The Olympics

As you know the Olympics are on right now where I live and although I was a bit of a skeptic beforehand it has turned out to be tremendously successful with a few hiccupps.

The bad

1. The death of the Georgian bobsledder. It was terrible and I feel for his family but it was a tragic accident.

2. Lack of snow at one of the venues. It was a real concern but they managed to work around it. The funny thing was at Whistler where most of the snow events took place there was tons of snow.

The good

1.Lindsey Vonn winning the downhill. Boy can she ski and she sure looks great doing it.

2. Clara Hughes winning another medal for Canada in speed skating. She is the only athlete from any country to ever win More than one medal in both summer and winter Olympics. Her summer medals were in cycling. There have been a couple others win one medal in both but never multiple. On top of it what a great lady.

3. The skeleton win by Jon Montgomery (he is on Oprah today) and then walking through the Whistler Village drinking a jug of beer that was passed to him. That was a Canadian moment.

4. The cross country skiing. If you have never done it you might not realize how hard it is to go that fast. They are incredible athletes and deserve more funding.

5. Canada and US womens final. The two best women's teams meet again. Canada won but these teams are so even.

More to come this weekend

Olympic Medals and Tournament Second

AS you know the 2010 Winter Olympics are being held in my backyard in about 4 months time. While I am a great supporter of sports my actual support for the Olympics has been lukewarm at best. I just think the money we are spending could have been spent on things much more needed . Having said that it's time for me and others to suck it up and support the games.

Some of the venues like the new speed skating oval are incredible while other things like the the Olympic mascots are a joke. So I like others were very apprehensive when we heard that they were unveiling the medals for the games. Would they be tacky and cheap?? Would they be goofy like some medals in previous games were??? Actually they are stunning.. I was shocked. I have posted a picture of them at the top and believe me this picture doesn't do them justice. Each medal will be unique. That's right. You win a gold medal in downhill skiing and it will be different than the gold medal for say bobsled. Each medal will weigh about 500 grams which believe me is a lot for a medal. All I can say is well done Olympic committee.

I played a live tournament last night with just under 60 entrants and believe me the old saying a chip and a chair is alive and well. Actually 3 chips. That's what I had left when things turned around. With blinds at 500 and 1000 with a 100 anti I was sitting in the BB with just 300 in chips. Yep 100 for the anti and just 200 in the BB. There were 24 of us left in the tournament at the time. I got dealt 10, 5 off suit in the BB. Figured my night was over. What's this everyone folds to the SB who actually gets to take 300 chips back and calls. He has 6,4.. I hit my 10 and double up which barely gives me enough for my SB. I get dealt A9h and with only the BB in the pot I hit my flush on the river and double up again. The very next hand I get pocket Queens on the button. Two people in the pot and I of course push and my queens hold up. I triple up. People at the table are laughing. A couple hands later pocket Kings. They hold up and suddenly people aren't laughing anymore as I now have chips to play with. I continued to get decent playing hands and hit some flops and my stack starts to grow.. After that the night is a bit of a blur (I was tired) but I managed to final table and with patience and some decent hands I ended heads up against the chip leader. He had me out chipped by at least 3-1. Suddenly my hands went dead and even though I managed to win a couple hands he soon had me all in with a Q 9 off suit. He had K10. We both whiffed on the board and his King held up. Still I was pretty pleased with a second place showing.

Olympic Ski Jumping (not all poker)

In 9 months the Winter Olympics will be here in Vancouver and the IOC with its old boys club has decided to not allow women to ski jump here in Vancouver. They have always had men ski jumping at the Olympics but their reasoning is that there aren't enough women ski jumpers of good enough caliber. What a crock. These are the same guys who wouldn't let women run the marathon or races longer than 1500 metres for years. It is so good to see that the ladies have taken this to court here in B.C and I hope they win. The IOC likes to show their muscle and really need to be put in their place.

I played a live tournament last night with 55 entrants and I swore that when I started this blog I wouldn't tell bad beat stories and so let us just say that I went out in 20th place when someone made an extremely questionable call and then got one out of the 2 cards he needed on the turn and the other on the river. Okay so that's a bad beat story. Anyways I was looking great up until that point having won a huge pot early on. I hit pocket queens and raised it 3 x BB and got 2 callers. Flop came Q XX. Love that flop. Action was on me. Normally I would check here but I decided to bet the minimum which got a look from a lady at the table who wasn't involved in the hand. I could see she was wondering about that bet. Anyways it worked as one of the original callers made a huge raise, the other caller folded and I pushed with my trip queens. I had the raiser covered by a bit and this was like the 5th hand of the night so he thought a lot and finally called. He had 2 pair and my trips held up. Too bad the rest of the night wasn't so good.

Speaking of bad beats I see Jennifer Harmon went out in 11th place in the WPT World Championship. She was all in preflop with AA and got called by Yevgeniy Timoshenko with 10h2h???. Anyways he hit 2 pair on the turn and she was out in 11th. She got just over 81,000 for 11th. They are down to 10 as of this morning and Scotty Nguyen is the chip leader.

April Fools Day 2009

I played a live tournament last night and it was another night where I never picked up a high pocket pair. High meaning pocket 10's and above but I did get dealt pocket 9's in an interesting hand. The player to my right bumped it 4x big blind. I put him on a low pocket pair so I immediately reraised him double. Everyone else folded and when it got to him he pushed. Oh Oh. I had him covered but was really concerned that he had a higher pocket pair now but having played with him I thought a call was still a good move. I called and he flipped over AK. I made the right call but the old river gave him a K and I was pretty crippled.

It became a wait to get a semi premium hand and push and fortunately AK popped up and I pushed and doubled up. I managed to maintain for awhile but but got extremely card dead and the blinds were eating me up. I looked down at the monster hand (joke) of Q2. I figured it at least a face card but was mentally thinking I was dead. Well of course I flopped a full house with 2 callers and tripled up. Very wild and aggressive table I was at last night. Saw a lot of great hands and a lot of one outer suckouts. Anyways somehow with 41 players I managed to make the final table and finished 6th. Good for the confidence 2 final tables in 2 days.

Managed to catch a bit of the BC Poker Championships which were held at the River Rock Casino In Richmond (suburb of Vancouver) in the fall but finally made it to local TV last night. Hope they replay it as it was hard to watch and play at the sametime. It was good to see Daniel Negraneau come back to Canada and play the event. He won it.

The hockey regular season is winding down and it looks like the beloved Canucks are peaking at the right time. They won another last night in Minnesota 2-1 in overtime. Could this be their year?? Only time will tell. Sure like to see them win the cup sometime in my lifetime.

I just read and didn't realize that we have had 2 Olympics, Montreal Summer games in 1976 and Calgary Winter Games in 1988 and we as hosts have never won an Olympic gold in our home Olympics. That's mind boggling and I got to say a little embarrassing as a country. I know they have put a lot of money and time into the training for our winter athletes as they prepare for the Olympics next February here in Vancouver. The goal of course is to break that jinx. Looking at current results from all the different sports it looks good that one of our athletes will get gold. It could very lucrative (sponsorship wise) for the first athlete from our country to stand on the top podium and hear Oh Canada being played.

A bunch of stuff (not all poker)

With the Olympics coming here the city of Vancouver is under a lot of scrutiny and now it appears they have plans to remove the homeless from the so called secure areas around the Olympic sites. Vancouver like most major cities has a lot of homeless people. According to news reports they plan to move the homeless to shelters at least until the games are over. I can see some interesting confrontations arising as some of the homeless have pets (not sure why) and the shelters don't allow dogs. I know I certainly don't have the answer to solving the homeless problem. I wish I did.

Speaking of the Olympics one thing that has always bugged me is the sports that are judged like figure skating. It is always so subjective and generally really biased. Well I admire the skill of the skaters the whole judging thing is a joke. Reputation means more than anything else especially for the ice dancers. Give me sports where the fastest skier, fastest runner or the best team wins. It would be like in poker someone judging how you played those pocket queens. Hey you played them wrong that costs you 500 chips. Yea right.

Played a live tournament last night and generally stunk. I think I finished 24th out of 40. Got bluffed off a huge pot when I made (the right decision percentage wise) to fold my pocket 5's to a scary board but knowing who was also in the hand and the cards he plays I probably should have called . Then in my last hand my trip 2's got got beat by trip 4's. Just wasn't my night and I really didn't play well.

I see in Vegas the MGM/Mirage bunch who are building the massive City Center project are in deep financial problems. I think there have been massive overruns on City Center. Should be interesting to see how it all plays out. I also read yesterday that Cirque DE Soleil is planning a new show with an Elvis theme which is scheduled to open sometime in December at one of the places at the new City Center (if its finished). Well I have to admit I have never seen a Cirque show but being a long time Elvis fan I might just check it out. I kind of wish it was September that it opened as that's when I will be there next.

I sure have been getting the offers from Harrahs lately for cheap rooms. I never get comped rooms because I don't play slots or table games just poker. Makes me wonder how Vegas is really doing during this current recession. One thing that has increased my cost is the current Canadian dollar. When I went to Vegas last August our Canadian dollar was at par with the American . Now its around the 81 cent mark. Be nice to see it go up some.