Cancer may take away my physical self, but it will also bring me a new life.
“God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.” – Voltaire
Leave it to a French philosopher to give us a quotation that could be so vehemently argued for and against. I’m guessing that when he wrote this somewhere back in the 1700′s, Voltaire wasn’t speaking of a wife who had cancer, and then proceeded to beat the crap out of it over the last 10 years. Ten freaking years. It’s left its scars. It reminds us daily of what once was. But it also offers us the ability to focus on the fact that we have the power to control what happens to our happiness today. And that makes life so very wonderful.
It was April 15th, 2002 that my wife Traci was diagnosed with cancer. It was before I knew who she was, but as she tells the story, it was something that was taken with the attitude of “I’m not worried. Just tell me what I need to do to beat this.” And she began the process of Chemo and eventually getting a bone-marrow transplant later that year in October. Doctors ruled her “Cancer free” which simply meant that the fight against cancer was won, and now it was time to battle the fight of all fights. The fight to live, and live well. Read more…
So in case you missed it, I wrote two posts (part 1 here, part 2 here) that led up to a decision to call off most of my stack with Aces on an 8c-7s-6c flop. Ultimately, I made the call and I was right, I was ahead.
I don’t want to focus too much on the result of the turn and the river, and instead want to focus on the play of making the call on the flop. I raised pre-flop an appropriate amount I believe, and I continued with a bet size that was appropriate. And when the SB villain moves in on me, I need to establish a range of what I’m ahead of, and what I’m behind. Read more…
We have a flop, and villain check raises all in. What do you do?
I know that I said that I would get this up two days ago, but it seems like the only time that I’ve been home has been to sleep the last two days. A somewhat unexpected turn of events. So with that aside, we’ll get back to the hand in question. If you missed part one of this discussion on how you should play aces in this spot, check out the full post here.
In summary, we’re on level one of the $340 Buy in NLHE tournament and UTG raises to 150 at blinds of 25/50. Two players make the call when action folds to me in position with Ac-Ad. The first question that I asked was, “do you raise or do you call.” Read more…
How are you playing aces in this tournament?
There are few things in poker that make a poker player happier than looking down at a pair of cards that have the letter “A” on them. Pocket Aces aren’t going to be folded by anyone pre-flop. It just doesn’t make sense. But how you play them before the flop can determine how a hand gets played after the flop, the turn, and on the river.
I want to take a look at a hand that I played at the Los Angeles Poker Classic at the Commerce Casino yesterday where I was dealt pocket aces, and get some feedback on the way that I played them. I’m going to present two different scenarios in two different post for the same hand, and let everyone weigh in on the best way to approach the play. Poker is a game that has a bunch of different opinions, and I’ll explain what my line of thinking was, and why I made the plays that I made, as well as the results which are far less important. It should be how you play the hand that matters, not the end result. Read more…
Harley is the newest addition to our family, and provided us with one heck of a week.
It’s been a rough week and a half since Christmas. The day itself was nice, and it’s always fun to see the kids open their presents and such, but the gift that Santa gave our family of a new 3-month old Golden Retriever Puppy has me questioning my sanity. Harley is a wonderful addition to the family. He has an awesome temperament, and is a warm and friendly addition for all of us. But having a puppy in the house is just tough.
It doesn’t make matters any easier by the fact that he was attacked by a Pit Bull just 3 days into having him. Now we’re playing nurse as well. I’ve been itching to get this down, so that I can simply get it out of my system, but work and the duties of taking care of a new dog have just been in the way. So here goes the story. Read more…
What if all of these teams had a chance at the National Championship?
Every year, about this time I sit down and spend some time in creating a fantasy College Football playoff bracket. I’m a huge opponent of the current BCS format, and I’d love to see the NCAA get their act together and finally put together an adequate playoff system to determine a College Football National Champion. I’m also a realist, and realize that the universities make far too much money from the currently flawed bowl system to even consider deviating from it, but it sure would be nice for us fans to watch a playoff. Instead, year after year, we’re left with nothing but passion and conjecture on who the nations best college football team REALLY is, and often debating whether or not the two most deserving teams ended up playing in the national championship game. Read more…
There is so much to be thankful for on a day like THIS day.
On a day where countless scores of people and their loved ones will sit down at a table and over-stuff themselves with Turkey and all the fixin’s, I finally found it in me a desire to write down some thoughts. I miss writing a great deal from time to time, but I also suffer greatly from a lack of motivation to do it on most days, which lends to the reason that it’s been more than a month since my last blog entry. But on today of all days, where we sit and recant the things that we’re thankful for, I had a few thoughts that I wanted to get down. Read more…
Congratulations to DeepStacks Live lead instructor Tristan Wade on his first career WSOP Bracelet win.
It’s been a while since I’ve played poker outside of the home game. Since I took a 4th place finish at the $120 buy-in Venetian in Las Vegas during Brett’s bachelor party, I haven’t hit the tables at all. Some of the reasons have been financial. I just can’t really afford to go play poker these days. But honestly, most of the reason has been a loss of excitement and desire, as I find myself losing the capability to connect to the game regularly.
I find myself having a more difficult time these days watching poker on television or even reading about it online. I’ll tune in when people that I know are doing well in an event, like a friend of mine Tristan Wade, who just won his first WSOP Bracelet. I first met Tristan at the World Series of Poker last year when he’d made a deep run in the Main Event. Read more…
Rafe Furst and Phil Gordon will continue to have my support for everything that they've done in the fight against cancer.
Change can be a good thing sometimes. It’s inevitable in life that as time goes on, things change. After all, we’re not immortal, and we’re far from perfect. As a result, things will be different. Change can be tough, and it can be good. But it’s an element of life that we must all cope with.
April 15th remains a landmark day for me in many ways because of the way that it changed my life. Gone are the days that I spent playing online poker. Gone is my online poker bankroll, seemingly tied up in what looks like a sea of mismanaged assets and misappropriated distributions among owners of a site that has fallen to pieces. I can no longer play online the game that I’m passionate about, nor can I carve out the time or the bankroll to play the game live. I’ve been forced to move on from poker, despite holding onto the love and the passion of the game. Things have changed. Read more…
We all got screwed by the Full Ponzi Poker Scheme
I’m not sure what all the hours that I logged on Full Tilt Poker are worth anymore. It appears as though the Department of Justice wishes that time that I spent, and the money that I deposited to be viewed upon in the same manner as a purchase of a PlayStation game. I could spend countless hours clicking buttons, claiming that there was a skill element in my wins, and then walk away with nothing but time wasted.
The Department of Justice opened old wounds in poker players’ souls yesterday and then poured salt directly on them. The most recent revision to the civil complaint originally filed on April 15th now includes the names Howard Lederer, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, and Rafe Furst. The last one bothers me the most. The DOJ’s chief lapdog, US Attorney Preet Bharara went so far as to call the Full Tilt Poker concept a full fledged Ponzi Scheme, aimed at taking away customer money without the intent of giving it back, and instead distributing it among it’s chief board members and owners (of which there are purportedly 19). “Full Tilt was not a legitimate company, but a global Ponzi scheme. Full Tilt insiders lined their own pockets with funds from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited,” said Bharara. This giant mess got even messier, if that was even possible.
Let’s try and summarize the list of events: Read more…