Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The check is in the mail

OK well not exactly a check... but Estie's Green Card (which is apparently Pink) is approved and according to the nice lady she talked to at the INS on Tuesday, January 30th it is "In the mail". They approved it on the spot and sent it off to be printed and sent to us. So in a week or two she will be a card carrying member of the Foreign Elite :)

It is now 3 weeks from January 30th, 2006 when she can apply for citizenship and 21 months when she can get permanent residence. A *HUGE* thank you to everyone who helped in this process as it is a big relief to be done. My mom and Dad, Estie's Mom, Jon, Katherine, and everyone else who went out of their way to make this possible. It is greatly appreciated and we will never forget the kindness and support of everyone in this time.

Thank you again and congratulations to Estie! I personally could not be prouder or happier at this time in my life.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Stepping Up

It hasn't been a good start to 2007 so far.... I got my second lesson of the year in tilt. After getting my Pocket A's cracked by 5's on the turn I dumped 300 more on the table before rebuilding from 600 down to 50 up. I decided not to leave because there was a drunk/idiot who I wanted to get his money and got sucked out on again for another 300 and then proceeded to dump all of the remaining 400 onto the table for a net loss of 700. Not only was most of it tilt induced... I strongly suspect that the Drunk/idiot was not really as much of an idiot as he played it up to be. He was getting away from an awful lot of big hands and making some marvelous plays with some marginal hands. I left very frustrated and actually stayed away from poker for a few days even though I had time to play.

We had a big tournament at IP this weekend and it got me to thinking about getting my skills up the level where I can compete regularly in those tournaments. First place was only $37,000 which is small for those tournaments but it is definately enough to make a dent in my bankroll! I also spent some time talking to a few of the local pros about moving up, bankroll management, games in town, etc... and made the decision to take a shot at 2/5 No-limit at the Palms. This is a 200 minimum, 1000 max buy-in game. It is higher than I have ever played before but I felt like my game was ready for it as long as I could keep my head about me.

The room at the Palms is nice enough. It is only 10 tables. 6 in one room for the limit games, and 4 in the "High Stakes Room" where they only spread 2-5 no-limit. They had 3 tables going with a list and it stayed that way the entire 5 hours I was there. The bathrooms are right in between the 2 rooms (very convient a huge plus), they serve red bull without charging $5 a can like the station casinos do. The waitresses were nice, and prompt... Dealers were acceptable, if not outstanding. The rake is one of the best I have seen in town with a max $4 rake on a $120 pot and high hands and bad beat. All in all, I understand the reason the word on the street is that Palms is the best 2-5 in town.

The game was pretty good. The stacks were very deep and the play was decent enough to take advantage of. We had a husband/wife team playing in the game and they appeared to be playing together which was a bit disturbing but they left shortly after I sat down. I played very well most of the night... however I misplayed 2 hands badly putting most of my money in when way behind and I should have known it. I dropped 700 on those 2 hands alone, and ended the night only up $426. It could and should have been better... and I never really got any big hands. I felt like I could play this game regularly and beat it for a sizable profit..... So I will definately be back. Especially with their half a million dollar first prize freeroll in June which I only need 300 hours of play to qualify for :)

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Year 2006 Summary

The year of 2006 was not a bad start. I finished with 545 hours played at the poker tables and up $9,794 for an hourly rate of $17.97. Almost 18 dollars an hour and that was with an awful May where I played almost 100 hours of negative poker.

My goal for 2007 is to play 100 hours a month at a win rate of $30.00 an hour. I think this is definately achievable for my continued improvement in the game. I also want to include 1-2 medium size buy-in tournaments each month (100-200 buyins) with deep stacks and slow blind levels. Probably MGM or Ceasers.

I had a good year dealing as well, even though I think I would have been more successful if I had just played poker. Dealing gave me the consistency I needed at that point and has been an enjoyable experience. I plan to remain on the extra board even if a full time position opens up in 2007 to allow me the abilty to continue to do tournaments and cruises. Estie and I have talked and discussed that I will not accept a full time position unless it is a primo spot until after the world series in 2007.

There are 2 Bellagio tournaments I want to do in the first half of 2007, as well as one at Mirage, Mandaly Bay, and possibly the world series again. I also have a cruise to Alaska, Party Poker Million cruise, and back to Mexico in November. All in all, a lot of interesting and enjoyable stuff coming up in 2007 and I have to fit poker in there somewhere :)

November and December were a decent finish to 2007 with only 58 hours and up $1540 for a $26.32 win rate. It was almost exclusively no-limit and I have continued into 2007 the same way. Except for one tilt induced session at Ballys where in just a few hours I dumped 800. Not a good start to 2007, but recoverable.

Oops... My bad.

Well the interview at INS was Tuesday morning and we got there at 8:35 for our 8:45 appointment. We only had to wait about 10 minutes and we got a nice friendly gentleman for our officer. He asked a series of questions to verify what we had written down and then only asked for more details/documentation if we didn't have all the answers correct. Unfortunately one of the questions was "When were you divorced from Emily". I didn't know the answer... (Estie did, but that didn't help!) so he then asked for the Divorce Decree... well I hadn't gotten THAT piece of information, and ask such we got the green form. The green form means you have to come back with the extra info before you can get approved.

Other than that, the interview was smooth as silk. We had everything else we needed and it was over very quickly. Once I get that copy and bring it back... we should have Esties conditional residence. If Estie is still putting up with me in 21 months from that date, then she will be given her permanent residence. 3 years from the date of the conditional residence she can apply for citizenship.... So it is fairly well finished at this point... a huge relief for both of us.

We went and celebrated by going to the Spa for the afternoon together. We had a lovely pedicure, wax, facial and a nice relaxing day (I didn't do the facial that is for women!). It was very relaxing and refreshing. Aftewards it was poker time!

Poker went fairly well yesterday with a 4 hour session finishing up 180. It was a quiet controlled day where I was never down, and didn't get many cards to play with. I had to work and grind for everything I got. Today was a different type of day. I immediately went down a full 100 when I went all-in with 2nd pair on an 10 high flop. I got called by QJ with a gutshot who caught a king high straight. He apologized profusely and actually turned out to be an incredibly nice guy from Dublin, Ireland. We sat next to each other for 5 hours and had a great time. He ended up giving back that 100 and a lot more over the rest of the night :)

After losing the first 100 I bounced up and down and around for awhile before getting extremely lucky playing the Hammer (2-7) from the straddle. I decided this guy was buying a pot and pushed all-in with 2nd pair. Unfortunately he had the 8 on an 8 high flop and called. It was the same Irish guy from before, and this time I sucked out hitting a 2nd 7 on the turn and taking down a nice pot with the Hammer!

I played well for awhile taking down some unclaimed pots, and making a few great plays. I made one in particular which I was very proud of. I had K/10 on the BB and 2 limpers to me and I made it 12 to go. They both called and the flop was 10 high. I bet out 25 into the pot and a player at the other end of the table who got a huge beat earlier and was playing a bit off-kilter made it 75. The other guy folded and it was back to me. I looked at the guy and the way he held his body and the way he looked at me made me feel like he wasn't very confident in his hand. I made the read that he was making a play at me with a drawing hand, and that I was ahead. I pushed all-in for 75 more into a 180 dollar pot and he called after some long thought. My read was dead on, he had J high with a poor draw and my K/10 held up for a nice pot.

The poor guy had lost his third buy-in for the night and had to take a break. The night was winding down when this hand came up. The table had gotten very passive but a lot of new players were coming in as the "night shift" came in. I limp in under the gun with Q/10 offsuit. It is raised by my the guy to my immediate left to 10. 4 callers back to me and I am priced in to call. The flop is 10/10/7. So I flop 3 10's with a Q kicker. I feel very confident in my hand at this point when the guy to my right leads out for 60 into the 60 dollar pot! This is same Irish guy from earlier! I had played with him for awhile and had a pretty good read on him. He made a few comments about full houses and quads which didn't fit with his body language so I put him on a weak 10 who wanted the draws out.

I called the 60 and it was folded around to a guy sitting with 87 in front of him playing his 3rd hand of the night who goes all-in. At this point I can't fold for 27 more into a 300 dollar pot and call as does the Irish guy. The turn is a King and the Irish folds to my all-in bet of 200 more. (I really thought he would call... but whatever). We turn our hands up and the short stack had pocket 7's for a flopped full-house and was WAY ahead. I had 6 outs to catch up and the miracle Q hit on the turn for the better full-house and the whole pot. That put me up 300 for the day and I managed to give some back before cashing out up 187 after 5 hours.

It is back to work on Thursday morning at 1 AM for 2 days of graveyard before the big 500 dollar buy-in event at the Imperial Palace at 9 AM on Saturday morning... I will probably be on graveyard next week, but it should be a good week with 2 big tournament days and a big weekend on graveyard. Last week was really good with the 5 days on grave and almost 600 at the poker tables.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Big day tomorrow

Well... tomorrow is the immigration interview for Estie and I. This is when they decide whether we got married for a green card only, and if we did everything right. It is the last major hurdle for us to overcome in a long, painful journey. It is pretty nerve wracking right now...

In addition to that, I had my first week working on graveyard. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be... and it looks like with one guy out for 10 weeks for a hip replacement, I will be on it for awhile. Once you adjust the sleep schedule it is actually pretty good.

World of Warcraft expansion came out, so that has been pretty exciting working to get my priest up to level 70. In addition to that, Estie has made some adjustments to her game and started playing a lot more poker with me... so both of us are working towards some big accomplishments in the near future.

I got my phone replaced after leaving it at the airport. However, I have lost every phone number I had.... so if you want to ever hear from me again, send me your phone number or call me. If you don't have my email address it is my first initial, last name, at gmail.com.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

I wanna go Fast!

Sunday, Jannuary 7th
It is amazing how much of a difference a real weekend makes after a real week at work. When your average day is 4-5 hours, days off are not that important. When you work 40 hours in 4 days... suddenly not going to work seems a whole lot more fun. This was the last weekend for Clarese as she heads back for Jacksonville at 7 AM Sunday morning. It is going to be very sad not to have her here with us. She is a real joy in our lives, and it is tough having her live so far away.
Saturday we went to the Sahara and the "Nascar Experience". Apparently it isn't exactly the biggest attraction on the planet since at 3 PM on a Saturday afternoon there were no lines, and hardly any people. We went on the rolleroaster there "Speed - The Ride". I have to say, that is a darn good coaster. Backwards and forwards, a vertical drop in reverse, one loop, some twists, with no waiting it was pretty solid. We also did the "Cyber Speedway". I was sorely disappointed. The graphics were awful, the handling was poor, the cars were difficult to use, and overall a poor lacking experience. Play an Xbox driving game and skip this one.
Now that Clarese and Johan are finished with their visit, which I wish had been longer but everyone has other things to do than entertain me. (I wonder why that is... I pay them enough I thought :), I can start my new year of poker. I want to start playing more serious tournament poker and plan to hit up the Venetian, MGM or Ceaser's tourney's first. They are respectable starter tournaments at 100 or so buy-ins, 30-40 minute levels and deep stacks. So it is a real tournament and not a push-fest like the 40-50 dollar ones around town. In addition the prize money is fairly large (4-5K for a win in most of them), so it is worthy of some effort. I want to try to hit 1-2 a week as well as 20 hours or so of playing. I will try to finish up the numbers from 2006 to give an idea of how things finished up. Overall it was a good year, and I hope next year is even better.
A funny story from the Nascar ride at Sahara. We are waiting our turn to get on, and the guy in the coaster already is smoking a cigarette. Now this SEEMS to be a bad idea, but what do I know. He then drops the lit cigarette into his lap and starts trying to find it in his layers of clothes, at this point the ride takes off. Speed is a turbo start, so he is launched back into his seat with a lit cigarette in his lap. On the return trip he states to his friends "My hat is gone. Right off my hand". Regardless of the fact there is a sign that says "No loose articles of clothing. Please put all hats, sunglasses, purses, etc into the lockers". He had a hat on as well as his 4 Nascar jacket wearing friends who all promptly took their hats off and put them in a locker. As he gets up to walk off the ride he falls back INTO the the coaster cars and has to be helped off the platform by the employees. I think he was drunk, hatless AND burned at this point. I am sure this guy will be a poster boy for natural selection one day

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Happy New Years! 4 Dollars to Call!

Well.. the new schedule came out and I expected to be on Day shift again this week, however it turns out I moved over to swing for the week. New years eve I am working at 5 PM "until". I was not terribly pleased as this meant I couldn't spend new years eve with Estie. It was our first one since we got married and I wished I could have been with her. The rest of my schedule was 8 PM on Monday and tuesday and then 4 days off for the rest of the week.

The time leading up to New years was great. We went on the Gondola ride at the Venetian and got to ride on the boats, and listen to the beautiful singing of the Gondola drivers. We had dinner at Mon Ami Gabi in Paris and some excellent food! I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting. We also visited the Bellagio Christmas display, it was amazing! Polar bears made out of live carnations, Reindeer out of Pecans, a 35 foot christmas tree, 100's of poinesettas. It was absolutely gorgeous! Estie and Clarese took her brother (Johan) to see the rest of the sites. They rode the rides at Stratosphere, and NYNY. They spent a lot of time sight seeing, and he utterly enjoyed the sights around town.

New Years eve Johan had to go back to England where he lives now, and I had to go to work. It started out slow, but since we had only 10 dealers and 6 tables it moved by pretty well. At midnight the room emptied out down to 1 table. It was very amusing to be sitting there on New Years eve with everyone counting down to the new year and we are there dealing out hands. "Happy new Year sir, 4 dollars to call".

After midnight we had a short reprieve when we got to have some dinner and relax a few minutes before the real fun started. With 300,000 people on the strip it was a mad house, and a whole bunch of those were coming in to play poker with us! Between 12:30 and 1:00 AM we went from 1 table to 9. It ran smooth as silk with me and Loughman at the front directing everyone, and the supervisor Rick getting the dealers on the tables and the money. As soon as a table was full they started dealing. We had all 9 tables running 10 handed at 1 AM and we held all 9 tables until 5 AM when we started breaking down. I ended up going home at 7 AM after 14 hours of work. I had reached that point beyond exhaustion where everything was just a haze. The nice thing was it was good money. The bad thing was it really really messed up my sleep schedule. Atlanta time, working mornings, then switching to nights, and getting off at 7 AM. I was definately broken. I was so tired on Monday when I got to work that I decided to go home early so signed the Early out list. Well I'll be damned if all the people from New Year's eve didn't want to go home! One guy called in sick, 2 people had to work overtime, and it was insane in the room. I ended up being their until 4 AM and coming home exhausted AGAIN. On top of that, one guy didn't show up for New Year's eve and was fired. So they added another day to my week giving me Saturday night at 9 PM. The next day I come in to work at 8 PM again and find out that another guy has been suspended for getting in a fight while off shift in the room, and now I have been given ANOTHER day at 7 PM on WEdnesday. My 4 day weekend has now become a 2 day weekend.

Tuesday I go in, and again sign the EO list trying to get home before 1 AM so I can get a good nights sleep. I am still not able to sleep past 11 or so... which really sucks when you go to bed at 5 or 6 AM and are already exhausted. Unfortunately for me... noone is going home again, AND someone calls in sick again, so AGAIN I am there until 4 AM. 3 Days, 22 hours of work all in the late evening and early morning. Welcome to the life of a dealer I guess. Tonight I am in at 7 PM and if they scheduled me for another shift I will probably cry!

Vacation Overload

There are times when you go on vacation and the story is "Yeah, we had a good time and got to see everyone again". Then there are other times where your vacation sounds like you decided to fill every waking hour with something to do... This was one of those trips.

To start out with I booked a great flight direct out of Las Vegas to Orlando to meet up with the rest of my immediate family and their spouses/children at Disney. It left Vegas at 11 AM and arrived in Orlanda at 6 PM. A Perfect flight on the 19th of december. So I requested my vacation time at work from December 20th to December 25th. This was less effective than I had planned it to be, since I actually left on the morning of the 19th!

I went to work and told them "Oh my I made a mistake I can't work on Tuesday". So I had to apologize to the big boss, and get him to fix the mistake I made. We were already short staffed that day, so the Supervisor was mad, etc. I then get home from work and get a message from my Mother saying she will pick me up at 6 AM on Wednesday morning in Orlando. 6 *AM*! Oh crap... I go check my flight info to inform her that she is wrong, when I find out she is right! DOH! I booked an 11 PM Flight on Tuesday! Well crap... so now I *CAN* work on the 19th since I was scheduled for 10 AM, and so I called my boss and told him so. Unfortunately I didn't write it down and send it to him, I just called him. I had originally written down the original problem. So written trumps verbal.. and when I came to work on Tuesday morning the schedule had changed and I was off that day. Oops.

The flight went fine and we got there right on time. Dad was there to pick us up and we got caught up with everyone at the condo before going to take a short 4 hour nap, drove to get Clarese from her Dad, and got everyone all together for dinner. The weather was moving in and the original plan was to go to Universal Studios on Friday and Disney Christmas thing on Thursday night. However, with Clarese only being in Orlando for 2 days, and it maybe raining on Friday, and us leaving on Saturday we decided to go to Universal Islands of Adventure on Thursday morning just in case we didn't get to go to Universal on Friday. It turned out it didn't rain until after we finished on Friday and we had a great time at everything. The rollercoasters were awesome, Clarese had a great time (I enjoyed it a little as well, but don't tell her. I want her to think I just went for her). Disney world for christmas was great.

We left early Saturday morning for the extended family christmas in Thomasville, and then got home late before doing our immediate family christmas on Christmas Eve. Our flight back was at 1 PM from Atlanta so we had to get up and leave Bainbridge at 6 AM. We made it in record time since there was no traffic and hit the airport early and had an hour and a half extra to eat and relax.

Now in most airports security they have a little white bucket that you put your keys, phone, etc in. While they have big gray trays you put the big stuff like your laptop. etc. However in atlanta they do not have the little white trays. So the man yelled at me for bringing my keys with me to the scanner, and made me go back and put them in a gray tray with my cellphone. This unfortunately put my keys/cellphone way behind the other stuff I put thru. Well... fast forward 2 hours and the plane is leaving in 10 mins which is when I realized I didn't get my keys and cellphone from the security checkpoint! So a mad rush, mad train ride, back to security where they had found my keys but NOT my cellphone. It could have been worse... we only have one key to the car! so losing both would have sucked. So now I have no cellphone! BAH! Time to get a new one and get everyone's number again.

Once I got back home and checked my schedule at work I was scheduled for the next 5 days straight after taking Sunday and Monday off for the vacation. It wasn't too bad with 3 9 AM shifts and all day shifts. This worked well since I was still on Atlanta time and was waking up at 6 or 7 AM anyways. So I had no problem getting to work. It was good to be back home after everything. It was great to see everyone, and I really had a good time. Clarese is with us now for the next 2 weeks and Estie's brother is coming to visit as well for a few days. So it is sure to be an exciting time!