Poker update

I haven't written a poker update in a while and I actually have a few (relatively) interesting things to report, so here goes:

A couple of weeks ago, I came in 3rd in a NLHE tourney with 45 players. That is a strange and new field size for me, as usually I'll either play in a big MTT (multi table tourney) with at least a couple hundred people, or a sit and go (SNG) with somewhere from 5-10. This was technically a SNG, meaning it started as soon as 45 people signed up. I don't remember too many specific hands from this one; I just played solid poker throughout and managed to do pretty well.

A day or two later I tried out another new endeavour on the virtual felt: a HORSE tournament. HORSE is a fixed limit form of poker that rotates amongst five different games: Hold 'Em, Omaha High/Low, Razz (lowball), Seven card stud, and Seven card stud high/low, eight or better (Eight being where the "E" comes from). The WSOP added a new HORSE event this year with a $50,000 buy-in and the true pros and poker aficionados consider it the best test of a player's skill because of the variety of games. I've played some HORSE on-line at Full Tilt and I've done well before in some cheap SNGs but this was my first shot at a big field. 198 players signed up and my strategy was simply to play tight and see how things would go. In the past, I've noted that many players in these tourneys are surprisingly bad at several of the games, usually the Stud varieties (note: Razz is simply seven card stud but with the lowest five cards winning). I am by no means a stud expert but I've worked at it enough that I don't consider it too much of a weakness in a tourney like this. I've also gotten pretty decent at Razz after some practice.

Anyway, the tourney went well. I lasted into the money and eventually the final table. The blinds got very high at this point--big enough that players often found themselves all-in when playing any given hand. I managed to keep grinding away and I got to heads-up during a Hold 'Em round. My opponent had a huge cheap lead on me, more than a two-to-one margin, after he knocked out the 3rd and 4th place finishers. I managed to draw nearly even on a lucky suckout, catching a three-outer on the river. After that, I just dominated the guy. The Hold 'Em round soon ended and it only took a few hands of Omaha for me to pull out the victory. This was the first MTT I've won in a while and it felt great, especially pulling one out in my first try at HORSE.

My luck didn't carrry over to my first home game in quite some time. On a weekend trip to Memphis, Dad and Casey put together a small game with a few of their guys up there. We each threw in $10 and played a quick NLHE tourney. I tried to play tight but it's tough to stay too disciplined in such an event. I lost a decent amount of my stack with A-J, then got knocked out when a K-10 caught up to my A-10. It's probably better this way though--at least the Memphis guys won't have me pegged for a ringer and I should be invited back to their game. Despite the loss, it was a lot of fun and I'm eagerly looking forward to the next Memphis game.

The last interesting tourney was this past Saturday night. Daniel Negreanu sponsors an event called "The Protege" in which he tutors one lucky person for a few months and stakes the winner into $40,000 worth of major poker tourneys. The first winner of "The Protege," Brian Fidler, came in 2nd place in just his second event after meeting with Daniel and won over $200,000. Negreanu is now preparing for a second Protege competition and he has a variety of ways that people can win a seat at the Protege Final Table of ten. I am a charter member of his message board at Full Contact Poker and as such I was given some freeroll shots at qualifying tournaments. On Saturday night, I made the top five and advanced to the next leg. To spare the details, the set up is this: on this coming Friday night, I'm in a tournament with 18 people. The winner gets a seat at The Protege Final Table, which just so happens to be taking place in the Bahamas in December. So that would be pretty cool. It will be tough, as all of the players qualified as I did, so they should have some game. But we'll see how it goes.

Rock Star: Supernova

This is a one-shot column that I wrote for the RTVC website after the finale last night. I've had several e-mails from readers; some feel exactly like I do, while others feel that I need "a hearing-ear dog." I'm not sure if Pedro and Chewie would qualify in the eyes of that obvious music snob. Anyway, here it is.

SUPERNOVA DROPS THE BALL

This summer, CBS brought us the second season of Rock Star, in which a group of established musicians use a reality show to select a new singer. I didn’t catch season one, simply because I’m not a big INXS fan and the concept alone wasn’t enough to draw me in. But when I heard the lineup for the season two supergroup, it sounded too good to be true...and I loved it. For people that don’t watch the show, I had a simple way to describe it: “It’s like American Idol, except with good music.” And the quick summer season was perfect for this show. To compare it to sports, it was like a perfectly executed two minute drill in football, with talented performers making outstanding plays as they steadily marched down the field. It was fast, riveting, and thoroughly entertaining.

And then they fumbled at the goal line.

I know that musical taste is subjective, and that point is reinforced by the often odd voting outcomes from this season. But the point is simple: I am, or at least I thought I was, the demographic for this band. I’ve seen the band members live on many occasions and the CDs that they played on are staples of my collection. In short, I grew up listening to these guys rock. But by choosing Lukas, it seems like they are attempting to completely deny their past – it’s as if we’re now supposed to act as if they weren’t members of Motley Crue, Guns ‘N’ Roses, and Metallica.

And for me, that’s a huge problem. Because that’s why I love these guys, and that’s why I watched the show. Sure, they made a point of announcing early on that they weren’t forming a “metal band,” and that’s fine. But to completely deny their musical legacy is disrespectful both to their original bands as well as the diehard fans of said bands…people who, I think it’s safe to assume, made up a large portion of the viewing audience of this season. Am I the only one shocked by the fact that we didn’t hear a single song all season from the bands these guys were in? We got Nirvana nearly every single week but they couldn’t throw us “Enter Sandman” or “Kickstart My Heart” a single time? Considering who these guys are, that’s practically blasphemous. It’s way beyond disappointing.

In week one, I was pleasantly surprised by Lukas’s performance. I didn’t know what to expect when this punk rock leprechaun took to the stage, and then he brought the house down with Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell.” It was the best performance of the night, and it wasn’t even close. The problem is that Lukas was never that good again. His vocal quality become grating and his stage presence borders on epileptic. He also seems to have no desire to sing the kind of music that the Supernova guys used to play, and sadly that’s probably why they picked him. I was intrigued when he elected to sing a Bon Jovi song just a few episodes ago, but then he chose an arrangement that made an 80s classic completely unrecognizable. In essence, that’s exactly what the band is trying to do as well by choosing him to front them.

Toby Rand was the clear-cut right choice. His original song was by far the best that any performer had to offer – it is catchy as hell and I’d love to hear it live with Gilby, Jason, and Tommy rocking along with it. But now I never will. Earlier today, I was looking at tour dates and considering making the trek to Dallas to catch the show in February, as that’s the closest the tour is coming to me. But now that Supernova has decided that they just want to be another 21st century vanilla modern rock outfit, I doubt I’ll even buy the CD. And I surely won’t shell out big bucks to watch Lukas’s manic stage contortions and listen to his choked-off squeals. The decision for a trio of metal gods to go that route is simply mind-boggling. So long, Supernova. To paraphrase a song that Tommy should know well, I’m not going to go away mad, I’m just going to go away.

Tom Brady is the man

Here is just another in a long list of reasons why I love Tom Brady. On the first play of the game today, he got absolutely blindsided on a blitz because of a blown blocking scheme in which a Buffalo linebacker reached him completely untouched--nobody even made an effort to block him and the guy had the most free and clear shot he'll ever have on a QB. Here's a question from a Globe writer and Tom's answer:

Q. That first play, you were obviously at an open set and they came on a blitz. Was that something you didn't expect or were you surprised?

TB: Well, like I said, we all could have done a better job and I could have done a better job on that play to recognize what they were doing, and I didn't. And it served me right that I got hit in the back of the head and fumbled. And that is no way to start the season. But we recovered and came back and then we put together a nice drive after that. So it would have been nice to start with the second drive of the game, but you know, just better learning on my part and making sure things like that don't happen.

He blames himself on a play that was absolutely blown by someone else. And he really means it. He's the best.