Excessive Variance

Last night was the only time this week I was going to get to hang out with my kids before I head to LA on Friday, so I called their mother and made arrangements to pick them up and spend the night with them.  Being the dumbass she is, she decided she would tell the kids that I would take them to this place called Incredible Pizza.  If your not familiar with Incredible Pizza it’s basically Chucky Cheese on crack.  They have a pizza buffet and a bunch of arcade games along with stuff like miniature golf and bumper cars.  As a kid I loved places like this, as a parent I hate them more than I can possibly put into words.  Unfortunately for me the instant I pick up Amara it’s all she is talking about, and I have a hard time saying no when I’m not going to see her for over a week.

So I get suckered into taking them to this place, but I was hoping that with it being Tuesday night it wouldn’t be that busy.  Oh hey… it’s spring break, so the place is packed like it would be on a weekend when the kids don’t have school the next day.  The best part is that it’s also white trash Tuesday, because they have some 12 dollar game card that gets you a pass to play a certain list of games all night for free which seemed convenient, so I got one for each of them.  I realized how bad this deal was once we hit the pizza buffet.  The lines were ridiculous and I was surrounded by obnoxious smelly people who look like they just got done shopping at Walmart.  In fact, I was instantly put into a state of mind similar to what happens when I walk into Walmart. Not good…

The pizza was horrible and everything else in the buffet just looked scary.  This place made Cici’s pizza look like the buffet at the Bellagio.  After managing to swallow a little bit of this cardboard textured ass flavored pizza they were ready to go play.

So first they wanted to play mini glow in the dark golf, which was alright other than having to wait about 10 minutes at each hole because the place was so packed.  Then they wanted to ride bumper cars, and luckily for us the line wasn’t long so they got to do that quickly.  Then we start looking around at the other games they can play on the list and we walk past this video game ride called Typhoon that you sit on and it simulates a ride on a various things like airplanes and roller coasters with air blowing in your face from fans and the seats bounce all over the place.  Since this is one of the rides that’s part of the 12 dollar play card it has a bunch of kids around it waiting to go on it.  One of the kids sitting there makes the observation that it would be easier to sort out who goes next if everyone gets in a line, and everyone sort of files into a line behind the machine, my kids were second in line.

So after the line is formed this little kid who was probably five or so walks up to the side of the ride, and starts watching.  He calls his bother over and his mom comes wandering along too.  When the ride ends the two kids who are on it go to get off and this new little kid tries to jump on skipping the line.  The kids whose turn it was speak up and say it’s their turn and this lady pulls her kids back and tell them “You can go next” to which I interject “excuse me, the line is here, you need to get in it”  and she responds “who decided that?” and I just look at the line of 8-10 kids behind the ride while trying to not come across like a complete asshole even though I could feel my anger about to boil over at this obnoxious bitch and I say “Probably the ones who have been here waiting longer than you”.  She tells me “Well we have been here waiting”.  I laugh at her and say “I just watched you and your kids walk up here a minute ago while all these other kids have been waiting at least ten minutes” and her brilliant response was “Well what about my kids?”

Now I was pissed.

This doesn’t happen all that often to me, but the mixture of animosity toward this  over sized shit hole of “family entertainment” while being surrounded my annoying people was wearing on my patience.  Unfortunately, I was surrounded by children, so what followed wasn’t exactly the best example of conflict resolution.  I said “Seriously, don’t be a bitch”.  Her jaw dropped and she turned around and started complaining about me to her friend who had as much business wearing leg warmers as Jabba the Hut has of wearing a thong.  So Jalen asks me if they are going to get to go next and I’m talking to him about it when I feel a tap on my shoulder.  I turn my head upward and looking up at a guy who is just about my height, and probably about 220-230.  He leans into me and kind of pushes me with his shoulder and says “I heard you got something to say about my wife, why don’t you say it to me”.

Now I got excited.

Anger turned to anticipation.  I wanted to piss this guy off.  I stood up completely where I was now clearly a little taller than him and stepped into him pressing backwards.  Speaking quite a bit louder than the hushed tone he used I said “You mean that ugly bitch over there?” and nodded toward his woman.  He stumbled back a little bit and a hint of a smirk crossed my face.  He got back in my face and said “I don’t like your attitude” and I responded with “If your bitch had taught your kids any type of manners I wouldn’t have an attitude”.  He says “Call her a bitch again and I’m going to do something about it” and I responded “If you want to take this outside we can, but you better bring your bitch and kids to scrape your ass off the curb when I get done stomping your fucking face into it”… not the nicest thing I’ve ever said to anyone, but I really wasn’t in the mood to be messed with and it more than got my point across.  He took a step back and held his hands up and said something about me needing to chill out in front of the kids though I don’t recall what it was word for word because there was a stupid PA announcement going on that said they were closing shortly.

I proceeded to tell him my kids were next, then the kids in line behind them were next, and if he didn’t like getting in the back of the line like everyone else had to then we were going to have a problem.  He mumbled something as he turned away and walked around to the other side of the machine where he grabbed his oldest kid by the hand and pulled him to the back of the line with his wife in tow complaining about me.  The 11-12 year old kid that was behind Jalen in line said “Thanks for not letting her jump ahead of everyone”.    While my kids took their turn on the ride I just kept staring back and the bitch and her husband.  After they were done we checked the lines for the other things and everything was long so we just ended up leaving.

I’m never going back to that fucking place again.

On a lighter note, today is a good day to drink right? I think that’s exactly what I’ll do after I get off work.  Three days till I’m going back to Cali.  Can’t fucking wait.  I’ll drink to that.

This month I’ve made a conscious effort to put in more play time online.  I’ve been playing 5/10 up to 15/30 short handed limit on Pokerstars because the games are generally pretty juicy and my bankroll has been on a nice steady incline.  I’ve also jumped from bronzestar to goldstar in the bonus program and am well on my way to the next level.  I’ve and cleared a decent chunk of bonus cash in the process which is nice too.

I was sharing some stats from the last 6000 or so hands I had played out of my poker database with Shiva and he wanted to make a side bet on what my win rate ($/hr) would be over my next 6000 hands using my current stats as a baseline.  So we made a bet that over the next 6000 hands I couldn’t maintain a win rate of over $50 dollars an hour.  The bet is only for $200, but it’s fun that I have a goal now to work toward.  Unfortunately for me my first session of the challenge I ran horribly and am way below where I need to be after about 300 hands.  Glad I have enough time to hopefully tip it back in my favor.

I actually won’t get many hands in over the next two weeks though, since this Friday we are taking off to spend a week in LA.  Not sure exactly what we are going to do while we are there besides play cards, but it will be nice to not have an agenda for the week.

Live poker was pretty good for me last week, I had a couple really nice back to back wins on Thursday and Friday.  It’s a little gross when I realize that in 18 hours of live poker I made as much as I do in two months at my job.  If it wasn’t for variance, I’d already be playing for a living.

Fun hand from my live session Sunday.  Playing 2/5 in a pretty soft game.  I just built my stack up to 1200 when I got all in with AA vs TT, and it held up.  The very next hand I get KK, and this kid who I’ll just call Tard (trust me, it’s appropriate) opens to $35.  Tard is kind of an obnoxious little asshole who has horrible poker fundamentals and comments about how everyone plays every hand, he also has some of the worst eddiquette ever which makes him annoying.  Tard started the hand with $659 in his stack.  I flat call call with my KK (I was setting a trap for him, been trying to for a while because the way he over bets everything post flop) and ODB behind me makes it $130 to go.  ODB started the hand with just over $300.  Tard tanks, and flats the raise, I reraise to $400 which is instantly called by ODB and Tard goes into the tank.  I was trying to imagine his though process, I’m sure it was something like “I bet he is just isolating ODB with something like AJ off suit so I better commit 2/3rds of my chips here and see what happens.”  The flop comes 9 high with 3 clubs, and Tard has a money spaz moment trying to shove in his last $259.  I isnta call and the dealer tosses out the next two cards.  Turn was a J, river was a club, and Tard shows AcKd for the nut flush he finally hit.  One of the other players and I share a pretty good laugh about how poorly he played AK and Tard got all defensive about it saying “I never do that with that hand”… really?  You just did.  Even better the game losses a player or two and now he won’t play 6 handed and he wants to go down to a 1/2 game.  SO a little later at the 1/2 game he check raises the tightest player in the game with a flush draw and gets shoved on, giving himself about 5 to 1 to call, and he sits there and says how he shouldn’t and its a bad call while me and the other player start laughing at him again.  In the spot where he should be snap calling he hesitates, and in the spot where he should clearly be throwing his hand away he commits 2/3rds of his stack without a pair and then shoves it in bad like he has some sort of fold equity.  It’s people like this that make the game profitable.  Even with a big loss to one of the worst players I know, I still booked a win for the day and one of my better live weeks in recent memory.

Hopefully things continue to go pretty well, and on that note here is my obligatory pic of Christina Hendricks…

Side note, shes a natural blond, but I’m okay with that…

Yes please...

So I had a bit of an accident Friday morning, and I made a post on Facebook about getting into a fight with a wall and the floor and losing which prompted many questions about what happened.  Since I’m a bit tired of repeating the story and I’m always up for poking fun at myself I’ll just explain what happened here, with the assistance of my awesome whiteboard and drawing skills.  You bitches better recognize…

So there I was sleeping peacefully on the living room couch Friday morning.  This is normal for me, since I don’t have a television in my room right now and I have trouble sleeping without one going in the background.

Sleep is pretty awesome!

Eventually my plan of sleeping in till the last possible minute was being foiled by both Travis walking around the living room and my Iphone’s alarm going off to tell me if I don’t get up now I will surely be late.  It’s really very subtle…

Imagine it yelling at you, thats what it was doing!

Now I needed to get up, but before I get to that part let me show you the layout of the living room.  Keep in mind this isn’t exactly scale, but you can get the rough idea.  The front of the living room has  42 inch plasma HD television sitting on a steel stand that’s wedged between a corner closet and the stairs going up to the bedrooms.  Please note the sharp pointy corner on the wall by the closet.

Living Room

Sorry about the lighting in the pic, I threw this little thing together pretty quick so don’t expect everything to be top notch here.  I’m working with limited materials.

Anyway, what I did after shutting off my alarm was stand up by the right side of the couch really fast because I realized I had like two minutes to get ready and leave or I was going to be late.  I felt a bit light headed when I stood up, and the last thing I remember is going to take a step forward… then everything went black.  There was a huge noise, Travis came running into the living room from the kitchen (note his bald spot, I’m all about the details!) to see what just happened.

X was where I stood up

Now it doesn’t look like a long distance, but my scale is off.  From where I stood to where I fell was probably 3-4 steps.  I woke back up and looked up at Travis asking if I was alright…

The foggy view as I first regained conciousness

So when I stood up, I blacked out, fell forward taking a few steps to try and keep my balance and falling head first into the corner of pain.  Based on the damage to my face, it appears that the right side of my face hit pretty flush against the corner and just missed the TV stand where I knocked a few blu-ray discs that were hanging off the edge off the rear of the stand.  Then my head bounced on the tile floor and I rolled over onto my back where I regained consciousness.  My response to Travis asking me if I was okay was “How did I get here?” and I was pretty confused and in a lot of pain.

I have a bruise that runs from the top right corner of my head all the way down my cheek, a red burn mark on the same cheek, and somehow I put a really bad bruise on my right earlobe.  My knee was on fire and I discovered that I covered the entire top of my right knee with the worst carpet burn I’ve ever seen.  Later I also discovered a really bad bruise on my left bicep from the fall.  Travis said it sounded like I sprinted across the living room and dove head first into the wall, which is probably about how it happened. I’m really lucky I didn’t get bounced between the corner and the TV stand, or I could have been in much worse shape.

I got up and gimped around to get dressed and get to work on time, where Travis spent time telling everyone what happened and making fun of me for the day.  I got checked out later in the day at a walk in clinic and the doctor told me it was probably just a momentary low blood pressure issue, though I checked out and everything was normal.  She advised me to take my time getting out of bed.  My face is telling me the same thing.  Hopefully I won’t be picking anymore fights with walls & floors.

So to make myself feel better I offer up one last image for this entry, fortunately for everyone this isn’t one that I created on a small whiteboard.  Hot redheads with huge boobs always cheer me up.

Christina Hendricks @ the Oscars

If you want to see more of her, check out the gallery at What Would Tyler Durden Do.

Until I write again…

I’ve been following the development of the pilot episode of Game of Thrones since it was announced that HBO picked up the rights to the series over two years ago.  For those of you not familiar with the title it is the first book in George RR Martin’s epic fantasy series The Song of Ice & Fire.  The story isn’t your typical high fantasy like so many Lord of the Rings clones, it is filled with a gritty realism found in characters that are not either good or bad, but very human.  The story is graphic, intense, exciting, engaging and fantastical from start to the end of the 4th book (5-7 have yet to be released).  Also the nature of the story telling have always led me to believe an excellent adaptation could be done for either film or television.  The story is far to big for a series of films, and regular television stations aren’t capable of airing the material without severe editing.  Only HBO could possibly pull off this project so it’s official announcement that HBO gave the greenlight to the first season after previewing the pilot episode last month.  I have doubts HBO can put enough of the story of each book into a ten episode season, but I can’t wait to see what they pull off.  I’ll be hoping some fanboy gets a hold of the pilot at HBO and leaks it like the True Blood one was.  HBO did release the first promo shot of the series, which looks to be taken from the prologue of the first book.

If you want to read more about the series check out the link to the side for Winter is Coming, a blog dedicated to the production news on the show.   And if you haven’t read the books, then shame on you.  Get that shit done.

Funny sidenote… I didn’t have my blog bookmarked so I went to do a google search for it, and they following happened thanks to Google’s autocomplete.

I just want to know why everything that is excessive is bad?  It wouldn’t have been so bad if I was buried under excessive celebration, or excessive cleavage, or excessive sex for golf pros.  Not this site, we are under urine and saliva.  I guess I can tell Kanye what it’s like to wake up to be the shit and the urine.

So the Winter Olympics are over, and I spent a reasonable amount of time watching them.  Okay that’s not really true… I spent a good amount of time watching curling, hockey, bobsled and speed skating and skipping out on ice dancing and cross country skiing and the other events that suck to watch.

I spent more time watching curling than any other sport.  I’m not even sure what my fascination is.  I know the Canadian mens team has some guys on it who seems to make ridiculous shot after ridiculous shot, but none of their shots are as ridiculous as the pants worn by the team from Norway they faced in the gold medal match.   Ridiculous is the wrong word here, I think I’m going to go with spectacular… yep that’s it, they had spectacular pants.  I think the appeal of curling is that it looks like something anyone could be good at and they could do while drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.  I mean there was a woman competing who was 5 months pregnant so clearly she wasn’t drinking, but that has to be part of the appeal right.  Also, there are lots of good looking women in curling, eye candy never hurts* sports you don’t fully understand.

Can NBC do anything else to prove how poorly run that company is.  First they had the Leno/Conan fiasco, and now with the Olympics  I don’t understand how an action sport like Hockey is left on MSNBC while cross country skiing gets the NBC feed.  The main difference being which one is available in high definition.  Hockey is one of the sporting events that benefits most from an HD feed, because it allows you to follow the puck more closely.  Cross country skiing on the other hand is not dramatically improved by HD.  So fuck you NBC for partially ruining what was a very enjoyable hockey tournament.  As for the tournament itself, it’s pretty clear that the two best teams made it to the final game and played for the gold.  Two things however were disappointing.  First that we couldn’t get a 7 game series between these two teams, because the quality of play and the drama was very high.  Second losing the gold medal game in overtime after beating Canada by two is a little frustrating.  In two games Canada was outscored 7-5 in regulation play on thier home ice, and they had to go to OT to win one of the two games.  As close as that was I find it hilarious the bragging from Canadians about “this is our game!!!”.  If the US ever happens to lose to Canada in a international basketball tournament during the round robin portion and we came back and barely beat them in the medal rounds I think I’ be happy about escaping with a win, not gloating about how great we are.  I will give credit to the Canadian fans who showed appreciation for a few of the US players who put on great performances, very classy showing.

It’s also been reported that the NHL is considering not letting their players play in the Olympics.  Being just a very casual Blackhawk fan I can say that this was some of the most enjoyable hockey I’ve watched in a long time and I think it would be a mistake for the NHL players to not be able to play.   It’s like all star teams that care and try hard, how can that be wrong?

The one thing I can’t stand about the Olympics is the judged events.  There is just something wrong about the scoring systems to me and it makes me lose complete interest when the performance is subjectively scored.  Not to mention some events are just boring, and could use some interesting twists like allowing the crowd to throw snowballs at the competitors.  Just imagine ow crazy some of those speed skating relays would be if they were each allowed a skater to go around and pelt the competition with snowballs.

Also the award for best quote of the Olympics goes to Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset who said this… “”My name is Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset. I skied the second lap and I f’d up today. I think I have seen too much porn in the last 14 days. I have the room next to Petter Northhug and every day there is noise in there. So I think that is the reason I f’d up. By the way, Tiger Woods is a really good man.” I have no idea who this guy is, what sport he competes in, or why he feels the need to discuss porn and comment on Tiger Wood’s character, but I like it.

Anyway enough with the Olympics.  I missed work last Friday due to pulling a muscle in my back, and then while heading in for the second half of the day I blew out a tire on my truck and found out I don’t have the proper tools to replace it.  So I missed the whole day and ended up getting picked up by my pal to go see Shutter Island.  What follows is a my brief review (sans spoilers).

Shutter Island is well made as you would expect from a Scorsese film, however I did have a few issues with it.  I think the first 15 minutes of the film tried way to hard to set a mood with background music that was way out of proportion and overly dramatic lighting effects that seemed better meant for a horror film than what this story is about.  The story itself is good, not great, but I thought it was a little predictable.  When I got home after seeing it I actually saw a new preview for the film talking about the “twist ending that leaves audiences in suspense”… I’m just going to go ahead and disagree with that.  This isn’t the Sixth Sense v2.0, but it doesn’t really need a twist to be entertaining.  The acting was pretty solid, the pace was a little slow at times but nothing to complain about.  I do think its a movie people will want to watch a second time to catch a few things they ma have missed, but after that I’d say it has little to no worth as something you can watch repeatedly.

*Ice dancing is an exception, no amount of eye candy makes that shit worth while.

Poker has been sort of slow the last two weeks, but here is a quick run down of what I’ve done.

Played in the $40 dollar buy in Sunday tournament on Stars for the 40 Billion hand promotion where first place was 125k.  The field was just over 41 thousand players, and I busted out in 202nd place running AK into AQ all in preflop.  Good cash, but very disappointing after 9 hours of play.

After running sort of bad in cash games during the week, I was excited to head to Council Bluffs/Omaha for the WSOP circuit event they had going just for a change of scenery.  I had last Friday off for my presidents day holiday, so I took off in the middle of a snow storm and drove to Omaha.  Normally its a 2 hour drive, but since I rarely ever exceeded 40mph on the way there it was closer to 4 hours.  Mother nature is a whore… I was worried this would affect the turnouts for the tournaments and cash games, but it appeared I was incorrect.  The place was packed.

Friday night I played in a 2/5 NL game with a 10 dollar mandatory straddle.  Great action in that game, and I booked a decent win after an 8 hour session.  Found a hotel, got some sleep as I planned on playing the HORSE event the next day.  Had an angry run in with housekeeping from the hotel as they were mad I wasn’t ready to leave at checkout time, but I didn’t really care.  Hit Ruby Tuesday for a decent brunch and headed back to the card room.  Got in a 10/20 O8 game and ran good in it for about a hour and 1/2 making back about 150% of what I bought in for.  At this point, the tournament was more than a freeroll for me.

The tournament area in the casino was horrible. They had the tables packed way to tightly, and didn’t have enough room for all the players so some of the tournament tables were spilling over into the live action area.  I got off to a decent start in the tournament, much like the one I played in Chicago I was chip leader of my table at the first break.  After that I just ran horribly, especially in Razz.  I lasted to just before the 3rd break before busting on a O8 hand where I flopped the nut flush draw and a wheel wrap and ended up making trips and losing to a full house and my low didn’t get there.  It would be nice to run good in one of these tournaments.

After the tournament I checked the cash game tables.  There was a 5/10 game, but I was around 13th on the list and they didn’t have room to start new games.  The 2/5 list was excessively long too so I just headed home.  The trip was worth while money wise, after entry fees and expenses I cleared about $1500 for a day and a half.

Sunday I played the Stars 4 Million guarantee.  Once again I ran AK into AQ all in preflop and lost, this time it wasn’t after 9 hours of play, but it also means I wasn’t in the money.

I had been enjoying Rush Poker on Full Tilt the last couple of weeks, until I took a brutal beat for a 250bb stack.  I opened with 77 in first position, only the big blind calls.  Flop was Ah, 7s, 5h, he checked I bet and he called.  Turn was a 6.  He checked, I bet, he raised, I pushed all in and he has a set of 5’s, drawing to 1 card left in the deck.  And he hits quads on the river… and my ass is still sore.  So I haven’t been playing Rush since then.  I’ve been playing around with some mix games and short handed limit games on Stars lately, and if it wasn’t for running horribly in 2-7 triple draw I would be doing fantastic.  I’m doing pretty well though, so I’ll just keep grinding and see how things go.