JeffreyLipsey.com

Yep, I got up early. One, because I had to get Marlyn up and two, I wanted to go see what I could buy. My first stop was at Office Depot; they had a laptop on sale for $350 and I wanted a good shot at getting one of those. I didn’t leave though until at least 8:30 am.


Since they have been open for a couple hours I didn’t expect to actually buy the HP Laptop and I was right. I was still there for 30 minutes though as I attempted to find a router they had on sale; Office Depot though had no Black Friday signs up so you had to go around and match the SKUs which took quite a while. They did have a few of the routers left so I picked up one of them and headed on to Pep Boys for a GPS Device.


Pep Boys had a sale going on for a $70 GPS Device which was a Tom Tom but by the time I got there they were all out. They did have 2 refurbished Magellan Maestro GPS devices for $5 more so I went heck, why not? If it lasts me 2 years I’m happy. After Pep Boys I scooted on to Target.


I can’t mention a couple things I bought at Target in fear of giving up some of my xmas gifts, but I did manage to finish shopping for my brother and mom. I also picked up several DVDs, including 30 Rock Season 1 and Psych Season 2; both were selling for $13.99 and are worth well more than that. Other movies that I picked up for $6 or less: I Am Legend, Gremlins, Goonies, Goodfellas, V for Vendetta, Interview with a Vampire, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


A couple of those I purchased at Best Buy, along with a Camera for Marlyn for only $60; again if it lasts 2 years I’m happy. I spent the rest of the day at home messing my GPS device, apparently you can hack the crap out of it and do a ton of cool things. More on that later.

I dont know where the time has gone. I didn’t play any tournaments this last Sunday as I went to my friend’s place and spent Saturday night. Marlyn was in Philadelphia for her work so the timing was perfect.


I did receive a rather scary phone call Sunday around noon from Poker Stars. Adil and I were headed to lunch and I saw an international number on my phone and when I answered the guy said it was an urgent matter. Heh, he got my attention pretty quick.


Actually what happened was that they were short one player from Virginia to play for Team USA in the World Cup of Poker. Apparently I was high on the TLB leader board for 2007 and, since I live in Virginia I qualified. Granted, I’m sure I was a last resort that came up on some filter somewhere (especially since in 2007 I lived in Illinois) but it was still pretty exciting to have Stars actively come search for me.


So I did play a tournament that day, it was a 17 man tournament with one player from each of the 17 east coast states. There were 4 different tournaments with 4 different players from each state (1 in each tournament) and the group of 4 that collectively did the best moves on to play another tournament. Well, I didn’t help my team at all as I busted 14th; however I got coolered AK into AA real early and I did survive a good 30 minutes on a shortstack.


Otherwise I had a fun weekend and the time has flown by. Thanksgiving is coming!

I started the afternoon playing and running pretty well. I got in 2 hours before dinner and ended up making about 3 buyins spread between 200 NL and 100 NL across Stars and Tilt, with the majority of the winnings at 200 NL in 500 hands.


Consequently, when I came back after dinner to get another 2 hour session in, I gave back nearly all of my gains. I feel like I played pretty well but the results were just catching up with my running well the rest of the month.


So when I came back I managed to drop over 3 buy ins, but I was lucky that I was losing the majority of buy ins at 100 NL and not 200 NL. I dropped 1 at 200 but lost 2 at 100 NL so I still managed to make a little bit of profit even though I finished down -24 BB. If I look at it in terms of buy ins it wasn’t a big deal, if I look at it moneywise it was very frustrating.


I feel good though, because I ran 165 BB below my expectation. Another good sign is that I made more money today without showdown than I did at showdown, which absolutely makes no sense.


In all my 4 hours of play today at 1500 hands I feel good and plan to continue to the schedule that I’ve made for the rest of the month. My goal is for 40 hours for the last 2 weeks of the month, and I’ve got 33 to go. I’ll have to keep my focus though if I really want to do it.

I got in around 12 hours of cash game play this week, well below the 20 hours that I would like to accomplish. I would have had a better shot had I not taken the whole day Wednesday off (explanation coming) and Thursday too, although I did play some at Cake.


I played a bit of poker on Friday, about 4 hours or so in and around the FTOPS Event. I had a pretty good week with no negative sessions and I feel like I’m playing pretty well.


The FTOPS so far has provided no results of any kind. I got fairly deep in the latest tournament on Friday but I couldn’t get that last double up to get me in the money. I went completely card dead and blinded down getting absolutely zero chances to steal the blinds.


Otherwise I have Sunday Tournaments going today which I’ll make an update on at the end of the day.

An article about congress and online gaming.

By Corey Boles, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Treasury Department has finalized regulations that would effectively ban online gambling in the U.S. and is trying to have them implemented in the waning days of the Bush administration.


The controversial rules would make it illegal for banks to process credit card transactions from most Internet gambling sites.


Their implementation has been opposed by groups advocating individuals’ right to gamble, the banking industry, Democratic lawmakers in Congress and even officials at the Federal Reserve.


The rules stem from a last-minute addition to a law passed in the final hours of the Republican controlled Congress in 2006. The provisions related to online gambling were included in an unrelated port security bill.


The Treausury Department forwarded the final regulations to the Office of Management and Budget on Oct. 21, a necessary step towards their implementation.


It’s standard practice for outgoing administrations to finalize controversial regulations before leaving office, a practice known as a midnight drop.


The law as drafted by Congress includes some exemptionsfor horse race betting, interstate online lotteries and betting on fantasy sports.


But draft rules published by the Treasury in October 2007 don’t define what would be considered an illegal transaction, and there has been much confusion as to what types of online gambling would be rendered illegal.


Banks have warned they may block all online gambling transactions rather than try to determine which ones are illegal. An official from the Federal Reserve testified before Congress in April that the draft regulations created considerable uncertainty.


Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, attempted to drum up support from fellow lawmakers for legislation that would amend the law to allow online gambling transactions to continue.


He was unsuccessful but pledged to return to the issue next year.


The Poker Players Alliance, a group formed to combat the law, has fought against its implementation. It argues that Internet poker should be exempted from the law.


“It’s really remarkable that this administration would try to push this out given the burden it would place on financial institutions at this time of financial crisis,” said John Pappas, the executive director of the group.


Pappas is meeting Friday with officials from the OMB, whose job it is to formally implement the regulations, in a last ditch effort to prevent them from being put on the books.


He wants officials to wait until President-elect Barack Obama’s administration takes office in January to allow for a thorough review of the potential impact of the rules.


A Treasury spokeswoman did not return phone calls seeking comment for this report.

Please go to http://tinyurl.com/uigea to make an official comment to the Federal Reserve!


Tell them:


* The federal agencies responsible for our nation’s economy should not be focused on Internet poker regulations.
* Finalization of the UIGEA rules will add additional burdens on our already crippled financial systems.
* Internet poker is a game of skill and form of recreation for millions of Americans; it should be exempted from the UIGEA.
* Please do not finalize the UIGEA regulations until their impact on our banking systems and average Americans has been fully studied.

I got in a good 5 hours of cash game play today and I feel like I played pretty well. Got in just under 2k hands with 400 of those coming at 200 NL. I am starting to feel somewhat motivated to improve my play and move up stakes aggressively over the following year.


I had one lulz hand today, found here:


http://www.flopturnriver.com/Poker-Hand-History-Converter-Output-583997.html


In all, I feel good heading into tonight’s Turbo FTOPS event. It’ll be a long night hopefully but it should be a lot of gambool fun.

Today was annoyingly disappointing, although I think I played pretty good the cards didn’t line up.


My best chance for cashing came in the FTOPS #9 $322 Buy in. I had 25k with blinds 300/600/75 in chips about an hour from the bubble (3.5 hours into the tournament) and I am remaining aggressive. I lose 9To to Q9s for 3k chips, I then lose KK to KQs AI preflop for 4k chips, lost A5s to K9o AI preflop for another 4k chips (this time blinds were at 400/800/100) and then I’m at 10,000 chips, roughly 12.5 BB. I get dealt Q9o in the CO and it folded around to me; I thought it was fairly standard shove. The table was playing pretty tight and I didn’t want to make an incorrect fold so I figured it couldn’t be that horrible. I checked my short stacking spreadsheet after the fact and it said fold :(. With QTo and Q8s I should shove but fold Q9o and K9o. I ran into TT and, although I flopped an OESD I couldn’t get there and busted..


My next chance for cashing again came about an hour out from the bubble in the Sunday Warmup, where I restole with A2o and ran into AJo. It definitely was a marginal resteal but my opponent was 24/15 with 4/6 attempt to steal, so I was just unlucky to run into a better hand.


Everything else it wasn’t even all that close, frankly I don’t remember much what happened but I couldn’t get much going.

Reads: Opponent is 24/15 through 70 hands.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3426414


I knew it was going to be a tough spot as the action started to fold around to me. My stack is awkward and I raise and have no idea what to do against his shove. I asked Adil and he said maybe call; I asked Chris and he said easy fold, as we’re dominated too easily by overpairs. Something about this didn’t seem right and I went to the math.


I put his restealing range here on any pair, A5+ and any broadway card. I used this range as this is probably what I’m shoving here with and I’m sure his range is even wider than my own given my read. So, using that range I checked out what my equity was in Poker Stove.


equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 47.016% 46.46% 00.55% 1494129588 17755890.00 { 44 }
Hand 1: 52.984% 52.43% 00.55% 1686065544 17755890.00 { 22+, A5s+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, A5o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo }


Given that I was getting 3:2 on my money this is actually a fairly easy call. I was very close to calling myself but I had the same fears that Chris did, its just that he has way more combinations of over cards as he does pairs.


In conclusion: we should not raise/fold a pair here no matter how low. Adil mentioned that if we wanted to avoid a tough spot like this an open shove is +EV, which is true if you’re using ICM even this deep. I think raise/calling is more +EV though with a pair. What else can we call here?


We should be calling anything that has over 40% equity vs his range: A8o+ (although A6-A7 is fairly breakeven), KJ+ (KTo is breakeven), KTs+ (K9s is breakeven), QJs (QJo and QTs is breakeven). This is all against someone with a 25 % resteal range.

We don’t normally eat Irish food around here, considering that Marlyn cooks Italian/Asian and I cook just whatever I want. However, this week our meals have had more of an Irish fix.


Monday night I took my first foray into corned beef and cabbage, although I didn’t use any online recipe. Most recipes I found online involved stewing the corned beef with carrots and cabbage and I didn’t have that much time. However, I remember the way my friend Bill used to cook it in college, and it was always a big hit.


Basically, all he did was stick the whole slab of meat in the oven and baked it for a couple hours; so that’s what I did too. The meat turned out excellent, very tender and even Marlyn liked it (she historically doesn’t like heavy beef dishes). The only problem I had was trying to find a good way to cook the cabbage.


Jamey, on the other hand, had no idea how to cook cabbage in college and I never looked at how Bill would cook it. Marlyn always chops her leaves up when she cooks with cabbage and, to be honest, I’ve never cooked with it before. All I did was boil the fuck out of the leaves until they turned tender, although I think over cooked it. In the end, it just tasted like overcooked broccoli. Well, 1 for 2 isn’t bad, I need more help with my cabbage skills though.


This morning though, we out for brunch as we normally do and went to an Irish bar in Old Town. The place was huge and for the first couple minutes it was quite awkward inside. Once we ordered our food things got a lot better. Marlyn ordered a Bailey’s French Toast and regretted it almost immediately as she was craving crab cakes. Her intuitiveness was correct though, the french toast wasn’t that great; but she’ll have to wait until next week to have those crab cakes.


I ordered an ‘Irish Breakfast” which is just another term for: lets give everything possible on one plate that has anything to do with being Irish. It came with scrambled eggs w/chives, some soft Irish bread, breakfast sausages, baked beans, potatoes, grilled tomato and two other types of sausages that I had no idea wtf they were. Either way, just about everything on the plate was good with an exception to the grilled tomato, it just didn’t fit in.


It wasn’t the best brunch we’ve had, but the prices were pretty good as they were probably some of the cheapest brunch we’ve had yet. I don’t know how much their drink prices are but the food prices were good. I could see going back again.

Well, I managed to pull through in the Denver game for a nice 1 unit profit. I was in serious doubts there at half time that Denver was going to lose, as their defense is so bad it was annoying. Somehow they pulled through though…


I’ve got two teasers going tomorrow, they’re only 6 point this week and not 7 points so I should save 20 % of my bet. I’m going with Jacksonville -.5 vs Detroit AND Carolina -3.5 vs Oakland. I don’t see how Detroit or Oakland has a chance of winning this week so that is why I picked these teams.


My 2nd teaser is with Giants +9 vs Philadelphia AND the Jets -3 vs St. Louis. I’m fairly confident that the Giants/Eagles game will be a close one, let alone I think the Giants will win. The fact that I can get 9 points is even better.


I didn’t think any of the other bets looked all that great to me so I decided to not make anymore for this week.