Here we go.

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231936

Say what you will.....

Tiffany Michele is not a good poker player. I was watching the WSOP tonight and what I noticed is that Tiffany thought she was much better than she was. I know that what they show on TV is not indicitave of how they play, but she runs her mouth quite a bit when whe should just shut up. And now I saw it all. She just called the clock on a guy that was playing for 12 million chips. Why?
Now I just saw her go broke on a hand where she held A J off suit on a flop of A 9 8. Why? She is terrible.

Talk to you later.....

-Grouse

Almost there....

Hey folks, it certainly has been a while. I was considering ending my very short tenure as a blogger, but then decided to give it another go. See, the vast majority of my life as of late has been consumed with my wedding, which is right around the corner. I leave for wonderful Las Vegas in exactly 2 weeks from today and get married to the future mother of my children 2 weeks from Saturday. I can not stress enough just how unbelievably lucky I am. Dayna is the most caring, beautiful women that I have ever met. Why she is marrying me is a question that I will ponder for the rest of my being.

We are getting married at the Flamingo gardens and having a little cocktail reception at the Garden bar in the Flamingo afterwards. Any of you out there that might actually read this and are going to be in Vegas at the time, feel free to stop by and say hi and I will buy you a beer. On Sunday we leave Las vegas and start our honeymoon. I am so excited for this. We are flying to Vegas one way and renting a car to drive back to MN. We will first be heading to the Grand Canyon and staying a night there. Then we drive to Bryce canyon to see that park and stay the night there. The next leg is up to Grand Teton National park where we will be staying in Jackson Hole WY. For 3 nights. This is the part of the trip that I am probably looking the most forward to. Other than Las Vegas, Dayna and I have never been to any of the the places we are going on our honeymoon. We have always wanted to visit the national parks out west. I have wanted to go to the Tetons for a very long time and have just never done it. After the 3 days in Jackson Hole, we are heading to Deadwood SD for 2 nights to vist Mt. Rushmore and the rest of the badlands. Then we head home to Minneapolis. If any of you out there have been to any of these places and have some advise on what to do, I am all ears. We are just going to wing it for now and figure out what we want to do once we get there.

On another note, I am still playing some poker with rather poor results which is probably why I haven't posted in a while. I will be playing quite a bit more, once the whole wedding thing has come and gone. Until then I will try to post when I get a decent idea in my head, or when I actually have some poker content to discuss.

Talk to you later.....

-Grouse

Its all right buddy, everyone knows each other here.

Hello people. I am back from a well deserved relaxing vacation to the cabin. What can I say about it other than it might be my favorite week of the entire year. Fishing was slow but the weather was great. Wednesday night is the night that my fiance, my sister-in law, my brother, and myself, go to a small casino up north and play in there little tourney. This year my bro couldn't make the trip north due to work so it was just me and the girls.



The play in this tournament is by far the worst I have ever experianced in a casino run game. I had told my fiance that I was either going broke early or winning the thing. So this tourney is a 30 dollar buy in with a 10 dollar one time add on for the first hour. I always opt to take the add on right away. I hate playing short stacked, mostly because I am not that good at it, but also I do not see the point of putting yourself at an immediate disadvantage by not taking it. So as we are seeted waiting for this goofy thing to start, the tourney director asked if anyone from my table would be interested in moving to another table to even out the tables. I took a look at the other table and saw that the 5 seat and the 10 seat were available. I raised my hand and moved to the 5 seat on the short table. As I sit down the dealer tells me that the 5 seat is taken and the only availabe seat is the 10. I hate the 10 seat. I kind of tilt just by being so dumb as to move from a table where I had the 3 seat to a table where I had to sit in the crappiest seat at the table. Stupid me. As I sit there, cursing my stupidity, I realize that this douch had me switch to fill up a table and leave my previous table short. What the hell kind of sense does that make?



Anyways the game gets under way and I am playing super aggro, realizing that these people are not the best players in the world. I steal about every 4th or 5th hand I kid you not. I lose a couple raises when I actually run into hands and then one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen at a poker table happens. There is a pot going on where one person is all in and he has two callers. This one jackass who thinks he is a serious player because he wears a huge cowboy hat and big belt buckle to the game, is in the 3 seat. He has called the all in along with another young kid. The flop comes out, and cowboy douch bets into the dry side pot. This is not whats funny, whats funny is when the DEALER, looks at him and says, "Jim, I sure hope you have something if you are betting into a dry side pot." What? there is still another guy to act in the hand. Before I can say something, Jim, aka cowboy douch starts having a conversation with the dealer about what is going on in the hand and what he thinks the other 2 are holding. Remember this is right in the middle of the hand and he is discussing this with the DEALER. I can not contain myself. As I interupt and tell both the dealer and cowboy douch that you really should not be discussing this hand, cowboy douch cuts me off and says " Its all right buddy, everyone knows each other here." I almost laughed. I said "listen Jim, you don't know me and I don't know you so how about we play by the damn rules." Apparently the floor overheard and decided to come over to our table. Things settled down after that and I continued to steal pots for about a half an hour. I kid you not in the first hour my best hand was KQ off.



After the first break I was at 4500. We started with 3000, as long as you bought the add on. About 5 minutes into the second level I picked up 1010 out of the BB. 3 people call so I raise it up 3 times. I get one caller. The flop comes down AA2. I find it hard to believe this guy has an ace, since he just called on the button. The turn is yet another ace. This is where the hands gets funny. I bet he raises and I push. I have him coverd by about 2000. He actually thinks for about 30 seconds. During this 30 second slow roll, old cowboy douche pipes up. Here is what he says, " show him that ace so he know who he is messing with. BAHHAHAHAHAH. I litterally laughed out loud. The guy calls and I show my tens, and he shows A6 for quads. After the hand I look aver at cowboy and he says, "thats how its done." Really? How whats done? what did that guy do that made that hand so great. He played A6 to a raise which is questionable at best and spiked a board with 3 aces. Nothing to spectaculer there I don't think.



So after that funny episode our table breaks and I am sent to a table with a short stack. At this point I am sick of playing this tourney and would like to get into the cash game thats going on. The first hand I see is 10J off suit, with the J of hearts. I call along with 3 others the flop is a beutiful thing. 8910 all of pretty little hearts. I have top pair with an open ended straight flush draw. First guy bets and I push with my short stack. The other two fold an the original better calls. What does he call with you might ask? A5 off suit with the 5 of hearts. Do you believe that. No hand and is drawing to a 5 high flush. Of cousre what happens? The turn comes 5 and the river comes 5. Unbelievable! I am out 27th out of 47 players. It was by far the worst tourney experience I have ever had and I am not sure if I will play again next year now that I know that "everyone know each other there." I did manage to take 130 dollars profit from the cash game and another 100 dollars from the blackjack table, so overall it was a profitable night.



Talk to you later.....



-Grouse

Vacation

I am off to beutiful northern Minnesota tomorrow for a week for some fishing, a little bit of poker and a whole lot of relaxation. I will be playing a Wednesday night tourney at one of the small casinos up there. Last year I finished 5th. Hoping for a win this year as the play is absolutly horrible. I will post a report when I return. Here's to everyone having fun and safe week. See you in a week.

Talk to you later.....

-Grouse

So this is what it has come to.

I have not been playing hardly any poker as of late. So last night I decided to fire up stars and donk around in there sattalite section. I chose a 50FPP hundred person shootout to one of the million dollar tourneys. My first table was incredibly tight. Which I soon used to my advantage. You could be fairly certain that if anyone at this table reraised you they had a monster. So I stole a lot of pots and eventually got heads up with a 5 to 1 chip advantage. My opponent managed to chip up a little by pushing a lot of flops where I had wiffed. I eventually took down table one when he flat called pre flop and I checked my option with 10 3 suited. The flop came down 10 6 3 rainbow. I checked he bet around 2/3 pot. I pushed and he called with A 10 suited. His play here really baffled me. Up until this point in heads up he never slow played any ace. Anyway I won the first table with only one to go.

The final table started kind of rough for me. On the second hand I was dealt AK. I raise, only to see 3 callers. The flop was interesting to say the least, KQ10. I really was not that excited about my hand. The first player to act bet pot and the other 2 folded. I was not sure what I was thinking but I decided to raise to find out where I am at and of course he comes over the top all in. I thought for about a second and decided there is very little I can beat here. I fold. Now I am down from the starting stack of 1500 to a little less than 1100. A few orbitz go by and I pick up a few pots, mostly with steals, when the perverbial axe came crashing down on me. I pick up AA in the small blind. The player in the cutoff makes it 350 to go. It folds to me and I have about 1700 in chips, which happens to be the second shortest stack at this point. I decide to push against this player knowing that he does not need much to call. He is an action guy, loves to gamble. So as predicted he calls and turns up JJ. The flop comes down all blanks, as does the turn, thats when I looked at the screen just in time to see the jack spike on the river and IGH in 6th out of 100. Now I know that the odds are not very good that you are going to win a seat when only 1 out of 100 gets one, but as soon as I was at the final table for a few orbitz I knew I was a better player than the rest of the table.

The reason for the title of this post is because I can't help but think back to a time not to long ago where I would not have given two shits about a tournament like this, but last night I was generally mad about how it turned out. Just a couple short years ago I was making a decent amount of money online and never even thought to play a 50FPP sat. I guess I will just have to start over again once things on the homefront are taken care of. The only thing is that if I knew now what I knew back then, I would still have a fair sum in my online account. Thats not to say that I pissed the money away. I just didn't know much about bankroll management back then. I would take out money and buy stuff. Stuff that I needed at the time, stuff that I didn't need. Oh well, I guess you live and you learn.

Talk to you later.....

-Grouse

Long time, no post.

I guess I am not very good at this bloggning thing yet. It has been over a week since my last post. To be truthful, not much has been going on in my poker world lately. Other than the sat, I won to get me to the WSOP finals on Stars. Thats kind of exciting. I have options on when to use the ticket I won. I am not sure when I will play but I will for sure search for softest of the finals. Wish me luck.

***************

Lets see, what else has been going on? I had an awesome memorial day weekend. Every year, my brothers, Dad, and a couple of freinds always go up to the whitefish chain of lakes for the Bass fishing opener. The weather was perfect and the fishing was the same. We had one of our best bass openers ever. Plenty of fish. Good times. While we were up there, my pour fiance was at home enduring a tornado that swept through the north metro. Luckily my house was still standing with only a little damage to the deck and the roof, which will have to be replaced. Dayna called me while the storm was going through and it sounded like the damn house was falling apart. I kind of felt bad that I was in such nice conditions while she was stuck in that crap, but that feeling quickley passed. Sorry babe. She did have a couple friends over at the time so it wasn't so bad for her. I also got a promotion since I last posted. It goes into affect July 1st. More money but also much more responsiblity. Wish me luck on that as well. Thats about all I got for now. I will post my results for the WSOP final.

Talk to you later.....

-Grouse

In a funk.

I have been in a bit of a funk the last couple weeks. I am really bored with online poker. I have not played but a few sng's, and when I have played I have lacked the focus to actually play my game. Which as we all know, leads to lost money. I have really been wanting to play live as of late. There are a few problems with this. First is that in Minnesota there is no live no-limit cash action. Canterbury park only runs limit poker and a few no-limit tourneys. The closest place to play no-limit in a casino is in Turtle Lake Wisconsin, which is only an hour and a half drive. Turtle Lake runs 1/2 and 2/5 no limit. It is by far and away the softest no limit game I have played in a casino. It consists of mostly locals that really have no idea how to play. I haven't been out to TL for a while for a lot of different reasons. I just bought a house and am getting married in Las Vegas in November.

My once healthy poker roll is now being used for other things which have taken priority in my life. There was a time that I always made sure that I had a roll big enough that I did not need to worry about variance at the stakes I played. I am not saying that I am done playing poker, I am just saying that until I get done with the things that are important to me right now, poker is going to have to take a back seat. I am very excited to do the things to our house that make it "ours", and as far as the wedding goes, I could not be more excited for that. I would spend every nickel that I have ever made playing cards, for the oppertunity that I have right now with the women I love. So if anybody plans on being in LV in early November, feel free to stop by the Flamingo and the first drink is on me.

When will the desire return to play seriously online? When is the next time I will play some actuall live poker? I can't answer these questions, and to be honest I don't really care. I am happy where I am at right now.

Talk to you later.....

-Grouse

WSOP freerolls on Stars and Global warming my ass!!

So I have been playing the WSOP freeroll sattalites on stars. They run every evening at 5 past the hour. Talk about push fests. I played last night and in a matter of an hour I went out in 422 out of 2800. Now that is fast. You need to finish in the top 50 teo be entered into another sat for the main event package. These are not the most skillfull tourneys but you can't really beat the price. You are only able to register for one a week but I figure why not give it a shot once a week.

If you have not been playing them give it a shot. After all you might get extremely lucky and win the 12K prize package.

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Something else I wanted to touch on was this whole global warming bullshit. This weekend is generally one of my favorite of the entire year as I live in Minnesota and this is the opening of fishing weekend. I have hunted and fished my whole life and not once do I remember an opener like this. You see, in northern MN one of the greatest industries in the summer is the resort buisness. This weekend is normally a huge money generater to northern MN but becasue of the TWO FEET of ice still on some of the lakes, the resort owners are taking it right in the ass. I wish all of the so called "experts" on global warming would come and explain to the resort owners why if the planet is getting warmer, this part of the planet seems to be colder than any time I can remember. All right that is enough of my rant.

Talk to you later.....

-Grouse

Is blogging bad for my poker game?

So I was on a tear on the poker front last week. Unitl, that is, I decided to start a blog. I do not know what happened. I was at a high water mark for the year in my poker account, and now, after this last weekend I am worse off than when the week began. I know that blogging had nothing to do with it, but it is nice to have something to blame, other than my poor play.


It started Thursday night when I decided to have a few drinks. See, I took Friday off of work, so I figured what the hell I can have a few drinks on a Thursday. The mistake I made was firing up Stars after I was thouroughly tuned up. This never seems to help my game a great deal. I wish I could remember some of the key hands, but I have enough trouble remembering hands when I am sober.


I started the night by dropping 3 buy-ins in PLO. A game at which I enjoy playing and have been doing fairly well with as of late. I then switched it up to old faithfull, hold-em, where I got absolutly destroyed for 2 buy-ins. I decided this would be a good time to focus more on the drinks than the poker and shut the computer down.


Friday brought a day to myself at the house, which is pretty rare. So I decide that poker would get my complete attention, and sobriety. If I would have known in adavance how shitty the cards would be to me I would have drank, because as we all know the beats don't hurt nearly as bad when you feel little pain. I played two multi table tourneys on Friday. One PLO, and one Hold-em. In the hold-em tourney I went out on the bubble when I had a large stack. Now normally I am not an advocate of risking a huge stack on the bubble without the nuts, but the villian in this hand had consistently been check raising with weak hands and forcing others out of hands. I raised at the cutoff with AK of hearts. The villian is on the button with a larger stack than I. He calls. The flop comes Axx with two hearts. So far so good. I bet a little over half the pot. Villian instantanioulsy raised which to me meant that he most likley held garbage judging by his previous plays. So long story short, I jam, he calls, he has a set, I do not catch, I start thinking about that bottle of whiskey in the cabinet.PLO tourney was just plain bad. I played horrible. No excuses here, just was not my day.


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On another note, I am having trouble getting money from my bank into Full Tilt. I got some advise from BamBam about using VISA, but that does not seem to be working for me. Any other suggestions?


Talk to you later.....


-Grouse

Its nice to be welcomed.

After I wrote my first post I was really going back and forth weather or not I should persue this whole poker blog thing. I know that I am no kind of writer and I was not sure if anyone would really give two craps what I think about the game. I was surprised when I looked at my site this morning and realized I had a comment. To say the least I was not really expecting to ever get one. The rooster, (not quite sure how to link people yet), was kind enough to point me in the direction of a couple of bloggers from my home state. I had read their blogs before but that was besides the point. He was trying to help. Which is greatly appreciated.

After a couple of hours I logged back onto the site only to find that none other than Bam-Bam, (Damn I need to figure out how to link), had left a comment. He welcomed me to the community and had some advise for me on how to load some money onto Full Tilt. Thanks Bam-Bam. I hope to see you tonight during the mook.

I think I am going to give this poker blogging a shot. Hopefully I will bring something to the table. If not, oh well, tough shit.

Talk to you later......

-Grouse

The first in many

Hello poker players. This is Grouse14 coming at you for the first time. I have decided to create a blog after I have been reading all of the other poker blogs out there. I have been a long time reader of as many poker blogs as I can in a day. I must say that I am not a very good writer, but I do think that I have learned a lot from the rest of the poker bloggers out there. Hopefully I can contribute to the comunity as I have been playing poker for as long as I can remember.

A little bit about myself:

I am 30 years old and reside outside of Minneapolis Minnesota. I have played poker for as long as I can remember, seriously. Poker used to be a very important part of my life. So much that a few years ago I contumplaterd the idea of quiting my job and moving to Las Vegas with my cousin to try and make it as a professional poker player. I am very happy that I did not make that desicion. I met the greatest women in the world who happens to be my fiance, and I would have almost certainly failed at being a pro. I bought a house with my fiance and have never been happier. I am just now getting back into the game. I love it, and can not wait to post about my play on here so that I can get advise on how to make my game better.

I look forward to playing with and chatting with as many of you as possible. I am making my first post right before I start the "Saturdays with dr. pauly" PLO tourney. Good luck on the felt with anyone who reads this.

Talk to you later.....
Grouse14