Thursday, November 04, 2004
Trip Report…Or Is It?
When is a trip report not really a trip report? How about when your “trip” is driving to the liquor store for beer and ice, driving home, walking down the stairs and filling up a cooler with the goodies, then waiting for 14 other degenerate gamblers to join you in the basement? The only real trip of the evening was the one my 20’s took from my wallet to the pockets of the Brothers Scamehorn. Don’t they know it’s rude to come over, drink my beer AND take my money? Damn them! Damn them all to hell! Maybe I should start calling them the Bastard Brothers.
Tourney IV
Saturday, October 30th...this is the fourth tournament I’ve hosted under basically the same format. A $20 buy in for T1,000 in chips, unlimited $20 rebuys for T1,000 in chips if you bust out before the completion of the 6th round. Rounds are 15 minutes each with blinds starting at 5/10 and going up slowly to allow plenty of room for play. Going into this tournament I had played in five others before with the same format and had never had to rebuy. I decided to loosen up just a little bit this time to see if I could push myself a little closer to the edge without plunging into the abyss. Apparently my map was a little out of date and the abyss was much closer than I thought.
We start out with 3 tables of 5. I like the short handed action as I have a lot of experience with this from the 800+ Party SNG’s I’ve played in the last 8 months. In the first five hands I get A J o on the button. I raise it up to 35 pre flop and get the SB and one other caller. Flop is J 3 J with 2 clubs. BINGO! Trying not to chase off the action I fire out a bet of 100 (slightly smaller than the pot size) when it’s checked around to me and get a quick call from the SB. Hmmm…I’ve never played with this guy before so I have zero idea what he might be on. Hopefully K J! Turn is a red 4 and the SB leads out for 100. Well, it’s a make or break hand for me at this point so I come over the top for another 300. He ponders and eventually calls. The river brings a small club…rats! While I find it hard to believe he’s on a flush draw I have no idea what he may play and he could be on the J clubs with another club. With the safety net of a rebuy available I go all in, get called and he shows me pocket 3’s for a flopped full house. Lovely! So much for the no rebuy streak.
Now I definitely play a little more aggressive with my new chips. I see more flops, win a few small pots but get whittled down to about 800 when I get two red 7’s in the hole. I limp, flop comes 6 6 4 rainbow. Interesting. I make a small bet, get called by Halverson from one of the blinds. Turn is a 3 and as I don’t want to let Chris draw cheaply to hit a straight I shove in. Insta call from Chris…uh oh! I ask if he has the straight, he says no and shows me a 6. Lovely, part 2! River is a K and I rebuy again. Nothing really interesting happens from then until the break. Cards are pretty cold and I end up with around 850 in chips. Al did manage to catch me in rebuys by then. For $10 you can add on T700 chips at the break and all 15 players do so. I’m one of the small stacks but still in OK shape. I really need some cards soon before the blinds force me into auto push situations.
It doesn’t take long to lose 3 players and collapse to 2 tables. Halverson is the first to go from our new table and is quickly joined by a player from the other table to get us to 10. Now things get interesting. The guy that had been on my left that nailed me with the flopped full house was now on my right. He’d built up a nice stack and was the table chip leader. He lost about 1/3 of his stack in a battle that ended when he didn’t call a river all in bet. Soon after I’m dealt 2 2 in late position with the blinds at 200/400 and a 25 ante. I’m sitting at about 1,500 in chips. With one limper I push. It folds back to the limper and he calls. A K vs. 2 2. Flipper! Neither of us improves and I’m up to about 3,500. Whew! An interesting comment was made at this point by someone at our table. He basically stated that my all in was a terrible move and I was super lucky to not lose to big slick. Huh? I’m certainly not there to give free lessons so I don’t point out to him that I’m a slight favorite vs. any 2 over cards and that my stack size vs. blind size dictates that I have to push there. Sure as heck can’t wait for a hand when the blinds will eat over 1/3 of my stack next time by. Yeesh!
The very next hand I get A K…the cards have finally arrived! One limper (same guy as the previous hand) I raise it up to 1,000 and he goes all in for about 500 more. “You can’t get me twice in a row!” he says as he rolls over his hand. I thought he had slick again based on what he says but no, it’s a pair of 9’s for yet another classic coin toss race. I pair up on the turn and send him to the rail and now I’m really in business with about 7,000 in chips and only 9 players remaining. We quickly get down to 8 players left split evenly between the tables. I’m dealt an unsuited 2 3 in the big blind. I am so out of town to a raise until…Peter goes all in for just a little more than twice the BB. It’s folded around to me in short order. I still have a big stack at this point so losing another 400 chips won’t hurt me at all. I’m getting over 3:1 on my call so I make it, saying “I know this is a horrible call” as I roll my cards. Pete has 2 big cards but nothing spectacular. Flop brings not one but TWO 3’s and Pete is out the door. To say he’s pissed is a bit of an understatement. He bitches about the hand for the next hour as he watches the game and roots against me. There isn’t a player in the world that has a clue about the game that folds my hand in that situation. I know it sucks to get beat like that but how can you not see that as a situation that requires a call? Well, we’re down to the final table and I’m still in good shape.
We knock the field down to 5 in about 45 minutes of play. I was only involved in one memorable hand up to that point. In the BB again, this time with K 8 hearts. Not a bad hand to see 6 handed and hopefully I’ll play for free. Blinds are up to 400/800 with a 50 ante so there’s 1500 in the pot before anybody has to make a decision. The younger of the Evil Scamehorn Brothers, Rich, goes all in for around 2,500 from the button. I’m sure he’d appreciate it if I pointed out his older (yet slightly less evil) brother didn’t even make the final table. SB folds so it’s up to me. With 4,000 in the pot I’ll be getting about 2.5:1 on my call. I don’t think he has a monster but I don’t think he’s pushing with total crap either. Any A, any 2 suited 8 or better, any small PP, probably any 2 broadway cards. My biggest concern is that I’m facing a dominated situation with my K. Getting 2.5:1 in a situation that I think is no worse (or better, for that matter) then 60/40 I call. When he shows me K 3 I’m ecstatic! I just didn’t even consider that I could be the dominator with my hand. To make a long (and painful) story short he catches runner, runner for a flush and my big stack is not so big anymore and his slimy, evil ass is still in the game.
With only 5 left none of the players are excessively short stacked but I do only have 3,500 or so in chips. Action folds to me and I’m dealt A T o on the button. I’m not overly thrilled with the hand as I’ve been knocked out of a number of tournaments recently with this hand in similar situations. One of the blinds always seems to have A Q and I’m nuked. We’re paying the top 4 so I’d really hate to get knocked out here. Of course, fourth wouldn’t even cover my string of rebuys so I’m shooting for 3rd or better. The SB doesn’t bother to think and mucks his hand. The BB goes into the tank big time. Pete is standing over his shoulder willing him to take my chips. The BB is the same guy that laughed at my 2 2 push and has made a number of cracks about my 2 3 call of Peter. He flashes his cards to Peter and I’m ready to blow a gasket if Pete provides any input into the decision. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have an A as I’ve seen him push his hands quickly with A small kicker. Two broadways? Maybe middle suited connectors? I really can’t put him on a hand that would take this much time for a decision. He has me covered but a call would be for 75% or more of his stack. I decide I don’t want a call as I’d be happy with the blinds and antes and I don’t feel like any of the players left are better than me. Finally, he decides to call and shows me K 6 spades. WHAT? You put your tournament at risk calling an all in with that? WOW! Needless to say I’m pretty excited about my prospects. Flop is junk with one spade. Turn is another spade. Have you ever known that you were doomed? I’m dealing the cards and before I even turn over the river I call “Runner, runner flush” and I’m history. I really hate it when someone makes a bad play and knocks me out. I hate it even more when Pete tells him what a great call he made. Unfortunately I couldn’t choke off the words and pointed out that it was a horrible call, not a great one. Ugh. Don’t educate the other players. In the long run that’s a profitable play for me and I need to keep my mouth shut. It was just so frustrating to go down like that!
We play a follow up with a 10 player tournament with no rebuys and I get dumped in 5th when my 9’s go down to J’s. I was damn tired by the time we started the 2nd tournament and can’t remember anything except the final hand. Oh, wait, I just remembered another one. I’m in the SB, Halverson is the BB. I complete with Q 8 o, Chris checks behind me. Flop brings a Q, I check, Chris bets, I call. Turn brings the 3rd Q. I check, Chris bets again and of course I call. The river is the case Q and I decide to not risk a check behind me and go all in. Chris calls and shows me his pocket J’s. I didn’t knock him out but I sure crippled him with that hand. That hand just reinforces how trick J’s are to play. If he raises pre flop I’m gone but you get yourself in a nasty situation when over cards come on the flop. I lose $100 on the night but have a good time. Hopefully my next tournament will have another solid turnout.
Anybody Know A Good Place to Buy Some Time?
No, I don’t mean thyme to go along with my parsley, sage, and rosemary. I mean the time to write something somewhat interesting for my spanking new blog. It comes down to making a choice between poker and writing and it’s really, really hard to sacrifice my poker time. I need to force myself to make a little time to keep up.
No Hockey, So…
I’ll rant a little about basketball. Our local team, the Timberwolves, have a good shot to go all the way this year. I’m not a huge NBA fan but I do like to watch KG go nutty every night. The Wolves are my 2nd favorite team behind the Pacers so I’d like to see them do well. Unfortunately they’re saddled with one of the biggest egos in the league in the form of Latrell Sprewell. He has a long history of getting himself into trouble with his hands as well as his mouth. This week he spouted out a couple gems.
"Why would I want to help them win a title? They're not doing anything for me. I'm at risk. I have a lot of risk here. I got my family to feed. Anything could happen."
Why would you want to help them win a title? Hmmm, maybe because they’re paying you $14.6 MILLION this year you ungrateful piece of shit! Maybe because it’s your job to play basketball and you should do your job to the best of your abilities? And what exactly is the risk to you? You’ve made well over $100 million in your career. Are you saying you’ve spent it all? Then perhaps you should sell one of your fleet of cars, some valued at well over $100,000. And what exactly does your family eat, bars of gold? Most of us feed our family on slightly less than what you take home. I know you have 3 times as many kids as I do but your income is…let’s see…about 200 times what our family earns so I think you can manage to put some bread on the table. I was glad to see David Stern jump in and warn all the players that tanking games because you are unhappy about your pay wouldn’t be accepted by the NBA. It’s crappy attitudes like this that have spread to the NHL and put all hockey fans on ice for the season. Sometimes I hate sports.
Tourney IV
Saturday, October 30th...this is the fourth tournament I’ve hosted under basically the same format. A $20 buy in for T1,000 in chips, unlimited $20 rebuys for T1,000 in chips if you bust out before the completion of the 6th round. Rounds are 15 minutes each with blinds starting at 5/10 and going up slowly to allow plenty of room for play. Going into this tournament I had played in five others before with the same format and had never had to rebuy. I decided to loosen up just a little bit this time to see if I could push myself a little closer to the edge without plunging into the abyss. Apparently my map was a little out of date and the abyss was much closer than I thought.
We start out with 3 tables of 5. I like the short handed action as I have a lot of experience with this from the 800+ Party SNG’s I’ve played in the last 8 months. In the first five hands I get A J o on the button. I raise it up to 35 pre flop and get the SB and one other caller. Flop is J 3 J with 2 clubs. BINGO! Trying not to chase off the action I fire out a bet of 100 (slightly smaller than the pot size) when it’s checked around to me and get a quick call from the SB. Hmmm…I’ve never played with this guy before so I have zero idea what he might be on. Hopefully K J! Turn is a red 4 and the SB leads out for 100. Well, it’s a make or break hand for me at this point so I come over the top for another 300. He ponders and eventually calls. The river brings a small club…rats! While I find it hard to believe he’s on a flush draw I have no idea what he may play and he could be on the J clubs with another club. With the safety net of a rebuy available I go all in, get called and he shows me pocket 3’s for a flopped full house. Lovely! So much for the no rebuy streak.
Now I definitely play a little more aggressive with my new chips. I see more flops, win a few small pots but get whittled down to about 800 when I get two red 7’s in the hole. I limp, flop comes 6 6 4 rainbow. Interesting. I make a small bet, get called by Halverson from one of the blinds. Turn is a 3 and as I don’t want to let Chris draw cheaply to hit a straight I shove in. Insta call from Chris…uh oh! I ask if he has the straight, he says no and shows me a 6. Lovely, part 2! River is a K and I rebuy again. Nothing really interesting happens from then until the break. Cards are pretty cold and I end up with around 850 in chips. Al did manage to catch me in rebuys by then. For $10 you can add on T700 chips at the break and all 15 players do so. I’m one of the small stacks but still in OK shape. I really need some cards soon before the blinds force me into auto push situations.
It doesn’t take long to lose 3 players and collapse to 2 tables. Halverson is the first to go from our new table and is quickly joined by a player from the other table to get us to 10. Now things get interesting. The guy that had been on my left that nailed me with the flopped full house was now on my right. He’d built up a nice stack and was the table chip leader. He lost about 1/3 of his stack in a battle that ended when he didn’t call a river all in bet. Soon after I’m dealt 2 2 in late position with the blinds at 200/400 and a 25 ante. I’m sitting at about 1,500 in chips. With one limper I push. It folds back to the limper and he calls. A K vs. 2 2. Flipper! Neither of us improves and I’m up to about 3,500. Whew! An interesting comment was made at this point by someone at our table. He basically stated that my all in was a terrible move and I was super lucky to not lose to big slick. Huh? I’m certainly not there to give free lessons so I don’t point out to him that I’m a slight favorite vs. any 2 over cards and that my stack size vs. blind size dictates that I have to push there. Sure as heck can’t wait for a hand when the blinds will eat over 1/3 of my stack next time by. Yeesh!
The very next hand I get A K…the cards have finally arrived! One limper (same guy as the previous hand) I raise it up to 1,000 and he goes all in for about 500 more. “You can’t get me twice in a row!” he says as he rolls over his hand. I thought he had slick again based on what he says but no, it’s a pair of 9’s for yet another classic coin toss race. I pair up on the turn and send him to the rail and now I’m really in business with about 7,000 in chips and only 9 players remaining. We quickly get down to 8 players left split evenly between the tables. I’m dealt an unsuited 2 3 in the big blind. I am so out of town to a raise until…Peter goes all in for just a little more than twice the BB. It’s folded around to me in short order. I still have a big stack at this point so losing another 400 chips won’t hurt me at all. I’m getting over 3:1 on my call so I make it, saying “I know this is a horrible call” as I roll my cards. Pete has 2 big cards but nothing spectacular. Flop brings not one but TWO 3’s and Pete is out the door. To say he’s pissed is a bit of an understatement. He bitches about the hand for the next hour as he watches the game and roots against me. There isn’t a player in the world that has a clue about the game that folds my hand in that situation. I know it sucks to get beat like that but how can you not see that as a situation that requires a call? Well, we’re down to the final table and I’m still in good shape.
We knock the field down to 5 in about 45 minutes of play. I was only involved in one memorable hand up to that point. In the BB again, this time with K 8 hearts. Not a bad hand to see 6 handed and hopefully I’ll play for free. Blinds are up to 400/800 with a 50 ante so there’s 1500 in the pot before anybody has to make a decision. The younger of the Evil Scamehorn Brothers, Rich, goes all in for around 2,500 from the button. I’m sure he’d appreciate it if I pointed out his older (yet slightly less evil) brother didn’t even make the final table. SB folds so it’s up to me. With 4,000 in the pot I’ll be getting about 2.5:1 on my call. I don’t think he has a monster but I don’t think he’s pushing with total crap either. Any A, any 2 suited 8 or better, any small PP, probably any 2 broadway cards. My biggest concern is that I’m facing a dominated situation with my K. Getting 2.5:1 in a situation that I think is no worse (or better, for that matter) then 60/40 I call. When he shows me K 3 I’m ecstatic! I just didn’t even consider that I could be the dominator with my hand. To make a long (and painful) story short he catches runner, runner for a flush and my big stack is not so big anymore and his slimy, evil ass is still in the game.
With only 5 left none of the players are excessively short stacked but I do only have 3,500 or so in chips. Action folds to me and I’m dealt A T o on the button. I’m not overly thrilled with the hand as I’ve been knocked out of a number of tournaments recently with this hand in similar situations. One of the blinds always seems to have A Q and I’m nuked. We’re paying the top 4 so I’d really hate to get knocked out here. Of course, fourth wouldn’t even cover my string of rebuys so I’m shooting for 3rd or better. The SB doesn’t bother to think and mucks his hand. The BB goes into the tank big time. Pete is standing over his shoulder willing him to take my chips. The BB is the same guy that laughed at my 2 2 push and has made a number of cracks about my 2 3 call of Peter. He flashes his cards to Peter and I’m ready to blow a gasket if Pete provides any input into the decision. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have an A as I’ve seen him push his hands quickly with A small kicker. Two broadways? Maybe middle suited connectors? I really can’t put him on a hand that would take this much time for a decision. He has me covered but a call would be for 75% or more of his stack. I decide I don’t want a call as I’d be happy with the blinds and antes and I don’t feel like any of the players left are better than me. Finally, he decides to call and shows me K 6 spades. WHAT? You put your tournament at risk calling an all in with that? WOW! Needless to say I’m pretty excited about my prospects. Flop is junk with one spade. Turn is another spade. Have you ever known that you were doomed? I’m dealing the cards and before I even turn over the river I call “Runner, runner flush” and I’m history. I really hate it when someone makes a bad play and knocks me out. I hate it even more when Pete tells him what a great call he made. Unfortunately I couldn’t choke off the words and pointed out that it was a horrible call, not a great one. Ugh. Don’t educate the other players. In the long run that’s a profitable play for me and I need to keep my mouth shut. It was just so frustrating to go down like that!
We play a follow up with a 10 player tournament with no rebuys and I get dumped in 5th when my 9’s go down to J’s. I was damn tired by the time we started the 2nd tournament and can’t remember anything except the final hand. Oh, wait, I just remembered another one. I’m in the SB, Halverson is the BB. I complete with Q 8 o, Chris checks behind me. Flop brings a Q, I check, Chris bets, I call. Turn brings the 3rd Q. I check, Chris bets again and of course I call. The river is the case Q and I decide to not risk a check behind me and go all in. Chris calls and shows me his pocket J’s. I didn’t knock him out but I sure crippled him with that hand. That hand just reinforces how trick J’s are to play. If he raises pre flop I’m gone but you get yourself in a nasty situation when over cards come on the flop. I lose $100 on the night but have a good time. Hopefully my next tournament will have another solid turnout.
Anybody Know A Good Place to Buy Some Time?
No, I don’t mean thyme to go along with my parsley, sage, and rosemary. I mean the time to write something somewhat interesting for my spanking new blog. It comes down to making a choice between poker and writing and it’s really, really hard to sacrifice my poker time. I need to force myself to make a little time to keep up.
No Hockey, So…
I’ll rant a little about basketball. Our local team, the Timberwolves, have a good shot to go all the way this year. I’m not a huge NBA fan but I do like to watch KG go nutty every night. The Wolves are my 2nd favorite team behind the Pacers so I’d like to see them do well. Unfortunately they’re saddled with one of the biggest egos in the league in the form of Latrell Sprewell. He has a long history of getting himself into trouble with his hands as well as his mouth. This week he spouted out a couple gems.
"Why would I want to help them win a title? They're not doing anything for me. I'm at risk. I have a lot of risk here. I got my family to feed. Anything could happen."
Why would you want to help them win a title? Hmmm, maybe because they’re paying you $14.6 MILLION this year you ungrateful piece of shit! Maybe because it’s your job to play basketball and you should do your job to the best of your abilities? And what exactly is the risk to you? You’ve made well over $100 million in your career. Are you saying you’ve spent it all? Then perhaps you should sell one of your fleet of cars, some valued at well over $100,000. And what exactly does your family eat, bars of gold? Most of us feed our family on slightly less than what you take home. I know you have 3 times as many kids as I do but your income is…let’s see…about 200 times what our family earns so I think you can manage to put some bread on the table. I was glad to see David Stern jump in and warn all the players that tanking games because you are unhappy about your pay wouldn’t be accepted by the NBA. It’s crappy attitudes like this that have spread to the NHL and put all hockey fans on ice for the season. Sometimes I hate sports.
Friday, October 29, 2004
You say it's your birthday?
Happy freaking birthday to me.
How’s that for an opener? Today is my birthday and the birth day of my blog. I’m (wait, I have to figure this out)…36 years old today. Cripes, that’s getting up there. When I was a kid I thought I’d be lucky to live to see 40. I better make it a hell of a lot longer than that or the wife will be saddled with some nasty debt. Of course there is that insurance policy…
I don’t know if you can train a monkey to set one of these things up but I sure don’t seem to be getting the hang of it. I’d like to blame Chris Halverson for that but that wouldn’t really be fair. If I knew what the hell I was doing I’d have a nifty link in his name to steer you to his site. Obviously I don’t have a clue. Anyway, Chris was nice enough to steer me to this site when I asked him for some info on setting up a blog. Truth be told, it’s entirely Chris’s fault that I’m even doing this. I didn’t really know much about blogs before I met him. I always thought they were things that super computer geeks were into (I’m old, remember?) and cost a bunch of money to run and were super complicated (thus requiring you to be a super computer geek to run one). Now I’m not saying Chris isn’t a geek, but he certainly seemed to be a fairly normal guy the first time I met him. He was taking my money at the time but I didn’t let that color my opinion of him. During this drubbing he shared that he had a blog. I took the time to look it up and enjoyed reading it. I also checked out some of his links to other bloggers and decided to give it a shot myself. I’ve always been very “social” and love to share my opinions.
First, some background info. I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana 36 years ago today. I have no siblings as I pushed my parents into poverty with my voracious appetite. I spent my formative years there and developed a nasty addiction to Indiana University basketball. While it’s under control now, no addiction is ever eliminated and this one still strikes once or twice a winter. If I’ve achieved legendary status in anything it would have to be for my “outbursts” while watching my beloved Hoosiers go down in flames. Al can testify to this as he witnessed a classic evening in 1992 when I.U. lost to Duke in the semi finals in Minneapolis. I was in rare form that evening.
I ventured to Minnesota to attend Macalester College in St. Paul. I spent four fairly uneventful yet expensive years there. I began working for Norwest Bank (strangely enough, a bank that no longer exists due to a merger) while in college and spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 years working there. During that time I suckered Jennifer Klein into marrying me after an interesting 10 year relationship. When we had children (Jordan, now 5 and Nicklas, now 21 months) I volunteered to be a stay at home dad. That is what I’m currently doing with my life, along with some part time accounting work for a local non profit organization.
Now, on to my true motivations for creating this blog, poker and hockey! Poker is currently my favorite “activity” away from family responsibilities. When I say “poker” I mean Texas Hold‘Em which is my current game of choice. I spend at least 20 hours a week playing online at Empire Poker and Party Poker. I started at Party but set myself up with an affiliate after a while so I had to open an account at Empire as well. I return to Party to play in the 1,000 + player 30 + 3 NLHE tournaments once or twice a week but pretty much live on Empire. I also run tournaments at my house about every other month which is how I met Mr. Halverson. My fourth tournament will be tomorrow and I’m expecting my largest field yet of around 16 players.
Growing up in Indiana basketball was the winter sport, not hockey. The 1980 winter Olympics provided my first extensive exposure to the sport and I was hooked. I can’t skate a lick but I love the game. With the NHL in the midst of a lockout with no end in sight hockey has become a painful topic for me. I have lots to say on the labor situation and will do so at a later date. I also follow U.S. college, Canadian major junior and Minnesota high school hockey so I do have some other options during the lockout. In particular I’m a huge Minnesota Golden Gopher hockey fan and am lucky enough to be able to see them twice a week on TV most weeks. I’ve also stepped into the realm of hockey parent as my daughter Jordan has laced up the skates for the first time this year. After half a dozen or so practices she can actually skate without assistance but hasn’t mastered the concept of pushing off so she’s super slow. It’s expensive and time consuming but as long as she’s having fun we’ll continue to participate.
I’ve got a million things that I want to write about bouncing around in my head but I’m calling it a night. When it comes to sports radio my favorite guys are the ones that work in a variety of subjects, both in and out of the sports world. I’ll try to do that in this blog, not just hammer away at poker and/or hockey every time.
How’s that for an opener? Today is my birthday and the birth day of my blog. I’m (wait, I have to figure this out)…36 years old today. Cripes, that’s getting up there. When I was a kid I thought I’d be lucky to live to see 40. I better make it a hell of a lot longer than that or the wife will be saddled with some nasty debt. Of course there is that insurance policy…
I don’t know if you can train a monkey to set one of these things up but I sure don’t seem to be getting the hang of it. I’d like to blame Chris Halverson for that but that wouldn’t really be fair. If I knew what the hell I was doing I’d have a nifty link in his name to steer you to his site. Obviously I don’t have a clue. Anyway, Chris was nice enough to steer me to this site when I asked him for some info on setting up a blog. Truth be told, it’s entirely Chris’s fault that I’m even doing this. I didn’t really know much about blogs before I met him. I always thought they were things that super computer geeks were into (I’m old, remember?) and cost a bunch of money to run and were super complicated (thus requiring you to be a super computer geek to run one). Now I’m not saying Chris isn’t a geek, but he certainly seemed to be a fairly normal guy the first time I met him. He was taking my money at the time but I didn’t let that color my opinion of him. During this drubbing he shared that he had a blog. I took the time to look it up and enjoyed reading it. I also checked out some of his links to other bloggers and decided to give it a shot myself. I’ve always been very “social” and love to share my opinions.
First, some background info. I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana 36 years ago today. I have no siblings as I pushed my parents into poverty with my voracious appetite. I spent my formative years there and developed a nasty addiction to Indiana University basketball. While it’s under control now, no addiction is ever eliminated and this one still strikes once or twice a winter. If I’ve achieved legendary status in anything it would have to be for my “outbursts” while watching my beloved Hoosiers go down in flames. Al can testify to this as he witnessed a classic evening in 1992 when I.U. lost to Duke in the semi finals in Minneapolis. I was in rare form that evening.
I ventured to Minnesota to attend Macalester College in St. Paul. I spent four fairly uneventful yet expensive years there. I began working for Norwest Bank (strangely enough, a bank that no longer exists due to a merger) while in college and spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 years working there. During that time I suckered Jennifer Klein into marrying me after an interesting 10 year relationship. When we had children (Jordan, now 5 and Nicklas, now 21 months) I volunteered to be a stay at home dad. That is what I’m currently doing with my life, along with some part time accounting work for a local non profit organization.
Now, on to my true motivations for creating this blog, poker and hockey! Poker is currently my favorite “activity” away from family responsibilities. When I say “poker” I mean Texas Hold‘Em which is my current game of choice. I spend at least 20 hours a week playing online at Empire Poker and Party Poker. I started at Party but set myself up with an affiliate after a while so I had to open an account at Empire as well. I return to Party to play in the 1,000 + player 30 + 3 NLHE tournaments once or twice a week but pretty much live on Empire. I also run tournaments at my house about every other month which is how I met Mr. Halverson. My fourth tournament will be tomorrow and I’m expecting my largest field yet of around 16 players.
Growing up in Indiana basketball was the winter sport, not hockey. The 1980 winter Olympics provided my first extensive exposure to the sport and I was hooked. I can’t skate a lick but I love the game. With the NHL in the midst of a lockout with no end in sight hockey has become a painful topic for me. I have lots to say on the labor situation and will do so at a later date. I also follow U.S. college, Canadian major junior and Minnesota high school hockey so I do have some other options during the lockout. In particular I’m a huge Minnesota Golden Gopher hockey fan and am lucky enough to be able to see them twice a week on TV most weeks. I’ve also stepped into the realm of hockey parent as my daughter Jordan has laced up the skates for the first time this year. After half a dozen or so practices she can actually skate without assistance but hasn’t mastered the concept of pushing off so she’s super slow. It’s expensive and time consuming but as long as she’s having fun we’ll continue to participate.
I’ve got a million things that I want to write about bouncing around in my head but I’m calling it a night. When it comes to sports radio my favorite guys are the ones that work in a variety of subjects, both in and out of the sports world. I’ll try to do that in this blog, not just hammer away at poker and/or hockey every time.
