LOL Politics

I had a big honking draft of a post regarding political matters, but finally had the good sense to just delete it, as pretty much any blogger posting about politics could serve as a textbook definition for anyone wondering what the phrase "monkey humping a football" means. But by all means, keep 'em coming, as the unintentional comedy is pretty priceless.

The only thing I really have to say is thank God people are at least engaged and talking about politics. I may completely disagree with Palin's stance that if a half Negro/half Islamic terrorist rapes and impregnates your daughter or wife that she should be forced to have the baby, but at least it's getting the issue out there for discussion, for debate. Just like all of those fake dinosaur fossils planted in the ground by God to test your faith, when He wasn't busy directly whispering her ear that natural gas pipelines are a necessary and crucial part of His grand plan. it's very refreshing that both parties are finally addressing the process of real change, of tackling the tough issues at the core beliefs of all the candidates, and not just trying to put out a slick, smiling package designed to appeal to (insert name of target demographic here).

As far as poker, things are actually rolling along pretty well. I'd gravitated towards playing more SnGs and MTTs over the last few months in lieu of cash games, but found myself with fairly skewed stats. I was doing well in satellites and smaller field MTTs, but donking back anything I made in those to large field, bigger buy-in MTTs.

Smarter people than myself would have seen the logical conclusion there (stop plauing large field, bigger buy-in MTTs) but I persisted for quite awhile before finally giving in to the cold, harsh truth. So for the last month or so I've been playing a ton of satellites on Saturday/Sunday, mostly to the $750K Guaranteed, and just unregistering and pocketing the T$, using those to play a bunch of $24 and $36 Turbo SnGs.

Not the most exciting poker existence to live, as there's never a potential payoff of more than $216 on the line, but it's been fairly profitable, with a ROI of 10% for the SnGs and about 40% for the assorted satellites (anything from the $3 shootouts up to the $75 ones, with various field sizes). I naturally lapse into a more screwed-down style in MTTs and rarely play aggressively (i.e. correctly) enough to build the stack I need to be a real force, but it'd make sense that I'd have more success in satellites, as far as simply needing to outlast 10% or so of the field, and nothing more.

I'll be off to Niagara Falls in just under a month for the WPT Canada event with PokerRoom, but then nothing on the schedule (for now) until next April. We've been pretty busy with work on our house, trying to get assorted stuff done by late October in time for the wife's 30th birthday party, as she's planning quite a shindig. Odds are actually improving on everything getting done, but probably still 75/25 at this point, as tackling one thing just spawns three more, etc.

I haven't quite convinced myself to leap back into the real estate investment waters but I'm pretty close, as discussions with a local bank led to them offering me a line of credit for real estate purchases/renovations that would not only make a potential project more profitable, but would ease some of the headaches caused by tapping into savings for repair costs. I can't say I'm very bullish on either the housing market or the general US economy for the next 18-24 months, but there are still people out there flipping houses and making money. If I can find a property at the right price (and with the backup plan of being able to rent it profitably), I may give it another whirl and see what happens.