Call me Hoover

Playoff football has enveloped my life. I spent the last week on the ESPN Colts message board stirring up trouble with Baltimore Ravens fans. It's all very childish and unimportant, and I love it. The Ravens fans were trying to tell us that we should feel bad about stealing their team 23 years ago and that we should petition to give all of the Baltimore Colts records, colors, and team name back to the city of Baltimore. We tried to tell them that we didn't care, but that did not make them quit. They wanted to be angry. They reveled in it, so I decided to help them out by creating a thread to help give them some validity. I'm pretty proud of what I accomplished.

SIDE NOTE - I told my parents about the thread, and my dad laughed...but my mom asked why I couldn't spend that kind of energy on more important things. Mom, I did this while at work. What am I supposed to be doing with this time? Other than working, of course. I've got this job down to a science...like Physiology, one of the easy sciences. I am ready to bail.

The Colts won, and now the hated Patriots will be coming to town. This is how I like it. If we're going to win the Super Bowl, I want it to happen through beating our nemesis. I have to find a good angle for the forums. I think I'm going to be celebrating the Patriots best player. No, not Tom Brady. I'm talking about Bruschi's Steroid Chin. I will elevate Bruschi's Steroid Chin to god-like status. Patriot fans will flip if they think someone's implying that their beloved Tedy Bruschi did steroids. Personally, I think everyone in the NFL is on steroids. It's like every celebrity is on cocaine. But back to Bruschi's Steroid Chin, it's incredible. I think the Patriots could line up on defense with two safeties in the back, two defensive linemen up front, and leave Bruschi's Steroid Chin to defend the middle and still dominate the NFL. That's how good Bruschi's Steroid Chin is.

After the big win on Saturday, I hit the online poker scene. Normally, I don't like to talk about poker on here, because I think poker blogs from amateur players are mind-numbingly boring, but I figure most of you stopped reading by this point anyways, so here goes.

I recently switched back to Ultimate Bet, since the other site I was playing on had terrible tournaments, and tournaments are where I have the biggest advantage over all the idio...er...less experienced players out there. I had $30 in my account when I switched and managed to work that up to $3. Oh, I guess that would be down. Well, never fear. I'm kind of a poker god. I worked that minute sum up to $360 with some stellar play. That's where my total was at on Saturday when I entered a $33 no-limit tournament with about 360 people in it.

SIDE NOTE - $360 is not a big enough bank roll to enter a $33 tournament. But I was a little drunk, so whatever.

Things started poorly for me as my 1500 starting stack got quickly hacked to 450 thanks to a weak player chasing a draw on me and hitting. A lot of players would give up at this point and just throw all their chips in the pot on the next Ace they see. But playing short stacked is a strength of my game, perhaps the strongest point of it. For the opening hour, I picked and chose my battles, and by the first break I had my stack up to 1300. Not good, but I was still alive.

For the next couple hours, I can't remember anything except for that I had my Ipod kickin' out tunes, and I was focused and making some sweet moves. I never had a large stack, but my short stack game is excellent, remember? Suddenly, we were in the money...and then more people kept dropping while I scraped a few more chips here and there...and then even more people were knocked out and lo and behold I was at the final table! Of course, I was in tenth place out of ten...but I play a great short sta...wait, I think I mentioned this before.

I have a special final table strategy. It's called, "Let these other guys get knocked out while I make some sweet moolah." Each time someone would lose, I would move up a spot in the pay scale, and each of these jumps were worth at least $120. Dan, how's that for good business sense? So I laid low and sure enough, three guys got knocked out quickly. I made a couple plays and got out of the way. A few more got the heave ho. I made a couple plays turned on my invisibility mode. More got knocked out. Suddenly, we were heads up. I had around 120,000 chips, and my opponent had about 460,000. I like those odds.

Did I mention that playing short stacked is one of the strengths of my game? I should have if I didn't. Well, the other strong point of my game is playing heads up. I play very aggressively, switch gears a lot, and have a knack for cueing on my opponent's betting patterns. I feel that if I get heads up, and my opponent has a 3 to 1 chip lead on me, I still have a good shot at winning.

I started off fast and began to win pots. I like to win a lot of small pots and as many in a row as possible. This demoralizes my opponent and makes them panic a little. It's hard to keep your cool when you look at the hand history and the guy you're playing just won 8 hands in a row. I try to set it up so that when I catch a really big hand, my opponent will decide he's had enough of my bluffing and reraise me huge with bottom pair. This guy was good, though, and he wouldn't pay me off on my big hands. In addition to this, he rivered two straights on me and should have had all of my stack both times. It took me forever to finally catch him, but I gained the chip advantage after about 40 minutes. That's when I lost my mind.

You have to understand that it was 2:30am at this point, I had been playing this tournament for 4-and-a-half hours, and I had watched the Colts game earlier and celebrated the victory where many beers were consumed. My Ipod had long since run out of batteries, and I was running Pandora which is not my usual music accompaniment. Is that enough stupid excuses? Good, because here's a stupid play. I caught middle pair on a hand, which is a good hand heads up. My opponent came out betting the minimum, which could easily be a bluff. I raised it. He raised me back. This is where I should have let go of the hand, but something told me he was pushing me around. I thought he was getting tired of my nonsense and trying to bully me. Well, after about 15 seconds of thought, I convinced myself this was the case and made a $1200 decision to reraise him all in. ($1200 was the difference between 1st and 2nd place. This is pretty big money, huh?) Well, he insta-called me, and I knew I was boned. He flipped over top pair, and I was drawing to a little more than 5 outs.

But what cometh on the turn?? My card for trips! I sucked out for $1200!! Holy f'ing fucking f'ing mother f'ing holy fucking shit! I scored my biggest win to date. $2962.53.

Thank God for this one. I need that money for my move back to Cali. The Colts win in the playoffs on the road and I win my biggest tournament ever. Now that's a good day!