Poker and Football, Oh My

For some reason I woke up far, far too early this morning. Which isn't all bad, as I got a healthy dose of poker in, plus got caught up on assorted poker blog reading, as well as some other chores and what-not.

Glad the Red Sox took game one, but geez, what an ugly, ugly game. Having to watch Tim Wakefield and Cornrow Arroyo pitch on the same night can cause one physical pain when they're struggling. All's well that ends well (for BoSox fans), I guess, but that was a pretty pitiful display all the way around.

Last week I tore it up as far as football prognosticating. 12-2 for the week and 4-0 on money games. That brings me up to 57-31 overall for the year, or a healthy 65% on the year. I've been betting at InterTops, using the initial poker signup bonus that I cleared, and doing pretty well. I'd never bet on football before, but told myself it was basically a freeroll, not to sweat it, etc. So far so good.

Here be my picks for this week. Tricky week overall, and I only put money on the Vikes (-6.5), Bills (+6.5), and the Jags (+9):

Tampa Bay Buccaneers -6.5 Chicago Bears
Baltimore Ravens -6.5 Buffalo Bills
Kansas City Chiefs -3.5 Atlanta Falcons
Minnesota Vikings -5.5 Tennessee Titans
Carolina Panthers -3.5 San Diego Chargers
New York Giants -6.5 Detroit Lions
Cleveland Browns +7.5 Philadelphia Eagles
Miami Dolphins +6.5 St. Louis Rams
Indianapolis Colts -9.5 Jacksonville Jaguars
New England Patriots -6.5 New York Jets
Green Bay Packers -3.5 Dallas Cowboys
Oakland Raiders -3.5 New Orleans Saints
Arizona Cardinals +6.5 Seattle Seahawks
Cincinnati Bengals +5.5 Denver Broncos

Poker is treating me fairly well this weekend. I finally got around to chasing the sign-up bonus at PokerRoom (which is a pretty hefty 40% on initial signups, up to $200 max). I like the interface a good bit (especially the chick with the enormous breasteses) and they've got a decent amount of tables running. The client is also Web=based so there's no software to download and it'll run behind some firewalls in the workplace, too. On the negative side, the bonus is going to take awhile to clear. You have to accumulate a set amount of player points, based on rake, which get doled out to you .5 pts at a time (usually if the pot is over $10) or 1 point at a time (usually if the pot is over $20). If you play 2/4 or higher, it goes fairly quickly. If you're used to clearing bonuses at .50/1 or 1/2, it'll take much longer.

The games are fairly soft, though, especially the NL tables. Yesterday the poker gods decided to hand my ass to me (I was down $200 at one point) but I managed to repair a good bit of the damage today. I'm about $75 down, and one-third of the way to the bonus.

Played a bit of 2/4 on Empire and keep steadily building up the roll there. I don't really like playing at sites where I'm not clearing a bonus, essentially handing rake money away for no reason, but it's hard to pass up the opportunities at Party/Empire/assorted skins. After the wedding I'm going to do some wrangling and scheming and finally set up a rakeback deal to resolve that issue, but until then they'll just get all of my rake, greedy bastards.

Speaking of which, next week at this time I'll be married. Crazy. In a good way, but still crazy.