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The European Short-Handed Championship, with a guaranteed prize pool of 150,000 Euros is being staged in Dublin this June, and massive interest has been generated by online players, joining the satellites in vast numbers, in the hope to win a prize package to the live event.

I posted this hand on my blog too, but figured it might get some interest in this community.  To preface the hand, I am an online pro who occasionally plays live at Casino Montreal.  In this hand I was playing 2/5 NL.

I had just sat down and only seen two hands.  In both, a middle-aged big stack sitting across from me had cold-called raises preflop.  I pick up KK in mid-position and raise to 25, it folds to the middle-aged man who flats from the small blind.  We’re heads up to the flop which comes A-J-6 rainbow.  The villain checks and I c-bet $40.  He flats again.  The turn is a queen.  He checks, I check behind.  River is a meaningless 4.  He leads with a $60 bet.  What now?

On April 28 will remain certainly engraved in l’ history of the poker in ligne… Within the framework of the “ Kill Elky Battleship” , Bertrand Grospellier, tried to beat a record with the Casino of Monte Carlo in margin of l’ EPT: that of the greatest number of Sit& Go played simultaneously. The best of the French players had one hour to enter […

L’ actor of the film Hotel Rwanda, Gift Cheadle, moved by the dramas in Africa, creates with the player of poker Annie Duke in 2005 l’ association “ Ante Up for Africa”. It thus wished to bring its assistance and to assist from depopulated the d’ Africa, by financing work of the charitable organizations which provide l’ assistance to […

When I met the woman who would later become my wife, I was just 19 years old. I had a long, long ponytail. I delivered pizza.

In 1994 I was thin, carefree, and spent more time planning my next road trip than with silly “conventional” distractions like rent, gas, and cable TV.

I saw the Grateful Dead at Soldier Field that year. I saw Phish in Cincinnati and Louisville. I crashed a Phish show on my 20th birthday way up in Bethlehem, PA.

I ended that year with the same wife-to-be and two of my closest friends, by spending New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam.

Those were heady days my friends and, now, if it’s possible to have a mid-life crisis at 34, welcome to it’s heart.

Maybe it starts with Phish. Could be Bonnaroo. It may be that having my brother living so much closer has a mutual bad influence. We’ve already caught the start of the Dead tour (as posted below) and now here’s a rundown of the summer to be :

May 31 Phish@Fenway Boston, MA

My friend “Uncle Ted” scored the tickets up in the rightfield grandstand. My brother and I are flying up that morning. We get in at 11:30. We leave Boston at 5:00AM Monday. It’s a whilwind, what Timmy calls a “Rockstar Vacation”.

We’re just going to RAWK! Should make for a pretty interesting return flight in any event.

June 9 Phish@Asheville Civic Center Asheville, NC

Hard tickets to score but I paid the scalpers. This will bring about some scorn in the -Head community. I absolutely do not care. Otis, Pauly, and my wife will be there too. Should be silly since it’s the smallest venue on the Phish tour this year.

This is an old-school venue. I plan to act in a very stupid manner.

As soon as the show ends my wife and I will hop in the fully-loaded car and head to Charlotte for a few hours sleep before hooking up with my brother, his wife, and “Uncle Ted”.

We’ll be getting an RV.

June 10 Phish@Thompson-Boling Arena Knoxville, TN

We’ll take that RV 4 hours down I-40 to Knoxville and hook up with a half-dozen more friends. We’ve got 12 seats for this one. Hopefully the Joker and TD will be there. Some other friends, both new and old will be using some of the 12 tickets my brother and I scored (all at face value) through various means.

My seats are fantastic. Lower level, Pageside.

After the show we’ll load up the RV and hit a hotel just 6 miles away.

This will be the last clean bathroom for days.

June 11-14 Bonnaroo Manchester, TN

This is my fourth Bonnaroo. B and I went in 2002, 2004 and 2007. My brother and his wife will be with us for the third time. Uncle Ted, Matt, and Julie-Steakdoses are back for a second time.

It’s awesome for a long list of reasons but my favorite are :

Phish is playing both Friday and Sunday nights.
Plus,
The Beastie Boys.
David Byrne
Bruce Sprinsteen and the E Street Band
Snoopy Dog
etc.
etc,
etc,

I can’t wait.

August 15 Phish@Merriweather Post Pavillion Columbia, MD

I threw this in for good measure. I scored 4 tickets on the Fishman side in the lottery. My wife, my brother, sister-in-accodance-with-law, and I will have fun.

You know, because its the Phishes.

Now here are my concerns,

I’m not 19. I’m older, fatter, and more pampered. I do have actual responsibilities.

And kids.

I played in a decent frolf tournament Sunday and played well. Today my back and legs have been extremely sore. That makes sense. I competed for a full 11 hours.

You know, competed.

At standing, walking slowly, and throwning a frisbee.

Yikes. If that hurts now, I’m more than a little worried about the stamina required for a summer of ‘94.

We’ll see how it goes.

Most of the time when you are engaged in a hand of poker, you will think of your decisions before taking them. For example, if you follow a revival with K-Q, you known as: “ If j’ the signal pair, I have will play this hand. If j’ have a gut-shot and two overcards, I will play […

The excitement of playing poker in Las Vegas is heating up as Titan Poker players continue to compete and win their seats at the premier event on the poker calendar this summer.

I have a scabbed over gash that runs from the top of my left triceps down past the elbow. The left hand has a few nasty scratches that make it look like I lost a catnip fight with a panther. My special “frolf shoes”, actually Teva trail shoes, are so badly torn I haven’t even tried to wear them in a week.

Plus, I had to buy a new skeeter.

Still the worst part of my past week was the following admonition from my wife :

“I don’t think you should play alone anymore. If (Otis) can’t play, you should just go to the gym instead. It’s too dangerous.”

She actually said that!

I’m so ashamed.

I started playing frolf regularly, by which I mean almost every day, about 8 years ago. That first initial infatuation lasted a good two years before taking a 5 year snooze. Then, last summer, Otis and I rediscovered what we loved about it in the first place :

It gets us out of the house.
It gets us outside.
It gets us away from our wonderful and better-than-we actually-deserve wives.
We can pretend we’re competitive without, you know, skills or talent.

I’ve played pretty much every day for the past year.

But even a true love needs a fresh look, a new position to try, a fresh approach. After playing almost exclusively at “Timmons Park” we we thrilled to get a new course out in Greer.

So without further yammering nonsense, here’s my take on the new “Century Park” course and details of my latest frolf humilation.

Now that the leaves are coming in, the course is looking good. The city of Greer had to redesign the course last year and brought Innova in for the course architecture. That led to a complete clear-cutting of all the underbrush. Before the spring it had a real zombie apocalypse feel. If you’ve read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”, this is the landscape you pictured.

Now with some leaves on the trees it looks like the apocalypse…with chlorophyll. That’s an improvement in my book.

The layout is actually quite superb, a mixture of tricky elevation changes, long bombs, and at least a few relatively easy birdies.

Notable are :

- The third hole which is over 400 feet and has a tough uphill lie that begins about midway.

- The 7th, which should be the easiest in Greenville but has caused me to develop a frightening mental block. There is only one tree to hit. I always hit it.

- The 10th which lies to the right of the teepad with that path obstructed by heavy trees. It’s a pretty easy birdie for a lefty who can get a good long range fade but is tricky for a righty who has trouble with a turnover disc.

- The 11th is the hardest hole in the area IMHO. Otis’ too. 397 feet with a steep uphill and some pretty dense tree obstructions about midway. A par here is very impressive.

- The 15th. Notable because, while long, it is not a particularly difficult shot. Somehow, this is an Otis mental block hole.

- The 16th. A case could be made that this is actually the easiest hole on the course. I, however, have now lost two midrange discs here…including my daughter’s “Skeeter”.

Last week I threw a fade shot that I thought would curve into the basket. I had the range right but actually pulled it a bit and caught the side of a tree. That sent my skeeter a good 50 feet away and at a 90 degree angle from the hole.

When I crossed the creek and found my disc, I found that there is actually a SECOND creek perpendicular to the first. My disc was beyond a good 20 feet of dense bramble on the opposite bank.

After sloooowly stepping through the thorns, I got to the near bank and devised a retreval plan :

Step down about two feet onto the near bank with my right foot.
Quick step with left foot across 2 feet width of creek to far bank.
Scoop Skeeter.
Push back onto right foot.
Climb out.
Resume play.

In my defense, a strategy much like this has worked thousands of times before.

Instead it went bad fast.

When I stepped down, my right foot sank a good 8 inches in the mud. When I lunged forward it wouldn’t come loose.

I tried to re-adjust and threw my weight backwards, my arms flailing in a spiral.

With my left hand I reached backward for something to grab and stop my fall. With my right I tried to break my fall into the creek.

The left hand found something to grab. A thornbush. It ripped my hand open (my throwing hand no less) and I finally let go falling entirely into the mud.

The mud was so soft now that I couldn’t stand to get out. I had to find some sturdy sticks nearby to get solid footing for the climb from the creek.

When I did, my right shoe stayed behind. I had to get on my stomach and pull it out.

I left the skeeter behind.

Now I’m not allowed to play alone. And, sadly, this is my SECOND major frolf injury of the year. This one, luckily, was without witnesses.

The last was in a competitive tournament.

/Frolf Content

Whereas it has just broken its contract with Atalanta of Bergamo, Christian “Sore” the old Vieri international one of football of Squadra Azzura (Italian national team) finds itself today without club. At 35 years, he sees stinging the last moments of an intense career of high level footballer and wonders about his future. It […

It’s the first lesson I taught my wife when she joined me for a round on the frolf course. She’d never seen disc golf before so I figured I’d start easy.

**TINK**

“F%$#!!!”

It’s the sound of a disc hitting the basket, but not staying in, and the subsequent reaction of the player. It only took about 5 minutes before we heard it happen the first time to a player in a group behind us.

It’s been more than a year since I’ve been on the disc golf course, and it felt good to be back!

The course in E-Vegas is amazing. All 18 holes have nice concrete tee pads and pictures of the hole at each tee. In fact, a number of the longer holes have alternate tee pads for women, amateurs and G-Rob.

There’s a lot to like about the set-up of the course, too. There are mandatory openings through which you must throw the discs. There are lots of places where a bad throw could land you out of bounds or in the water. And the holes offer lots of opportunities for a variety of shots. It’s a longer course than Timmons Park back in Greenville, but it also doesn’t have as many Death Star trench-like shots either.

On this day, I managed just one birdie (despite what the course suggests, regular frolfers consider all holes to be a Par 3). But I was happy with how I threw considering it had been so long since I was on a course. And I can’t wait to get back out and do it again!

Plus, this gives the guys from G-Vegas just one more reason to visit. 1) Free place to stay. 2) Casino boat with poker room. 3) Disc golf course. 4) And for Bad Blood… some adult establishments.

The European Championship of Online Poker IV (ECOOP) is coming soon with $4,550,000 in cash prizes.

(Posters Warning : CJ told me this blog now has a more diverse focus. I still plan to stick to gambling in some sense. Because I am a problem gambler, this still leaves an immense range of topics about which I can, and will, post. I just felt like writing again.)

I saw a wookie bounce off the hoods of three cars. He streaked past me, with clumped hair flapping and woozy knees wobbling, presumably running FROM something that only he could see. With wookies there’s an equal probability that he’s running from :

A) The Law.
B) His Past.
C) His Imagination
D) Soap.

He’d just run down our aisle when he darted between cars, bouncing off one, into another fender, then off a hood. I thought he got away. I later heard he was slammed down by three cops.

For those of you playing at home, that’s “A”.

Now, generally I like to get all settled in before wookie watching, but since this is the first Dead tour in years I was prepared for anything. My wife, brother and I got to Greensboro at least 3.5 hours before showtime. Presumably enough time to either drink a dozen beers or wait once in the porta-potty line.

The good news is that most of the salesmen were pretty savvy. That’s unusual for a wook. The two most active undercover cops were a big burly guy in a yellow shirt that said “Dead” and another guy, also burly, but at least 6 foot 6 with a crew cut and a blue ‘do rag.

I saw douche-rag guy hit up one pipe vendor near our car. Pipe vendor was holding his glass in a black case and strolling down our lane when douche grabs a random pipe and whips out a wad of cash. My car was blasting tunes at the time and I couldn’t hear everything said but I saw douche-rag point several times to the “bowl” portion of this young wooks glass. Wook, again, was savvy. The only part of the conversation I actually heard was wook telling cop, “These are for tobacco man. I could hook you up with THAT if you want.”

Cop grabbed his money back from the wook, put the glass back, and stormed away without a word.

That’s the gamble that is the Dead lot these days. I remember back in the day, we’d see more of everything than you can imagine ( I mean wow, really, everything) and the cops did nothing. It used to kinda freak me out the way cops would just ignore all the obvious, illegal activity at a GRATEFUL DEAD show. Maybe Jerry was responsible for greasing the locals, but the cops ain’t cool these days and they haven’t been for quite some time.

Granted, like the wookies themselves, some people deserve what they get. One kid, a girl who I’d say was about 17, came by our car holding a ticket in her hand. She showed it to me….busted for drinking in the lot. Now, here’s where she got super-extra-mega-dumb. Her girlfriend was in the process of getting busted by yellowshirt guy (who again, could have just worn the uniform for all the subtlety he brought to undercover work) and our kid goes up to give her friend a hug. During the bust. While holding an open beer.

Sigh.

These are tomorrow’s leaders.

So once inside we take totally excellent floor seats just to by the soundboard (Philside) and I continue the now standing bet I have with Pauly. We each pick 3 songs for 1st set opener. 3 more for second set. 3 more for encore. I took $20 off him when Phish opened with Fluffhead at Hampton.

We pushed all three for the dead.

Here’s the setlist for those who care :

Set 1

Music Never Stopped
Jack Straw>
Estimated Prophet >
He’s Gone >
Touch of Gray
I Need a Miracle >
Truckin’>
Miracle

Set 2

Shakedown Street
All Aong The Watchtower
Caution
Jam
Drums
Space
Cosmic Charlie
New Potato Caboose
Help on the Way >
Slipknot! >
Franklin’s Tower

Donor Rap

Encore:

Samson and Delilah

Some notes :

I love Music Never Stopped but am unable to NOT hear Donna scream OHHHH YEAH at crucial parts of the song. I’m not sure what that means. I’ve never actually SEEN Donna but that’s what years of bootleg cassettes will do for a man.

My brother and I really, really, really, really, really, wanted to see Estimated Prophet simply because we like screaming AH NA NA NA NA along with Bobby Weir. We’re amused by simple things.

He’s Gone was written long before Jerry died but when you’re touring without him you do know the audience assumes it’s ABOUT him now….right?

Miracle was the highlight of the first set. I got stuck in the beer line during Touch of Grey and missed part. In fact, I missed so much that I missed Truckin’. I was so oblivious to it that I PICKED Truckin’ as one of my 3 second set openers with Pauly. It was a dumb bet.

I enjoy the song Shakedown Street very much.

I also Enjoy All Along the Watchtower and Warren Haynes really shredded it up on this one.

Caution was awesome and this is the best thing about having Warren play with the band. He can actually sing the blues. Not the douchey Bobby Red Rooster blues but the good ol’ Pigpen brand. If you get to see the Dead this year, hope that they play this song.

During Cosmic Charlie my wife said, “you know the DEAD never played this but all the after-bands (Phil, Ratdog, the Dead) play it all the time. I wonder why.”

Then they played New Potato Caboose. Wow. I don’t even own a bootleg version of this soon. I couldn’t remember the name until it was half-over. I do remember that “touching makes the flesh cry out loud.” That counts for something.

The band started the Help>Slip>Frank at 11:30. That’s 4 hours in.

My brother and I assumed all day, it being Easter and all, that we’d see either Promised Land (my guess) or Greatest Story Ever Told (his). Samson and Delilah is what we got.

C’est la vie.

This is the kind of crap I blog about now.

It did contain some gambling.

That counts.

The first assessments for year 2008 start to fall. Which repercussions the world economic crisis does it have on the world of the play and more particularly of the Poker? A general fall of the frequentation of the Casinos was confirmed in the Hexagon during the year 2008. The economic crisis lasted and it strongly has amputee the […

After a hard fought tournament in beautiful Salzburg, Austria, Jacob Chen wins the 1st place prize of 47,302 Euros.

Becomes the first player from Spain to qualify for the World Championship No-Limit Holdem Main Event and will represent Titan Poker at the event in July.

I have an intriguing question that may require a bit of thought.

Would a stake from another person be considered gambling on your part?

For those that do not know what a stake is, it is a specific amount of money given to you to play poker with. If you profit from it, then the staker gets 50% of your winnings and you take 50% (or whatever the cut is decided to be). If you lose the stake, then you are out nothing other than ‘cake’ if the staker stakes you again. ‘Cake’ pretty much means that if you profit from the next stake, you pay me back what money you lost the first stake and then cut any additional profits. If the staker does not stake you again, you are out nothing.

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Ever have one of those nights where it seems like you should have held onto nearly every hand you folded? I’m having one of those right now.

Folded Q4 at a tight table. (Ring game on Absolute) What’s the flop? QQ4. Turn was unimportant, river card was Q. I was kinda kicking myself over that, as I’d just thrown away the nuts. But, then again, seeing as I’m not real aggressive, getting rid of Q4 in early position was definitely the right call. As it turns out, I would have won on just the flop. Didn’t even need that Queen on the river.

Few hands later, same table. I throw away an A4 as I’m not one of those players who thinks you have to see the flop any time you get an Ace. What’s the flop? AAJ. Great. Maybe I should just play all hands that have a 4 in them. I would have won that hand also, had I stayed in.

Another few hands later and I get 64. Screw it, there’s another 4. I’m playing. Flop doesn’t help me at all and I fold. I knew that hand was garbage, but I played it anyway because I was frustrated.

This is in stark contrast to a few nights ago when I kept hitting these weird straights. On Big Blind with 8-5. I check to see the flop and hit a straight with 467. Next big blind, I check through with 10-7 and flop 89J and win the hand again. It’s funny, because I never had another chance to check on big blind after that. One of the guys raised pre-flop every time I was on big blind, as if he expected me to keep making straights all night if I was allowed to check.

Anyway, no real point to this. I just felt like venting a bit about my luck tonight. Hopefully it’ll get better tomorrow night, as last night was pretty awful as well.