My boy Mike "bonzo9876" Katz is on to the final day of the 10 thousand dollar event at Caesars 5th in chips of the remaining 19. First place pays one million dollars. The structure is kind of breaking down in this event, as the average stack is much smaller at this stage than a typical 10 thousand dollar event. Mike will have his work cut out for him against a very tough, very young field of accomplished (atleast online) players.

One time! I'll be auto refreshing my phone for updates over the course of my last two classes.

EDIT: As I write this the 10 handed final table just begun. Mike enters 7th of 10 in chips and is guaranteed 35000 dollars or so at the moment. I'm having fun sweating :) Follow live at Cardplayer.

SS

Not a whole lot's been going on since I last posted. I went to Birmingham last weekend as Alabama was up in Knoxville playing Tennessee. The weekend was a really good time. On Saturday I joined my Mom, sister Heather, Heather's boyfriend Ben, and a few other friends to watch the game at a bar called Fox and the Hound. Thankfully, Bama had no problem with UT and improved to 8 and 0. We still sit in the number two spot. Our remaining games include a homecoming affair against a scrubby Arkansas State this weekend, at LSU next week, and then home games against Mississippi State and rival Auburn. Bama probably can't be worse than like 6 to 1 against winning the National title. Just making it there would be sick. One time.

A lot of people forget that in 2005 Alabama opened up 9 and 0 before losing to LSU at home. Hopefully we'll be 10 and 0 after beating them this year.

During the week I've kind of just been lounging around and watching a bunch of baseball. Life is pretty boring during the week. It makes me miss the never-mundane Vegas life. I guess this is the case for like 99.9999 percent of the population during the week though. It's definitely been a different experience being back here in college at age 23...but whatever.

Quickly, some poker. Sunday was a successful day for me, as I turned like 200 percent ROI over the tournaments that I grinded. I got off to a good start early when I satellited into the upcoming 5000 dollar FTOPS event for 520 bucks or something. Later, I made a deep run in the UB main event but busted 27th or something. I ran a really risky bluff for all my chips in that tournament. This is something I don't usually do since people never fold, but it felt right. Simultaneously, I impatiently bubbled the PokerStars 500.

The highlight of the evening came around midnight though as I finished up the night with an outright win in the 215 dollar Mixed hold 'em event on Stars. Of course, this is half NLHE and half limit hold 'em. The tournament only had like 125 entrants, so the win paid 5600 or something. It's not about the money so much though. The most wonderful feeling in tournament poker is, of course, outright victories. It's very rare nowadays because of the large fields. I got really lucky in the NLHE portion with like 9 players left when I thought I had the best of it and stuck it in on J74 or something with 33 and the guy turned out to have KK. Turn 3. Sowwy. I feel like I played pretty exceptionally in the LHE pretty much all tournament long. A lot of people just have no idea how to play LHE.

I think grinding heads up NLHE for just the couple months that I did early this year has helped my all-around poker game immensely. I feel like I am hand reading as well as I ever have, and I'm certain that I am getting that good, thin (and max) value. I often times valuetown myself because I try to go so thin, but it's the sickest feeling when you like 3/4 pot with third pair, get called, and know you're good.

That's all I got. Hopefully my entries will get exciting again soon.

EDIT:

Oh, I also meant to mention a must-buy album for metalheads like myself. Taproot's new "Our Long Road Home" is just perfect. I can't quit listening. I get some messages and emails from people who are into metal, so I thought I would pass that on to those who haven't heard it. It's sick I'd kind of been brainwashed into listening to pop music because of my affinity for nightlife recently. Glad to be listening again. Also, I guess Halloween is coming up. I'm undecided if I'll wear a costume. More interestingly, my little sis Carly is turning 21 next Monday. God, to be 21 again.

SS

Sorry for the lack of updates. As I mentioned this administrative blog page is messing up my entries. The good news is that I'm FINALLY, FINALLY getting my webpage redesigned. I'm really excited about it. I know I've said this a million times. This time I actually made it to the post office and mailed my web designer a check, so it's going to happen for sure. The whole site will be redone with new pictures, news, the whole nine yards. I guess it was pretty unprofessional of me to not update my site for almost 3 years. Hopefully the whole site will be up and running by like early to mid November. I'm gonna go get dressed up have some pictures made by a professional photographer, so please no one laugh at me too hard when those pics surface.

I've been working really hard to change this pattern of laziness since I've been back in Tuscaloosa. I know I've blogged endlessly about this. I think it's really important to be able to get stuff done though and to be able to be relied upon by others. I still have a long way to go though. As I write this, we are in our tenth week of classes at The U of Alabama. I just got back from Target where I bought groceries for only the second time for the semester. It's laughable how embarrasing this is. Also, I am completely unorganized. I have all of my shit from all 5 of my classes in one, like, 49 cent folder that I found lying in my room at the beginning of the semester. Luckily, I've been able to find everything when I've needed it and I've still been able to do really well in classes. I long for the rewarding feeling that I used to get from being completely on top of everything. Also, my schedule is so weird because I have classes during the day then have to come home to take a break before going to my night classes. This kind of sucks, but it's a product of me waiting until the last minute to register for classes this semester. I'll set up something nice for the Spring. Ok I'm rambling.

This past weekend was a really great time. Some friends from Birmingham came in town and the whole weekend was insane. We got the scare of our lives from Ole Miss despite being up 24-3 at the half. Bama played horrendously in the second half and was held scoreless but able to fight off a potential game winning drive from the U of Mississippi to hold on 24-20. We're now 7 and 0 and still ranked second. I'm almost positive I'm not going up to Knoxville for the game against U of Tennessee next weekend. I'll likely go to Birmingham, so if anyone wants to chill this weekend lemme know.

Quickly, a poker update. As usual I'm playing only on Sundays. I played this Sunday and lost a little bit. The highlight (lowlight?) of the evening was a 13th place finish in the 100r on Stars for insignificant money. Oh also I got some of the best (financial) news of my life the other day when I learned that money I thought I'd invested in a mutual fund about 10 weeks ago was never entered into the fund (per my laziness not responding to mail from my broker). Therefore, I didn't lose the 30 percent market downfall value and thus saved myself a really sick figure. I'm leaving it in there very long term, so it's basically just a paper figure, but still this is a pretty monumental suckout.

Gotta go to class.

SS