I want to give a shout out to one of my best friends, Ben Mintz (The Destroyer-online screen name). Ben took down a WPO preliminary tourney yesterday at the Gold Strike in Tunica, MS for $21K. Along with the first place prize money he won a $5K main event seat and a gold bracelet.

Ben and I have been best friends since high school and I pretty much got him playing poker. He was a pit game kind of guy before I finally showed him the way during one of my many trips to visit him at the old Horseshoe poker room in Tunica. Underage of course!!! Ben’s online career pretty much started because of me, so I like to think. This was probably in 2004. I had $20 in my Party Poker account and Ben turned that $20 into over $1,500 in a very short time. Then not too much longer I got the sweetest call ever. He called me one morning while I was grinding my way at my desk at work and he said that things were about to change. I was like WTF happened. He told me that he beat out a field of over 2K to win the $40K GTD on Party Poker for $10K+. I can remember that day like it was yesterday. There have been many ups and downs while dealing with a best friend who lives the life of a professional poker player, but hey if it was easy everyone would do it.

I just want to take this time and web space to give a shout out to a great friend and even a better person.

One time dealer!!!!

Tater

Who cares right? Oh well.

Hey Guys. I guess you all thought that I died or just gave up since I haven’t posted a blog in over 3 months. Well I didn’t die, but I had to take a little break from poker for a while, so that I could regroup and get my brain in working order again.

The last time I blogged I was playing $100NL FR on Bodog with a big enough bankroll to withstand the variances, so I thought. Well after I lost about 10 BI’s in the span of 2 weeks I told myself that I needed a little break from poker. So I did just that. I completely stopped playing online, live, home games and even lol play money games. I didn’t miss it one bit.

Then football season started. I never really played that much during the week ever. I did the majority of my playing on the weekends, but when football season started something else was there to occupy my mind. So I put off my poker playing another month or so, but now I am getting the urge to start playing again.

I am back to playing micro stakes again after being able to pretty much beat Bodog at the beginning of the year for a modest amount every month I am going to have to bite the bullet and grind out a couple Benjamin’s a month at the micro cash game tables. I started playing regularly about a week ago and I have had 7 winning sessions in a row until last night where I got cooler’d by a perfect perfect back door straight when I had middle set on a K-T-x flop. He had KJ, FTW!!!! Good thing it was $25NL. I am up about 4 BI’s this week and I hope to grind out 8-10 more BI’s before the month is over and start rebuilding my almost defunct bankroll.

I have 70% of my bankroll sitting in Bodog hoping that they will have a payout method in the works that will allow me to get my money out faster than a 40 business day snail mail check. I would think that Bodog would find something new during football season, but it hasn’t happened yet. As soon as they do get a new withdrawl method I will be taking my money off of Bodog and either stuff it in my sock drawer for a live roll or ship it over to Absolute where I am playing now.



Later-

Tater

It has been a while since my last update, but not a lot has changed in the world of Mr Taterhead. The last time I wrote I mentioned that I was going to take a couple of shots with my bankroll and if I busted it I would find something else to do with my spare time for a while. Good news is that I didn’t bust my roll. Yaaay me!!!! Last month I played poker with the intention of winning enough to have a 15 buy in bankroll to 3 table $200NL on a regular basis. I got up to 12 buy ins at my peak when I decided that I had enough to take a couple of shots. Well that wasn’t a good choice. I dumped a couple of buyins at $200NL and was tilting out of my mind. I immediately cashed all but $500 out of my online roll and rebuilt my live roll which allowed me to take a shot at a new $2/$5 NL game that opened at the Ameristar Vicksburg. Landlord79 and I made a trip to the Ameristar Vicksburg and we enjoyed it very much. We may have a new home!!!! Be sure to check out our trip reports and poker room reviews from our little excursion.

I was able to talk my “wife” into opening a new account on Bodog with rakeback (33%) but she isn’t going to be playing too much on Bodog until she can get a few extra Benjamin’s to take full advantage of the initial deposit bonus of 20% up to $500 using Rapid Transfer. LOL bonus whore!!! I, errrr she, only needs to win a few more buy ins at $100NL before she reaches the $2,500 goal. That along with the $500 initial deposit bonus will get her to the 15 BI threshold to start grinding $200NL regularly.

Good luck to everyone in Vegas for the WSOP. Sure wish I could have made it, but life got in the way.

April online results were pretty solid. I didn’t get to play as much as I wanted to, but who does right? I did all of my playing back at my old home of Bodog where I played mostly $50NL with a little bit of PLO to make the degenerate inside of me smile. I made my standard 10BIs that I was making before I tried out the rock garden over at PokerStars. I know that Stars has a wonderful VIP Program and awesome tourneys, but I don’t understand why people love banging there head against a wall over there. I guess you can say that I am a Bodog man through and through. It was hard to leave Bodog at first, but it was really easy to go back. I mean when you can consistently beat a game for 8-10ptbb/100, why would you want to scratch and claw your way around the sharks at ‘Stars? I am sure Landlord79 has an answer, if you want to know just ask him.

I made a single trip to my home casino, HSBC, and I ended up losing one BI ($300) when a guy goes runner- runner Ts for Quads on me. It was gross. Landlord79 was watching as the hand happened and we just stood there in amazement. I just laughed and we had an interesting story to talk about on the way home.

I have been playing poker for close to 10 years and I just recently made a vow to myself that if I am going to waste my time playing, I am going to try and make some money at it. So starting in June, I am either going BUSTO or ROBUSTO by playing nothing less than $200NL on Bodog. I am using this month to play $100NL and $200NL trying to get as close to 15BI’s for $200NL as I can. I know that 15BIs for a level isn’t considered good bankroll management, but I am just tired of wasting my time on the internet when I get home for Snickers bars.

If I bust my roll doing this, I will take a long break and figure out what the next step for me will be. I hope by updating my blog more and posting results more frequently will help me along the way.

Wish me luck



PS----I am looking for a Hand History Converter for Bodog HH’s if anyone knows of one? Poker Zion used to have one, but for some reason it doesn’t work now that two rags updated their site. I had to manually enter the suits on the cards and that sucks, IMO. Damn you ED.

PSS--- I run so good on Bodog. This hand was from last month. My first ever Royal Flush. I thought I was about to get some action when the board paired.

Bodog No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (9 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com

MP2 ($78.25)
MP3 ($99.97)
CO ($46.35)
Button ($28.95)
Hero ($51.35)
BB ($33.95)
UTG ($19.00)
UTG+1 ($10.38)
MP1 ($40.75)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q, T.
4 folds, MP3 calls $0.50, 2 folds, Hero completes, BB checks.

Flop: ($1.50) K, J, A (3 players)
Hero bets $1, BB folds, MP3 calls $1.

Turn: ($3.50) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP3 bets $3.5, Hero raises to $9, MP3 calls $5.50.

River: ($21.50) J (2 players)
Hero bets $15, MP3 folds.

Final Pot: $36.50

So this weekend I was watching the NFL Draft and I fired up my laptop to mess around with some PLO and in < 2hrs I ended up winning 10 BI’s. Too bad it was at $25PLO. I am sure that my luckbox will run out and I will be cussing this game come tomorrow, but man it sure was fun.


For all of those dying to know I am up ~12BIs @ $50NL this month and beating Bodog at 12bb/100.

I will post monthly graph and results along with some sexy hand historys in a couple of days.

Good Luck