Chris Halverson’s Blog

Well, I kept my pledge to have every hand of online poker that I played in December be for a bonus (and has actually continued into today). I was going to write a big ‘ol article about bonus whoring, but I’m not sure I could do any better than ScurvyDog’s recent article on the poker bonus trail. All I can add is that if you play 2/4 or below (definitely 1/2 or below), you are leaving a lot of money on the table if you do not work these bonuses. You can do what you want and only play at Party, but there are terrible people at every site. Trust me, if I can beat them they cannot be that good Seriously though, Party is not the only place that has bad players. I can understand if you don’t want to go outside of your comfort zone, but if you have a small bankroll you’re a fool not to go for them. ‘Nuff said.

Following up to last week’s Canterbury trip, I noticed that my favorite baseball blogger (well, OK, my only one as I’m not really a baseball geek), and fellow Minnesotan, Aaron Gleeman made his first trip to play poker at Canterbury. I always enjoy reading about other people’s first trip to the casino and his is good. Go read about it at his site.

Thursday night was Mrs. H’s birthday and I had arranged dinner at McCormick and Schmick’s, a seafood restaurant. I’m not a big seafood guy, give me a nice rare steak and a scotch, but these guys do it right and it’s not too outrageous considering they have to fly things into the middle of nowhere. A couple martinis (Bombay Saphire of course) and some blue marlin later and I was tired, so no poker was played that night. She enjoyed her presents this year, so all was good.

Friday was, of course, New Year’s Eve. The wife and I, being old fuddy duddies now at 34 (well, she’s 35 and a craddle robber, but…), remembered that we never did get tickets for the party thing that we were going to go to, so we said screw it and stayed home. I played poker for about 3 hours and finished -2BB. Other than that I just watched the MN Gophers kick some ass and become the Music City Bowl Champions. Woo hoo, or something.

New Year’s day was spent watching some killer college football. I usually don’t watch college football as it really doesn’t do a lot for me. I’m a big NFL fan, but I’ve just never got into college. I have to say though, the Iowa/LSU game was incredible. Then immediately following that was the Rose Bowl and another exciting game. Both games went down to the last play and were very fun to watch.

Of course, I couldn’t let almost six hours of football go by without some poker. Throughout the day (including during the Fiesta bowl where Utah just destroyed Pitt) I was playing on Paradise. I played for a couple of hours before their servers crashed and I decided to work on some other stuff for a while. Once again, across six table sessions I was down about 4BB.

Sunday is NFL day and a chance to see if the Vikings will choke once again. Of course, they did, but backed into the playoffs anyway thanks to a Carolina loss. The Vikes have no defense and evidently the offensive line decided to take the day off today. Hopefully they’ll pick it up a bit in the post-season although I’m not holding my breath.

Keeping with tradition, I played poker while watching the second game. I pulled up a couple of Paradise tables and went to it. I proceeded to drop my $40 buyin at one table down to $8. About that time I was finally able to get onto a second table. I was about ready to drop the original one when I went on a rush and worked it back up to $30 for a while.

Mrs. H comes up a bit later asking me to “cook dinner”. I decided that Hamburger Helper was a good choice and promised to start it shortly. I quickly check the cashier at Paradise (they tell you how many more “points” are needed to clear a bonus) and realized I only needed 16 more raked hands to clear another $10. Well, dinner will have to wait. I decide to go into super tight mode in order to wait out the remaining hands.

How’s that saying go? “The best laid plans…”

I proceed to get AKs, AQo, KK, QQ, KQs all within those hands. I won with all of them. Most were fairly small, but the Hiltons paid off handsomely when I got quads on the turn. I was in EP with only the button left. I had to decide what to do, lead out or check raise? I decided to play it like a bluff and waited for a while, then bet. The button raised! Thank you. I pretended to go into the tank, but then re-raised. He waited a bit and then just called. I then was obligated to bet the river fearing that he’d just check behind me. What did he have that warranted raising the turn with a pair on the board? The ever powerful K7o. See, this crap happens everywhere, not just at Party. He lost $11 on a K high.

Anyway, I finished my Sunday NFL session at +50BB (+30 on one and +20 on the one where I was down to $8 earlier) and went to make some Chilli Mac. It’s about time I have a killer session again. I would, however, be happy with more consistent smaller winnings rather than having a bunch of small losing sessions and then a big win. I’m sure that’s being too resulted oriented, but sometimes it gets frustrating.

Paradise is treating me well. I’ve cleared $100 in bonuses and made a decent amount in play there (despite the small losses on the previous days). I’ve still got $50 left to clear there, but may wait a bit now that the beginning of the month is here with new Crypto bonuses and my desire to try the SNGs again. I plan on playing as many SNGs as I can this week in preparation for a live tourney on Friday night.

I suppose I should register for class too, after all they start on Monday. I just don’t feel the desire right now. Work pretty much sucks and is in a weird state right now. I should take advantage of another free quarter of class (well, technically I have to pay it back if I leave before a year). I’d be foolish not to take advantage of it. We’ll see if I will have to worry about paying things back soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 2nd, 2005 at 7:52 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.