So there was another Bloggers freeroll on www.FaceUpGaming.com today. I made it fairly deep last time, so I decided to give this one a shot too. I had been planning to drive over to a nearby casino to play in a live tournament, but decided instead to stick around home and join with my virtual friends on the virtual felt.
Lets just say that the blogger event didn't come off quite as smoothly as last time. About 5 hands into the event I looked up and realized I had been disconnected. I thought it may have just been me or my internet connection, so I closed and reopened my browser, logged back into Face Up Gaming, etc. to no avail. Still couldn't get the tourney to open back up again. I found a few of the other bloggers bitching about it on Twitter and realized I wasn't alone.
I finally got back in after 5 minutes or so and discovered I hadn't really lost any chips, so apparently everyone at my table had been disconnected too. Saw precisely two hands that I folded before I was disconnected again. This time it took about 10-15 minutes before I could reconnect and I wasn't as happy with what I found this time around. Apparently not everyone had disconnected so somebody was hard at work clicking raise over and over again stealing the blinds of all the other people who were disconnected. My 2200 or so chips were gone and I had been eliminated in 86-88th place according to the tournament lobby.
Once again there were several bloggers complaining via Twitter and their own blogs that they had suffered the same fate as me.
Gotta love two things about this. First the frustration of being
blocked from participating in the tournament and second the
douchebaggery of the person who took massive advantage of the
opportunity to steal, steal, steal over and over again when playing
against people they are acquainted with. I don't know if the tournament
continued to its conclusion and people were awarded prizes. If so I
hope they drop their iPad or iPod and shatter the screen as they remove
it from the package.
I will most definitely not be paying to play on Face Up Gaming and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody else either. I think inviting poker bloggers to play on your site is a great marketing idea. Hopefully you get some very cheap publicity out of the deal...I mean unless you royally screw the pooch. (And the pooch is walking decidedly bow-legged after today's effort.)
I might go back if it's another free event, but I won't skip other plans for it.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Father's Day
Today is the first Father's Day since my dad passed last November. Dad never made a big deal about Father's Day, but I realize in retrospect it's because he did a lot of sacrificing for his family. I get it now. My kids look at me like I'm crazy when I say I don't want anything for Father's Day or Christmas, but I honestly don't. I get just as much or more happiness from seeing them get things they enjoy.
The reality and gravity of the occasion really struck me harder yesterday than it has today. I was listening to a CD that was recorded by the select choir at the high school where I help out with the show choir program and it just started up the waterworks. Music does that to me above anything else and especially because my dad loved attending the choral concerts of both his kids and grandkids.
This song in particular by current American composer Eric Whitacre impacted me. His use of tight dissonant chords just seems to grab me by the soul and shake emotion out of me:
Note: This recording was another of his internet experiments where he has people from all around the globe record their one part and submit them. They're then edited together to form a virtual choir.
I was also especially touched today by the post made by Otis/Brad on his stunningly well written blog over at Rapid Eye Reality. If you're not a regular reader of his, you should be.
The reality and gravity of the occasion really struck me harder yesterday than it has today. I was listening to a CD that was recorded by the select choir at the high school where I help out with the show choir program and it just started up the waterworks. Music does that to me above anything else and especially because my dad loved attending the choral concerts of both his kids and grandkids.
This song in particular by current American composer Eric Whitacre impacted me. His use of tight dissonant chords just seems to grab me by the soul and shake emotion out of me:
I was also especially touched today by the post made by Otis/Brad on his stunningly well written blog over at Rapid Eye Reality. If you're not a regular reader of his, you should be.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
FaceUpGaming
Well, I guess I better join the chorus of stories about today's blogger tournament on FaceUpGaming. I almost forgot about it, but I joined my table a few minutes after the tournament began. I still had my whole starting stack so I apparently didn't miss much.
I looked around the table to see if I recognized anybody and found none other than Waffles sitting three seats to my right. We exchanged pleasantries and he told me I better not eliminate him. I started out playing super tight, but it didn't take long before I figured out that the tournament was a super turbo with blinds increasing every 5 minutes or so. The tourney started with 2,000 tournament chips, so it was definitely not a deep stacked event. The first decent hand I saw was AQ of diamonds after I was down to around 1,600 chips. I got it all in with my lone opponent when an ace fell on the flop. He had A-10 and neither of us improved so I doubled early.
A few hands later Waffles raised on my big blind. After the hand I warned him to stop doing that and he typed something like "lol" or "hahaha" in the chat window. By sheer coincidence his comment happened to come up right after somebody was eliminated. Some dude with Zeus in his name yelled at Waffles for being an inconsiderate jerk. Now look...Waffles can definitely be an inconsiderate jerk, but this time it was a simple misunderstanding. To his credit Waffles tried to explain to the guy that he just misunderstood, but he wasn't buying it and a typical online poker game chat fight ensued. Waffles, to his delight, discovered that the FaceUpGaming software doesn't filter swear words.
Note: Waffles claims he raised my big blind mercilessly. We'll have to let him live under his little delusion that the 2 times he raised it counts as mercilessly.
Wolfshead wound up at our table shortly after the little altercation. I never tangled with him and we eventually made it to one of the final two tables along with Lightning36.
Waffles got crippled a little later after he got it all in with pocket kings and lost to Ace-rag when an ace flopped. I don't remember what he went out on. I avenged his internet pissing match by eliminating the Zeus d-bag on the first hand after the break. I was the BB and he was the SB. I had A5 offsuit and the flop was a beautiful A5A with two spades. Zeus bet almost his entire stack and I couldn't shove my stack in fast enough. He showed 78 of spades for the flush draw. He didn't hit his miracle turn and river for the straight flush and it was buh-bye Zeus.
I finally went out in 15th when I shoved my stack that was like 7-8 big blinds with QJ suited and it lost to J8 offsuit when the flop contained a jack and an eight. I hung around and railed Wolfshead and Lightning who eventually went out in 8th and 3rd respectively.
The one cool feature they had on the site was the ability to feed your microphone and webcam directly to the table so you could live chat a la Skype with other people at the table. I didn't take advantage of it, but Wolfshead and Lightning seemed to have a good time with the banter. I had to mute them because they were causing me to sometimes miss the little bell that signaled it was my turn to act.
I hadn't played online poker with anything of value on the line in over a year, so it was nice to get back to the tables. It was your usual blogger donkament and I wish I could claim some great skill in making it deep, but with the structure of this one it was all about catching cards at the right time and avoiding bad beats because it was a complete shovefest after only about an hour of play. Too bad Josie didn't play. I would have really enjoyed having some bragging rights for outlasting her.
Play lucky.
I looked around the table to see if I recognized anybody and found none other than Waffles sitting three seats to my right. We exchanged pleasantries and he told me I better not eliminate him. I started out playing super tight, but it didn't take long before I figured out that the tournament was a super turbo with blinds increasing every 5 minutes or so. The tourney started with 2,000 tournament chips, so it was definitely not a deep stacked event. The first decent hand I saw was AQ of diamonds after I was down to around 1,600 chips. I got it all in with my lone opponent when an ace fell on the flop. He had A-10 and neither of us improved so I doubled early.
A few hands later Waffles raised on my big blind. After the hand I warned him to stop doing that and he typed something like "lol" or "hahaha" in the chat window. By sheer coincidence his comment happened to come up right after somebody was eliminated. Some dude with Zeus in his name yelled at Waffles for being an inconsiderate jerk. Now look...Waffles can definitely be an inconsiderate jerk, but this time it was a simple misunderstanding. To his credit Waffles tried to explain to the guy that he just misunderstood, but he wasn't buying it and a typical online poker game chat fight ensued. Waffles, to his delight, discovered that the FaceUpGaming software doesn't filter swear words.
Note: Waffles claims he raised my big blind mercilessly. We'll have to let him live under his little delusion that the 2 times he raised it counts as mercilessly.
Wolfshead wound up at our table shortly after the little altercation. I never tangled with him and we eventually made it to one of the final two tables along with Lightning36.
Waffles got crippled a little later after he got it all in with pocket kings and lost to Ace-rag when an ace flopped. I don't remember what he went out on. I avenged his internet pissing match by eliminating the Zeus d-bag on the first hand after the break. I was the BB and he was the SB. I had A5 offsuit and the flop was a beautiful A5A with two spades. Zeus bet almost his entire stack and I couldn't shove my stack in fast enough. He showed 78 of spades for the flush draw. He didn't hit his miracle turn and river for the straight flush and it was buh-bye Zeus.
I finally went out in 15th when I shoved my stack that was like 7-8 big blinds with QJ suited and it lost to J8 offsuit when the flop contained a jack and an eight. I hung around and railed Wolfshead and Lightning who eventually went out in 8th and 3rd respectively.
The one cool feature they had on the site was the ability to feed your microphone and webcam directly to the table so you could live chat a la Skype with other people at the table. I didn't take advantage of it, but Wolfshead and Lightning seemed to have a good time with the banter. I had to mute them because they were causing me to sometimes miss the little bell that signaled it was my turn to act.
I hadn't played online poker with anything of value on the line in over a year, so it was nice to get back to the tables. It was your usual blogger donkament and I wish I could claim some great skill in making it deep, but with the structure of this one it was all about catching cards at the right time and avoiding bad beats because it was a complete shovefest after only about an hour of play. Too bad Josie didn't play. I would have really enjoyed having some bragging rights for outlasting her.
Play lucky.
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