Chris Halverson’s Blog

Other things to like about California: Buying booze in a grocery store on a Sunday.

This week, this blog is renamed: Johnnie Walker Red Poker Blog.

In Minnesota, we can’t even buy liquor on Sunday, much less ever in a grocery store (3.2 beer and wine coolers in grocery stores). Of course, the grocery store seems expensive and selection is limited, but there’s little choice in this small town, plus I don’t want to drag my son for a trip for the express intent of buying booze for myself. Anyway, I pick up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red at the grocery store (we’re renting a townhouse, so we have a full kitchen and everything) and I’m set for the week.

Today (Monday) I wake up early, like 6AM due to my falling asleep at 8 the night before. I get up and finish my paper. It’s not my best work, but the coding part went above the requirements, and I had a perfect (yes, 100%) score going into the final project, so I whipped out the paper part of the final project. This was augmented by adding six pages of JavaDoc, just to increase the the page count Hopefully it’ll work.

I finish up around lunch time and pull up Empire for the first time of the vacation. Well, I pulled up Planet earlier to see if I was registered for the Sunday tourney and had to ask Felicia how to tell if I was. Talk about an unintuitive interface. I can see how it works and such now, but I had no idea. It’s not showing yet, but I doubt I’m registered since I haven’t funded my account yet (but Neteller finally has my money, four days my ass…). On that note, I won’t be playing this week since I don’t get home until 7′ish that night and I’m sure I’ll be tired. I’ll be back though, don’t worry
Anyway, my Empire session lasted about an hour. All the while my son has “Dumb and Dumberer” on in the background. Here’s a hint, pass on the movie. He was tired due to the altitude (7000 feet) and the heat, so he didn’t board as much as I would have thought. We travel cross country to snowboard only to arrive and have 70 degree (F) temps in the mountains. Figures. Anyway, my Empire session ends up even, which is all I could ask for at the time.

We watch a couple more movies (”Mr. Deeds” - pretty decent, and “Boiler Room” - I liked it), eat, and watch a little TV. Then I get a call on the cell and it’s my man hdouble getting the initial setup for this weekend in place (I can’t wait!!). My son gets tired and heads downstairs to watch TV and I pull up Empire again for a real session.

First couple of tables are pretty much break even for a while. Up 8BB on one, down 6BB on the other. Then things turn around and I get up on both and jump. From there it’s up all around. I end up on four tables (remember Iggy’s advice: table selection, table selection). After about another 90 minutes, the Johnnie, timezone, and altitude kick in and I decide to call it a night (at 10:30PM PST, but to me it’s still 12:30AM). I got AK seven times and won a total 19BB with it. Unreal. I even stole the blinds a couple of time, which is something I don’t normally do.

I end up 23.5BB for the night. Not quite enough to pay for my son’s lift ticket ($36/day), but a damn good positive night which is what I’m looking for overall. I haven’t played for a week or so, but while I got a little frustrated early on (at 50/1), my patience paid off in the end. I wanted to jump to 1/2, but all the tables were full except the 6max ones. I’m not quite ready for that yet, and I didn’t want to wait around on a waiting list. We’ll see what tomorrow brings, but I want to jump up to 1/2.

As an aside, I got my check (yes, a paper check, I messed up and couldn’t fund via Neteller in time) from True last Friday (check #1988, which I thought was interesting) which caused a quick run to the ATM to repay the withdrawal I made to augment the Neteller account (in order to augment Empire/Party or deposit into Planet). Perfect timing.

Another aside, playing via a modem is doable. I only got semi-disconnected once, but playing two tables (while doing nothing else network wise) is very doable. It still sucks for general usage, but it is definitely usable for at least two table poker (at Empire/Party at least).

All in all, a great day, but right now I’m more interested in keeping the B&M streak alive on Friday. After all, I can’t let HD down on our get together. Look out SoCal, I’m on my way and when HD is in the house, you cannot hide!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2004 at 1:29 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.