Time to grow up!

I am starting a new job next week. I will be cooking at the St Cloud Hospital. I am a little over 50 years old and I suppose it was time to grow up and get a big boy job! It's the first job in my working career that offers a full benefit package and 40 hr work weeks. What am I going to do with all the extra time? It does require every other weekend but that is less weekends then in the past. It was a challenge to get this job. Over the years I have applied over 6 times for various positions including other cook positions and this was the first time for an interview. The hardest part of the process was trying to get my immunization records. 40 years ago they didn't keep such great records of such things and it took a blood test to see if I had antibodies in my system for Mumps, Measles & Rubella, which luckily I did or it would have been a 4 week delay to get shots. I am still going to be helping out at the Pizza Ranch for a couple of days a week. I am very grateful to Jackie and Darren for giving me the opportunity to work there for the past 3 1/2 years. I met a lot of great young people that I would have never had the chance to get to know. I'll bet that it was close to 4 or 5 hundred different people under the age of 25 over the time frame. It was fun to watch many of them grow over their time at the Ranch. The only thing that will be a challenge for me is this is the first job that my hours wouldn't be very flexible. No more last minute let's go to the lake or casino trips. They will have to be more planned out, but it seems a small price to pay. I may even get a chance to play some poker occasionally as a lot of my shifts will be early in the day. I guess we will have to wait and see.

The Lederer Files

I have been slowly watching all the parts of the Howard Lederer files on Facebook through Youtube. Thanks to Tony and Matt for posting. There are 7 parts so far and I have watched most of 6 of them. They are about 30 minutes each so it takes a lot of time to watch it all. A few things are apparent real quickly. One Howard is very boring to listen to. He talks in mostly a monotone voice and is trying hard not to look as the bad guy. He clearly has waited until he knew that he was mostly off the hook before coming forward. He talks a lot about what happened and how it happened as he sees it. It is an interesting perspective and I would recommend that any online poker player should watch and learn because what happened to Full Tilt could easily happen to any online site. If I follow correctly, He says that a big part of there lack of funds came from the fact that after the new law regulating the banks that Full Tilt kept giving players there full deposit and allowed them to play even though they were not getting the money from the processing company. So very little money was actually coming in and they were still paying out if players cashed out. I believe him that this was part of the reason, but there has to be more to it. What he doesn't talk about was what he and the other board members were getting from Full Tilt during this time frame. He does say that one point they tried to raise enough money from the board to try and keep the site going, but by then the government was so far into it's investigation that not enough money could be raised to keep Full Tilt alive. So now, Poker Stars owns Full Tilt but isn't required to pay any of the money back. The government has most of the money but why should they give it back. All they have to do is sit back and manage the lawsuits from players that lost the most and settle with them for a small amount. Meanwhile guys like me that had a small amount on the site are out of luck. I had maybe $25, so there is not much of a point in trying to reclaim it. For Poker Stars it's a big win. They buy out there main competitor when the US market opens up again and will have access to all Full Tilt player data base with really paying much of anything. It is a gamble for them if the US market doesn't open back up, but I would think that they know what they are doing and planning for the future. Here is a link to part 1 in case you are interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g1wFJx461U&feature=relmfu

CMPPA Omaha Split

Yesterday was the St Cloud Series of Poker Omaha Hi-low tournament. It is one of my favorite CMPPA events of the year. It played out to be a very interesting tournament. My first table was mostly a solid bunch with a couple of loose cannons, but in Omaha unless the loose canons are catching they don't last long and that is exactly how it played out. The stronger players quickly weeded out the weaker players and we ended up with a table full of good players all with big stacks. The other table meanwhile was very loose and aggressive with that table knocking out most of the players. It even managed to put a few good players on tilt! The biggest wild card at the games was Josh. It was Josh's 1st CMPPA event of the year. Josh is a weak holdem player at best and not very knowledgeable about Omaha, so I expected a quick exit by him. Was I surprised. He managed a final table and finished ahead of my on the money bubble in 5th place. Congrats Josh. The funny thing about his play was that he didn't fold once all day perflop. Think about that. Not one preflop fold. And on most hands he called the turn and the river. I have never seen a stack go up and down as fast as his did. It made for a very challenging final table. At final table I was about average in chip stack, but when you have a player that won't fold it forced me to change how I was playing. Any raises that you would make would be called by Josh and then several players behind would call either because of pot odds or because they just wanted a chance at Josh's chips. In a way the skill was taken away because everyone just started limping most hands and you ended up with 3-4 players to see flop. This changes everything in a split games. It becomes who catches the flops and unfortunately it wasn't me. It didn't take me long to limp off most of my stack. It isn't how I would ever expect to play on a final table. It's just how it played out. In retrospect I just should have tighten way up and played my blinds and waited for Josh to be eliminated, but it's hard to pass up on the chance at free chips. That's the great thing about poker no matter what your style everyone has their day when everything goes right and you do well.

One thing that was very apparent yesterday was how out of poker practice I am. Not that I played poorly, but at how bad I was at reading hands that were turned over. At least I kept the table amused with my miss calls. In fact, it was one of those days when I got it wrong most every time. Omaha split can be a challenge to read the highs and lows, but when you are the tournament director you are suppose to it right most of the time. Glad I could provide comic relief.

Now on to my pet peeve of the day. I got invited to a home game after the CMPPA event last night. It was a $10 buy-in with one rebuy. It sounded like fun as My wife had to work last night and it was my birthday and didn't feel like going home just yet. The game was to start at 8pm. The ordeal to get there is another story (sorry Don), but did manage to arrive right at 8pm. There were lots of cars there and it seemed like everything was a go. This game was to held in the garage and he had a nice setup. I walk in and sit down to wait for the game to start and home owner announces that others had run to get chairs, so it wasn't going to start for a while. Ok, so I will wait. By 8:30 people are still coming and leaving to go eat or get beverages. I have had enough so I leave. I appreciate the invite to the home game, but please when you tell me to be there at 8pm don't start at 9pm. In this day of busy lives there is a lot I could have done in that hour and then arrived at 9pm. Also you are running a rebuy tournament, there were plenty of players there at 8pm to start and the others could have joined as they arrived. This is a big reason that I rarely play in home games or run them for that matter. I am a person if you tell me to be there at a certain time that's when I will be there.

Congratulation to Dustin on another CMPPA win in impressive style winning with quad queens on the last hand. Someday maybe I will win one!

St Cloud Series Event #1

This took a while but finally a little time to blog. Last months SCSOP event was a very fun and classic bar poker game. I played well all day and then made one mistake and It cost me my tournament. Chalk it up to another hard poker lesson. I had decided to play very tight aggressive in this event and that is basically how I played but my cards ran so good for the first 2 hrs that it looked as if I was playing hyper aggressive. It is funny how one player can change the whole way a table plays. Most of you know Carlos and I am not going to use code names for this story. Carlos was an hour late for this event and as the tables worked out he ended up at the table next to me. Now I didn't play many hands with him and he didn't get many of my chips, but he did change the outcome of my tournament. Carlos won several big pots when he first got to the table and amassed a big chip stack. I had been close to the chip leader the whole time. When Carlos has chips he opens his already lose game up even more and he extra loose at this point basically playing every hand and in his situation I probably would have played the same. Blinds are 100-200 and I have over 14,000 in chips. I am small blind and pot is raised and then reraised by another very loose aggressive player that usually has nothing when he raises. Person in front of Carlos calls and of course Carlos calls. I look down to 3-4 off suit. It's only 400 more and I sure that there is going to be at least 2 callers behind me and guy that reaised would never reraise. I figure see flop and then fold. Flop is 3-4-6 two diamonds. I am not putting anyone on 2-5 or 5-7 so I check to make a reraise. There is a pretty big bet and Carlos calls, so I move all in to try and get rid of at least one if not everyone. A couple fold and then it gets back to bettor and he insta calls, so I figure he has an over pair. Carlos thinks for like 5 minutes and then folds. Guy turns over 6-9 of diamonds. So he has top pair and a flush draw. Really! Reraise preflop with 6-9 suited and then call off almost all your chips with a draw. I am not sure of the odds here but depending on the diamond situation of other players he may have been close to 50-50. Turn of course is a diamond and my day is over. It was a poor play by me playing the 3-4 to start with but when you add someone like Carlos to a table it forces other to play more aggressive and it increases the pot odds to stay in hands. Had there been a raise and a reraise and no one else when it got to me I fold and am still alive. Now, Carlos did end up 2nd in tournament and I am not knocking how he played. I just need to learn to adjust my game even more for players with that same style of play. I will say that when he got heads up that instead of getting more aggressive he got really tight and it cost him the tournament. He did lose one big hand that he was drawn out on but he should have had a big chip lead at that point and was barely ahead to survive. Any congrats to Rod on his 1st CMPPA title. You played well and won all the big pots at the right time. Next is Omaha Split my favorite game so hopefully I will have something good to blog about next!