Chris Halverson’s Blog

New Ground

In order to keep my “mega bonus whore” title, I made sure to max out the Empire HAPPY2005 bonus (once again, despite vowing to never play there again, you can now see how easily I can be bought, $200 is all it takes). I logged into Empire and they offered me another bonus: 50% up to $100. Nice! The 50% one even has a lower work rate (500 hands expires in 30 days), so it’s even better. Now I’ve got $300 in bonus to work off at Empire needing a total of 1900 raked hands. For some of you this is nothing, but for me it is an undertaking.

Time and time again I’ve heard that the 25NL tables are the place to clear these bonuses. I’ve read it and have other bloggers/readers tell me this. I’ve shied away from them because honestly I was scared. I wasn’t confident enough in my poker skill to be able to risk a stack on a hand. In limit I may lose a bit, but I cannot put my whole buyin at risk on one hand. Of course, I cannot double up on one hand either. I just was not sure how I would handle facing a big raise as opposed to just a “normal” bet. Henry has suggested to me a couple of times that I should try it as it may fit my style better. He told me this months ago, I just need to start listening to those who know what they’re talking about.

Therefore, due to my success in the $20 NL SNGs and facing a ton of hands in a short timeframe (for me anyway), I decided to give it a shot and on Sunday played in my first NL ring game. Wow. I just wish I had decided to do this earlier. Granted, it’s only a few sessions, but I have come out pretty well here and I don’t feel out of my element.

Straight Flush #3

I think the poker gods were trying to tell me that the water was OK when I limped in and then called a $2 raise with Ac3c. Yes, bad call I know, but this guy was raising everything, so it didn’t mean much. The flop brings me 4c5cTd. There were four of us seeing the flop and the action was kinda slow so my mind was subvocalizing my outs: I have a straight draw, nut flush draw, WHOA, I mean a straight flush draw! SB checks, BB throws out $2.50. I call, button folds and SB calls. The turn is the mighty 2c. I just about fell out of my chair. Now I need to figure out how to keep people in. I am hoping that somebody made their flush and has a K or Q. SB checks and BB throws out a $4 bet ($11.50 in the pot). I do a min raise representing a flush. The SB cold calls the $8 and the BB folds (damn). The river is a brick and the SB checks. I look at his stack and he has $11.50 left. I unclick the “Muck uncalled hands” button (gotta show off the straight flushes) and put him all in. He insta-calls with QcTc for the Queen high flush.

That was my third straight flush. I’ve hit the high with a Royal, second high with the King high, and now the low with the Wheel.

Overview

Anyway, the NL tables seem pretty good and I plan on playing them more now. I still need to figure out the best betting strategies, but I don’t think I made a minimum bet the whole time I played. Not sure if that’s “correct”, but it does work to drive some people out. I am also amazed at how badly people bet. They basically treat it like a limit game and just hit the buttons that pop up. One hand had 3 people raising pre-flop but they all just did the min raise. They each raised 3 times, it was stupid. That’s OK, they’re the people that will pay us off in time. It’s also incredible the way people will sometimes totally overbet things. Throw in $17 pre-flop UTG? Geez…

I did make a couple bad plays, but since the winners tended to play it so badly I didn’t really lose more than I would have during a 1/2 limit game. I did lose one buyin when my rockets lost to a Q5o (who cold called 2 raises preflop). I didn’t freak out like I thought I might have. I just rebought and kept playing. I was down that session, but I don’t expect to win everytime anyway. I also misread the board a bit when both tables flipped up at once and I got blinded by three to a flush on the board when in reality it gave me a full house and I just checked it down. Then again, I’ve done that in limit games too, so that’s nothing new to this game.

I have read nothing about NL specific play other than some things in the Single Table Tourney forum on 2+2. At this time I’m basing my play on what I’ve read in my various limit books. It’s obviously the betting strategy that is so different. I don’t always know the correct bet size to use, so I’m kind of winging it. At the $25 tables that seems to be OK. Most of wat I’m doing has been learned from playing in the sit and go tournaments. I still have a lot to learn in this area though, but it is fun.

I know the 25NL tables are the 50/1 of the NL world, but I need to get a little experience with them first, then I’ll move up to the 50NL. I have the roll and from what I hear it’s no more difficult than the 25s.

Blogger Table

Of course, while I’m actually trying to learn something new and make some money, I suddenly notice Iggy sitting to my right. I’m not sure how long he was there, but suddenly I’ve facing a $2 raise while holding Big Slick. I look to see who raised and tried to figure out if it was legit or not. I smooth call (doh!). Of course, my Big Slick loses to a pair of sevens. The other 7? That’s right, Iggy’s Hammer raise. Now the game was on and suddenly the table is being overrun with bloggers. Evidently it was my table that was to be the blogger table of the night. Great…It was hella fun though and I didn’t lose my shirt, so I have that going for me.

Oh, and I did bluff win with the hammer. Unfortunately I lost about $10 trying it a couple other times, so I ended up losing overall with the Hammer (but up on that table). Oh well, all work and no play makes Chris something something.

Kudos Hank

Go read Henry’s latest entry. He’s going to go work for Full Tilt Poker at the end of the month. Congrats!!! I’m so jealous!

Introduction

It’s not very often that I have to get dressed up to go play poker. Most of the time it’s something comfortable, but I never go out of my way to worry about it. Friday night, however, was very different. I was invited to participate in a tournament at the Minneapolis Club. This is the quintessential example of an old men’s club (which is not restricted anymore). You know the type: they use actual cotton towels in the bathrooms; huge ceilings; dark wood; smoking is allowed in certain rooms (including cigars); membership by invitation only. This was bound to be one of my more “interesting” poker experiences. This did mean that I had to come home and change out of my jeans and into business casual. The things I do for poker.

This whole adventure started innocently enough. After Drac’s last tournament (see here for recap) I got an email from Pete, one of Drac’s friends, about this tourney at the Mpls Club. I send in a request to participate to the organizers and then don’t hear back from them until right after Christmas. They say I’m confirmed and things are ready to go.

Things are ready to go, but I’m still a bit unsure. First off, it’s a $100 entry fee. Now I’ll go sit at a ring game with $100 no problem, but I expect to come ahead or at least not lose the whole thing. A tournament means that I don’t get anything unless I outlast a lot of people. I do pretty well financially, but I’m still nervous about dropping $100 on a crapshoot tournament.

Pete, however, assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem. There was another one of these last October and he (and Drac) played in it. While neither made the money, they said the field was generally really, really bad. The people are (were) all basically friends in the finance business. A lot of brokers, advisors, etc. (Pete works in that field). Needless to say, poker is popular so they put on a tournament. Here’s one reason why I decided that this could be a good game to go to: They sent out rules ahead of time so that people knew what they were (which was nice). One of the rules said:

• No wild cards

The fact that they call that out was telling and pushed me over to playing.

The tournament originally started out with 106 players with a fairly bad structure: fast blinds and only starting out with T500. I had passed this by Hdouble, Iggy and Pauly as I thought it was really bad and was questioning whether I should bother or not. They said to concentrate on possible networking opportunities and side games and just have fun at the tourney. I agreed, but still didn’t like dropping $100 on a total crapshoot. On the day of the tournament they sent out new information: they raised the number of participants to 120 and increased the starting chips to T1000. The blind structure is a little slower, but they still have issues with condensing tables, but I’m already confirmed, etc.

So I decide to take the plunge and try my hand at this tournament. Since there are four of us who live within a few minutes of each other, we decide to meet up at Dave’s house to carpool. Drac, Al, Dave and myself pile into Dave’s Caddy (which is totally appropriate considering we’re going to the Mpls Club) and head downtown.

After arriving at the club we go upstairs to register. There is a line of nicely dressed people waiting to hand over $100 bills to play poker. The organization seems to be going OK at this point. They have two people handling the registration, one to take the money and check off the players and one to hand out the name tags and table assignments.

From there we head on into the ballroom and look for some food. This tournament had corporate sponsors who paid for food. There was also a full service cash bar available. The food was your traditional spread, cold cuts, veggies, cheese and some salmon. It was all good and hit the spot. The drinks were expensive ($6 for a drink, beer or otherwise), but what do you expect, you’re at the Minneapolis Club.

Main Tournament

At about 7:10 (supposed to start at 7, so not too bad), they round everybody up and go over the rules and introductions of the corporate sponsors. I hit the bar for a 12 year old Macallan (neat, of course) and take my seat in the 1s at Table 15. Since I’m the first dealer I look at our chip stacks that were still in the racks and notice we’re short two stacks. Great. We finaly get all our chips and cards are in the air. I start shuffling cards while looking at the table to see if there’s anybody who knows what’s going on. Nothing is sticking out at this point, but that would change shortly.

About two hands into the tournament I look up and see Drac at his table waving his hands at me like a madman. It took a couple of different tries (I don’t understand mime too well), but I finally figured out what he was trying to say. I had a guy who works at Poker Academy at my table (they make software similar to, but, surprise, in his opinion is better). Some people at Drac’s table were saying that he may be pretty good so he was trying to warn me. I acknowledged and kept an eye on him.

The 4s was interesting and I wanted to talk to him but he busted out pretty early and I didn’t see him later. First off, he had his name tattooed around his wrist. What was interesting was that it was in binary code. Anyway, he seemed to know what was going on and came to find out that he lived in the same building as the 5s. He said that he has a monthly game, so he at least knows what’s going on (and his play showed it). What intriqued me was when the 7s flipped over the Hammer and after they were shown the 4s said, “The HAMMER!”. I was like, “Huh?!?” Unfortunately he didn’t last much longer and he was gone.

About 10 minutes into Level 1 I see Drac walking away from his table. He had the top two finishers from the last tourney at his table and he pushed things (for good reason to be explained shortly) and busted. He didn’t seem too upset about busting out halfway through Level 1 which was a bit perplexing at the time.

I had a couple of solid people at my table. I, of course, was card dead during level 1 (30 min levels) and didn’t win a hand. My table was very, very tight. This reinforced my thought that about half of the table was decent. Poker Academy Guy knew what he was doing and was involved in a lot of pots. This is one of the strategies that people employ at the early level, try to double up early and ride out the middle levels. Unfortunately it did not work for him and he busted out early into Level 2. The guy in the 2s was out around the same time. After a bit, the 4s busted and I moved over (we were using rectangular tables and the 1s was on the end and it was a PITA to deal across the table).

We were now 5 handed, yet not eligible for consolidation. In what I think was one of the worst parts of the otherwise well run tourney, the organisers said they would not consolidate tables until it was down to 4 people. This meant that we played all Level 3 five handed. That is tough due to the blinds coming around so quickly. There were other short tables but the organisers did not want to reseat people unless they really had to. I was not too happy with that part. Eventually we lost another one and we were eligible to be reseated.

We got moved en masse to Table 1. I had a small enough stack that I could carry all my chips in one hand (a bit over T1000 at this point). Due to the lack of organisation in reseating (ie. they just said, “Go to table 1″), I got to the table before the rest and staked out the 4s. Thankfully my plan worked and the former 5s at my table sat to my right. He was fairly aggressive and basically never limped. I wanted him there so I could get out if necessary. The second hand at the table I was in the BB and got AQo. I limped in and the flop Q high. I was able to get all in against somebody who was at the table and handn’t seen my play yet. My queens held up against a 3 flush on the board. I didn’t like the third one on the river but confidently threw out a bet anyway. He called and I doubled up.

The break came and I was at about T2000 (started at T1000). I was doing OK, but due to the makeup of my table I was not too confident that things would go well. The blinds were going up quickly in relation to my stack and I needed to make another move. I was able to see a cheap flop in the SB and made trips on the turn. I made a big bet and was called and on the river when I kind of misread the board. Without looking at my chips I called out a bet and left myself with only T150. The other guy didn’t raise but just callled and my trips lost to a straight. Not sure why he didn’t raise, I would have had to call. I was crippled and didn’t have enough to post a BB, so I just waited until I got some paint and pushed in with J4o under the gun. I of course lost and my tourney is done.

Side Game

During this time Drac had busted out of another $100 side tournament. I wasn’t too thrilled about paying $100 for essentially a SNG. I’m still not totally comfortable with $100 buyins. I find him and find out that he’s playing in a $100 buyin dealer’s choice cash game. Now that’s more my style, but decide to look around and see what else is available. I find a $20 entry SNG (sorry, I just refer to these single table tourneys as SNGs, it’s just easier and you know what I mean). I look at the table and see some very possible dead money, but the chips “stacks” consist of about 15 chips total. Ug. Well, I decide to try it anyway and buy in.

We spend a few mins trying to figure out the structure and I just let the people hash it out. It wasn’t terrible, but could have been better. I just played dumb and agreed with virtually everything in order to not show that I knew what I was doing.

While the rest of the table was figuring it out, I hit the bar again. This time they were out of Mcallan and I had to get the house scotch (I didn’t have time to wait for them to restock). Disappointing.

I was able to about double up fairly early when I saw a flop from the BB with K3o. The flop came KKxo. Now obviously I’m scared of somebody having a K since I have no kicker. I decide to see if anybody has one and throw out a bet. The woman to my left immediately calls and we lose the other couple of people. Hmm…Turn is a brick and I throw out a decent sized bet and was called again. Now I’m bit nervous. Like most people, she was very passive, so it is entirely possible she’s got a king and just not raising. The river is another brick, no flush/straight possibility, and I throw out the red chip (T500) and she calls. I flip over my cards, expecting to be outkicked only to find out she has Jack high. She called me with Jack high!! (cue Elix Powers from the 2004 WSOP) That busted her (or close to it, she was gone shortly thereafter) and I had a good stack. One other guy at the table had one a big hand and we were the chip leaders.

A couple hands later I get ATo and limp in UTG. Nobody was raising and at this table so AT was a monster. Flop comes KJx rainbow. I check my gutshot to the nut straight. Big stack min bets and loose older guy min raises. I’m not too thrilled about this, but since I have a big stack I call and other big stack calls (*whew*, no re-raise). The turn is my beautiful Queen. I check the nuts, then it’s bet, called and I pull the check raise. Of course, nobody realized the power of this and everybody called. I led out with a bet that was enough to put both the others all in and everybody under the sun calls. I flip over my straight and bust out two people.

I’m now the big stack and soon thereafter I’m heads up with the other big stack. The original plan was to make it winner take all, with 8 of us starting for a total of $160. My opponent was an older stock broker. He was a good guy and we were chatting it up quite a bit and having a good time. We were about even at the start and he picked up that I was playing pretty weak. He was able to push me off hands with some big bets. I then changed gears and started reraising him and calling down his big bets. This got us back to even and he slowed down.

I won a decent amount when I called a min raise with 86o and the flop cam 79T. He said, “Well there’s your straight” and laughed. I just played along and at the end flipped them over and told him he was right. He just laughed and started shuffling. There weren’t any other memorable hands during this time and unfortunately we were just pushing chips around. After a 20 minute heads up contest we decided that another $80 was not worth it and just agreed to chop. We then both pushed all in to see who would win the last hand and my Q high paired on the river and I “won”.

I had a net of +$60 on that tournament which paid back over half of my original tournament buy in, so I was feeling a bit better now.

I went and found Drac again and he’s got this huge grin on his face. I ask him how he’s doing and he says he’s up. How much? “I don’t know, but people keep buying chips from me”. He still has got a big stack in front of him including a decent number of blacks ($10 at this game). Oh, must be rough. In the end he was way up. He made the right choice by busting out early and getting in cash games with the other people who busted out early.

Final Table

While I did not participate in this, I feel it is worth noting, if for no other reason than to remind myself to auto-buy into this if there is another one.

I also would like to point out that two people from my first table made it to the final table, so I was at one of the tougher tables of the night, which makes me feel a bit better.

The final table was interesting to watch. The play was so bad it was unreal. There was a woman who made it heads up who:

• Had a hand ranking chart next to her
• Would ask on almost every hand: “There’s no more cards coming, right?”
• Had to constantly ask how much each chip was worth and what the bets were

She would also call with anything. The weak guy to her left would try to bluff her, but he would do it by throwing out a minimum bet knowing (well, he should know it, but evidently didn’t) that she’d call. He’d then look upset when he lost. It was very weak play. She also did not know the meaning of the word “check”. She led out betting all the time with nothing. Of course, it was always the minimum so there were always callers. It was amazing how passive the final table was.

She got 2nd place for a payday of over $1000.

To quote the vernacular: Oh the humanity!

Overall

The tournament was pretty well run. It would have been nice to have a better system to redistribute the tables as playing 5 handed when there are other tables doing the same is pretty bad. They were using the Tournament Director software, so if they had kept track of people busting out they could have done it pretty easily although it would have been logisitically kind of difficult (there would be ways to do it though). They also need to start hand for hand on the last two tables. The last two were very different, one went to three players in quick succession while the only lost one or so. It would have been much more fair had they gone to hand for hand and redistributed the seating quicker. The people were friendly and the environment was fun. Next time I’ll make sure to bring along a cigar or two as that would be the best, to sit around with some single malt and a cigar while playing poker in a juicy cash game. Could it get better than that?

The side games were very juicy though. To most of these people $100 is nothing. They were throwing it around like it was no big deal. Drac took full advantage of this and cleaned up. I should have got involved in one of those games and will do so next time. I made back some money so I was only down a little bit so all was not lost.

I still had fun although I didn’t really network any. I’m not the most extroverted person, so it’s hard for me to talk to people I don’t know. I also am in the wrong business as most of the people were finance people.

I don’t think I really played that well. I was way, way too weak. While bluffing people who don’t know anything can be a big time losing situation, I didn’t bluff at all or even push some of my draws until I was short stacked. I probably could have lasted longer had I played better, but for some reason I played very weak/tight. Oh wait, that is normal for me. Damnit! I need to break out of this cycle and play harder. I play scared at times which is not good in general and even less so in a crapshoot tourney where maybe 10% of the people know what they’re doing.

Thanks to Pete and Drac for getting me into this game, I appreciate it and look forward to future ones!

In homage to RTATS, I offer up a few ramblings, nothing too exciting, just some things that are on my mind at the moment. Don’t worry, I won’t make this a habit, I just didn’t play any poker tonight.

Alias

OMG. The first 10 mins show Jen strutting around in a babydoll and then in a schoolgirl outfit. They then also changed the intro to showcase her more. I played it in slow motion.

My wife just rolled her eyes and said that she was sure all the guys were loving it. I wiped my chin and just agreed.

For Iggy

See more interesting T Shirts at T-Shirt Hell. Warning, may not be safe for work (check out the Whores page).

PC Games

I got two PC games for Christmas: Half Life 2 and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. Unfortunately my PC’s video card is not good enough to play them. I had to get a new motherboard and such for my PC a while back and got a MicroATX board. It says it can only hand 4 volt video cards (I think) which is not powerful enough to handle anything. Unfortunately, I can’t wait to play these and so I’ll probably end up going out and getting something good enough to play these on. I absolutely loved HL and MoH. I have been waiting for HL2 for a long time, it’s killing me to have it here and not be able to play it.

Steam, however, pisses me off. WTF was Valve thinking about forcing you to register HL2 with a particular Steam account. I don’t care about the online part, I just want to play the single user missions without having to log into my son’s Steam account (doh!). It’s lame.

Movies

In the queue:

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (Unrated Version)
Dodgeball
Spiderman 2
Remaining episodes of Millenium, Season 1

Stu Ungar

Watched Stuey’s 1997 WSOP again. The man was unreal.

School

I tried to sign up for class but it’s still not showing up in my web page. Hopefully it will soon so I can start work on stuff considering it’s Thursday and the assignments are due on Sunday. It also appears that the book is nowhere to be found locally so I have to order it from the bookstore. The bookstore also only has used books (which is fine by me) which seems to imply that it’s out of print or is an old version.

Credit Card Offer Opt Out

I hate those effing credit card offers that I get every day in the mail (and Mrs. H basically throws a fit everyday when they come). Thanks to Paul Philips I see you can permanently opt out of them. You can do it here.

Work

Sucks.

I wasn’t really going to bother with any sort of update tonight, but I played 3 SNGs and then read a new posting at UWannaBet about how bad the play is at the Party SNGs. All I can say is: Yes, it’s ridiculously bad. I probably shouldn’t even bring it up lest any of you other people decide to try to invade my waters, but there are enough of them to go around.

I decided to try to multi-table SNGs for the first time. I’m not sure I like it, but then again, since each one takes 40-60 minutes, it’s the only way to play enough to know if you’re a winner or not. In my first one I made a comeback from being chip dog with 4 left to winning. During this time I had #2 running. I made a couple of good plays to get to a decent stack, but had zero feel for the table. I had the PokerTracker Tourney Time window up so I could at least get some information if needed, but I really had no idea what was happening.

Thankfully these play like 50/1 limit with people min-raising (baby Jesus must have fits while these are going on) so I probably am not missing out on much. Anyway, after winning the long heads up duel with the guy on table #1 I turn to table #2 and notice that we’re down to four people. Uh…OK. Once again I basically folded my way into the money, or at least the bubble. By things time I’m pretty short stacked, but I outlast one other guy and I end up taking third.

The last one was full of clowns. Either that or their keyboard/mouse didn’t work and they could only fold or go all-in. There were three people at this table that would push with $50 in the pot. Just ridiculous. That was fine becuase I figured I’d just wait to get some cards and they’d pay me off. This worked for a while and I was chip leader for a bit until I doubled somebody up when the softplayed two pair and caught me. I should have realized this because he was one of the “pushers” and he just kept calling.

I think I was mesmerized by my new cards and I just wanted to keep them on the screen longer.

I did pull a blogger move though. I’m UTG and down to T390 with the blinds at 100/200 and I get the hammer. I, of course, push. Unfortunately I have zero leverage and am called in two places by such crap cards as AQs and AJo. Bah! Somehow the poker gods thought that the hammer has no pull tonight and I go home in 7th.

Anyway, I’m still doing well in these and plan to keep at it. I know I cannot keep up this ridiculous run, although it is fun to see a 100+% ROI figure, but these things are gold mines. Err, I mean, these things suck. Full of maniacs, super hard to play against. You should stick to your ring games and leave the SNGs alone.

Of course, the jackpot is almost up to $300K again. Empire has a reload bonus that starts tomorrow and despite my vow to not play there again, how can I not and still call myself a good bonus whore? I also haven’t even started the Cryptos yet…Wednesday is the two hour premier of Alias (Jennifer Garner? Oh yeah!) not to mention a new Lost, so that pretty much takes out that night. Friday is gone too due to a live game. Man, choices, choices.

Uh, yeah, but Jennifer Garner. Don’t expect any poker from me on Wednesday. Did I mention new Jennifer Garner?

More Party Modifications

To keep up my Martha Stewart-esqe helpfulness I offer a couple more Party (and skin) mods.

The first one is a site that offers 4 different cards/tables. The cards are very high quality and I have replaced my default set with one of them. Take a guess which ones I’m using now. Go see them at Art Poker.

The other one is a new table that is clear and easy to see and is appealing to a lot of multi-tablers on 2+2. I haven’t tried this yet, but it looks pretty nice.

See the thread at 2+2 to download the zip file.

So I’m now using the combo of Chip Litre’s no chairs/no dealer and the above mentioned cards. Along with GT+ things are pretty nice.

Misc Poker Thought Of The Night

If you’ve read Winning Low Limit Hold ‘Em or Small Stakes Hold ‘Em, you probably (hopefully) remember the parts where the respective authors mention that in large pots it’s probably best to call a river bet even if you think you’re beat. You do remember that, right? If not, there it is, good advice by people who win at this game (ie. not me).

Why bring this up? Well, after playing 4 SNGs (1, 3, 10, 3, yes, the 10th place was going out on the first hand ) I decided to play a ring game at Party. I fire up a 2/4 table and post in the cutoff. I get 9d9c and check (3 other callers so far), button raises, BB makes it 3, all call and I call. Flop comes JdAd2d and I’ve got a four flush going. MP bets, I call, button raises and MP and I both call. The turn brings the 7d and it’s checked around to the button who bets and both of us call. The river is 8d to put a flush on the board. Checked to the button who bets. MP folds and I make the crying call figuring that he’s got me, but the pot was 12BB by now. He flips over 5d5c and MHIG. It’s great to win 14BB on your first hand. I finished up a nice 8BB over 45 minutes before going to watch CSI: Miami.

So, back to the SNGs. I played in four and moneyed in three. I won the first one which gave me a nice confidence boost. Got third in the next and I was still feeling pretty good. I decided to play another and see if I could keep it going. On the first hand I get ATs UTG. Well, suffice it to say that I had two pair but didn’t put the guy on KJ and he got a straight and I went out on the first hand. Opps. Since I played all of 3 minutes on that one I pulled up another one and got third without winning a hand outside of blinds being folded to me (well, maybe one or two all in pushes to steal when I was short stacked, but I didn’t win any “real” hand). It was unreal. I just sat there and watched people take each other out and folded my way into 3rd at which time I was terribly short stacked. I’m hoping I can play at least 3 a night until Friday.

Oh, and I forgot to register for class too. Gotta do that tomorrow after all I have nothing to do at work.