who had a site last year and as of this posting I have no idea if it even exists anymore.

I'm sure that initial start ups of minor online poker rooms can be profitable, but over time I would have to think that unless you have a name pro who is constantly at final tables, your site's chance for growth is minimal at best.  Just look at the "November Nine" for 2010: all of them are either Poker Stars or Full Tilt. 

As for Phil Laak, there is no question he has some poker skills, it just seems that his skills aren't what they used to be.  I'd like to see him at a final table soon, and hopefully his poker site will still be around when he gets there.

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow!

July 20, 2010

Lost in the Dark...until now.

Greetings,

I don't know how many people even recall my incoherent ramblings of poker games past.

Nonetheless, here I am, ready to move forward with what I should consider as a steady hobby.

Over the last few months I have spent my time "off and on" playing at Full Tilt. In my own assessment, I feel I have played better than I have in years gone by, with one exception: I still make the occasional donkey call.

The donkey call is something that I do for one simple reason: make the person prove the value of their hand. About 2/3 of the time, I pay the consequences for calling the best hand, but when I do catch someone bluffing or catch them with a marginal hand, it does two things (in my opinion): (1) it sends the message that I will call a big bet, and (2) it shows other poker players what kind of person they are dealing with.

Quite often, shortly after I 'out' a player as a bluffer or as a marginal player, they normally are busted by someone else. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, it does give me a small sense of satisfaction.

That's all for now, I will be doing bigger and better daily updates now that all of my issues are behind me and I can concentrate on enjoying my poker game.