Sunday Sundries

The poker bookshelf in my leaky abode. [Click to enlarge]

Had some family emergencies crop up this weekend that caused my trip to the Arizona State Poker Championship to get canceled. Mother-in-law took a tumble and seriously hurt her back, and my Dad had emergency car issues he needed help with. While it's nice living in the same town as these parents, they're all getting up there in age and it seems like the frequency of them needing help from us is increasing.  Sigh. Gonna have to plan a Vegas trip to play in some tourneys to make up for missing this big tourney-- assuming no more last minute emergencies.

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Listened to a Thinking Poker podcast this week and the guest was Tony Dunst... and I was kind of surprised at my reaction listening to him speak. I've been a fan of his commentary in the televised WPT events on TV, and while the jacket and tie shtick is a bit silly, I've always thought of him as an otherwise regular guy. Bzzzt. Bottom line is Dunst comes off as a self-important douche in the interview. He reminds me of one of the junior engineers I used to work with who had the world all figured out-- and of course it revolved around him. My opinion of Dunst definitely dropped a few notches after listening to his theories on life. No, nothing he said is particularly horrible... he just comes off as pretty shallow and self-centered. Sad.

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Had a good week online. Lots of lucrative $100NL Zone poker to pad the 'roll, plenty of profitable $400NL 6max to keep me sharp, and some donations back to the poker gods in $100 PLO to keep me humble. Gonna let it all ride until the end of the month and then make a nice little withdraw if things continue as they are going. Woot.

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Played in my monthly bar tournament and bubbled the damn final table again for the third time in a row. It's cheap and a fun group of guys, so I'll keep playing in it, but the blind structure definitely favors luck over skill, especially after the first hour of play. I got down to 17 big blinds and woke up to AKs. Two limps in front of me by relatively weak players. I bump it to 4x and both yahoos call. Flop is A-Q-3 rainbow. Check-check-I jam and get insta-called by both. First guy turns over QQ for middle set. Second guy turns over AA for top set.... and my TPTK is third best and fails to improve. Whatchagonnado?

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While I was away on a recent biz trip, my bride took it upon herself to clean my home office space and get all my books sorted and stacked on bookshelves. She didn't sort the poker books, but she at least got them all into one bookshelf. I just counted this morning: 247 of the crazy things. Most of them bought second hand at used bookstores. Some great, some good, some bad, some truly terrible. And yes, I've read almost every single one. Really.

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Non Poker News Follows...

Getting some great thunderstorms this summer, with lots of desert-nourishing rain coming down in bucketfuls every other afternoon. Bad news is I have a crazy intermittent leak in the house that only shows up every fourth rainfall or so. Manifests itself as damp carpeting in one of the rooms. I've spent hours chasing this down but no dice. Argh. Gonna spend another afternoon today poking around some more in the nooks and crannies of the structure looking for the pathway for this agua into the casa.

All-in for now...
-Bug