Tao of Poker

Speed Pauly and Mena's Hammer

I took 73rd out of 1300+ in a NL Speed Tournament on Party Poker and made the prize money. I was playing with my brother and The Poker Geek with Maudie sweating us on the rail. The event started at 2:45am EST and I was done by almost 4am. Quick? Yes. Overall... these tourneys suck and I apologized halfway through for getting Derek and Geek involved in that insanity.

Basically it's a regular multi, except they have 3 minute blinds, which accelerates the action. It's like playing poker with a bunch of kids diagnosed with ADD and a gaggle of crystal meth snorting tweakers. Yikes! It's a push fest with any two cards. I really enjoyed the first half of the tourney. If anything, it was exciting seeing two or three people move all in on every hand and I'd sit and wait for a good hand. I saw the players drop from 1300 to 100 to 750 in the first thirty minutes.

I started out not so good. I chased an open ended and flush draw and it didn't hit. I was crippled with a mere T250. On the next hand I doubled up with 99. A few orbits later I found AA and tripled up against JJ and KQo. I had a huge stack and I did not play one hand after that! Derek was KO'd and finished 654th about halfway through the pack.

Once the blinds got up high around Level 14, all the players with short stacks beginning stalling. Big yawn. It's not as fun as Dean Smith's Four Corners Offense from the late 1970s. It was down right annoying especially since I had the big stack at my table. I knew that when the blinds eventually got around to me... we'd all have to go in. At that point the strategy is stall, stall, stall... and move all in and hope to get lucky. That's not my version of fun poker. I'd rather poke my eyes out with swizzle sticks and shave my pubic hair with a brand new Williams and Sonoma cheese grater than stall my way into the money.

I knew that with all the stalling, I was going to make the money, however the Poker Geek was on the bubble. In a tournament that paid out the first 140 players... he managed to come in 140th place. Pretty cool. He was pumped to win 56 cents!

I grinded my way to 73rd place. I was all in in the BB with K9o in a four way pot. I flopped a King, and outflopped two players holding QQ and J4o. If some idiot didn't have KK, I would have won a 20k pot! I doubled up my buy in (first place got $1400) and swore off these speed tournaments all together. My buddy Brad likes playing them on weeknights when he gets home from work. But I say, it's a waste of time.

I always said that people do weird things between the hours of 2am and 5am, and not just on Party Poker.

Mena's Hammer

Did anyone catch the WPT's Hollyweird's Homegame last night? Mena Suvari (American Beauty, American Pie) won a hand with the Hammer. She flopped: 2-J-J and pushed out a big bet and won the pot on the flop. If she only raised with it! She outlasted Captain Kirk and the dude from the Love Connection and won it all.

In closing, I have won more money gambling on the NFL playoffs and on the Golden Globes than playing poker so far in 2005. Maybe I should stick to prop bets this year. It's sad state of affairs when you are relying on the Oscars to bail you out of a huge hole.