MoJo Westbrook'd Me

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	964,012
SNE Pace:	89,952 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days (PSP)

The weekend has been disappointingly break even poker wise, but I've been thoroughly entertained by sports happenings in the past 24 hours.

First, my fantasy squad will be moving to 8-2 (and remain in first place) after squeaking out a second win over fellow Stars regular Vinivici's team today. This despite my stud RB Maurice Jones-Drew pulling a Brian Westbrook on me. Instead of running untouched into the end zone for a TD with 80 seconds to play, he (smartly, granted) took a knee on a one yard line, allowing the clock to run down and the Jaguars to kick a game ending field goal. He apologized to fantasy owners after the game.

The Calgary Stampeders won their divisional playoff match up against Edmonton today. One more win and they'll advance to the Grey Cup which is being played in Calgary this year (the Stamps are defending champs, repeat one time).

The Flames played a terrible game against a really bad Toronto team on Saturday night, but thanks to an exceptional effort from Kipper and passable efforts from Iginla and Boyd still managed to win 5-2. Winning despite playing poorly is the sign of a good team, right?

Today I booked flights to Nassau in the Bahamas for myself and my girlfriend. We will be attending the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure as one of my two SNE tourneys (I'll reach SNE around the 30th of this month). The vacation will be from January 4th to 12th, we'll be staying in an upgraded Cove suite in the Atlantis resort. I'm really looking forward to the water park, dolphin/sea lion habitats and snorkel activities. Maybe I'll run good in the $10k buy-in main event too, who knows?

Finally, I finished Disgaea 2 a day or two ago. Or I thought I did. It turns out the PSP remake has a whole additional game that becomes unlocked after you finish the original, so I am enjoying that content. My roommate texted me to say he picked up the new Mario multiplayer platformer for the Wii a few hours ago, so I imagine we'll be playing through that over the next couple of days. My girlfriend is still working her way through Dragon Age Origins and making good use of my surround sound gaming speakers in the process.

Unecessary, But Awesome Nonetheless

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	949,948
SNE Pace:	89,588 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days (PSP)

On Monday I elected to take a day off poker and ended up purchasing some Logitech G51 Computer Speakers. I had been toying with the idea of getting surround sound speakers for my PC for some time, and finally pulled the trigger. I did my homework and despite no longer being produced, the G51s had such glowing reviews I tracked down some old stock and picked them up. I also bought Dragon Age Origins for the PC. I'm not the biggest fan of "Western" style RPGs, but it had been reviewed very well and I do have a brand new gaming PC to use, so the decision was easy. It seems like it should be a very good time, though my girlfriend has spent more time with it so far than I have. She really likes it, and thankfully doesn't have the same bias against western style RPGs that I do.

Another positive, my fantasy football team the Nit City Nutpeddlers moved to 7-2 this week and continue to lead the league consisting of mostly small stakes Pokerstars regulars. The Flames won 1-0 in Montreal tonight thanks to a stellar shutout performance from Kiprusoff, improving to a very respectable 11-4-1 on the season. We'll start planning the cup parade shortly.

Finally, here's a fun hand from my Tuesday session. A few minutes previous to this hand villain (a megadonk, obviously) won a 400bb pot with a reg in which his J7o made the second nut straight versus the reg's middle set. I'm obviously not raise/shoving the flop because I think I have any fold equity, it's pure value against his range.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (9 handed)
MP3 ($212)
Hero (CO) ($233)
Button ($248.05)
SB ($227)
BB ($242.95)
UTG ($200)
UTG+1 ($250)
MP1 ($200)
MP2 ($817.45)

Preflop: Hero is CO with A, Q
3 folds, MP2 bets $4, 1 fold, Hero raises to $17, 3 folds, MP2 raises to $30, Hero calls $13

Flop: ($63) 3, 6, 4 (2 players)
MP2 bets $2, Hero raises to $50, MP2 raises to $98, Hero raises to $203 (All-In), MP2 calls $105

Turn: ($469) 9 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($469) 10 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $469 | Rake: $3

Results:
MP2 had A, J (high card, Ace).
Hero had A, Q (high card, Ace).
Outcome: Hero won $467

Musings

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	942,279
SNE Pace:	92,879 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days (PSP)

I feel like I've got an awful lot of stuff to talk about, so I'm going to try a point form format until I get to a funny HH.

• I'm running like complete ass this month so far.


• On Friday I managed to make right around ~$2k with rakeback, yet I've never been so mad about a $2k day. It could have very easily been my best day ever had I run mediocre instead of laughable. The 17k hands I ground out is one of the highest volume days I've put in this year.


• The one hand I actually had hold up where a fish wasn't already drawing dead ended up being my second largest pot ever won, stacking two fish at 400nl. They both had between 50 and 70 BBs behind.


• It is fortunate so many people are willing to stack off drawing dead or I'd be an FPP pro.


• I'm a good ways into Disgaea 2 for the PSP, which is actually very entertaining. For some reason I expected the plot/characters to be inferior to Disgaea 1 and 3, but they aren't. The only downside to Disgaea games is they all use the exact same engine, same classes, same monsters, etc. Never anything new besides plot/special characters.


• I did not finish Persona for the PSP, though I am near the end. The game just got tedious and unfun. To start off I was impressed that its combat system was a step up from the more recent entries in the series, but its plot/story/other gameplay ended up being so vastly inferior that I moved on. At least the Persona 3 remake for the PSP will be guaranteed awesome when it is released.


• The new 2D Mario platformer for the Wii is going to have wicked fun multiplayer. My roomate and I are almost through the Wii VC version of Secret of Mana, my undisputed favorite game of all time. SoM has really aged well. That Square-Enix hasn't announced plans to release Seiken Densetsu 3 (SoM sequel) for the Wii VC is criminal.


• The Flames won two overtime games in a row on the road, basically due to strong goaltending in each. Surprisingly, one of the two performances came from backup Curtis McElhinny. The Flames host the Rangers in about 17 hours.

Finally, here's a really funny HH from Friday. I obviously mislick the flop, and villain times down before he shoves. Villain is a reg, but seems to be on the casual side compared to most. He isn't very good and is somewhat on the loose/weak side (he runs 17/7). Villain most definitely is aware that my flop bet is a misclick.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (9 handed)
MP3 ($103.35)
CO ($118.30)
Hero (Button) ($100)
SB ($45.90)
BB ($104.10)
UTG ($188.50)
UTG+1 ($130.20)
MP1 ($73.05)
MP2 ($125.50)

Preflop: Hero is Button with K, Q
6 folds, Hero bets $3, 1 fold, BB calls $2

Flop: ($6.50) 7, 4, Q (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $46.50, BB raises to $101.10 (All-In), Hero calls $50.50 (All-In)

Turn: ($200.50) 9 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($200.50) J (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $200.50 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had K, Q (one pair, Queens).
BB had Q, 10 (one pair, Queens).
Outcome: Hero won $197.50

October Review - Finishing Strong

Perhaps the largest event that occurred during October was my building a new computer, replacing the fine machine I built five years ago. I'm thoroughly enjoying the new box and Windows 7 hasn't made me angry yet, so at the very worst it's as good as Windows XP, which was a very good OS.

In terms of poker, I started the month slow and finished rather strongly. October was a lot like August in that I ran quite poorly at 100nl, which makes up the majority of my volume. However, due to taking a lot of money out of 200nl and even 400nl, I managed to have a fairly strong showing. I'm pleased that a healthy 16% of my volume was at 200nl+ this month, and I hope that number keeps going up steadily. As I've already cleared all my milestone bonuses for the year, all of my profit this month will be from straight table winnings and FPP value.

On the negative side, October had five full "weekends" (Fridays + Saturdays are my high volume weekend days) as well as thirty-one days total, and I still only managed 186k hands. I've really started slacking off on weekdays, because I know I can get away with it. That said, I put in higher volume during the final weekend of the month than I have played in a long time, so at least I sucked it up a bit at the end.

Here's my monthly graph + table:


The Bottom Line:
$12,388.80 winnings
$3954.83 FPP value (70,622 VPPs x 3.5 FPPs/VPP x 1.6c/FPP)
------------------------------
$16343.63 USD total profit. At current exchange rate (which has gotten considerably better over the last week), this is ~$17,726 CDN.

I'd really like to wrap up SNE in November, but I know myself well enough to know that I'll probably end up actually hitting it during the first couple days of December. That will still allow more than enough time for Stars to book my PCA reservation and for me to book Westjet flights, so there's no real downside. 72,748 VPPs to go.