Poker

I've rekindled my romance with poker.

Oh, I know all of you players have gone through it. You play and play and you win or lose but you keep playing day after day month after month. And then it happens. You wake up one day and you're indifferent to it. Yeah it still feels nice to win a pot but you don't get that same rush you felt when the romance was new.

I've felt that way for a while now.

I've been playing mostly tournaments with a few sngs thrown in when enticed by friends to play.

But something was missing.

I've told people before that they needed to try new games, new levels, etc., to get over the boredom. I found myself on a losing streak that was pretty frustrating but I also knew that I needed a break from what I had been doing.

I started playing limit hold em again. The best part was that I liked it. Yeah you get sucked out on. And yeah, it's sometimes hard to bluff - but it can be done.

One thing I've not done much of is playing short handed. I just felt more comfortable playing a full table. I found the 1/2 6 handed Limit Hold Em tables at Poker Host.

I think I'm in L-O-V-E.

Check out these stats from tonight:

After just a few short sessions and a total of 140 hands I'm up about $80.

I'll definitely be playing those for a while.

Funny how little change of scenery can really make a difference, isn't it?

Ante Up! and CardClubs.net

Many moons ago a friend (not Zerb) turned me on to podcasts. Poker podcasts to be more specific. He (again, not Zerb) hooked me up with the free ones from iTunes and life has never been the same.

The whole family went on an extended road trip last April and I burned hours (12) of the Ante Up! podcast to listen to on the way. Even the other half found them amusing. I've been a regular listener ever since.

Ante Up! has a forum at the Card Clubs Network. It's worth checking out. They even have a nice playchip poker table populated by two (horrible) bots when there is no one else to play with. Someone (nope, not Zerb) has a brazillian playchips won (stolen) from those unsuspecting bots.

Merry Christmas!

From the Zooks family to yours!

Do I Dare?

Do I dare brave the world of Christmas Eve shoppers?

I think I do.

I'm finally feeling human enough to go out today. I got some of my best deals ever on Christmas Eve two years ago. I'm thinking about hitting Sam's Club and maybe a few other stores.

Heck, I'm not even sure my car will start. Last time it was out of the garage was last Wednesday when I drove ALL THE WAY TO THE KIDS' SCHOOL (about 1 mile) AND BACK!

The Great Procrastinator

Ok, so yesterday didn't go quite the way I planned.

Let's just say the mind was willing but the body wasn't.

So I'm doing laundry today and just doing my best to not go postal one particularly annoying young man.

I did play some more poker with the youngens. One has a particularly bad habit of going all the way with nothing while the other one loves to bluff.

Here's one hand that illustrates my point:

Seat 1: Gadzooks64 (~60)
Seat 2: Zooks99 (~60)
Seat 3: Zooks97 (~20)
Zooks99 posts the small blind of $1
Gadzooks64 posts the big blind of $2
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to gadzooks64 [4s 6s]
Zooks97 raises to 4
Zooks99 calls 4
gadzooks64 calls 2 99 is the maniac that will raise with anything
*** FLOP *** [Jc 6h 4d] Bingo
Zook97 Bets 2
Gadzooks64 Raises to 4
Zooks99 called 4
Zook97 called 2
*** TURN *** [Jc 6h 4d] [4c]
Zooks97 bets 4
Gadzooks64 raises to 8 I got it and I'm not going to slow play
Zooks99 raises to 12
Zooks97 calls 8
Gadzooks64 raises to 16
Zooks99 calls 4
Zooks97 calls 4
*** RIVER *** [Jc 6h 4d 4c] [Jd]
Zooks97 bets 1 and is all in
gadzooks64 calls 1 I was hoping to split pot with 99, sigh
Zooks99 calls 1
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Zooks97 [Ad 3d] (two pair, Jacks and Fours)
gadzooks64 [4s 6s] (full house, Fours full of Jacks)
Zooks99 [8c 4h] (full house, Fours full of Jacks)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 75
Board:[Jc 6h 4d 4c Jd]
Seat 1: gadzooks64 showed [4s 6s] and won (38)
Seat 2: Zooks99 showed [4 8] and won (37)
Seat 4: Zooks97 (small blind) showed [Ad 3d]

Illness or Vacation

Ever notice how messed up your schedule gets when you get sick or go on vacation?

Either way you're screwed. There's a mountain of stuff that accumulates while you are suffering and/or relaxing.

I'm starting to feel semi-human again. I woke up around 8:00 this morning after having been rudely awakened at 2:00 by a coughing fit that would not end.

I didn't get to bed until late because I was once again conned into playing the Thursday Night Full Tilt Razz Freeroll. Ever notice how the people that talk you into these things donk out early and GO TO BED leaving you to wonder why the hell you played this thing? I donked out around 145th/1800. GG me.

So today my agenda looks like this: laundry, laundry, laundry, more laundry, and, oh yeah laundry. This will surely be broken up by the random beating of a child and/or coughing fit.

Wish me luck.

Poker with No. 2 Son

My youngest talked me into playing some HU with him after we finished watching an episode of PPT.

We usually play limit with the kids just to make it easy. He took an early lead when I couldn't hit a board to save my life. I made a comeback when I rivered a flush and then a straight against him.

I finally decided, after he was gloating a little too much about bluffing me, to start calling down when I hit even just bottom pair. He paid me off on several hands.

After much drama I convinced him to either buck up or I would be done playing.

We played a couple more hands and he was ready to quit. I had him about 2:1 in chips.

We have a tradition of everybody "going all in" on the last hand and whoever wins that pot "wins".

He was dealt K9o and I got J2o.

Flop 99x x 9

The boy put professional footballers and their endzone dances to shame.

Sigh. I better get a "thanks mom" when he makes his first televised final table.

Germs, germs everywhere

I've become resigned to my kids bringing home all sorts of germs from school.

What I hate is when they are laid low for maybe 24 hours while I find myself in a funk for a week or more.

I finally broke down and went to the doctor a couple of days ago when it became apparent that I was going to need drugs to get over this bug that had settled in my sinuses. I picked up my drugs and headed back home to park myself on the couch and pretend to be alive.

The next day was the kids' last day of school. I was responsible for providing the snacks for their room parties. I had to scramble to get the snacks, teacher gifts and staff gifts together and to the school in time. Thankfully my presence in the classroom was necessary.

Then the other half comes home from work yesterday complaining that he must have caught what I have. He woke with a fever. After sleeping in he headed off to Urgent Care where he was told it was a virus that's been running around this area since September. So off to work he goes... to spread the joy around before his staff go off on the holiday break. I sure hope he doesn't infect anyone.

America Gets Screwed

Bad Poker Day

It's days like these that make me hate poker.

AA loses to QTd

KK loses to A7o

KK loses to AJo when he makes a runner runner J high straight during the famous All In Or Fold tournament.

AA goes down to J3 on the AIOF afterparty table - damn you Steeler!

Then this hand happened. All in on flop.

Homage to Hrbek

Which one is he? Your guess is as good as mine.

Personality Test

Dictator- ENTJ

86% Extraversion, 60% Intuition, 63% Thinking, 80% Judging

Have you no soul? It's clear you have no heart and that your blood runs cold, but really, do you have even one redeeming factor?

Sure. You're a natural born leader. So was Hitler. You just don't like people, do you?

You don't play games. You take charge. And there's very little room for mistakes in your world. You're forceful, intimidating and overbearing.

Heard of the word "patience?" Trust me, it's a word and it's something you're sorely lacking. Believe it or not, you're not always right. Learn to have some patience for those who think differently from you, knobflap.

From the way people's knees knock when they see you, you should have realized by now that you're not exactly a "people-person." You're more of a "people-eater." You just ain't tuned into people's feelings and probably couldn't care less whether you were anyway. Maybe you're not from this planet but the rest of us are.

Sure, you're intelligent. So what? You have some semblance of power. Big deal.

At least people LIKE the rest of us.

*****
I'm a bitch!?!??! Who knew?

Take the test here: Brutally Honest Personality Test

$180

That's right, $180

$180 for about 3 hours of "work".

If you can call playing poker "work".

About 6 months ago I started seeing my chiropractor, Dr. Keith. After a while we found out that we both like to play poker. I invited him to my home game and told him I would love to play in his sometime. He came to my game but wasn't able to stay for very long. Last night was my first time at his home.

Of course I was the only woman there but they seemed to be okay with it. We ended up with 16 players. The buyin was $20 with a $20 rebuy before then end of the 4th level - luckily I didn't have to rebuy.

I wasn't sure what to expect so I tried to just play my normal game and get a feel for the other players. The first hand I played was 55 UTG + 2. Flop was horrible for me and I ended up folding.

The next hand of note was between two other players. One had flopped a set the other ended up with a flush draw. The 9s made full on the turn when the flush hit but paired the board and then the case 9 hits on the river for quad 9s!

Not long after that Dr. Keith hit quad As on the other table.

I raised with AT on the button and get called by BB and UTG limper. Flop comes out JJ5. I put in a continuation bet. UTG mucks out of turn while BB thinks a long time then mucks.

The table is very passive. I get AK in the SB with 3 limpers ahead of me. I know a raise isn't going to get me anywhere and I'll be out of position so I just complete and the BB checks. Flop: K8x. I'm trying to decide how to play and figure my best bet is to push. I don't want to fight 4 other people for this pot. I get called by UTG SS with 8x and MP big stack with AJ. The MP player said he thought I was bluffing! My hand holds and I more than double up.

I get AA UTG and raise, get no callers.

I call a SS's all in with AJ and he doubles through me with AQ.

We are down to the final table. The blinds are 500/1000 with around 45K in chips on the table. Several players have only a couple BB in front of them. I have around 9K.

I push with AQ and get called by Dr. Keith on a SS with A4 and take him out.

I pick up JJ UTG and push again. The BB is concerned and asks me if I have Ks. I just shrug. He calls with AQ no help for him; I river a set of Js.

We get down to 4, I'm in the money! I don't recall anything interesting happening but two of the four go out and now I'm HU with a very passive player (he didn't bet trip Qs on a somewhat scary board when he was HU with a SS). He has me barely covered.

I push with AQ and he calls with Ax and I get him down to 3.5BB. He goes all in next hand and I call. I have him dominated but he hits a pair on flop and rivers trips.

Again we get it all in, I'm ahead and he hits a wheel on me.

A few hands later I put him all in with Ks8s and he calls with 4s6s. Neither of us improve and I take it down.

Wooooooot!

One of the other players owns a bar/restaurant in a small town a few miles away. He told me that his place is having a $50 tournament on Super Bowl Sunday and invited me to come play. I had to tell him that my birthday is Super Bowl Sunday and while there's nothing I would love to do more than play a poker tournament that day, my family may have other plans and I would need to ask the other half. They all laughed and said, ASK?! You just won $180!

I hope they let me come back and play again. It was a great time. I really don't get to play as much live poker as I would like. Online is one thing but live is definitely something you need to practice to get good at.

Bad BAD Bowler

Ok, so last night didn't go so well bowling wise. I had missed the previous week because the roads were bad and I was a pussy.

We bowled the 2nd place team last night. Good thing we were 5 games ahead of them and the rest of my team showed up to bowl and not chit chat like someone on the team.

I'd like to blame Motorola and poker for my poor bowling.

I'd like to, but I probably can't.

I have a Motorola V3m Razr phone. Jimmy just got one and Mandy, Trey's girlfriend, has one. So we spent a good part of the night talking about microSD memory cards, unlocking the phone, flashing new software, playing MP3s, taking video, alert settings, skins, etc. Very informative and fun. Not exactly the kind of stuff that makes you concentrate on your (horrible) bowling.

The first game I barely broke 100. Sigh. Steve, however, bowled quite well and managed to draw a straight flush. We play poker with 2 decks as otherwise there's not enough cards in the deck without reshuffling the cards. That's when the question came up about whether or not 5 of a kind beats a straight flush when you use two decks.

Straight flush v. 5 of a kind. What a dilema. So I whipped out the old phone - YES, THE PHONE, and put it in calculator mode. I had seen a lady at the kids bowling tournament this weekend using her Razr to add up scores. My last phone's calculator function SUCKED but this one looked very nice. After some searching I found the power function - a must have for probability problems. I guess it's too much to ask for it to have a factorial function - if only HP made cell phones for geeks.

So after a couple false starts I figured out how I wanted to do it. There was a little struggle with an out of range error on the calculator but I figured it out.

Short answer: straight flush beats 5 of a kind.

As you can tell, bowling was a HIGH priority for me last night... and it showed in my score. Easily my worst night of bowling in a long time. I had a great time goofing off with the guys. And, luckily, they actually managed to bowl well enough for us to win 3 games.

Next week we bowl the 3rd place team. Might be a good time for me to leave the phone at home and actually bowl, ya think?

Awesome [poker] table

OK, this table pwns.

I want one... when I win the lottery or the WSOP ME.



Other Half (Ph.D Mech Eng): Wow, not only is it a work of art it is an engineering marvel.

What to do on cold winter days?

Ok, I don't remember having too many frigid winter days when I was young but that may be a product of selective memory or growing up mostly in the desert southwest.

I'm pretty sure we just sat in front of the tube, did puzzles, played games, or read books.

This is what my children do.

It's called the Great Wall of Zooks. He he he. My kids are the bestest.

Gratuitous stylish photos taken by my Ansel Adams in training, semi-genius, totally cute kids.


Oh yeah, one just abandoned his masterpiece to play on the computer while the other is making himself annoying by hanging over my shoulder and playing editor as I compose my entry. Sigh.

Road Rage

Ok, so lately I've been wishing I had one of these:


Instead of one of these:


Especially when our roads are like this:

Ok, so I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.

GG winter. I stay home now.

Done!!!!!!

That's right, you heard me.

I'm done.

D.O.N.E.

I wrapped all the presents.

I bought the last two today - heaven forbid I forget the classroom gift exchange! (yeah, I forgot all about it, sigh, getting old sucks.)

So I fired up the sweet new DVD player with HDMI upconversion and Divx compatability. Loaded up History of Violence. I have a long and well documented "thing" for Viggo Mortensen. Sigh...

I gathered all the stuff: wrapping paper, scissors, tape, labels. I parked my butt in front of the tv and wrapped. I feel sorry for the other half if I have forgotten anybody or anything CAUSE I'M DONE.

Yep. D - O - N - E.

Unless Viggo calls and tells me to bring my old cheerleading outfit.

Uh, WTF was he thinking?

Full Tilt Poker Game #1354580621: Table Soft Breezes - $0.50/$1 - Limit Hold'em - 21:50:41 ET - 2006/12/04
Seat 1: Coffy5 ($10.15)
Seat 3: bsd72 ($19.90)
Seat 4: CROSSandCROWN ($10), is sitting out
Seat 5: CardDivine ($32.85)
Seat 6: countagain ($9.35)
Seat 8: gadzooks64 ($25)
Seat 9: buck712 ($28.45)
Coffy5 posts the small blind of $0.25
bsd72 posts the big blind of $0.50
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Qh Qs]
CardDivine calls $0.50
countagain calls $0.50
gadzooks64 raises to $1
Coffy5 folds
bsd72 folds
CardDivine calls $0.50
countagain calls $0.50
*** FLOP *** [8d 3c Th]
CardDivine checks
countagain bets $0.50
gadzooks64 raises to $1
CardDivine folds
countagain raises to $1.50
gadzooks64 calls $0.50
*** TURN *** [8d 3c Th] [7c]
countagain bets $1
gadzooks64 calls $1
*** RIVER *** [8d 3c Th 7c] [9s]
countagain bets $1
gadzooks64 calls $1
*** SHOW DOWN ***
countagain shows [6d 8h] (a straight, Ten high)
gadzooks64 mucks
countagain wins the pot ($10.25) with a straight, Ten high
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $10.75 | Rake $0.50
Board: [8d 3c Th 7c 9s]
Seat 1: Coffy5 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 3: bsd72 (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 4: CROSSandCROWN is sitting out
Seat 5: CardDivine folded on the Flop
Seat 6: countagain showed [6d 8h] and won ($10.25) with a straight, Ten high
Seat 8: gadzooks64 (button) mucked [Qh Qs] - a pair of Queens
Seat 9: buck712 is sitting out

Internet Help Desk

Another Stumble find.

URL change

OK, as many of you know I have two screennames that I use: gadzooks64 and pokerslut64. It looks like the prudes have taken over the planet and I'm going to have to give up on using pokerslut64.

I have changed the URL for this blog to www.gadzooks64.blogspot.com to reflect this. Sorry if it causes you any problems.

Update your bloglines or google reader and it will only be a temporary blip on the radar.

Thanks,

Gadzooks64

Snow Day

It looks like the whole midwest is having a snow day today.

Considering that it was near 70° just two days ago this is a bit of a shock.

My poor patio furniture

Ooops, looks like somebody (not me, er sorta) forgot to put grill cover on.

I don't think the neighbor kids are going to be swinging anytime soon.