blorgata, cuse on the loose

so i hopped in the benzo and cruised down to AC for the start of the borgata winter open. and by benzo, i mean greyhound bus. the bus was thug and pungent body odor-free for a nice change of pace, and i slept most of the ride down. i've been battling a cold for the last 4 or 5 days and i retired to my room shortly after checking in. i was in bed by 130 am, but i lay restless until about 5 or 6 from the nervous energy i usually feel at the start of a tournament series. i was playing the best live tournament poker of my life before the holidays and was anxious to get back into action.

event #1 started today. it was a $350+50 buyin deepstack event with 2 Day 1's to choose from. i played day 1A today, but because I had such trouble falling asleep last night i slept in an extra hour or so and didn't make it to the tourney room until the start of the third level. no worries though-- they gave you 25k starting stacks and i still had over 24k when i arrived. the first two levels i played (3+4) were pretty uneventful and i hovered around 30k biscuits. the next 6 levels went well and i chipped up to 84k at the dinner break. my key hand came when i flopped a set 0f 7s on a j72 rainbow board in a 4way limped pot at 500-1k blinds. the turn came a 4 completing the rainbow, and the sb led 3k, the bb raised to 7500, and i was sitting on 39k. i didn't see any good reason to raise at this point, so i just flatted. the other limper and sb folded, and the river came another j-igolo. homeboy led 7500 (verbalizing "same bet", which is almost always weakness). i tanked for a mintue and made it 20k, and he shipped on me with the old j8, so i got effectively a full double thanks to the passive line i took in the hand.

my biscuits got as high as 135k... but then dwindled in the last few levels of the night. i was sitting on 94k stack when the i decided to cut the little fellas loose. i was in the sb at 1500-3k. massive table chip leader limped utg, utg+1 limped, 2 limped from mid position and i completed from the sb with J2hh. bb knuckled, and the flop rolled off 822 with two diamonds. it was checked to the first mid position limper, who led 11k into 21k pot. next guy in, who i have some history with and is generally a pretty poor, predicitable player, minraises to 22k. i certainly didn't love my spot. flat-calling was clearly not an option with a 50k plus pot and a flush draw present. the minraiser could certainly have had a2... but something was telling me 8's full. whatever... i'm not a good enough player to lay this hand down in a $350 tourney with a lot of play before we even reached the bubble. so i shipped the biscotti. the flop better folded and the raiser called and showed me the dreaded 8's full. oh well... got coolered somewhat but was very happy with my play throughout the day.

no tourney tomorrow... i'll just play a satellite for the 3k main event as well as some sngs and/or cash. i'm hungry as a hippo for action and still have a good feeling that i'm gonna pop something big this trip.


anyway...

this past saturday, my pop (thos-dog) and i went to the syracuse-rutgers bball game at the RAC in new brunswick. i went to undergrad at cuse and am a huge cuse bball fan. cuse struggled a bit in the first half and went to halftime down 1, but then put it together in the 2nd half and slapped rutgers around like a red-headed stepchild. jonny flynn, cuse's pg, threw down the sickest dunk i've ever seen live over one of rutgers swingmen. (the play ended up as #1 on sportcenter's top ten plays of the night, on the same day as a ton of big college and nba games, not to mention 2 nfl playoff games.)

my pop is a really cool dude, and i was psyched to hang with him for the day-- i rarely spend time with him away from the rest of the family these days. thos-dog is really into photography and just hooked up this sick zoom lens for his digital rebel. neither of us were particularly adept at catching the boys in action, but we got some decent pics. at the top of this post you can see one particularly good one-- my dawg, eric "thug-life" devendorf launching a silky-smooth jumper. i am going to post more on my facebook page as soon as i get the chance. check em out there if you are interested.