Shirley's Journal

May 2008

May 29
I went to Cleveland earlier this week and had a blast with my friend Tricia. I have always been an amusement park junkie, so this Christmas my mom bought me two tickets to Cedar Point along with a couple airfare passes. Unlike California, Ohio has seasons which means the park isn't open year round. The park opened up a couple weeks ago and this was the best time for me to go considering I will be extremely busy with the World Series, the PokerStars Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT), summer vacations and the Legends of Poker in the upcoming months.

The amusement park was great and had a couple of rides that were unbelievable. Their Top Thrill Dragster ride is in my top two list with X from Magic Mountain. I am glad we chose (or were forced) to go in May because it wasn't busy at all. We were able to do all the rides several times each because we never had to wait longer than fifteen minutes for any ride.

The following day, we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. Music has always been a big part of my life, but I didn't think I would like to spend a whole day looking at memorabilia and stuff. We actually spent seven hours in the place and I could have stayed in there another seven hours without any sort of problem. After we left the place, we got a taxi ride and our driver was really cool. We asked him to drive us around and show us the sites. He even showed us a picture of their "casino" which was really just a tent. After our drive, we went to dinner at a Blues club that had live music and had Cajun food. Along with our food, we had some fruity blue martinis with Pop Rocks around the rim and after four of them we were pretty lit up.

The stay was short and sweet and we headed home the following day.

I can't believe the World Series is right around the corner. I am finally getting pumped up and ready to play. I have been playing a wide variety of games including short handed Limit Holdem which should help me in the HORSE tournaments. The Holdem portion seems to be a large factor in who does well in the HORSE events because so many more hands are dealt during that round than in the other games. I just found out that this year at the WSOP, they will be playing one round of each game, so we will have equal parts of every game and that should help me immensely.

After the World Series, which will be longer than usual this year because I am playing so many events including the main, I plan on taking a vacation to Cancun with my family. No poker allowed, just hanging out by the pool, going snorkeling and all of the other fun activities we can think of.

After the Cancun vacation, it will be back into poker mode for PokerStars LAPT event in South America. I decided that I am going to play in at least one tournament in each of the Stars tournament series in the LAPT, Asian Pacific Poker Tour (APPT), and the European Poker Tour (EPT). I have already bought in for the event held in Punta del Este, Uruguay. And as of now, the other tournaments I decided to play in is the APPT event in Australia and the EPT event in the Caribbean. I will probably play in one more EPT event next year, but haven't decided which one. I think I'll play in a total of four over the course of one year.

May 24
I will be playing in the main event of the World Series of Poker courtesy of PokerStars. I am now rooting for a couple of my friends who are in the midst of trying to win their seats via the Step program. The program is great and I am fairly confident that two of my friends are going to pull it off because they are good players and have moved up the Step ladder with ease so far.

May 17
I played two FTOPS events on Full Tilt Poker this week and blanked on both. The HORSE event was Tuesday and there were about 650 players. I lasted until 134th place. It seemed that I would not do well in the Holdem, Stud, and 8 or Better rounds and then would clean house in the Omaha and Razz. I even made the comment to myself "Thank goodness for Omaha." That comment came to bite me in the ass in the last round of my play. As a matter of fact, I was eliminated during Omaha when my opponent was drawing almost dead.

Razz wasn't much better. Once again, I got far in the tournament (played for four hours), but failed to cash. The game is so frustrating at times and there were a few occasions where I was rambling to myself "That's just so bad", "What was he thinking?", "These players have no clue", "What a bunch of morons" and more.

Since the Razz tournament on Thursday, I wasn't able to play much, so I jumped on a couple small tournaments tonight. Wouldn't you know it, I finished 3rd in one and was two out of the money on the other. Couldn't pull it off in the FTOPS where the money was 30 times what is was in the little tourney tonight.

May 12
I plan on playing in a couple FTOPS tournaments this week starting with tomorrows HORSE tourney. It took me awhile to decide whether I should play the $500 event at Commerce or the $500 event on Full Tilt. I know the prize pool will be much greater online, so that is what I decided to do. I am also going to play the Razz tournament on Thursday.

Tonight I played in a No Limit tournament on PokerStars and finished in the money. It wasn't a huge payday for me, but at least I made a little cash. I really pissed a guy off early on in the tournament, so that made it a little more fun. I had some chips throughout the tournament and then lost about half my stack right before we made the money when I flopped trips and the guy flopped a flush draw. On the turn, another club hit and I wasn't going to get away from my hand with the odds I was receiving (I also had the straight flush draw). After losing the hand, I went completely card dead, but was able to finish in 35th place (they paid 54 spots).

May 11
I did the walk on Saturday and wasn't able to run any of it because there were too many people there. Next year, I will make sure to sign up as a runner because they started earlier than the walkers For some reason I thought it was a better idea to sign up as a walker (and then run a portion) since I didn't think I would be able to run the entire race. Bad choice on my part.

After the race, I went to the spa and had a nice long massage and then lounged around in the Jacuzzi for a bit. I left a couple hours later and I was totally whooped. I ended up calling it a night at 6 pm. Waking up at 6 in the morning is definitely not my thing and my body needed the rest so I could recover.

I didn't play the Omaha tourney tonight because I got home too late from the racetrack. For years, I have taken my Mom to the horse races on Mother's Day and she loves it. I make semi-educated bets (I understand a little of the racing form), but my Mom bets like the typical woman. If she likes the name of the horse, she bets on it. My strategy isn't much better than hers because we both broke even for the day. Even though I didn't play the tournament, I played an Omaha ring game and basically broke even again.

May 6
Last night, I played in the $77 6-handed No Limit event on PokerStars and managed to pull out a sixteenth place finish after I made a come back with only $700 in chips late in the tournament.

I made a couple moves in the later stages that worked out and I was fourth in chips for awhile. I lost a large portion of my stack when I reraised my opponent when holding 99 and he called my raise. The flop came QJ6 and the guy led into me. If I decided to call his pot sized bet, I would have been committed and he had me covered. What could he have called my reraise with preflop that I could beat? I could beat AK or TT and that is about it. I folded and the guy chatted "KK". I was knocked out a short time later.

This weekend I will be doing the Revlon Walk to raise money for Breast Cancer. I just started running and have worked my way up to about 2 miles a day (with short walking breaks when needed) and enjoy it because it is a good way to clear my head. The walk (run) is only 5k and I am going to try and run the majority of it.

May 2
I am so relieved about having those poker definitions finished finally. I spent hours on end trying to get them done and was tired of looking at terms like counterfeit, marked cards, wild card, and straddle. As a reward for finishing them, I gave myself a day off from the computer and went to the Bike to play some No Limit live action.

I headed over to the casino by myself and sat in the $300-500 buy-in game with $5-5 blinds. Immediately, I won a few hundred dollars when I flopped top pair, top kicker with AQ and it held up. For the next couple hours, nothing exciting happened and I fluctuated a little bit. There was one guy at my table who seemed like a crazy man and I won a big pot off him when I held pocket tens. I still have no clue what he had, but I got a bet out of him on every street on a board of 227Q2.

The next exciting hand was when a player moved in on me for about $130 from first position on a board of 653. I was the preflop raiser and was holding pocket 7s. I thought there was a very good chance my hand was good and if I was wrong, I at least would have outs. The guy behind me mucked pocket nines face up. The turn was a seven giving me top set and the river paired the five. I showed my sevens full and the guy that had moved-in threw his cards face up and walked away with disgust. He had flopped a set of threes - poor guy.

Most of the time I go play live, I tell myself "I gotta get out more". I enjoy playing at the casino a lot more than I enjoy playing online these days. On top of it, I play much better sitting face to face with my opponents. So, my next trip will be within a week or two.