Party Poker Blog

"The track takes 15 percent, but what's 15 percent of a dream?"
Charles Bukowski

Getting to watch Hoyt Corkins destroy Phil Helmuth as his own personal chew toy in the Foxwoods WPT finals was truly hilarious. I officially have a new hero.
Thanks again for the WPT tape, Pauly!

What a week. What a rush. The fish are schooling on Party, my friends. Please take advantage now - before it's too late.

I'm not much for patting myself on the back - I learned long ago that poker has a way of quickly humbling you. But NL tourneys, both multi and SNG have been treating me extremely well - almost to the point where I was despondent, thinking I had wasted too much time grinding ever since the poker boom kicked in. But two wise friends pointed out that my grinding has taken me to where I am now, and they're correct. I've won two of my last three multi's and finished fifth in a $50 NL multi on TruePoker.

Per the True tourney - I think I just got lucky. Honestly, I didn't really pay attention until very late - I wasn't getting cards and was either talking on the phone or IM'ing during the tournament. Plus, the players were very passive - it was like the anti-Party, and I was lulled away from the table. But at a certain point, I shifted gears and went all-in five times in row, culminating in getting caught with my pants down, as I had a9 SOOTED versus AQ. Of course, I sucked out with a flush to double-through.

From there I hit some flops and suddenly was 7th stack with perhaps 25 or 30 players left. I was moved to a new table and, sadly, end up with a MONSTER stack directly to my left. This crimped my style severely and I started getting blinded off.

Somewhere around this point, I mentioned to Hdouble that I was in the running for a nice little score and he came to sweat me. Hank, who is much brighter than me, immediately recognized the monster stack to my left as Don, fellow poker blogger at Bullets in the Hole. Too damn cool! Plus, now I could raise his big blind. :)

Not much else to report, I folded into fifth place, accruing another nice little hit. For the record, I got knocked out when I went allin on the BB with 28c and two clubs on the flop. Everyone enjoyed a nice chuckle when I showed my power hand. Don, doing the poker blogging community proud, ended up finishing second and pocketed about $1400 along with a $1000 seat in a WSOP freezeout. Way to go, Don!

I once read an article by Daniel Negreanu about "Party Day" in which he purposefully played like a maniac and would blow off some steam after the weeks of grinding. I've adopted that theme in my home game and on Saturday evening, it worked well. I raised preflop with just about anything playable, played some hands blind and ended up the second big winner in the game despite walking into some sucker punches late in the game. But for you players wanting to learn a bit about image and controlling a table, it would do you well to try this out once in a while, if only for the fun factor.

I'm hoping to leave time to play so let's cut to the quick.

Our good friends at PokerSavvy have a new feature up - make sure to head over and check it out!

Pokersavvy.com invites you to participate in the World Series of Poker Fantasy League. Here's how it works: You pick of team of your favorite pros. Then, as the WSOP progresses, you can check back and see how your team is doing. The teams that accumulate the most money through all the events of the WSOP win fabulous prizes.

Check the Fantasy League site for registration and further details.
Pokersavvy.com World Series of Poker Fantasy League.

Somehow I found this 2003 WSOP shirt for sale on EBay.

From the 'Don't They Have Anything Better To Do?' department:
Poker night costly for Ravens' Corey Fuller

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Baltimore Ravens cornerback Corey Fuller was charged with hosting high-stakes card games at his house. He was released on $5,000 bail Tuesday night after a search warrant was served at
the house. The felony charge carries a possible five-year state prison sentence and $5,000 fine.

State law allows card players to gamble up to $10 a hand, but sheriff's spokeswoman Linda Butler said Wednesday some pots were worth thousands of dollars, and games were held several times a week.

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I really enjoyed online poker pro, Jason, giving his two cents about playing multiple tables.
Poker Odyssey

FullTiltPoker is up and running. Play money games only right now.... Supposedly, poker professionals such as Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Erick Lindgren, Clonie Gowen, Phil Gordon, Andy Bloch, Erik Seidel and Howard Lederer are sitting at their puters and playing the unclean masses at the play money tables. It would be easy to play the cynic card here, but these are players beyond reproach, imho. The only glaring mistake they've made this far is not including Richard Brodie on their team.

Someone did have an interesting question about this poker site arrangement with US poker pro's:

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Could the pro players (at least the ones living in the US) that are promoting this site be in legal trouble for "promoting illegal gambling" once the site goes "real money"? Similar to the legal problems being encountered by advertisers of online sites?

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Aren't they defined as 'hosts' and in the clear? Hell, ask Andy Bloch, he's got a damn Harvard law degree.

For the record, I'm a long-time fan of Andy's WPT site:
The (Unofficial) World Poker Tour Fan Site!

Poker in Anchorage, Alaska?

Poker player deals state House in on casino bill
Perry Green - Card-playing furrier hopes to turn failed fish packing plant into money maker.

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Anchorage poker star Perry Green has talked leaders of the state House into introducing a bill that could let Green start an international casino in Anchorage.

Green wants to turn the failed state-owned Alaska Seafood International plant into a casino that caters to well-heeled Asian tourists. It would bring jobs and tax dollars to the state, Green pledges. It's a controversial idea. But he has intrigued key members of the state House, including House Speaker Pete Kott.

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Alrighty then. It's amazing how many sites out there want links, but they aren't offering anything but shill banners and empty fake site reviews. What a joke. If you enjoy the latest news in poker and other assorted poker links from around the web, consider supporting this humble poker blog. Bonus Code IGGY when you sign up at Party Poker!

I wanted to leave a stellar link for everyone but instead I'm gonna finish with this silly HST-style Las Vegas Trip Report I found on RGP. It's only Part I.

Part II actually has poker content. Please ignore if easily offended!

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Fetish and Losing in Las Vegas - 01
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Disclaimer:

If you're a guy, we don't need a disclaimer. For you ladies, be advised there's lots of dirty stuff in here, and our disclaimer is that every single guy on the planet, except perhaps Lee H. Jones (a prince among
swine, he is), thinks exactly the same way we do -- they just hide it better. Now you know.

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So I scored a trip to Vegas for some fluff training class. Spaulding schedules a vacation to accompany me. Then and there, whatever small value the class might have offered was compromised. So it goes. Neither
of us have ever been to 'Sin City,' and Spaulding is positively glowing at the vice potential. "We can see strippers here, anytime," I rein him back in, "I'm going to play cards the whole time."

"I said vice, not strippers," he clarifies.

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religious aside to generate entertaining hate-mail
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I guess I'm what you'd call a deist. I think if you examine the current science, it strongly supports the Big Bang theory. At least that's what that freak in the wheelchair says. Several billions years ago, the
evidence suggests, there was indeed a 'day with no yesterday.' The entire universe, simple at first but with the ultimate potential to produce complex entities, such as multi-angle porn DVDs, sprang into being from
nothingness. Even if you're a confirmed atheist, ponder that concept a little while, over a nice fatty or two, and I guarantee you’ll say "Whoa. That's heavy." Then you'll order some Chinese. No matter. What I'm
saying is that I believe there is some higher power, but I have a hard time with all the man-made rules and regulations of organized religion, the ban on Onanism being as good an example as any. My point is that I'm not the most religious person you'll ever meet. As such, I have no moral qualms about prostitution. Indeed, it strikes me as highly practical. Don't try to tell me you never thought, "I'd gladly pay $200 for an hour with my wife's sister, and it's not like it's hard work for her..." I would never indulge in it though, only because I'm a big pussy. I'm paranoid about catching some disease still unknown to science, such as the
Tijuanan Penis Leprosy. Those VD medicine commercials on TV don’t help either. They've got to be the best abstinence advertisements of all time. They show some red hot model, a total stunner, who explains with a pearly smile that by using Valtrex, she's only a genital wart sporting, highly infectious, pus-seeping skank for a few weeks out of the year. Then they remind you that 'there is no cure' but, hey!, you can control it Real Nice. So, call me a fagula if you must, but I'll be taking a pass on the hookers. Unless I'm really really drunk. Spaulding, however, is of the James Tiberius Kirk school of thought: if it's a carbon-based life form
with an orifice, it will do. Think I'm exaggerating? We were watching "Walking With Cavemen" (featuring partial nudity) on Discovery, and he's telling me which Homo Habilis's have the best boobs, and which ones he would canoodle (answer: all of them, one way or another). Really.

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end of religious aside to generate entertaining hate-mail
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Monday, 1:30pm
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[Cue music, "Roll on Down the Highway" Bachman-Turner Overdrive.]

I work the morning then go pick up Spaulding, stopping first for some jerky and a Mead memo table for note taking. Spaulding's coming from lunch at TGIF's, and already smells like a hot-wing littered pine forest.
We make the short drive, passing about Spaulding's flask of Bombay Sapphire the way the Harlem Globetrotters pass a basketball, because it's totally uncool to arrive at an airport stone sober (you should probably write that down). We check our bags and hike over to security, where the line is quite small. There are two ways to clear security: pass the metal detector or get searched manually. Spaulding notices a hot-babe security guard over on the manual search side, and he spots a sign that says if you have a pacemaker, you shouldn't go through the metal detector, they'll pat you down instead. Just as I'm reading a second sign that says, in so many words, "Don’t fuck around, because we take everything seriously, and if you try to be cute we'll call in the FBI and you'll be standing tall before the man," I hear frigging idiot tell the guy, "I have a pacemaker."

"Into the chute sir," says Rambo. I already know what's going to happen. They'll wand him, discover the lie about the pacemaker, and 30 minutes later we'll be sitting in an interrogation room at the local FBI
office while some jackbooted ATF guys swipe all the 'Barely Legals' out of Spaulding's luggage. God knows I don't need that again. Anyway, the hottie is already busy with someone else, and Spaulding has to get
searched by, I believe, Fred Sanford. Ha. Luckily, we clear security with no problems.

We plant our asses at a small bar/cafe and order up a couple 22 ounce lagers. The guy on my right orders another Michelob Ultra, and whines for a clean glass, because the last one wouldn't hold a head. Spaulding
laughs inappropriately loud and calls him "The Wine Steward." TWS glances at us disapprovingly, and returns to his USA Today. We're watching the USA channel, some movie about cheerleader auditions. Spaulding, now slurping bourbon, is talking to the TV, as some of the more morally bankrupt girls audition by climbing on the table and striking some hot short-shorts poses on all fours (wish I caught the title, looks like a good rental). "JFC! Look at the tail on that one! It's like vulcanized rubber!" Suddenly, he announces that they've watered down his Wild Turkey – it tastes weak. Then we notice the bottle; it's 80 proof, not the usual 101, if you can imagine such temerity. He carries on about the unfucking
believability of serving 80 proof Turkey. "It's just not right," he laments, shaking his head. On TV, one of the snotty, established cheerleaders (the blondie, of course) on the selection committee blackballs the brunette good-girl gymnast, denying her a spot on the squad. "That cunt!" remarks twelve-step, loud enough that patrons at the tables are now looking at us. TWS has had enough and leaves without
finishing his Ultra. "Well," I say, "We've never been kicked out of an airport."

"That's a bet," says Spaulding, without looking away from the TV.

We board the regional jet for the hop to Pittsburgh. The flight isn't full, and I'm happy that the seat next to me is open, so I can sprawl out a bit, but of course boozehound spots it and moves over by me. Talk turns
to fetishes. Considering my circle of friends, I thought I was aware of every sick deviation known to man. I wasn't. Spaulding not only knows them all, but apparently has them all. Over two mini-bottles of Tanqueray
(and tonic) each, he fills me in on 'CFNM,' some specialized form of male exhibitionism, to which there are dedicated web sites.

Spaulding: "Dude, it's so hot."
Me: "It's naked guys, and the women are fully dressed?"
Spaulding: "Yeah, but the women are, like, innocent until they go wild."
Me: "So it's like flashing?"
Spaulding: "No, the women want to be there. They're at a strip show"
Me: "So they're dressed – the women?"
Spaulding: "Yeah, that's the point."
Me: "So, as you're ipsating your way through the web site, you're looking
at what is, in fact, a male strip show?"
Spaulding: "Yeah."
Me: "Doesn’t that strike you as kind of...Siegfriedesque?"
Spaulding: "No! Dude, you don't get it. It's like you fantasize that
you're the guy."
Me: "And you need pictures of naked men to do that?"
Spaulding: "You obviously don't get it."
Me: "Obviously."

I invite you to send an email to elgattogrande@hotmail.com and tell Spaulding he's a closet homo. Be aware his average email turnaround-time is 3 to 48 months.

Then he moves on to 'shrimping,' which is the practice of toe sucking. I have a serious anti-foot fetish. Unfortunately, my mind leaps back to the time I saw Spaulding barefoot at hunting camp. He's not a stickler for hygiene, and his toenails are long enough that he could use them to hang upsidedown, bat-like, from the ceiling. The thought of someone putting his foot in their mouth genuinely sickens me. I can also still remember the hideous stench of his hunting boots. The mental image makes me literally gag, hard, on a swig of GnT, and go into a coughing fit.

The soccer mom across from us was subtly, yet noticeably, taking this all in. She must have thought we were a couple of real perverts. If she only knew.

Mercifully, the captain announces we're making our final approach. Pittsburgh bars will be much better, Spaulding assures me, because Pennsylvanians know how to drink. As if he's been suffering thus far.

The Moose Is Loose
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There is, of course, nothing spectacular about Moosehead beer. But when we were youths, it was the most exotic, and therefore the best, brand we could get our hands on. So, being traditionalists, we while away the hour in Pittsburgh with some Moose and wings at TGIFs. We watch the muscular Venus Williams trounce some skinny white girl on the telly. "She's got big boobies," Spaulding observes. Few things escape his keen powers of observation. I have a nasty flashback when I notice a bottle of IROC beer
in the display rack. I had expected that, due to its debilitating side effects, the US Bureau of Health would have sealed their brewery in the Yucca mountains by now. Guess not. During a post-wing cocktail (more
Sapphire), some guy next to us is yelling into a cell phone. Spaulding asks him to hold it down, which he politely does. A minute later, cell phone guy correctly points out that Spaulding is louder than he was being.

"What's your excuse?" asks cell phone.

"Pbbbbbbt...I'm fucking drunk," replies Spaulding, as if it were the dumbest question ever asked. Which it may have been.

We board the 757 for Vegas. Spaulding is boisterous with the stew. He tells her she looks like Venus Williams. She does not. The flight is full, but the person next to me is a no-show. Frigging unlucky
coincidence, because guess who takes the seat? Before we even leave the gate he's yelling "cocktails!" Remember that news item, about the guy who *took a dump* on a beverage cart? I start to wonder. You won't believe this, but as we wait to depart, the stew comes down the aisle asking for a "Phil McCrackin?" I shit you not. Phil never shows. Maybe he was supposed to be my neighbor. I accuse Spaulding of having something to do with the 'Phil McCrackin' episode, but he maintains his innocence. Hmmmm. Shortly, we depart the slag-strewn acreage that is Pittsburgh.

As we rise up above the white, cottony cloud layer, I'm struck by the sheer beauty of it all. I figure I can see 50 miles out, and it's an unbroken sea of white. It looks like an arctic landscape, with towering
summits of pure white rising up like mountains out of the vastness. Again, I'm not overly religious, but it's hard to take in the view and not see the hand of a divine watchmaker. Spaulding belches, burning my eyes,
and again asks about cocktails, thus spoiling the moment.

We're an hour out before we can purchase dinner and cocktails. I get two Tanquerays. Spaulding orders four. I figured they won't give him that many, but they do. He owes $20 for the booze, but gives the cute stew $40 as a tip. Again, I don't know that they're supposed to take tips, but she does. Not all that long later, the stew is rewinding the cart. Spaulding orders two more GnTs "for later." This time, I'm SURE they won't give it to him. They do. Spaulding launches into his sermon about the power of toking. I've heard the same damn story about the guys who built his fence 50 times (he alleges that a $70 tip saved him $800). I tune him out, and let his prattle flow around my head. A bit later, the stew (to whom he
has tipped 30 or 40 bucks) comps him some headsets for the movie. He gives me a Farrah Fawcett sized grin, to drive his point home. Wonderful.

Mentally, I note how much more sedate the plane becomes about 20 minutes after beverage service. Except for Spaulding. Then, thankfully, the GnT confines me to a dark and dreamless nap about 90 minutes out.

I awake sometime later to tremendous snoring on my right. As we wing westward at 500 miles per hour, we reduce our usual motion relative to sidereal time. The 'unusually' long sunset is spectacular. When true
darkness is upon us, I'm stunned by the blackness of the view – only tiny patches of light every here and there. On the East coast, you’re never above an unpopulated, unshoppingmalled area. We must be over the Rockies.

Finally we see it. Las Vegas, as Holden wrote, does resemble a convention of ocean liners in the middle of a vast, endless sea of night. Full of poker aspirations, I wonder if I'll make a big score, or if I'm just
another jewel in Cooke's 'diamond tiara in the sky.'

To be continued.....

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Link of the Day
The Passion of Kirk Cameron
Former Growing Pains scamp Kirk Cameron has grown up to become a teleporting Christian soldier. "Does the fact you have sinned against God scare you?" says Kirk. "It should."