FROM LAST TO FIRST

What a wild Fantasy Football year. I got a D from my peers for my Fantasy Draft, and rightfully so. My first 4 picks were pretty much a bust: Steven Jackson, Willis McGahee, Chad Johnson and Matt Hasselback. I went 0-4 to start the season.





But then I went on a tremendous run, thanks in big part to Deangelo Williams, whom I picked up off the waiver wire. I would only lose 1 more game all season long. I rode Donovan McNabb all year long, but played Tyler Thigpen for the playoffs (I picked him up off the waiver wire right before the playoffs started). I also played Green Bay DST all year but played the Seahawks for the Super Bowl. I won the Super Bowl 157-74. What a blowout! Here was my final roster (the checks were waiver wire additions):


Ship it!

Weekend wrapup

I managed to play poker Friday night and cashed in more than half of the tournaments I played in. Problem was that none of them were huge. See below from official poker rankings website:

I did finally win a $75 super turbo. Have you played these yet? You start with 300 chips and the blinds go up every 3 minutes. Tight play is rewarded. I have won one at every level I can think of ($169, $75, $30, $15 and $4), but it seemed to take forever to get a first place win at the $75 level.

I like them because they take 20 minutes or so to play and if you can double up early, you can basically fold to the money. Win 2 hands and you have a great shot of taking first place. There is really no poker skill necessary until you get 3 handed. And even then it is questionable if you will need any skill to win. The nice thing is to watch a bunch of people slapping chips around while you wait for a big hand to shove with.

I got creamed again in fantasy football this weekend. My survivor pick was Green Bay, but with a lot of people taking Detroit as a potential upset, I changed it just before kickoff to Seattle. They won't lose at home to the 49er's, right??? Wrong! I'm out in week 2. My ffl team is down by 23 points going into tonight and the only thing I need is 24 or more points by McNabb to win. I don't really see that happening against Dallas. Maybe, I'll get lucky and suckout....

And I finally broke down and bought the first season of LOST. Everyone says it is so good and I haven't seen 1 single episode. Hawkette and I plan on diving into that now that Big Brother is wrapping up. We do have Survivor starting up soon, but we are excited to see this "LOST" that everyone raves about.

Saturday night I saw Cheap Trick. They were fabulous as always. Best band I have ever seen live by far. This time, I had to pay $150 a ticket since they were billed with Heart and Journey. I saw Heart twice 20+ years ago and they were terrible both times. This time they were alright. Ann Wilson has such a great voice, so I really enjoyed that. Journey was "blah". The lead singer they have now, "sounds like" Steve Perry. But he's not Steve Perry. Journey was the first concert I ever went to and I loved Journey. This time, I wasn't impressed and left about half way through their set. I was really only there for Cheap Trick. I just wish they were the headliners...

Hope the tables are treating you goot! Stay patient.....

Fantasy Draft

So here we go again. Last year, I got a D for my draft from my online critics and so I tried to make a change in my roster. I traded Tom Brady away for Matt Lienert prior to the season starting. That move was an F and my season sucked balls.

Here's this season's draft results:

Pick Position Name
5th RB Steven Jackson
20th RB Willis McGahee
29th WR Chad Johnson
44th QB Matt Hasselback
53rd WR Santonio Holmes
68th TE Dallas Clark
77th RB Matt Forte
92nd WR Nate Burleson
101st DEF Green Bay Packers
116th QB Donovan McNabb
125th WR Vincent Jackson
140th K Adam Vineteri
149th TE Donald Lee
164th DEF Seattle Seahawks
173rd K Robbie Gould

You can obviously see that I picked as if no one on my team will get hurt. If everyone did stay healthy and played well, I have no issues with bye weeks or backups. Maybe that was dumb, as a lot of guys will take 1 defense or 1 kicker only and plan to pick up another one later in the season. But our transactions cost $1 per drop, per add, and per trade. So I figured I would make the best team I could and plan on minimal transactions.

So what's your grade for me?

Catching up from the weekend

Despite having a D- rated draft and a terrible trade while attempting to correct my mistakes, I managed to win a second straight week. 2-0. I don't know how long my receivers will overproduce and compensate for my week running backs, but I will take it for now.

What a crazy weekend in the NFL. How many of you picked the Browns to hang 51 points on Cincy? Not me. My Broncos sucked out on the river for the second week in a row. ICE ICE BABY. I didn't think Icing the kicker really worked anymore.

And, oh yeah, I played poker this weekend. I played online Friday night. Made a nice run getting up 50BB playing 1/2limit.

Saturday night we had a home poker tourney. 13 players total, so it was a little smaller than usual. We should be back in the 20's consistently starting in January. $20 buy in. I was card dead all night. Never saw a pocket pair higher than 77. I managed to buy a few pots and steal a few blinds, but would give it back getting caught later. I didn't use my pen and paper (see this post) so I don't have any HH to give you, but it wouldn't be interesting anyway. I finished 7th. My brother, who ALWAYS finishes in the money with his tight, tight, tight play, bubbled for the first time in a long time. Congratulations to Bill E. for taking it down.

We played a second tournament with 9 players. Same story for me. No cards, tried to push people out of pots, got caught stealing a few times and went out 5th.

Then we played $1/$2 NL. This is when everything changed for me. I started off aggressive taking a few losing (bluff) hands all the way to showdown. This set me up as a maniac. After that I could call down to the river and finish off with a min-raise and win nice sized pots with Top pair only (they were assuming I was drawing and then bluffing?). I also took several pots with c-bets after raggy flops since they assumed I was playing ATC even after pre-flop raises. A couple of nicely played monsters helped. We finished at 5:30am, and I was up 70BB. Not a bad night, I paid for 5 entries to the tournament (Hawkette, one of my son's, and mine), paid $25 entry due for my fantasy football league, paid for $40 in white castles for everyone, and then had exactly the same amount of money left when I went up to bed. That's pretty good entertainment.

Stay patient...

Fantasy Football week 1

Sorry not much poker content lately. I will be posting some hands from my cash games last night, soon. I am planning on playing in the mookie tonight. Come and play. Every Wednesday, 9pm CST on FTP. $10 buy in. Password is vegas1.

You won't believe this ridiculous shit! Check out this post from the Pokerwolf.

First week of FF was good to me. I was down 8 points going into Monday night and I had Matt Leinert and Joe Nedney versus Anquan Boldin. I was pretty confident going in, but man!, did Leinert scare me. I thought for sure I was a loser, but somehow, I won by 2 points.





Are you ready to say WTF? In an effort to thin out my New England heavy roster (and because I hate him) I traded away Tom Brady for Matt Leinert and Ahman Green. Two 3rd round picks for a 1st round. I know, it was stupid, but I wanted another starting running back and I felt that Arizona will be playing behind a lot therefore Leinert would be throwing a lot. So far that trade doesn't look so hot. I got 20 points versus the 29 I gave away. But I know Brady will bust, eventually. He will get back to 125-160 yards passing with 1 TD games, as New England pounds the ball out on the ground.

And for anyone interested, Cal was quoted in the local paper. Click here for the article. They left out one of his rushes, but still a good week for the Indians.