Merry Christmas!

It's been a little while since my last update and that's due to a lack of interesting stories for me to tell. Never fear, I am always looking for a new story to tell.

For now, I just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Everyone is in my thoughts and I hope all is well!

Calamity of Errors

It’s been a busy week.

I had a friend visiting from out of town and we spent a few days down at the Elbow playing $15/30. I know I talked about this in my last entry but it’s amazing how bad these guys play. Really dumb founding. My friend didn’t have very good luck though, which sucks since he’s been running badly for almost a year.

So, we’re playing late Wednesday night and I’m getting pretty sleepy. I’m in the number two seat and my friend is in the number four seat. Since I’m tired I’m only paying half attention to the game so I muck and see my friend 3-bet this lady who’s between us and playing like a maniac (although she plays decent post flop in a weird way). My friend is the cut off (button – 1) and after the button calls 3 cold (big donkey), the small blind calls 3 cold (drunken donkey) as well. Because he’s drunk the small blind has a few problems getting his chips out. He’s also sitting in the number six seat, which is directly opposite the dealer. The dealer kind of helps him get his chips straightened out then finishes directing action around the table. This is getting to be a big pot.

The action finishes and the dealer collects the chips and brings them into the middle of the table. Then he looks through his 1-inch thick spectacles with a dumbfounded look and says to the small blind, “You don’t have any cards.”

Surprised, the small blind looks down and sure enough his cards have vanished. “Umm…. What the fuck?”

“The dealer scooped them up when he pulled your chips in,” I say, knowing full well that I just opened up a can of worms.

“No, I did not!” the stupid dealer says incredulously.

“Yes, you did,” I reply matter of factly. This silly banter goes on for a little while with my poor friend trying to play his hand saying, “It doesn’t matter, the hand is dead, let’s get going!”

Of course, my friend is right. The SB’s cards have touched the muck (the discards) and is dead. This is a universal rule in any and all card rooms. In this case, not only has the hand touched the muck, but it is buried in their and is irretrievable. In all cases like these the pit boss is called over to make a ruling, and there is only one ruling that he can make, the hand is dead. Instead, he asks the players in the hand if the SB can have his money back out of the pot. Huh? WTF? Sigh…here we go. Those were probably my exact thoughts when this happened.

So, two players agree and the pit boss asks my friend to which he responds, “Just make your ruling, whatever you decide.”

“Ok, then, the money stays in the pot. This guy doesn’t want to give it back.”

“What? Buddy, don’t make me out to be the bad guy. Take responsibility and do your job – make the ruling.”

Taken aback a little the sheepish young pit boss tries futilely to console my friend who wants none of it. The hand plays out, and I forget the result of it but the pit boss continues to try and make amends with my friend but he isn’t really the forgiving type when he’s been wronged and it doesn’t work out. The pit boss kind of skulks away, a little ashamed of himself.

Trouble has a way of finding my friend and this night was going to be no different. After the above incident happens my friend is involved in another pot and is simply calling a bet, but after having a bad day he is frustrated and in this specific hand he decides to call by dropping one chip at a time on the table. Click, click, click, click, click the chips hit the table and when it’s done the dealer looks over and says, “Don’t do that.”

“I can’t call like that?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Sigh…”

A few hours later, my friend has quit the game and I’m finishing up my hands when they bring the late night food out. I rack up and cash out and get in line to get my food. It’s put on the counter in this little horseshoe shaped kitchen. My friend gets a plate and the first food in the line is the cookies. The line is pretty slow moving so when my friend gets a cookie he begins to eat it, because it’s like 4am and he’s hungry and the line is slow. Tap, tap, tap. My friend turns around and the security guard says to him, “You can’t eat that here.”

“Pardon me?”

“You can’t eat that here.”

Chomp, chomp, chomp.

We have a little laugh, eat our food and then I get him another cookie as we leave for the evening. BTW, +$350 for the evening. So far, playing live, I’ve booked 14.5 hours and have won $1313 including the $100 I donked off in the prop bet. Not bad for 3 days work.

Easy come, easy go.

I've got a friend visiting at the moment who's also a poker player and he came down from Edmonton to play some live poker. Calgary has awesome live poker, it really does. I always knew I would need to mix in live play with my online play to maintain sanity, but I guess I had forgot just how good the live games really are. There is nothing comparable online except possibly at the lowest levels. I think it would be fair to equate the $15/30 live casino game to $1/2 online.

Needless to say I feel good about my chances to beat the live games.

So Monday night I decided to go downtown and play by myself so I phone and get my name on the list, "How many names on the list at the moment?" "We have seats open." "Be there in 30." I get down there at about 10pm and they have a few seats open in two different $15/30 games and it's a must move situation. A must move situation is where they have one "main" game and they try to keep it filled, or mostly filled, so they force players to move from the secondary games (if there is more than two) to fill it. I started off in the feeder game playing 7 handed.

The game was really juicy until about 11:30 when about 3 decent players sat down. Instantly they all put their names on the transfer list to the main game and within 30 minutes they were all gone and we were playing six handed. YAY! You see, live players don't play shorthanded much. Most of them despise it and will do anything they can to avoid it. I, on the other hand, love short handed. It's my bread and butter. Therefore, anytime a live game gets short I have a HUGE advantage since most people don't know how to play.

We eventually drop to four handed and I didn't necessarily run over the table as my hands were very simple (really good, or really bad) but I did very well. Final tally +$958 for 3 hours play. Highlights were when I made a thin value bet with QQ on a K9xxK board and at showdown my opponent, who called my bet, says "I thought you'd be stronger than that" and mucks his hand. Another hand was where I called a bet on the river with King high after checking behind on the turn and my opponent sheepishly announces, "Queen high". "King high," I say and roll my hand over. The blank dumb look on his face was priceless.

Tuesday night, last night I suppose, I played again for 6 hours and finished +$5. Yup, $5. Funniest part of the night happened in a prop bet. The game had been playing fairly tight for a live game and people were commenting on the lack of action. A nice chinese guy two the left of me, whom I had played a pot with about an hour earlier says "No one here wants to gamble" as he put his name on the transfer list. "I'll gamble with you," I replied. What I meant was that as soon as I got any semblance of a reasonable hand I'd like to get involved in some pots with him. I was a bit surprised by his response.

"Ok, $100 on red or black flop - you pick."

"Does it have to be two or three?"

"Two."

"I'll take red," and I put my $100 out there.

The table is pretty interested in this little bet and we get our hands and we both fold and he says, "I had two blacks - I like your chances".

"I had one of each."

"Yah, I like your chances," he says.

The flop comes out. Black, Black, Black. FUCK!

I have never made a bet like that before and my friend was extremely surprised by it, as I myself was afterwards. I essentially flipped a coin for $100.

So, I guess I really won $105 playing poker and lost $100 on a flip, but oh well.

First Time for Everything

I guess I should have checked?

Hand P4-55233959-1091, Started at 12/4/2007 3:50 PM (MST)
Table 'Baku': $15-$15 Fix Limit HE (Real)
Seat 0: KOalltables ($1,289 in chips) (on the button)
Seat 2: sukkmugg ($680.45 in chips)
Seat 3: honaymouse ($189.70 in chips)
Seat 4: BuckdaCanuck ($1,296 in chips)
Seat 8: Riverblaster ($3,783 in chips)
*** Blind Bet Round *** :
sukkmugg : Post Blind ($7.50)
honaymouse : Post Blind ($15)
Dealt to BuckdaCanuck: Jh
Dealt to BuckdaCanuck: Qh
*** Pre-Flop *** :
BuckdaCanuck : Bet ($30)
Riverblaster : Fold
KOalltables : Fold
sukkmugg : Call ($22.50)
honaymouse : Fold
*** Flop *** : Ah Kh 10h
sukkmugg : Check
BuckdaCanuck : Bet ($15)
sukkmugg : Fold
*** SUMMARY ***
Pot: $87 | Rake: $3
Board: [ Ah Kh 10h ]
KOalltables lost $0
sukkmugg lost $30
honaymouse lost $15
BuckdaCanuck bet $45, collected $87, net $42
Riverblaster lost $0

Worst Day Ever

Today has a dubious honor. I lost more today than I've ever lost before.

-$4050.

Professional Poker is fun.

Heritage Funds

In 1976 Alberta created the Heritage Fund so that future generations of Albertans will get a share of our non-renewable resources. This makes a lot of sense since the people of Alberta own these resources, not the companies that are exploiting them. So how much is in our fund? 15.4 Billion, which I know sounds like a lot, but let's compare that to some other funds around the world.

• Alberta - established in 1976 has $15.4 Billion
• Alaska - established in 1976 has $37 Billion (and I thought we were the socialists)
• Kazakhstan - not sure when established but has $24 Billion
• Norway - established 1996 has $306 Billion

I'm not going to go into the reasons for this but essentially our government is in love with the oil companies. What I would like to discuss is why Norway's fund is so large since it's 20 years younger than our fund that is pretty surprising (think about the compound interest on our fund that 20 years should have given us).

1. Norway has much large royalty fees than Alberta.
2. Norway ensures that a state owned company owns at least 50% of North Sea oil production.

Once upon a time Albertan's had our own state owned oil company, Alberta Energy Corporation, better known as AEC. Of course, Klein sold that to Encana as part of his privatization campaign.

"Furthermore, Norway invests all of its oil and gas revenues in foreign companies and assets so as not to create an inflationary spiral in Norway that would quickly eat up it's oil revenues and drag down the section of it's economy that is non-resource based." - William Marsden, Stupid to the Last Drop.

All of the above numbers are also from Stupid to the Last Drop by William Marsden.