Well my evening of playing Royal Holdem poker turned out to be quite fun.  You only play with cards, 10 and higher, all the other cards you take out of the deck.  There were four of us, so we had just enough cards to play with.

Its so weird because you get dealt a king, queen starting hand and think wow ok this isnt too bad, until you realize actually its not that good at all considering what everyone else could have!  The first player was out of the home tournament in five minutes!!  Its like turbo-charged poker!!  I managed to last another five minutes and then was busted by a flush.

Great fun was had by all and many laughs… its a great way to lighten things up and get the party atmosphere going! Or, if you just want to speed up your Holdem game and get a result quickly.

Everyone has their favorite hands and then also their less favorites.  For me one of my less favorites is king, queen off suit.

It was all because of one bad experience in my early playing days, which cost me a lot of chips, which I couldn’t really afford at the time.  You know how it goes.  I got sucked in and then sucked out… Started with king, queen off suit – nine, ten on the flop and I was hoping to get some luck on the turn and river, didn’t get much help, so I tried to bluff my way out of trouble… my opponent kept re-raising and eventually called… ouch!  You must know the story.

So now you can understand why I get a nervous feeling every time I get dealt king, queen off suit.  Ok maybe its not that bad that I break out into a sweat, but lets just say that I don’t leap out of my chair with joy and go “WHOOOPEE!!”

King, queen off suit just doesn’t do it for me.  I’ll have a look at the flop most times, to see if I can partner my royals or get a straight going.  But a lot of the times, I’ll just chuck it and fold.  Get out whilst I can, dont want to go there again!

Do you know what I love the most about the internet?  Its the power that it gives you to be anywhere, at any time and still able to do your work, find out information or get your daily entertainment.

I took a trip to Mexico last month and no-one (accept my family and a few close friends) new that I was gone.  I still did my work and played in an online poker tourney.  Sitting on a beach…sipping a margarita and connected to the world.

Believe me it gets a bit stressful when your connection goes down.  Then you have to get creative with your excuses… but apart from that, I had a wonderful holiday and was still able to do my work, earn some money and play poker online.  Life doesn’t get much better than that…

So what do you go for, when choosing an event to enter at the 2009 WSOP?  Big prize money, even if you don’t finish as the winner vs Fame of winning a bracelet.

It probably depends on who you are and how big your bankroll is.  Everyone wants to win a bracelet at the WSOP, but if you already have a few chips in your back pocket and your mortgage is paid off, then you would probably go for the fame and not the fortune.

Some may say, well I’ll go for the fame, because the fortune will follow… hmmm but I would disagree on this point.  Just because you are famous it doesn’t guarantee that you will make lots of money.  So, I would probably go for the money first… fame is not that important to me…

Then I would go for an event with the type of poker that I am best at, so that I would be confident of my ability and of winning.

But heh… thats me, different strokes for different folks.

What would you go for?

It was really interesting to listen to the poker pros on High Stakes Poker the other night, commenting on how aggressive some of the young online poker players are. They will think nothing of raising $50,000 and watching the other players squirm.

It may be that they have made easy money and have lost a bit of respect for money, so to throw $50 K into a pot is nothing to them. To the more experienced and battle hardened pros, when someone raises by $50 K, they sit up in their seats and think twice about calling or re-raising.

Many times they will frighten off other players and they have probably been getting away with it playing poker online. I wonder, if they are face to face with some of today’s poker pros, whether they would still be able to get away with such aggressive poker play. Sometimes yes, but all it takes is a few calls and aggressive play back at them, and if they lose a few hands in a row, their stacks will take a knock… and then what?

Play poker too loose and too aggressive, it can backfire on you. Its all about being selective and turning on the aggression at the right time. Some of the young guys have made a very healthy bankroll, by making money playing poker online. By developing a big bankroll they can now afford to play aggressive online poker.

It will be very interesting to see the young aggressive online poker players matched against the older, wiser, experienced poker pros in the WSOP – Not long to go now….

Spent my evening getting terrible starting hands and watching the game from the sidelines.  Very boring, to sit their the whole evening watching your colleagues play!  My table had good poker players and I was not too confident to go with a weak opening hand.  Then eventually I thought ahh why not, and went with my five, eight off suited.

I just thought lets give it a try and see what comes out on the flop.  Always remember that your opponents never know what you have, if you’ve been playing tight all night, then they may think ahhh she has finally picked up a good hand, I had better back off for now…

Anyway I got lucky with my five, eight – got another five on the flop and the river card turned out to be an eight.  My two pair ended up being strong enough to take that hand.  But then I tried it again later and got bust, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t – thats poker folks! Better than wimping and limping on the sideline!!!

Ok some of those April Fools pranks I can’t write about and perhaps are best kept to yourselves… but thanks anyway… who needs friends when I see what some of you did to each other…

Played in an online poker tournament last week, was doing pretty well, playing consistent poker and not taking too many unnecessary risks.  Until I lost a big chunk of my stack when my set of kings got beaten – can you believe it?

I was so sure that I had the hand won and there was no ways I was backing out, not with such a strong hand.  Thats poker for you.  You have to back your strong hands because otherwise you don’t win.  But once in a while someone else at the table also has a strong hand!

Anyway I never really recovered from that loss and slowly got elbowed out of the tourney… will just forget that one and move on… it happens!

I have started reading the book “A thousand splendid suns” by Khaled Hosseini.  After reading “The kite runner” and watching the movie, I decided to try his second book.  I enjoy his writing, its simple and straight forward, and his story telling is fantastic!

Reading about life in Afghanistan and what has happened there over history, is quite shocking!  I just cannot understand why or how people can stoop to such levels of violence and ugliness.  It makes me really appreciate everything that I have in my life and just how privileged I have been.

Got completly April fooled by my brother today… the little bugger!

He phones me up and gets me all worried because he says he got desperate and took a chance playing online poker.  Lost a huge bankroll and now can he borrow some money from me because he cant pay his bills this month… the little… (cant even bring myself to say it, I am so mad..).

Just you wait one day he might just get himself into trouble and if he comes to me… ha!  That’ll teach him to “cry wolf with me!”.

He first of all laid on the charm, as only he can do… says he has always admired how well I have done through poker and what poker skills I have etc etc… like the salesman he is, pouring out the compliments, luring me into a false sense of security.

Then he says, “Sis you know you can count on me for anything right?”

What do I say to that?  Of course, thanks, I appreciate it… but it was clever he first offered his help then he hits me with the, “well, actually I’ve got myself into a bit of a tight spot…being playing poker with some guys and it didn’t go so well…”

I completely forgot that it was 1 April, I got myself so wound up and mad, yet also worried about him… then he starts laughing… “April Fools!!”

Gotya big time!

President Obama has now got his $787 billion bailout plan approved (after a bit of haggling..) and the government is blowing hard on the embers of the fire to try and get some economic stimulus going…

No sooner than he has signed and the ink has dried,  what I call the “trickle effect” is starting to happen.  Every state has come up with “shovel ready” projects that will keep people occupied, demand going and stimulate…

Mayors are dreaming up all sorts of public works projects that would have been rejected as “crazy” a couple of years back.  “Shovel ready” means they are ready with their shovels to start digging or whatever…

Apparently Las Vegas could spend $2 million on neon signs!!  Way to go boys!!  Aren’t there enough neon signs glowing in Vegas?

And, where does the power come from, to power up the signs?  Isn’t that on the running expense side of things, which doesn’t help profits… ah no problem we’ll just retrench a few to help pay for the higher electricity bill…

I know that similar public works projects helped get us out of the great depression of the early 30’s.  But are we now just spending for the sake of spending????

Has anyone stopped to think will this help?

I got spoilt last night, I was taken out to a movie, by a nice man…

We went to see “The curious case about Benjamin Button”, what a great movie I really liked the story.

It just makes you think so much about life and the different stages of our lives, what we do when we are young, growing up, maturing.  It was so sad how their lives sort of passed each other on the way.  It must be incredibly hard to live your life backwards.

I didn’t realize that the film was based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald book.  Its well worth seeing, makes you realize how precious time is and how we have to make the most of things whilst it lasts.

Its no wonder it is an Oscar winning movie.  And of course Brad Pitt is just gorgeous!!!!