Luckdonkery of both the Sports and Poker Varieties

Oh what's that? That's the sound of a clueless blonde going 12-2 in NFL picks this weekend. I once again used my elaborate system of suppositions like "Oh, they can't lose FOUR in a row" (New Orleans-- well I guess they can) and "Rivers has to get his shit together sometime so why not this week?" (San Diego, who routed Denver). My lucksacking this weekend vaulted me up to a four-way tie for 4th place in the Pauly's Pub Pool with three guys who actually know what they're doing when it comes to making picks (Daddy, Storms, and Austin Matt). That's right beetches. Don't forget who won the NCAA one with absolutely zero knowledge of college hoops...

I played some poker over the last few days while watching all those NFL games I know nothing about (and getting to see USC go down to Stanford... seriously, is there anything sweeter?) and watching the Yankees-Indians playoff series. Mainly I've been two and three tabling the $24 turbo SNGs on Full Tilt and seem to be hovering at an ROI between 15 and 20% which is fine by me. I also let Showcase play a couple of $5.50 SNGs on my account. In the first one he played limit hold'em and won it! Derek and Pauly were on the rail, perplexed at why I was playing like such a donkey... and in a limit SNG. Showcase revealed himself though, and proclaimed to his table "THIS POKER THING IS SO EASY" as he took it down. The next night he wanted to try a no-limit one. And he finished 3rd! Go Showcase!

I won a seat to the Fifty-Fifty tournament on Full Tilt on Monday night through a $3.30 rebuy satellite where I was in for $15. Bayne was two to my left during the rebuy period and saw my aces get cracked twice. I'd been wanting to try the Fifty-Fifty for a while now, but it's kind of an oddly timed tournament for those of us on West Coast time-- starting at 6:30 PM, right about when I want to be eating dinner. But that's what delivery Chinese food is for. The Yankees were down 6-1 as my table popped up onto the screen. 957 players signed up, creating a slight overlay.

I ended up sitting with Scott Fischman ("emptyseat88") two to my left for the duration of the tournament. This kid is one serious lucksack. There were at least three instances where he committed himself on the turn with nothing more than a flush draw, got called by a better hand and hit every one, giving him a huge stack. He was also playing 5 tournaments at once, including the $1K Monday, so maybe he just didn't give a shit about what he did a $55 one. Gambooool it up, I suppose.

I ran into Fischman's luckdonkery head-on in the final hand I played. With 3,700 chips in the 120-240/25 level I made it 720 to go from third position with A-A. I had an extremely solid image, having only showed down two hands in two hours. He re-raised to 2,200 with something like 31,000 behind (he was the chip leader or close to it) and when the action was folded back to me I was more than happy to move in. He called immediately and showed 4-4... but a T-8-4 rainbow flop busted me out in 214th place with 153 places paying. Had I won the hand, I would have had an above-average stack going into bubble time. Boooooooooooo. Totally sucks.


And then the Yankees lost. Double boooooo.

I have six days left before Pauly hits L.A. and eight days until we head Down Under. Disappoinintly, the New Zealand leg of our journey did not work out (the tournament itself never materialized), so we'll be on mainland Australia for the duration of the 20 days we'll be down there. Our first stop is Melbourne for the Poker News Cup. After the tournament, we'll day-trip around Melbourne for a few days before flying up to Sydney to finish off the journey.

Hopefully, by the end of this afternoon, I'll have a bottle of Xanax to make those 15-hour flights a liiiiittle easier.