*#%$ YOU, BILLY JOEL!

So it looks like ol' Billy's been sippin too many bottles of white AND bottles of red... Or maybe it was the CAPTAIN JACK that got em?

I'm assuming the tour is only "postponed" for the time being, but if for some reason it gets cancelled, I'm going to be livid. I paid $400 on one of those ticket scalping sites online for two tickets with a combined face value of $150. If it cancels, I'm sure my only course of action will be a refund for face value from Ticketmaster!

Goooogle!

Is GOOGLE taking over the internet???

With the quality of their offerings, I, for one certainly hope so! I continue to stumble across different services and tools that Google is coming up with that make my life consistantly more interesting and easy. Currently I use (regularly):

Google Search
Google Image Search
Google News
Google Groups
GMAIL
Blogger
Hello
Picasa
Google Local
Desktop Search

And recently discovered, Google Maps which BLOWS Mapquest out of the water!

I can almost guarantee any or all of these services and tools will be beneficial to anyone that uses their computer and the internet regularly.

Remember... JUST FUCKIN GOOGLE IT!

Moooovies!

So we stuck with Blockbuster.com and dropped Netflix for our online movie rentals. For no reason other than they seem pretty similar after trying them both and BB is $5/mo cheaper. I'm pretty impressed with the system. Kinda cool to always have movies around and never have to worry about late fees or going out for that terrible 1.6 mile journey to the actual Blockbuster store! ;-)

Right now we have Collateral, Paparazzi and Garden State.

Tues Tournament

So I hopped in the tournament this past Tuesday. Pretty great night for me, even though I finished 15th paying out a whopping $148. After the $100+30 buyin, I made $18. Sweet.

But the night was awesome. I felt like I played very well until the last 30 minutes or so, isn't that always how it goes? A few notes...

Third hand or so after we started I picked up A9s in late position. A couple limpers around to me of the T$100 blind. I raised to T$400. The blinds folded and I only got one caller second UTG. Flop comes AJ9 rainbow and I check the other guys stack, seeing I have him covered by a couple hundred is all. I go ahead and push in and he quickly calls turning over QJo. Sweet, he's drawing very thin. Turn blank, river J and I'm down to T$200. :-( Hanging on by a shoestring, I pushed in a couple times with big hands (that certainly came at the right time!) JJ, KK (x2) and AKs all held up on all-ins preflop to double me up a few times and get me back in the mix.

From there I was making good moves. Playing within the limits of my cards for the most part, but had one hand that I was particularly proud of. Raised the BB 4x UTG with 44. Got 2 callers. Flop comes AT4 rainbow. First to act, and with a bully in the hand, I thought for a minute (normally here, I'm pretty aggressive and would push in, which probably wouldn't have changed the outcome, but I still liked the variety of my thought here) and I checked. The bully asked how much I had left and it was about T$2k. He said "alright, I'll put you in" and bet out. Player behind him folded and I quickly called. The set held up to his AQo and I was dancin.

From here I built up an above average stack, and got to be about 3rd/4th in chips as we approached the bubble. Lots of banjo strings as we got closer to the money and I was taking advantage of it stealing blinds with 4xBB raises preflop pretty well. Down to 21 players (20 is money) I gave away T$10k in chips with a stupid move. There was a guy playing pretty loose at our table and had some steam going stealing blinds as well. He raised 4xBB 2nd UTG and I looked down at KQs. I figured him to be stealing so I put T$10k (about a 3x reraise) in the pot figuring him to be smart enough to fold as we were so close to the money. Unfortunately he either had a hand or grew some serious cajones and pushed in over the top of my re-raise! Ugh. He had me covered and I didn't want to put my money finish on the line and folded. Yuck!

That chopped me pretty good and I was down to T$5-6k. Once again, picked up a monster - KK UTG and got a caller on my push. Doubled up to 10-12k and got moved to the other table. Blinds were at 2k/4k and were almost to me when I got a suited K (K6 I think) UTG. Figured a push would get me the 6k in blinds but ran into AA on the button. I needed diamonds bad! Wouldn't you know it was time for a miracle flop and it came QQQ pretty much drawing me dead. Needing KK to come, it didn't and I was out 15th for my $18 payday.

I'll probably play one night a week at least from here until June when I'm playing the WSOP $2k buy-in event. I'll continue to post recaps if anyone cares to read them. ;-)

Cheers.