Royal Sampler Link of the Month Award

Another blogger linked to me, an occurrence so extraordinary I simply must draw attention to it. The lonely vacuum of my blogging world was pierced by a Will Ferrell avatar, which gave me some hope that some people, somewhere, may be reading this blog (the fact that Will Ferrell was involved made the event doubly pleasing). So kudos to you, Navy Guy Poker - for your act of mercy on this suffering blogger you have received the Royal Sampler Blog of the Month Award, and an inclusion in the elite group of links to my right.

Previous to this, I had a temporary whiff of blogger celebrity when the Blogfather himself assured me he would mention me in his blog (I had emailed to him to plead (and I do mean plead) for his most illustrious attention). But as the weeks went by I realised that IGGY was probably just being ironic, so I hopped back into my box to contemplate the vacuum.

(Entreaty) Come on, IGGY, you’ll link to Dutch Boyd but you won’t link to the Royal Sampler? Where is the justice? (Entreaty Ends)

One other thing – if you, dear reader, don’t think that Anchorman is a work of comic genius, you deserve a roundhouse kick to the groin. Debate is not welcome on this statement of fact.

If you agree that yes, Anchorman is a work of true genius, then feel free to add a comment below. If not – take it to Dutch’s blog: he loves that sort of crap over there.


*****

As to any poker–related activities, I am in a rebuilding stage at the moment. That is, I’ve blown a lot of my bankroll playing satellites into big tournaments, and thus am playing SNGs (lately with little success) until I build my stack up to a reasonable amount. Still a while to go yet.

Other than that, I played a live 20-person tournament last week, and managed to win. But that wasn’t the interesting thing. The interesting thing was this tournament took place in a warehouse in an industrial area of the city I live in.

It felt very Rounders as I was heading out to the location – a phone call beforehand (huddled with two friends at a local pub), an affirmation of the venue and numbers we would bring, crawling along deserted streets trying to find the nondescript doorway. And the set-up was very Rounders: three tables in an unused storage building next to a smash repair joint. Nice.

The characters involved, fortunately, were not Rounders – they were a bunch of young guys fairly new to Hold ‘Em, who wanted to learn, but also were happy just to play and have a few beers.

As to the card playing, we started with 2500 in chips in a medium/fast structure. I hovered around 2500 – 3000 until the final table, where I hit a few hands and managed to build my stack. I went heads-up against a guy who hadn’t properly adjusted to short handed play (he was playing too tight) and kept pushing all-in until I had nearly all the chips (the blinds were pretty big by this stage). I got the rest of his chips when he finally called me with J3 when I held T8s. I turned trips and walked away with 200 bucks.

All in all a pretty good night.