The bowling update. I blew the first game by opening in the tenth when i could have hit the first two to lock jim out. Down by 24 pins. Second game – hit the first six in a row only to open the next three for a 211. Down by 36. Smoke break time.

Day 2 – first taco bueno meal. Their “medium” drink is 32 ounces. The food is delicious but i think this might have something to do with the weight problem in OK.

Why was the drafthouse voted the number one theater in America?

Because they show movies like Rad. That’s right. I’m going to see Rad in the theater. Watch the trailer (click on the “Preview Rad” link).

Oh yeah, and please do continue to pray for a dvd release of Rad. Or just buy an illegal version from ebay.

You’ve seen the commercials for Axe body spray, but who would believe that it really works? The other day I was waiting in line at the local HEB when I noticed that the latino in front of me (you know, one of my peeps) only had two items: Axe body spray and diapers. I struck up a conversation with him that went something like this:

Me: “Yo yo, why you buying that shit if you’ve already gots a baby?” (because that’s how I talk)
Homie: “Naw bro, I ain’t go no kids. I just buy the diapers because I bang so many chicks when I’m wearing this Axe body spray that I can’t keep up with them. So after I’m done bangin’ her I leave her one of these diapers with a note that says, ‘You aight baby, but you goin’ ta need these in about nine months.”

With a testimonial like that, I had to buy some. I didn’t want to put it on in the store though because Kat and I had plans for the night and I didn’t want any bitches slowing me down. I had it all planned out. I sprayed the Axe all over the entryway and then sprayed a trail leading back to the bedroom. According to the commercial, Kat would be unable to resist. I was slightly afraid of using too much and ending up like that prostitute at the end of Love Potion Number 9, but I didn’t want to use too little either. I just used my best judgment and my expert wafting skills from chemistry lab.

As I waited in the bedroom, I heard Kat open the front door. “Jesus Christ! Did a cow take a shit in here?!?” I figured I probably just used too much; it’ll still be alright. By the time she got to the bedroom door she had this look on her face:

“What the fuck happened in here?” It was hopeless, the Axe had no effect. I explained the whole situation and Kat made fun of me for falling for advertising campaigns. Then we started the difficult chore of getting rid of the smell. We tried everything: Air fresheners, febreeze, scented candles, I even tried spraying tomato juice all over the walls after recalling that episode of the Brady Bunch where the whole family gets sprayed by a skunk (remember that one?). All attempts failed. Eventually we had to burn the house down.

After thinking about it some more, maybe Axe just doesn’t work on whiteys. I’ll have to try it next time we go to the tejano bar. I’m sure it’ll work just like in the commercial.

There was a small release celebration at my company today. I chose to drink this:

Big Red

Yeah, I drink this shit on purpose because I like the flavor of gum, but can’t stand the smacking that goes along with it.

So what ever happened to keeping up with my life events anyway? I mentioned forever ago that I was going to Vegas for the WPBT, but no trip report? I’d like to say I purposely wanted to be the last one to write about it. That way I could read everyone else’s WPBT posts, like April’s, CJ’s, Heather’s, and a bunch of people who’s blogs I lurk around but have never introduced myself to, since these people likely took some form of notes or I could use their collective memories to aide my terrible memory. But the fact is that I don’t have a terrible memory, I remember everything clearly.

The story really isn’t all that interesting. I won the WPBT in a little under three hours, destroying the field with my expert play while watching the entire “Saved by the Bell: The College Years” box set (with commentary) on my mini-DVD player (oh Screech, you’re so zany). I took my winnings straight to the Bellagio where I sat down at the highest limit table I could find and blew through the competition, searching for a higher limit after the players at my table got tired of donating their money to me. By Sunday morning, I had too much money to take home on the plane with me, so I decided to give all the poker bloggers $5000 apiece to make up some story about how someone else won the WPBT. The really expensive part was getting that ballroom back together for all the pictures of Studio Glyphic winning. But money well spent, I wouldn’t want anyone to know that I won, would I?

In real life, I don’t own a mini-DVD player. And I couldn’t ever convince myself to buy the “Saved by the Bell: The College Years”. And I (obviously) didn’t win the WPBT either. Instead, the WPBT tournament experience was awesome, but my play was terrible. Here’s how it went for me.

I showed up to the even hungover as hell, but no matter how nasty I felt, as soon as I saw the field of poker bloggers in the ballroom, my excitement took over. There were a few people that I recognized, but for the most part, I would just stand around and overheard people’s names and start to place names with faces. The whole multiple names thing makes life more difficult (login name vs. blog name, vs. real name), maybe we should have just stuck with logins. And the fact that I don’t have a PokerStars account meant that I wasn’t going to know half the people there anyway. I swear I’m getting one, for real this time (as soon as I finish out my bonus on Titan). But that’s all good. It was really cool to be around a bunch of people that are really into poker, but I spent the majority of the morning just looking through all the free stuff, picking up some PokerStars gear, FullTilt t-shirts, free dvds, etc. I’m a sucker for the free stuff. The speakers were cool too, but by the time they really started talking, the fact that I hadn’t eaten in over 16 hours was really starting to take its toll on my body. I had to get food.

Yeah, it was as tasty and disgusting as it looks

After eating some greasy bacon cheeseburgers the tournament got underway. Of course, with 100 players and four people that I knew with my luck I was undoubtedly going to be seated with someone I knew. I did get a slightly lucky turn though because I could have had Kat (that would have been the worst) or Heather (I’m a little leery of her since she destroyed me at the Poker Princess Invitational), but instead I had April. She’s kicked my ass on a number of occasions, but not as many times as Kat has and not as badly as Heather did. Either way, I was determined to stay away from her and did so successfully.

In the first couple round of the tournament I was running amazingly well. Every time I looked down at my hole cards they were awesome. And if they weren’t awesome and I was in the big blind, I’d hit two pair on the unraised flop. Unfortunately, I didn’t adjust from the maniacs on Titan and pushed everyone out of the big hands I had by betting too much. Somehow I was expecting people to come over the top of my top set, but unfortunately that never happened. By the third round, I was starting to run terrible. My decent pocket pairs ran into boards that were too ugly to keep playing. I mean, with three players and a board of A-K-Q my pocket Jacks really aren’t that good.

After a stupid call on an all-in from BadBlood (which I was sure to lose), I was severely short-stacked and threw away my last 200 chips or so with A7s, which didn’t pay off when there were three callers (200 was maybe 2xBB at that point). I busted out of the tournament somewhere in the 80s. Terrible.

But even though I played terrible, the tournament was awesome and I can’t wait for the next one. This time, I’m going to spend my time playing poker instead of craps (for real!), but that’s a story for another time.

This holiday season wasn’t the first time that I didn’t see my family for the holidays, but it was the first time that I didn’t see them and I didn’t really have a good reason for it. In the past couple years it’s been traveling to other places. It really is nice to take advantage of the free days off and spend some extra time on vacation, but this year I didn’t really even feel like doing that. This year, we stayed around town and enjoyed just hanging out and avoiding the Christmas season. Instead of being constantly pissed off by crowds in airports and slow-moving traffic on highways we spent time with all of our friends that grew up locally or were in the same situation as us. It was nice.

Oh yeah, and we also painted the door, as Kat previously mentioned. It looks like this:

The Metroplaza, now featuring a yellow door

So next time you come over, don’t worry, you’re at the right house.

I’ve always had tilt odds in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t until I started playing NL that I learned how much I can benefit from tilt odds. I’ve never been much of a chatter at tables and I used to never respond when people told me how bad a player I was. But on Titan it seems that there are some great tilt odds just from chatting with people. In my favorite recent incident, I called a jackass that was continually overbetting with A-junk with my A4o, hit an inside straight draw on the flop, called his marginal flop bet (taking into account the tilt odds of winning the hand) turned an open ended straight and nut flush draw and rivered the flush to bust him out. He immediately re-bought in for table max and started in about how terrible my play was and how he was going to bust me out if I keep playing terrible like that. His first hand in he once again overbets the pot. I think about it for a second and he starts in on the chat with “CALL! CALL! RAISE! CALL!”. I respond with “Wait until I get a good hand first.” He goes nuts. He starts dumping chips to everyone at the table, finally when he has $50 left, I get AA in first position when he’s on the button. I call and say “Hey, I’ve got a good drawing hand go ahead and go all-in. He raises my $2 call to $30. I put him all in. His K2o doesn’t improve. I’m going to miss that guy.

I have no attention span, I can admit it. For some reason when I play poker I need to be playing four different poker games (three if I’m attempting to chat with people or watch tv at the same time). I can’t help myself. I make stupid plays when I just have one table going (stupider than some of the mistakes I make when playing too many games at the same time). So I stick to the 6-max NL games. They’ve treated me well so far and I’m liking it, but I know I need to get myself used to 10-person NL games because that’s what I’m going to be playing live.

But these 6 person s’n'g tournaments? That’s the ultimate r0x0r. It’s the k-r0x0r even. Now if I can win a jackpot, I’ll be crazy excited.