Merry, Happy New Year

I thought I would get this post out while I have the spare millisecond this week.

There is no poker playing content today.

Christmas was kind to the _one family. There are still parts of train and doll house strewn across the living room floor. Mrs. _one got a CD and book she had been wanting, and I got two poker books to read (devour) and use.

Hopefully everyone had a safe and happy holiday last weekend and will do the same next weekend.

I Should Be Playing Right Now!

Guess what? You stumbled across one of the few poker blog posts that has no WPBT Holiday reports/results/regurgitations.

Hi, my name is mortal_one and I have not played online poker in a week. (All: Hi, mortal_one.) So what have I been doing you might ask? I really wish you wouldn't. OK, here goes.

If you have been reading regularly (or as regularly as I post) you will know that my car broke down on me a few weeks ago. During the time it took to get my car fixed, I was getting up earlier (5:30am), getting the little _ones ready for daycare, driving kids to daycare, driving Mrs. _one to the school where she teaches, then taking her car to work - another 1 and a half away. Then I would work til 4:00, drive until 6 to 6:30 depending on bad rush evening (too long for rush hour) traffic and pick up the kids before daycare went into overtime (and penalty charges). Once I had the kids secured, we would go pick up Mrs. _one and be home about 7:30 to 8:00. This makes for a long day for all of us.

Well we got my car fixed and wouldn't you know it, the brakes on my wife's car are almost gone. Needs the master cylinder replaced. Well it being Christmas-time and all, the budget at the _one's home is tight. So for the next week or so, we are following the same schedule this time with my car.

Add this to the fact that I am trying desperately to catch up on my "important reading" (why do so many bloggers think they have to report on the same tournament? ;-} ) and this is one tired mortal_one.


I used to work in a bookstore (and eventually managed it) for 7 and a half years. I grew to hate Christmas. It was the customers. Not the regular book customers we would get throughout the year. No, these were the super-nasty, illiterate, inconsiderate, moron customers. You would not think so, but more than once I had to restrain either an employee or a customer when things got out of hand.

I am now 8 years past the bookstore. And I am growing to love Christmas again. I know the reason is my 4 year old and my 2 year old. They have been learning carols in daycare/preschool and it is so cute to hear them mangle the words. I am a much more happy person than I was 8 years ago.

Oh, well maybe sometime in the next week I will get to play some more online. Until then, hug your kids (if you got 'em), your spouse (if you have one of those), your significant other, your family, and friends. And save one hug for yourself. You know you need one.

Yeah, I know the paragraph above is sappy. After you have finished throwing up, clean yourself and start with the hugs!

I'm Glad It Happened!

Remind me to:

• Not start playing online when I am already tired and/or sleepy.
• Not put money into the pot just to more quickly get the raked hands necessary to clear a deposit bonus.
• Not to loosen up my starting hands just because the rest of the table did.

All these factors went into my more than 20BB loss on Monday. To quote that obscure Poker Blogger, "Oh, The Humanity!"

I am glad I am learning these lessons early. It could be even more expensive later on. Along with these lessons learned, I also learned that I could switch gears a little bit. At one point I was down >27BB and was able to climb back up a little by tightening up my starting hands and playing the reads I had on the players rather than just the cards. Towards the end, I was even able to bluff a couple of limpers off of a flop of AKx rainbow. I will have to go back and look but I think I had something like Q5o in the big blind.

I had no bad beats. I just played st00pidly. I paid for it. It was kind of fun to be THE BIG IDIOT FISH for one night only. Now I have that out of my system, I can get down to bidness. I hope the Donatees put me on their friends list and come looking for me later. I will have a surprize for them!

I have a couple of new posts just about ready. Look for them Friday late night/Saturday early morning.

Bits and Pieces

While the cats are in Vegas, the mice will play!

OK, here is my plan. While the other bloggers are in Vegas, we take over their blogs.

Chris Halverson: Start drinking massive quantities of SoCo. You can be the new ChrisCantHang.

Mean Gene: Start listening to Metal. Turn the dial up to 11 (because you can). You can be Bad Gene.

Iggy: You get the sex change and move to Oklahoma (I'm sure that will go over well there.) You can be Aunt Iggy.

I will stop by Wendys and load up on them triples. I can be the new Grubby_one!

Who's with me? Everyone? Someone? [Sounds of crickets chirping]

I wish I could think of more. If you do, put 'em in the comments. That's what it's there for.


Say what you will about Jackpot Jay at ESPN, at least he was smart enough to avoid gettting hit with THE HAMMER in his latest column. He doesn't say if "The Hammer" was announced in the chat or not, but the guy who had KK was pissed.

I don't know what I am going to do for reading material for the next few days. Most of the manufacturers of said reading material are migrating to Vegas for the next few days. I'm guessing they will find better things to do than sit down and type words onto a glowing screen.

Can someone in Vegas confirm this: Is it true that AlCantHang's carry-on "bag" consisted of a case of SoCo with straps attached?

Got an email from Party the other day. They will kindly send me a Party shirt if I sign up and play 200 raked hands by 12/22. If I decide to go for it, I plan to alter the shirt. Under the Party logo I plan to add "Fish #568463".

I reviewed my first session using Poker Tracker. Wow - too much information on too few hands for me right now. I did review the hand history, and found that of all the hands I folded there was only one of them I would have won had I not folded pre-flop. It was the last hand I played and I had QT. I folded. Flop came TTx. Turn rag. River K. Hand was won with a KK.
My two biggest losing hand were hands I lost to straights I did not see coming. Lesson: Pay more attention to the board.

Weekend Aftermath

I am one tired mortal_. This past Friday, my car broke down on the way home during my 2 hour commute. I did not get home until after 9 PM. Did I mention in a previous post that this was one of our traveling weekends? (My wife has a monthly curriculum committee meeting.) We did not leave the house until 10:30. Got to my parents at 2AM. Kids did not get back to sleep until 3 AM. Woke up at 6:30 AM to drive wife to meeting. Back at my parents house an hour later. Caught another couple of hours. I am still sleep deprived.

The meeting was held at the Stonewall Jackson Resort at Stonewall Jackson Lake State Park. (AlCantHang - this is only about 2 hours from where you stayed at Rocky Gap.) Lots of things to do there - boating, fishing, golfing, camping, hiking, hunting. I did none of those things. I still had a great time.

I still haven't caught up on my "important reading". Although I did make a dent. Hopefully I will get caught up after posting this tonight. Either that, or if I feel rested enough, I may have my long awaited second session of online poker for real money.

I just wish I had gotten into poker a year ago so that I would have my poker bankroll and knowledge built up enough to head to Vegas for the Dec. 11th WPBT at Sam's. Sounds like it will be gallons of fun. I can't wait until the write-ups start appearing.