Sunday, February 05, 2006

Good game but commercials lame (and poker rocks)

Man, what a good game, better than many of the blowouts that haunted the Super Bowl throughout the 80s and 90s.
But boy, those commercials were horrible.
I liked, like, four.
• I LOL at the Budweiser "streaking" sheep commerical. That was my favorite.
• I liked the Hummer being picked up by the two giant monsters, namely because I loved all those monster movies when I was a kid. Godzilla rules!
• I liked the woman saying, "I'm surrounded by jackasses" line as a take on all those monkey commercials.
• And I liked Kermit the Frog selling the car, but only because I'm an outdoors person myself and could relate to his adventures. Hey, Kermit, if you ever want to climb a peak together, look me up.
Now, onto the lame commercials:
• Burger King and the huge production? Are you serious?
• That Jessica Simpson cover of "These Boots Were Made..." was horrid enough, but did she really have to make a Pizza Hut commercial with it? Does she have any pride at all?
• The Diet Pepsi machine commercials were bad enough. Really, do we need another ad campaign featuring a can or a soda machine as the centerpiece.
IT'S NOT FUNNY!
• I know it's only a movie preview, but does anyone want to see that new Shaggy Dog movie starring Tim Allen? Is this what parents are reduced to, two hours of crappy cinema to give their kids a good time?
Sheesh. I'm taking Jayden to the park.
• Could the NFL be any more pretentious? Its NFL Network commercial basically stated, through glossy photos of families and good, wholesome people, that the Super Bowl was the most important event in American history. It was like watching a tribute to WW II vets or something.
Better luck next year, ad agencies.
• • •
In my last post, I talked about how the cards were improving, but they went sour again, and last week was probably my worst of tournament play in my life. I cashed 4 of 17 SnGs. That's just sad, sad, sad. It makes me question my whole game plan of being patient and playing good starting hands. If you don't get good starting hands, what can you do in that case?
Well, Saturday, it took a live game at my buddy's to turn things around. My biggest hand of the night was an Omaha hand, of all games, when I had K,K, trash, trash, and the board came K,J,A rainbow. A very scary board, especially for Omaha, but the guy bet only a quarter of the pot, so I hung with it. These are not experienced players but they do have some tricks up their sleeves and are getting better all the time.
We checked it around when a 4 fell, making me think that maybe my hand was good after all.
On the river, another 4 fell, eaning the only hand that could beat me was if someone was holding A,A. Again, no one raised, and even if they don't raise much, I knew they would with A,A, so when my friend bet the pot plus some, I raised him the pot back.
He paused, paused, paused and then showed me J,J and folded.
Wow, good laydown. See, he's getting better all the time.
The other friend called me nothing.
Ah, well, he beat me last week in Omaha, so justice is served.
So after a very good night at the live felt, our game broke up at 12:30 a.m., early, so I went home for some late-night Saturrday night poker, usually when the drunk fish are out swimming. Sure enough, I doubled my $25 buy-in in about a half-hour and then went to bed.
Sunday I won one tournament and took second in another.
Poker gives you such a good feeling when things are going well. Ahhh.
I just wish it went this well all the time.
Don't we all.

1 comment:

TripJax said...

Sometimes it comes down to what you do with your medium/bad hands that makes the difference.

Here's a thought...

On your next SNG, follow this routine. Since you do a good amount of folding the crap cards as they come up, right after chucking them into the muck, take a look at the table and what position you will have in the next hand. Make position the first thing you think about before the actual cards you receive. This becomes important for when the action is limped or folded to you. Your game can suddenly open up a little bit in middle to late position.

That was just a thought so take it for what is worth (which is not much!) There is much more to it than what I've written above obviously, but I think you are focusing too much on the cards you get instead of the action at the table and your position. If you take more control of the action at the table you start to get the answers you want from people.

May the felt be with you.