The Madness Continues

Yes, March Madness continues... boy I love this time of year.. Two years ago at this time, I was in Las Vegas for my first time... what a time to be in Vegas.

Now, this next part has been brewing in me since Selection Sunday and I can't stand it anymore. Are there possibly any bigger morons than Billy Packer and Jim Nance. I consider myself to be a pretty calm and layed back guy; but listening to those two morons... wait.. I think I am being too kind.... but listening to those two IDIOTS, I wanted to reach inside the TV and strangle both of them.. Billy Packer then was on a local St Louis sports talk radio station the next morning and continued his typical Big Conference/ACC sermons and how these low life mid majors don't belong in there. Talk about a guy just not having a clue. The thing that finally set more over the edge was there obvious and disrespectal way in which they handled the interview with the commissioner of the selection committee... Unforgivable... It is one thing to have your own agenda; but to blatantly interupt and cut-off the commissioner.. it is ... oh never mind... I could go on and on but I feel my blood pressure rising again....

Oh, and one more member of the moron/idiot club is Gary Williams of Maryland saying that the phone rings both ways and he didn't hear of any mid-major teams calling him to schedulde... WRONG.. anyway, Barry Hinson of Missouri State called him the next morning... of course he didn't call back to a few days later... By the way, he lost in the first round of the NIT to a non-worthy mid major... Way to go Jaspers... We'll see if he actually follows through with his rant and see if any Missouri Valley teams are on his schedule.

Now, on to the games...

Is anybody else getting the same amount of pleasure that I am watching this other non worthy teams kicking the big schools in the junk...

The Missouri Valley has two teams in the Sweet 16... of course Bradley and Wichita didn't even belong out there in the first plays (so THEY say); but I guess that is why the play the games... Others:

George Mason... yep another non-worthy team in the Sweet 16
Northwestern St.. beat a small school from the Big Ten... Sorry Mr Alford.
Bucknell... yep.. beat a Southeast Conference team
San Diego St gifted a win to Indiana
Wichita beat a Big East and Sourheast conference team.
Wisconsin - Milwaukee... Sorry Big 12
Bradley... Big 12 and Big East

Yes, some of the mid-majors didn't win.. i.e. Northern Iowa and Southern Illinois; but way to go Mids.... you are making this tournament special and hopefully wising up these so called experts/morons/idiots that need to buy a clue.

My beloved Bears played the Cardinal and grabbed a quick 21 pt lead in the 1st half only to relinquish it in the 2nd half.. they did go onto victory and will play Mr Pender's Houston club. The other MO Valley (Creighton) team also won.

OK.. this is a poker blog... let's talk a little poker to a legitimize this post...

Do you ever read a blog posting and say to yourself... boy I wish I had written that.. That is exactly what Poker Shark did in his talk about aggression in limit poker. I agree whole heartedly with his talks on aggression.... more notably known as selective aggression.. He plays more full ring as compared to my shorthanded games; but I feel the same principle applies.

Here is one example from my archives from Saturday... I am in the BB with J3s (clubs) in a 5 handed 6max 3/6 game. The Cut-off open raises. He is a good player.. at least he has a similar style to me. Everybody else folds and I call. The flop comes 6cTh4c... I actually bet out here. I try to mix up leading out and check raising... anyway, he raises and I 3bet... he just calls.

So what does that tell us? He raises preflop about 15% of the time so I can actually put him on a pretty wide range. Depending on the person, you can assume big cards until it becomes obvious that it is more than that.. OK, he raised... still could be just big cards. More times than not, if you are raising preflop, you are raising on the flop...especially heads up... He only calls when I 3 bet... It still screams big cards... or a slight chance that he is way ahead... certainly ahead of me as I just have Jack high...

OK.. Turn brings 7d.. I bet out and he folds. Would I have won this hand if I didn't show strength? No way.. This hand happened to not be very big; but I did get my big blind back plus 5 small bets from the cut off raiser.

So, yes, aggression is a very big key to success in winning limit poker. Another thought that leads to victory... especially in short handed play... is how you play the blinds. I am putting my thoughts together and hopefully going to post something this week on this subject. Heck, I'm off all week in between jobs, I should be able to do something useful.... Other than the honey do stuff that she so conveniently posted on the refridgerator. Surely, that can't have as high of a priority over posted some juicy poker content.

I have updated my stats for the month of March.. I am not playing any on Sunday night so they should be up to date... As far as the week went... it went much better than last week. I got in about 1840 hands of poker... ok exactly 1840 hands of poker mostly back a 3/6... although, I have been having more success at 5/10 and 10/20 than 3/6... Take Saturday.. 368 hands at 3/6 for a $259 loss... 82 hands at 5/10 for $167 gain... 25 hands at 10/20 for $196 gain.. These days, I just seem to getting brutal beats at 3/6... Case in point with JJ with both of them hitting their sets.. losing to 93s for a rivered flush and one other losing to a 4 card flush (I folded on turn after flopping the set and lots of betting on the turn when the 4th club came).

Anyway for the week, I was up $526 in ring play along with $120 of Pokerstars bonus. I did lose some money in a blogger get together, I believe... Anyway, I won't complain about a $634 week. I also received from Rakeback from Battlefield which I will add at the end of the month. See the banner on the right for a link to ThisIsTheNuts. They have re-designed their homepage and have a lot of things going on. We'll see how this week goes as I will be off most of the week and most likely will be playing a whole bunch of poker.

Now as you can probably see, my blogroll on my blog is not very big. This doesn't mean that I don't read a ton of blogs.. I do. Mostly, I just read them via bloglines; but I am not against posting a link to a blog on my site here if requested to. My standards, again, are pretty light... post about poker and post about it often. I received an email from Russell over at Poker As a Second Income requesting that I link him up. After a quick visit, I recognized his blog as I have stopped by before. It looks like he writes about poker and does it often, so I have linked him up.. Stop by and take a look... I am.

That should do it for today...

Have a good week!!!