“Don’t like her?! What’s wrong with her? She’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s got huge…”

Swings. Huge swings. That bitch Variance came around again today.

Session 1: +80 in 2/4 6-max and .25/.50 NL 6-max

Session 2: -130 in 2/4 6-max, .25/.50 NL 6-max, and 1/2 full ring

Session 3: +52 in .25/.50 NL 6-max

Net: +2

What a day. I don’t even want to think about the hourly. But at the very least I’m within “I can’t believe I lost my entire buy-in” distance of the 35% bonus.

This follows, of course, a Monday where I lose two buy-ins in NL and then join a multi-table tournament because HDub insists the overlay is great. Heh. Stupid re-buys and add-ons eliminated the overlay and committed me for double the money. I was doing okay in that tourney, definitely within one good pot of the money, but the blinds were advancing rapidly, and none of us except maybe the four largest stacks were in good enough shape to fold into the money. So I moved in with AK suited and got severely crippled by JJ when I didn’t improve. I bounced out when my KT ran into KJ and AQ on the way to XXTQA and decided to let KJ take the rest of my chips. 30th place.

Afterwards I decided to enter a turbo freeroll because I like roulette. The funny thing is that I don’t think roulette lets QQ get beaten by 24 (who’s all in preflop) with a 2 on the turn and a 4 on the river. Roulette might let KK get beaten by AQ, but it seems so unfair when all my chips are in preflop. Anyway, I don’t even recall how I went out, but I do remember it was in 30th place. Must have something to do with my birthday next month.

So it turns out the deadline for one of my finals has been extended to January. That means I could have made the event this past weekend. Rats.

Fortunately, this being a blogger event, there are write-ups all over the Internets. I suggest reading them all. And, of course, now that Iggy’s listed all of them on his site, there’s almost no point in my continuing on unless I add some “value” to the list.

Las Vegas and Poker Blog – And here I thought all of Sin City would have stopped in its tracks when the bloggers arrived. Read the rest of the blog for the weekend’s other goings-on, but only after you check out flipchipro’s pre-event write-up and tourney report, especially the 9’s list: “How do you know you’re in a Blogger’s Poker Tournament?” Good stuff. PokerProf gets in his acknowledgements and thanks and foiledcoup gets in his.

Tao of Poker – Pauly is, of course, the uber-organizer of the Holiday Classic, and in true blogger fashion, posted several entries live from the event. Don’t miss the one about the fight where Pauly had the nuts.

FeliciaLee – One of the few professional/bloggers at the Holiday Classic, and of course, the eventual winner. Wish I’d had money on her. Check out her report to see what a tournament looks like from a winner’s perspective. Heh. Congrats, Felicia! She’s also added part one of the weekend recall. Apparently Felicia doesn’t hate Hold’Em. Who knew? Kidding… Part two goes into more depth on the tournament, and shows us once again why Felicia’s got the best damn tournament reports in the blogosphere.

Bill Rini – Winner of the first-to-bust-out Gigli prize, which is like pouring salt in one’s wounds, in my opinion. A good overview of Bill’s trip, with some photos of the professionals.

Glenn’s Poker Journal Felicia’s husband Glenn has a tourney report and some photos taken with his new digital camera. Then he travels back in time and tells us what happened on Friday. More photos with funny captions.

Poker Perspectives – Maudie’s got the day before, the first day, the day after, and a live from the event post. If you didn’t quite catch that, there’s a gap or two in there. Check back for her updates.

The Cards Speak – Hdub does bisonbison one better and auto-rates the bloggers based on friendliness, intelligence, and post-flop “I could hang out with him at a poker table all night” -ness.

Up For Poker – CJ says, “Get ready for an onslaught of trip reports.” Find out how Vegas can remind you of Barbie and where you sleep when you’re the sixth full grown adult male to enter your hotel room for the night. Also, CJ’s tourney report.

BadBlood plays Poker – It’s a good thing poker bores Mrs. Blood ’cause that’s not all Mr. Blood blogs about.

Guinness and Poker – Iggy on why you shouldn’t send a midget to do a man’s job.

random thoughts and thoroughbred selections – BG with some actual thoroughbred selections and putting the blues in gamblingblues.com. That last one’s got more bite than a first-year co-ed.

Riding the F Train – Asphnxma tries to trap the bloggers twice and ends up on the other side in part 1, then makes good the next day at the Horseshoe. Finally, some hints of a WPBT leg right here at home. That would be awesome.

This is more work than I thought. I’ve probably re-edited this post 12 times already. But really there’re a lot of great stories out there. Here’s three more to read:

Genius of the Poker

SnailTrax

Bob

Yes, this is a truly crazy thing. One weekend from dozens of perspectives. Let’s hope Iggy steals some content and makes one consistent narrative out of it all. In the meantime, enjoy.

I have Small Stakes Hold’Em and Winning Low Limit Hold’Em–both of which I like very much, though I’m more likely to go back to SSH than WLLH for rereading.

Anyone know a good no limit book? I bought Pot-Limit & No-Limit Poker by Bob Ciaffone and Stewart Reuben and found it a little lacking. Some good stuff on opponent stack sizes, I suppose, but I don’t recall getting that much out of it.

BadBlood had suggested McEvoy’s book. There appear to be two:

Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold’em (Championship Series) by Tom McEvoy and T.J. Cloutier

No-Limit Texas Hold’em (New Player Series) by Brad Daugherty & Tom McEvoy

Any thoughts on which one is better for ring play?

Well, I’ve finally done it. It only took 18 months for this miserable hourly.

Had a very good NL 6-max session tonight and ended up with 13x my buy-in. I owned that table. It got to the point where any post-flop action from me basically won me the pot. I usually only used this power for my strong draws, but I think one time I frightened off pocket rockets with my cowboys and a queen on the board. And here I thought I just had the best hand.

I also showed the maniac to my right a thing or two. Stealing my blinds is one thing, but if you lose all or a big percentage of your chips with some bad plays, you’re just going to bust out, which, of course, is what he did. One time he raised and I re-raised the amount of his stack for fun–about 25x his raise. Probably a waste of cowboys, but then again, they can be cracked. Don’t worry. I don’t do this all the time.

Not only did I take some big profits off the table, but I also tripled my bonus point count while doing so. Not sure what I think of a bonus system that disproportionately rewards winning players, but as long as I’m one of those winning players, I guess I can look the other way.

This winning session followed a few mediocre sessions at Party and Doyle’s, of course. 1/2 full-ring and 1/2 6-max just caused me to lose my chips slowly over the course of many hands. I don’t know why, but a lot of times I just don’t feel it when I’m playing.

“Right but, what is it?”

“It’s just what they bring ok?”

That’s usually a sign to leave.

So now that I’ve broken that 1G mark, I expect I’ll dip and rise past this boundary many times. Let’s hope I keep my head and don’t bust out.