Randy’s Blog

Just like in life, poker has its ups and downs. I am happy to say that it’s been a long time since I’ve ran bad played bad. Right now I’m going through a rough patch at the tables. Over the years I’ve had my share of variance, but since it’s been a long time and I’m playing more lately its hit me full force! Check out the hand below:

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players

SB: $450.35
BB: $48.75
Hero (UTG): $89.75
MP: $187.15
CO: $19.25
BTN: $118.35

Pre-Flop: T T dealt to Hero (UTG)
SB calls $1, BB folds, Hero raises to $4, 2 folds, BTN raises to $10, SB folds, Hero calls $6

Flop: ($21.50) 5 T K (2 Players)
BTN bets $10, Hero raises to $35, BTN raises to $108.35 and is All-In, Hero calls $44.75 and is All-In

Turn: ($181) 6 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($181) 4 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $181 Pot ($3 Rake)
Hero mucked T T and LOST (-$89.75 NET)
BTN showed K K (Three of a Kind, Kings) and WON $178 (+$88.25 NET)

Now I don’t want to turn this into a bad beat post because it’s not. Throughout life I’ve always worked hard to find the good in every situation. We all have choices in life every second of the day. We can either piss and moan about tough situations or even deserved problems, or we can make the choice to allow new challenges become our personal triumphs!

Today I found myself talking with my children about how life can sometimes kick you when you’re down, and they can get up or roll over and die. Now obviously I’m not just talking about poker, but in life in general. Funny enough though, poker and life can imitate each other.

So, life poker has dealt me some hard to swallow beats, but I am making the choice to use this opportunity to refresh my game and take a good hard look at how I’m playing at the tables. I will also be looking at specific hands. Not only the hands where I lost money, but in hands that I won money too! Over the next week I will be:

1. Reviewing my Hand Histories in the Replyer

2. Combing through Poker Tracker looking at:

VP$P Numbers

Pre-Flop Raise Percentage

My Position stats

My Blind Stats

My Aggression (I’ve been known to be a maniac)

So, this is giving me an opportunity to refresh/re-tool my game and see if I’ve picked up some bad habits and identifying any new leaks I have. No matter how many years you’ve been playing poker, leaks in your game can sneak in on you and disrupt your game. It’s up to you weather you want to plug those leaks, or repeat the mistakes of many players before us..

Most everyone who plays online poker knows all about the Absolute Poker scandal from a few months back. For those who have been under a rock you can get caught up here.

Today the Kahnawake gaming commission released the results of their investigation. This scandal is another unwelcome PR blow the U.S. online poker players. We are fighting an uphill battle as it is. Some states have already banned online poker and unless we start making our voices heard in the voting booth, it will get worse before it gets better..

You can read their findings here: Absolute Poker Audit findings (pdf file)

Cliff Notes:

Absolute Pay $500,000 in fines.. But to who exactly is unclear..

Absolute has to fire people responsible.. What?? They didn’t do that already? WTF!!!!

Absolute has to pay all fees related to the investigaiton..

Absolute has to set aside a security deposit (in case they cheat again).

Well, 2007 is about over and what a year it has been! This has been a great year for me personally and professionally. I bought a new house, have my dream job, wife/kids are happy, etc. I am super excited because I think 2008 will be more of the same.

About six months ago we started Ridge Poker so everyone from the old Tight Poker forum could have a home of our own that wasn’t being over run by SPAM and that we knew would be there the next day…

At first, it was just a spur of the moment move and now, six months later it’s taking on a life of its own. We are getting new members, the members we have are still growing, and the best part is that I don’t see an end to our potential as an online community.

2008 will be a great year for the RP community too! We are going to be having some sweet ass promos in appreciation of our loyal members and visitors including: RP gear, Private Freerolls, Free Poker Lessons, and the list goes on.. Sign up for our mailing list on the home page.

2007 also gave us another chance to help “Libby” in her daily battle of cancer. Our fearless leader (MJ where ever you are ) started the Libby Tournament fund raiser in 2005 to help Merv and his family have a better Christmas. Even though we are a smaller community now, we still managed to make it happen! MJ also managed to make a donation from whatever place he’s been hiding. Thanks again MJ, you are still the man!!!!!

I’ve said this before but I must say it again. I feel so lucky to be a part of such a great group of people. We are all a little different; Farm boys from Oklahoma, Programmers in TX, Stock Traders NY, Teachers in OZ, and even some poker pros. We all have built a special bond over the past few years that may seem odd to some, but to us it’s the only way we can picture it.

Oh, and one of my favorite moments in 2007 happened last night when Tom Brady and Randy Moss hooked up for the record breaking touchdown! For those who don’t know, my son(s) and I have a huge rivalry about Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady. I really hate Manning and they really hate Brady or (Butt chin) as they call him. So, the game last night was extra sweet for me.

Well, it’s finally happened. I turned 30 today. I have some mixed feelings about this. It’s been a quite day of reflection. My day started off by me falling off my back porch (again). It’s raining here and I was going out to smoke and slid right off the damn thing. My porch has 5 steps and I landed on the second to last step flat on my ass and shoulder. It broke the step in half. It seemed like it happened in slow motion. As I layed there in a decent amount of pain I remember thinking that this was a great start to the day.

Luckily, I don’t think I broke anything this time. I did the same thing baout 2 months ago, and after a few days of my ass hurting I finally went to the Doctor. After he got done laughing and taking x-rays, he told me I had a hairline fracture of my tail bone. So, at least this time I guess I got off lucky, sore but lucky..

As for the rest of my day, I’ve never been a big birth day guy. So, I planned on this just being a relaxing day with the family.Of course, that means watching football all day and chillin’ with my boys (My three sons). As I said earlier, I’m not a birth day guy, especially a 30th birth day guy. So, i wanted to make sure I had a good stress free day.

My wife , kids, parents, and in-laws all gave me some killer birth day gifts that I have to brag about. The wife gave me a new pair of Nike’’s and XM radio. My kids got me New PJ’s, socks, underwear, a cell phone holder, a magnet thingy (kinda like a magic 8 ball where you asked it questions and swing pendulum until it stops on an answer., and my mother-in law bought be a flameless poker lighter. All wonderful gifts!

Now, I thought I’d relay a story that I can honestly say changed my life. I’ve only a few people this story, so I hope you get as much out of it as I did.

About 7 years ago I was the Safety Director for a large company. I was also in charge of the Engineering/sanitation of the facility. I worked there for many years and I knew everyone well. We were like a big family. One of our sanitation employees was named Bobby Tharp. Bobby was 30 years old, a great guy to chat with, a hard worker, and a good friend. A couple of years earlier Bobby had been having stomach trouble and was seeing a Doctor often, but it never seemed to get better. After being referred to several Doctors, he finally found a Doctor that knew what was wrong with him. Bobby had a 4 inch tumor in his stomach. They put him through chemotherapy and surgery. After the surgery and 6 months of chemo he was cancer free!

About a year after that they discovered a few spots of cancer on his liver. Before the surgery they told him it was minor and they expected him to make a full recovery. The surgery was expected to take a few hours, but only lasted about an hour. When Bobby woke up they informed him that the cancer was far more extensive than they thought and it was inoperable. they told him he had about 6 months to live. they offered him additional chemo treatment, but they couldn’t guarantee anything and told him it would only prolong his life and reduce the quality of the time he has left. He choose not to have any additional treatments.

Being the guy Bobby was, he still came to work everyday and to look at him you’d never know he was sick. I was lucky enough to spend lots of time with him. I was lucky enough to learn a lot from him. Bobby had a new wife, new baby, and until the last year he thought he had his whole life in front of him. I can honestly say he changed my life and how I think about life.

On my birthday seven years ago, I walked into my office and Bobby and a few other people were there waiting to give me update reports, budget numbers, etc. I wasn’t very happy about working on my birthday. Things had been really stressful at work and at home. I’m sure it was obvious I was in a foul mood and I remember doing some random complaining after reviewing some reports. I remember Bobby sitting over there waiting on me, listening, and he had a slight smile on his face.

After I cleared everyone out of my office it was just Bobby and I left and we started talking about work, family, so on. I’ll never forget him looking at me and saying this. He said “Randy, I know you have a lot going on right know man, but just remember this, every day is a good day”. I sat there for a minute feeling like a complete dumbass. Here was a good friend of mine dying of cancer with less than 3 months to live and I’m complaining about trivial bullshit. I started to apologize to Bobby and he stopped me and told me it wasn’t needed. He said he did the same thing before he knew how short his time was left. then he told me again, “Everyday is a good day”.

My friend Bobby died about 2 months later and at the funeral what he said to me that day kept going through my head. I made a promise to myself that I would always remember that no matter how fucked up my day was, “Everyday was a good day”!

In memory of Bobby Tharp

So, I haven’t had a real vacation for about two years. I love my job alot, but I get burned out after a while. Everyone has kept asking “where are you going to go to on your vacation”? I’ve been just smiling and saying “No where”! That’s all I really want to do, Stay home and relax!

I’m having a little (”work withdrawal”) I’ve had several calls from work, of course an inspector shows up on my first day of vacation. I’m lucky that there are very smart people who can take care of anything almost anything while I’m gone. Still, i have this nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something.

Durana and I are planning a weekend trip to Tunica, MS and that will be going somewhere I guess. We really just go there because we get free rooms, good comps, and it’s only 3-4 hours away.

This time off has given me some time to finish some much needed upgrades/additions on the main site. I finally added a real Bonus and Rakeback Page . It also gave me time to set up the 3rd Annual Libby Tournament. It is a Charity Tournament to help raise money to help one of our members pay for expenses related to his daughters illness. You can check out he details here. Everyone is welcome!

In other news: I’m going to be trying out a new poker site tonight. My buddy Mirage pointed me to a nice fairly new site called Carbon Poker - The site looks nice and clean, I’m not sure what else to expect. I played about 10 minutes of play money. They offer some nice features from what I saw. I’ll play it for a few thousand hands and post a new review on it.

This is another great youtube video explaining the dumb shit that politicians are trying to pull off. For anyone that doesn’t understand the dynamics behind the UIGEA or the WTO mess, this opens it wide open for all to see. Proving again, nothing gets done is DC without a greedy motive.

As most of you know, I have a full time job as an environmental director, a big family, wonderful wife, and great kids. The last few weeks, Mewsiclovr and I have been putting in lots of time on the site and forum. Mewsiclovr works a full time job, has a wife and daughter, and just got a promotion. All this combined has kept us busy as hell!

The good new is that our hard work is finally starting to show some results. We are #1 in Yahoo for Poker Tutoring) and a few other keywords, and we are now #4 in google for those same terms. We are also moving the site to a CMS (Content Management System) to help me keep the site updated, eliminate broken links, missing meta tags, etc. On top of all this we are looking at moving the forum to a newer type of software known as vbulletin. This is a nice piece of software that I hope will eliminate once and for all the messy bugs present in the phpbb forum. Oh, and I can’t forget the promos we have planned. We working on dates for a Felt Poker Freeroll @ Cake Poker, and we have the 1st annual Felt Poker Awards. Gonna be a busy couple of months!

Funny, now that I read all this I don’t know how I’ve had time to play poker this month. I took a break from poker yesterday and played some tonight, but I really wasn’t into it and ended up down a few hundred.

Well, now that I’m thinking about it. I do know why I have so much time. Mewsiclovr does most of the labor intensive stuff with the site and forum. Not because I don’t like messing with it, it’s just that I have a bad habit of breaking things. this is probably because I have little to no clue what the hell I’m doing most of the time. I guess ML and I make a good team. I have ideas, and he makes them reality!

If anyone reading this is form the forum or website, we all need to give ML a nice big shout out! He is the man that has made most of this possible. I’ve often thought about what I would do without him to make it happen. It’s simple, not much nothing would get done!

ML YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Interesting stuff. I wonder what kind of things are in the works though as far as state sponsored gaming. Something like Duplicate poker maybe? Also, we all need to be paying attention to the 2 upcoming court rulings..

This clip is from a great show called “The Real Hustle”. Basically these guys show you how easy it is to scam people. Here is one that involves poker where a player pretends to be really drunk and annoying, but is really just setting up the hustle:

The poker world is a world of never ending drama it seems. Since last year when the UIGEA was passed into law, poker players has been fighting for their right to play poker in the comfort of their own home. The PPA has been working for online poker players trying to re-write the internet gaming laws and solidify our right to continue funding and playing poker.

It seems like every time we as a community start to get some momentum, another scandal comes to light. The last few weeks there has been not one, but two online poker “dramas” that are giving ammunition to the bible thumping politicians and other anti-gaming activists.

Drama #1 Absolute Poker “Superuser account” -

After hours of research and a combination of resources, thousands of well respected online players are convinced that Absolute poker has a serious security flaw in their new software that allows “Superuser” accounts to see other players hole cards. You can read more about this here:

Drama #2 - The Pokerstars WCOOP Main event winner “TheVOid” has been disqualified for using more than one account in the worlds largest prize pool event in history. He has forfeited over 1.3 million dollars because of this and it’s not the first time the online poker world has seen this happen. See the story here:

Now, I’ve already stated that I don’t know all the details of either one of these major poker world dramas, but one thing I do know is that we all will pay the price for scandals like these. This gives more credence to the argument over internet gaming security, and worst of all it will certainly discourage new players