Boom Update

As you may have noticed... I have not been posting lately. I am still in recover mode from the lightning strike. While it did kill our phone equipment, cable mode, router, treadmill and furnace. It only slightly injured my pc. So the good of it is that I have been able to recover some data such as pictures, excel files, quicken files and most importantly... Poker Tracker stats. So now I will be in repair mode as the PC still hangs up all the time and is very, very slow and I still can't get out to the internet.... so suffice it to say that I have not played any online poker in a week. To tell you the truth, it has been a nice break. I will probably have to take to a local PC shop and have them check it out as I can't get it going.

I did however get in a home game on Friday night. In our monthly home game, the usual suspects were present... myself... IceMan, Kip, Puff Daddy, Ace, the Force, the professor and Bud. What we did last year and what we are starting to do this year is play this small tournaments with the winner getting money to go Harrahs or Ameristar to play in a WSOP or WPT qualifier... however, this time around, the winner had a choice... he could take the full amount ($200) and go to the qualifer or take 75% and keep the cash and the rest would go to 2nd place. We wrote down our decisions via a "secret" ballot so nobody knew ahead of time what the others were choosing.

Shuffle up and Deal...

Very early in the tournament we had some fireworks when the Professor and Bud went at it. The professor had flopped a straight with 65 and Bud had flopped 2 pair. All the chips got in after the turn as Bud called the all in knowing that he was probably behind... Luckily he rivered his boat and more or less sent the professor packing. As I tell Bud all the time... very lucky poker player.

I, of course, played typical tight aggressive style.. what else would you expect... Early in the tourney I got the dreaded KQ under the gun... why is this "dreaded"? Read here. I just limp along with a few others.. flop is Q high and I check and Puff Daddy throws in about a 1/2 pot bet getting a call by me and one other.. Turn is a rag and I check again hoping to catch Puff on a typical Wonka check and raise... no luck.. it checks around.. River is another rag. I bet out and everybody folds. I couldn't beleive it. I won with KQ... I'm starting to feel good about my chances.

I didn't play too many hands; but the hands that I did play hard... The hand that moved me to the lead was with QQ. There was an early bet and I went all in which at that time about 4x the blinds and early bet... Kip was shortstacked and called with 55 and the original better also called who I believe was "the Force" with something like T5s...huh? The Force is typically a very conservative player so this call was uncharacteristic of him. Well, much to my chagrin a 5 came on the flop giving Kip a set... I just shook my head (as I am used to this by now) and was hoping for the side pot... Turn comes..... Q.... wow.... I hit my 2 outer and took down the 3 way pot.

A little later, there was a some betting going on preflop. I was in the BB with 65s and by the time it got to me it was really just a small part of my stack and I definitely had odds to call. Low and behold, I flopped the straight... I did my check and raise and knocked out somebody else (Bud, I believe) and put a huge dent in the chip leaders (The Iceman) stack and went on to beat the IceMan heads up. It was a sweet victory as the IceMan had knocked me out of a tourney earlier in the month when his Pocket 9s bested my pocket 7s on a 6 high flop.

I ended up opting for the 75% cash to boost my live poker bankroll as I'm sure that I can win another tourney in the upcoming months to put me into a WSOP qualifer at the local Harrah's. OK, I may be oozing with confidence after my 1st win there in a long time. It was nice to hear Puff Daddy crying about not getting cards as he has been running over our monthly game tables. Maybe next time PD.... NOT!!!!

We played some more poker later on as we usually do and Kip walked away the big winner doubling or tripling his original buyin for the night (including tourney).

Anyway, thanks for sticking around.. this post was more or less for the local boys.

I hope to get back to the virtual tables by this weekend.