Archive for September, 2006
Steelers Win!
Sep 8th
I don’t think I mentioned here the biggest sports bet I have ever (and probably will ever) make. A sportsbook at a website called mansion.com launched a “little” promotion that allowed a limited number of signups a risk-free bet on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ opening game of the NFL season. The bet was $1100. If you won the bet, you’d win $1000 on top of your bet. If you lost, they would refund your $1100.
So here’s the scenario. One of my friends and I had placed this large risk-free bet because our bankrolls could afford it and sat down last night to watch the most exciting NFL game I’ll ever watch … due to the money on the line! The game was intense … we both placed our bets before we knew the main QB Ben was out of the lineup, so we needed Pittsburgh to win by 5 points or more. After the first half we were up by 4 points: so far so good!
In the 3rd quarter, Miami scored a touchdown which put them ahead by 3. Worse yet, Pittsburgh had a good march down the field stopped when they fumbled the ball on the one yard line!!! At that point, we figured our bet was lost … but we were in for a real treat at the end of the game starting with a Pittsburgh interception which they would soon convert into a TD. Now we were up by 4 again with enough time on the clock that Pittsburgh couldn’t just run the clock down.
Pittsburgh marched up field but got stopped at the 25 yard line or so and tried for a field goal – a $1000 field goal for each of us watching. To our dismay, he missed it. At this point, there wasn’t that much time on the clock left, and we were worried that Pittsburgh wouldn’t try to score anymore points on their next posession … just try and burn the clock.
But then! Miami threw ANOTHER interception which the Steelers returned for another TD! Boy were we happy with that!
Pittsburgh held on to that score winning the game 28-17 and I’m now $1000 richer. w00t!
Heraldk
I caved
Sep 4th
Yup, I caved. I have re-purchased world of warcraft. My first copy fell out of my hands into my sister’s when I stopped playing ages ago. And now, I have caved after months of holding out even when everyone around me was playing.
What made me do it? I’m not sure. I’m a little frustrated with poker at the moment. I need a break – I’m not playing my best and I’m playing break even poker even though I know I can do better. That’s not entirely it, but it is a start for how I’m feeling.
It’s a very odd feeling not playing something that everyone else is playing. With normal games, it isn’t too bad. A week or a month pass and no one is talking about it anymore. WoW is entirely different though. It’s been out for how long??? And *still* everyone talks about it. As soon as someone talks about it, everyone playing starts talking about it. Increasingly, it has made me feel uncomfortable … and you’d think that would drive me away from the game.
I have fond memories of playing the game. It is an amazingly fun game – and that is a big reason why so many people are playing it and talking about it for hours and hours … and hours. I watched my sister playing in the battlegrounds for awhile. I even mentioned to her that I was not all that interested in the battlegrounds because I prefer the content side of the game rather than the PvP play. She wasn’t even playing a part of the game that I wanted to play! And yet tonight I was so tempted to go out and purchase the game that I did half an hour before the store closed.
I’m not worried about slacking in my responsibilities. I am too interested in my own success to simply waste my opportunities. My thesis is reaching a first draft stage and will be on its way with my supervisor tomorrow afternoon as he heads to Ottawa. Because I didn’t finish in time for the end of summer I needed to pay for another semester anyways which means I’ve got a ton of time to finish up (not that it will take too much longer). And beside all that, I feel like I need something other than poker to occupy my time. I don’t see myself being able to sit down in front of a computer all day playing poker just because I can make money at it. It is fun, but not *that* fun.
So here I am … installing WoW. It’ll probably be another 15 minutes before its installed. Until then, I will ponder why I finally caved…
Heraldk
Poker Bankroll Building Part 2
Sep 3rd
I left off my poker bankroll building at the end of January 2005. I had capped off a very successful initial 3 months at playing poker considering that most players who win don’t start winning right away. Apart from a short spurt at Party when I had no clue what I was doing, I quickly learned the ropes to make myself at worst a break even player at the low limits.
Part of learning the ropes, I forgot to mention that I took some of my intial PSO points to order an amazon gift card which I used to purchase 4 poker books to ramp up my learning of the game. These books, in particular “Small Stakes Hold’em” would be my biggest learning tools over the start of my poker career.
Early in February, my first PSO referral points came in worth $65 – apparently one can make a decent amount with some simple referrals!
At this point, PSO launched the PokerNow rake rebate plan. At the time, PokerNow was a skin of Party Poker (it has since been absorbed, and I’m not too sure if it even exists anymore). This was a great deal since I was now serious about online poker and could use a regular paying PSO points influx which were just about as good as cash. I deposited $100, worked through my deposit bonus and by the time the rake rebate plan collapsed due to Party Poker’s insistence, I cashed out $273 and had earned another $60 in PSO points for rakeback.
I started my next promotion at Golden Palace poker on March 2, 2005 once again depositing $100 and getting started. I dabbled a little with no limit play, but for the most part, I stuck to my limit game and went through the raked hand requirements at golden palace. At the end, I cashed out $303 to my brand new neteller account which I had finally decided to start up since I didn’t want to have to deposit anymore money through my credit card. Plus I received yet another $60 worth of PSO points for the promo!
From here, my poker exploits no longer simply followed the PSO promos around. There was some harder to complete promos to do, but I was also interested in building my bankroll, so I would jump around a little bit. Before I created my neteller account, I started a frequent flopper rakeback plan with Ultimate Bet through PSO. This would be a recurring site for me because when I didn’t have a current bonus to work on, I would return to UB to do generic bonus and PSO points. From here on, I will probably need to go month by month … so I’m going to wrap up my Feb-April months in a table here and be back with part three of this series in the next little while!
PokerNow rake rebate: +173 + $61 PSO points
Golden Palace Poker: +$203, $60 PSO points
Referral Points: $85 PSO points
Absolute Poker (2 deposits): +$129
Ultimate Bet: +$80 + $22 PSO points (rake rebate)
Total Winnings: $585 USD + $228 PSO Points
Sum of total winnings to this point: $1086 USD + $3490 CAD + $390.50 PSO points + 1000 chips
Stay tuned for the next three months or so!
Heraldk
Edmonton Skyline
Sep 3rd
After an afternoon of geocaching with my friend JR, I saw this neat sight from his 15th floor apartment. I asked him if we could take out the screen so I could grab a few photos from there. It’s pretty cool to see Edmonton in all its glory. The shots I got turned out pretty well, so here’s this week’s photo.
Style Modifications
Sep 2nd
Well I kept meaning to come back to this blog to fix up the template so that it did everything I’ve wanted it to. It’s now a whole lot farther along that path, though I have more things that I want to do with it. I’ve added a “recent comments” addition on the left side. I’m hoping that the presence of people’s comments will encourage people to make comments on my blog. So … please do!
As well, I’ve expanded my “recent photo” to show the last 6 photos I’ve posted to Flickr. Please take a look at my photos and comment on them as well – I would like to hear suggestions on how to improve my photos, and I can get an idea of what people like!
I plan on making more changes to the blog styles in the future, but for now I’ve got to head out. If you see my blog in a half-broken state it’s probably because I’m playing with the template again. My apologies, but I think it’ll be for the better!
Heraldk
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