On Football, Poker and UltimateBet
Posted: 2007-09-14 13:31:18By: Debo34
Well, it's been a week or so since my last blog entry. I took a couple days off from poker, mostly to spend time with my family. My son started 8th grade and had his first soccer game of the year both in the same week, so that kept us busy.
Football season has started! I am a big time NFL, and college football fan. My wife views this as a disease, and for the most part I can't disagree with her. Some would think that 5 fantasy football leagues are too many. I happen to think it's just about right. I was only doing 4 until a group of UB poker players decided to put together a $500 league right before the season started. I am sharing a team with P0KER H0. We are hoping that these guys don't play fantasy football as well as they do poker. Longtime UB players YngmanN4quiki, latestlines2, green plastic, muddywaters, and shipitthisway , are a few players in the league. Looks like fun!
I also run an NFL pickem league every year. Every week we pick every NFL game against the spread. We all enter $1700, which amounts to $100 per week. Half goes to the highest score each week, and half gets held over for the year end best total.
This league is a blast. Hopefully I have a repeat of last year when I chopped 1st and 2nd with fellow Team UB member Shawn Rice. We have 12 people in this league, all of whom are UB players. Week 1 winner was YngmanN4quiki. Congrats Mike.
This is what I love most about Ultimate Bet, the friends I've made playing on the site.
On the poker front -
Nothing too exciting for me has happened for me since my last blog entry. I made back to back final tables in the 2pm 100+9 on Friday and Saturday, only to come up short again finishing 7th, and 6th. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever close out and win another poker tournament.
I played the Aruba 50 seat guarantee on Sunday, but never got anything going. I basically just stayed around my starting stack for 2 hours, then lost a race for all my chips. Very boring and frustrating. I was very happy to see that my friend Cunningham was able to win a seat. Congrats bud, see ya in 2 weeks.
Sometimes a poker tournament goes from great to very bad in the blink of an eye. Last night that was the case for me. In the Aruba 500+30 we were down to 5 players, paying one seat, and 3 cash spots. I believe 4th was paying $1600. I was sitting 3rd in chips and had plenty of chips to stay patient , and win this tournament. Then all of a sudden I get that top 200 starting hand Q4 suited in the big blind. The story can only go downhill from here I know.
With roughly 12k in chips, and the blinds at 400/800 I call a min raise from the button . The flop came out 10, 5, 3, none of my suit. What was this, I flopped the nuts? I lead out for $2400 and he takes a few seconds and calls. Oh no, now what? At this point I'm putting him on a hand in the area of 77, or 88.The turn pairs the 3. Do I fire again? Nope I decide to get really cute with this hand. I check hoping he will bet small enough so he can fold to my over the top all in. Perfect! He fires out $2200 , and I'm over the top all in for around 9k. When he doesn't beat me to the pot, I know I'm winning this hand. I've put him to the test on the bubble, and he's going to fail.
He goes into the tank , and is just about to time out as I'm screaming fold to my monitor. He couldn't have had more than 2 seconds left when he pulled the trigger and called my bluff with 10J. He made a great call. I tried to use the fear of the bubble against him and it didn't work. This isn't something I do often, and more times than not when I do, it usually works. Once I decided to get myself that deep in the hand on a bluff, I liked my check raise on the turn. In hindsight, I wished I had just folded preflop, or check folded the flop. I mean after all, why lose all my chips on the bubble with Q hi? Live and learn I guess.
This weekend I'm headed to Eugene Oregon to watch a U of O football game vs. Fresno St. with my good friend Kurt. He has unreal season tickets. We sit 1st row, 50 yard line on the visitors side. He took me 2 weeks ago to watch the Ducks beat Houston. It was amazing the interaction we had with the Houston players. It was a nonstop trash talk fest, what a blast. Although I'm not a huge Ducks fan ( I went to Washington St.) I will root for them against anyone but WSU. He has a ticket for me on October 13, when the 2 teams play. Goooo Cougs!
2 weeks til Aruba, 12 days in poker paradise!!
Debo
