Monday Bonus Whores and Other Incoherent Stuff

"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan

Today is the last day for you to be eligible for the 100% sign up bonus for Check and Raise. There is no time limit to clear your bonus. Visit here for more details.

Party Poker is offering up February reload bonus up to $200. You have until March 2 to sign up and have one week to clear your bonus (7x rake hands).

I have been squeezing poker in between writing binges. Here's what happened the last few days:

22 Feb @ 11:30am EST... On Poker Stars, I played in a Heads Up tourney for New York State using 50 FPP in order to try to win a seat at The World Cup Finals. I lost to a young Phishead from Long Island. I slowplayed 10-10 preflop and limped in from the small blind. The kid flopped two pair with 92o. I lost most of my lead and was behind after that. How the state tourneys work, you play heads up matches and if you win, you advance to the next round and wait until all the previous round's matches are complete. That continues until they get to the final 8. Those guys won seats into the next level. There were almost 60+ players and I had an early first round exit. Poker Stars will be giving one more seat away (they'll give 3 to the top 3 state qualifiers) and holding a tournament on Friday and Saturday (buy-in = 50 FFP) to find out who will represent TeamUSA in the World Cup Finals.

In a weird coincidence, my friend Stormy was also playing. He got a bye in the first round and lost his second round match. I had not talked to him in a long time. Man, Stormy and I have a ton of gambling history together. We played a lot poker with some other guys that we both worked with. We had OTB phone accounts and would call in bets on the ponies from work. We even took trips down to Atlantic City together to play black jack and roulette.

23 Feb @ 11:47pm EST... I played two $25 Turbo SNGs on Poker Stars and was whooped by the bad beat stick both times finding out the hard way why a lot of folks refer to Poker Stars as River Stars. I had gotten all my money in the pot on the flop with the best hand both times. Nothing I could have done. Riverstars, indeed.

24 Feb @ 2:14pm EST... I found myself caught up in the middle of a Check and Raise slaughterfest trying to clear my bonus. I fared well at the $3/6 table but on my other $2/4 table, I got my ass kicked like a lethargic Leon Spinks. My nemesis was a drunk Canuck from Saskatoon. He saw every hand to the river.

25 Feb @ 11:30pm EST... I played in a multi table tourney at Party Poker, a $10 Satellite for the $1 Million Guaranteed. Top 8 places paid seats and I finished an unimpressive 225 out of 540. I had a few railbirds including April, Spaceman, Sir Waffle, Derek and Archetype. Thanks for sweating guys.

26 Feb @ 11:18am EST... Omaha 8 with AlCantOmaha and Bad Blood on Party Poker. I flopped sets three times inside a half hour and lost on every one as expected. AlCantOmaha is tearing up the Omaha tables. He took second place in an Omaha 8 multi on Full Tilt. Then Bad Blood placed in a $50 multi. Good job, bros.

26 Feb @ 10:35pm EST... I randomly picked a NL table on Party Poker and Hank987 was sitting right next to me! Coincidence. Within the hour we had railbrds and bloggers on the list including BG, Helix, April, Sir Waffle, and The Poker Geek. Oh and this past Thursday, Hank987 took second place ($3,000) out of 250 in a $80 + 20 tournament at Foxwoods. Congrats! I invited him to write up his run for a future post. Stay tuned.

My buddy Jay (Senor's brother) played a $100 multi on Poker Stars with Tom McEvoy. Here's what went down and how the WSOP champ river'd him:

"Last night for the hell of it I decide to play a $100 multi table tourney on Poker Stars, and whose at my table, 1983 World Series of Poker Champion Tom McEvoy. I played with him for 2 hours until I got moved to another table. Other then some blind stealing back and forth, we only played one big pot against each other. He was short stacked pretty early on, had about 950 with the blinds at 50/100. The pot is folded to him and he raises to 250 from the cutoff. I find JJ in the big blind (with about 2000 chips) and figure to have him beat so I reraise him 1000, putting him all in. He thinks for a few seconds and calls me with A10o. Of course he spikes his A on the river to take the pot and double up. A WSOP champ sucked out on me!!!! In the end though, I finished 22 out of 275 (tourney paid top 27) and he finished 24th. Didn't make much $, but at least I got a decent story out of the deal."

Congrats, Jay!

Thomas Hayden Church and Paul Giamatti in Sideways
In other news, I won my friend Jenna's office Oscar pool. First place won a bottle of Pinot in homage to Sideways.

So, I'll be clearing my bonus at the tables on Party Poker over the next week while the big city gets a few snow storms. I have been on a bad streak for the month of February and I'll cover that carnage in a future post. I'm so happy that March is around the corner. Conversely, my brother has tripled his Party Poker bankroll using the hit and run method at the 6 max NL tables. I hope he writes that up this week.

By the way, I wish I was this guy! Oh yeah, and this guy!

Recent Poker Playing Music...
1. Shuggie Otis
2. The Grateful Dead
3. Ben Harper
4. Velvet Underground
5. Sam Phillips