“Nerves of Putty”

I am about 24 hours away from playing in my first 5-card draw tournament. I believe there will be 8 players in the back room of a local business establishment. It is an ideal place to play. Quiet and poorly lit, but a beautiful professional poker table. Besides that there is plenty of alcohol. :o) I am currently playing pot limit on Check N Raise poker. I have managed to build my stack up to a nice $115, which is pretty damn good since I was down to $14 a couple of weeks ago. I won $20 last night and that was sweet. I am still a long ways away from winning my third $25 bonus, but at least I now have some ammo to make it happen. Back to the story… I am already nervous about the tournament and I lie awake in bed formulating my strategy. I know that when the time is write I am going to hold crap, the dealer will ask how many cards would you like, none for me thanks. Hopefully everyone will fold! So 24 hours away and my nerves are putty. I need to work on the poker face and have a couple Guinness to take care of the nerves.

Speaking of Putty – it is a cool little program for remotely accessing Unix machines. I messed up ssh on my machine and Putty removed that headache.

Speaking of putty I need to get my big glob of Silly putty out of the attic. It is a great stress reliever. Hopefully it is still good, because I do need some stress relief. I don’t blog about work because that is dangerous, so lets just say there is a bit of stress!

Before I add a little bit of poker content I thought I would toss in a few band names. The whole process of coming up with a cool name for a band must be fascinating. Here are ten bands names I have come across listening to music on the web. Live365.com has a station called WebNun radio, where most of these came from. It is a college station so you never know what you will hear (Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, to today’s hip music).

Favorite band names:

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Nerf Herders
G Love & the Special Sauce
Tripping Daisy’s
Ass Pony’s
Screaming Blue Messiahs
Modest Mouse
ZuZu’s Petals
That Dog

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes definitely is a classic. Especially if you have kids! J

I wanted to comment on Iggy’s guest post from 1/28/05. Playing poker with pinochle cards is a hoot. Believe it or not at a young age I learned to play pinochle with my parents, but I have forgotten how to play. When I lived in Houston we would routinely have Friday night home games. First game of the night (I do not recall the game) everyone stayed in and built up a huge pot. When it came to the show down everyone at the table was showing face cards. I looked at the box the cards came in and started laughing. Fortunately we could easily return everyone’s money and continue the game with a new deck. I always check the cards since this incident. Another good rule is also always verify the deck is complete if you happen to be playing with a used deck.

Recently playing sessions I have had AA four times. I have won only once out of those four times.

Here is a good quote from our 5 year old – “I’m hungry Papa.” “We are going to eat lunch as soon as Mama gets home.” “Can I have dessert while I am waiting?” I thought it was funny. I would love to continue this blog, but the rock tumbler I set up for our daughter is starting to give me a headache. It is loud and it will have to run for about 16 days. Oh I hope I survive. I really need to get that Silly Putty!

Stay tuned for a post on the 5-card draw tournament!

Play on