my sundays are usually laundry, cleanup, brunch, a bit of programming and trying a new restaurant with maggy. last day of relaxation before the work week begins. however things have been different since last week: soccer season started and will occupy my sunday nights for the next four months, maggy will be in hong kong for a month and today (and maybe the following sundays), I play in the red hot poker tournament.

I read about the red hot poker tour (created by a well known canadian poker champion Daniel Negreanu) online and decided to go check it out this afternoon, and ended up registering for today's tournament held at Elephant & Castle in the Rideau Centre. I sat at table 4 and was off to a slow start: no wreckless betting like I'm accustomed to in my home games. each player starts with 4000 chips with blinds at 50 doubling every 20 minutes. by the time the blinds goes to 600 with a 100 ante, I break out of my folding habits and make several aggressive bets over a few games. that is good enough to get me 8k chips and advance to the next table. there has been more actions at the other tables and it shows when I sit down at the new table: almost every player has over 15k chips, and the blinds are up to 500/1000 with 200 ante and begin to grind me down. I have no choice but to wait my chance coz I don't have enough chips to bluff anyone at the table out. my chance comes when I get the pocket Kings. after a few pre-flop tangos I go all-in against the high-stack. he calls and I flip my K's and him two 6's. the flop comes a 6, and I am in trouble. then I hit a King on the turn and the river is no help to anyone. I happily double up. then the bad cards start to come in and I hang in there the best I know how. three hours have passed and I make it to the 8-person final table: tired, excited, surprised and short-stacked. I have on me about 20k chips and the blinds are at 2k/4k with 500 ante, and I am next in line to be big blind. I bluff my way to pay for the two blinds. a round later I am big blind again holding 8-7 off-suit in my hands. some guy goes all-in. I hold the table up for a good minute, and then I call. strange that I called but, first, I like connectors, suited or not; second, he is the guy whom I beat with the two cowboys >:). the flop comes and he hits a pair of face cards. the turn card is no help to him but gives me an open-ended straight draw...

I'm getting tired of talking about poker. let's talk about the soccer match.

tonite was our team's second game. a 7-2 win to offset our 8-4 lost last game. I'm playing defence, not a familiar position and still trying to keep up. I was ok with the position I play until I got a ball in my crotch from blocking a shot (a bad shot/pass/whatever) in tonite's game. I almost blacked out and had to exit the field. I continued to take more abuses in the second half before the end-of-game whistle.

like usual, I came home in pain (more so this time than ever). I treated myself to a hot bath, and now I'm writing in my blog. time to hit the hay. g'nite! .e  23:58