Golf status

I cannot wait to play golf this Friday! I was unable to play last Friday as I had hoped due to work. In addition to Friday, I will also be playing on Saturday in a tournament with my golf group. This is the last regular tournament before our big tournament in two weeks.

I have been practicing almost everyday. I've had to make a few adjustments to my original practice plan, but in general it's worked out great.

I have another lesson this evening. Last weeks lesson was very informative. Anyone who plays golf semi-regularly should take a lesson especially if they have a video camera. The mental image you have in your head of what your swing looks like will be shattered once you see the video. Ugly doesn't even begin to describe it. During the winter I worked on a fixing a bad habit. I tend to open the club face too much on my back swing which causes me to hit right. After working on it I pictured myself as having a perfectly positioned club face, but the video showed I hadn't fixed the problem at all.

My instructor also gave me a few other items to work on. I usually tend to hit the ball too low. Now when I hit it right following his corrections I get a higher trajectory on my shot. It's going to take a lot of practice to ingrain these changes.

I have also been working like crazy on my short game. Yesterday was my 2nd putting only session. I had never gone to a course or a range before last week and just putted. It was great knowing this was all I was going to do and I could focus all my attention to it. My putting is rock solid right now and my confidence is high. As for pitching, I developed a nasty shank off the hozzle. I would either hit a perfect pitch or shank it. Hopefully my instructor can help me tonight with this one.

I like happy endings

Last night was a long evening of up and down poker. I was getting tired and ready to read myself to sleep, so I turned off auto-post and waited for the blinds to come around. At this point I was up enough to offset my buy in to the PPM S&G. Then on my last hand here is what happened:

Party Poker 5/10 Hold'em (10 handed)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 8s, 8h.
Hero calls, 2 folds, MP1 calls, MP2 raises, 2 folds, Button calls, SB 3-bets, 1 fold, Hero calls, MP1 calls, MP2 caps, Button calls, SB calls, Hero calls, MP1 calls.

Flop: (21 SB) 8c, 9h, 5d (5 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, MP1 calls, MP2 raises, Button calls, SB 3-bets, Hero caps, MP1 calls, MP2 calls, Button calls, SB calls.

Turn: (20.50 BB) Ks (5 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, MP1 calls, MP2 calls, Button calls, SB calls.

River: (25.50 BB) 3d (5 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, MP1 folds, MP2 calls, Button folds, SB folds.

Final Pot: 27.50 BB

Results:
Hero has 8s 8h (three of a kind, eights).
MP2 has Ac Kd (one pair, kings).
Outcome: Hero wins 27.50 BB.

Not a bad way to end a session. The only thing that would have made the night better is if I won my PPM S&G, but I guess that will have to wait for another night.

PPM V

Party Poker has started up their satellites for next year's Party Poker Millions V cruise WPT event. They say the prize pool will be at least $10 million. I'm going to make it my goal to get on that ship next year with out having to stow away.

I took my first step last night. I played in two of the $9+1 qualifiers. If you win this single table satellite, you get a free entry into the $60+6 tourney and if you win there, you get an entry into one of the $500 semi-final tournaments where you have chance to get on the boat.

I took 2nd place in my first satellite which gave me $24, a net win of $14, hardly worth the time.
In the next satellite, after a long heads-up battle against a short stack, I took first. This guy kept hanging around, until I finally caught him stealing when he went all-in with nothing vs. my KQ. So now I have an entry in the $60+6 satellite.

In reflection today, I think I'm going to start skipping this lower level and buy straight into the $60+6 level. I think I'm better off spending the time playing 5/10 and trying to win the $60+6 than playing in the smaller satellite.

For example, last night I picked up $300 while playing 5/10. Now I don't expect to have this good of a night every time, but since my bankroll allows me to play at this level, my EV is higher by playing 5/10 than playing in a $9+1 S&G. However, my EV is higher playing the $60+6 S&G than playing 5/10. This is of course assuming that I value a $500 entry chip the same as $500 cash I could win playing 5/10.

My blog

I must admit I had no specific intentions when I started this blog. I thought it would be a cool place to talk a little golf & hockey and mostly to force myself to analyze my poker game. It's tougher to lie to yourself when you put it in writing. Also, this space gave me a source to practice something that has always been a weak point of mine, writing. I never thought of becoming a player in the blogger community; I was comfortable just lurking from the outside.

Then today two things happened that I thought were pretty cool:

First, I got my first bit of pimpage. The Blogfather himself has mentioned my little PG&H blog in one of his infamous Guinness fueled uber-posts. True, it was along with a couple dozen other blogs, but it's still cool to see your name in lights.

Second, I got my first non self-inflicted comment. It was from none other than the newly crowned WSOP blogger representative himself, Bob at One2Many. I guess I never actually expected people to read what I have to say. It's pretty cool to have someone stumble by.

Now I'm going to ponder what else I want to get from this bit of work avoidance. I won't have much time to do so if I plan on reading Iggy's uber-post, damn this one is long. It's going to take half a day to read it and the other half a day to stare at his last photo.

The weekend in review

I really wish I could have played in the blogger tourney on Sunday. The Blogfather, Iggy, gave me my invite last week, but as it worked out I tried to pack too much into one short weekend and couldn't make it in time to play.

I was able to watch the final table where there was some good poker action and great chat going on. Congrats to Bob at One2Many for winning and going on to represent all of the poker bloggers at the World Series of Poker. Pauly has a great play by play of the entire event over at Tao of Poker. It was great to see one of my favorite bloggers, Hank, at the final table. I hope someday he finds more time to blog, as his new job at Full Tilt is keeping him pretty busy.

As for me, I prefer to fish out at Party Poker. The guppies were out in force this weekend. I was disappointed to see that Party Poker decreased the upper limit on what seems to be their recurring month end bonus. In prior months you could get a 20% reload bonus up to $200 (deposit $1000 to get a $200 bonus), but this month they've lowered it to $100. It does make it much easier to earn the bonus since you only have to play 700 hands versus 1400 hands. Hopefully the bigger bonus will be back next month.

I was able to knock off about 300 bonus hands on Saturday and Sunday. When trying to knock out a bonus, I usually two table on 2/4, but this time with only needing 700 hands, I stuck with one 5/10 table.

Overall, I broke even on the weekend, but I had to dig myself out of a hole on Sunday. On Saturday, I had two hands that took just about all my chips at the table. In both hands I had a big pocket pair, which I fast played, and both times my opponent went runner-runner for a 4 card flush. the first time I had QQ and hit a set on the flop. We capped the turn and river both of which were clubs to give the bad guy, who had AA, the ace high flush which beat my king high flush. OK, enough bad beat stories. Sunday was just a grind with a few small wins that built me back up to even.

I worked a lot on my golf game this weekend. I'll update on that in a seperate post.