Annette “Annette_15″ Obrestad has made her first final table at a World Series of Poker event, and she picked a good one to do so: the $10,000 buy-in main event. In the inaugural WSOP Europe series, which consisted of three seperate events complete with bracelets and huge paydays for top spots, the final event has worked its way down to the final nine after fan favorite Gus Hansen busted in 10th place after running QQ up against KK. I think in broadcast replay Gus will see that his opponent was displaying obvious body language signals of a huge hand (the guy looked like he couldn’t wait to turn over a hand, and that with Annette in the hand as well..she folded) but then again it’s Gus Hansen and he reads pretty good so who knows! In any case, Gus went out but turned in another amazing run in a high-profile talent-packed event. Nice run Gus!

Watching the event gave most of us our first look at Annette in a live game situation, and the 18-year-old didn’t disappoint. She played her trademark aggressive style, popping and repopping preflop and following through afterwards, and consistently stayed at the top of the charts, even taking over as the chip leader very late in the tourney. Then she was moved to the featured TV table and immediately took it over! Theo Jorgensen was visibly tilted by the youngsters aggressive style, as well as the constant raising from the two Swedes at the table, berating “all this raising with nothing” which was highly inappropriate. He half-jokingly told one opponent to show their “bluff” or he’d hunt them down and beat them up after the tournament. Annette took pot after pot regardless, and worked her stack up into the chip lead through great play.

At some point afterwards, although I missed it, she lost a large pot and was dropped down to nearly the short-stack position. When it gets to that point, it’s going to be all-in time soon based on the mega-high blind levels, so the tension for Annette fans began to rise. Sure enough, Annette pushed shortly afterwards with AT and was called by AJ leaving her dead to three outs. Ten on the flop and she catches up! I thought she could only do that online? Following the Gus bustout later on in the day (even though I would have loved to watch a Gus vs. Annette vs. aggressive table) she finds herself in the hunt for a World Series of Poker bracelet, very nice payday and the opportunity to lay claim as one of the greatest No Limit Holdem players ever without even being able to legally play in the United States! It’s safe to say she has a future in this game, eh :)

Somewhere along the way in the vaunted hallowed halls of online poker chat the oft-typed observation “nh” (nice hand) has taken on an alternate meaning: nice suckout. Let’s say you’ve got your opponent all in drawing virtually dead, such as AA vs 66 with a rainbow board of A72. When the turn and river both come sixes, giving the fortunate sap Quads, it is MANDATORY to type “nh” or the finesse “nh, sir” (a reference to Men the Masters trademark losing comment, either that or Men is multi-tabling about 6k tourneys a day). If the suckout is even more impressive, say Quads losing to an unlikely straight-flush you must acknowledge this with the cutting-edge variant VNH (the caps give the effect of true appreciation). So please, if you’re still chatting “nice hand” when a player makes a strong read or amazing call get your act together. That’s when you’re supposed to type WTF :)

Congrats to Jordan “iMsoLucky0″ Morgan for winning the Tunica World Series of Poker Circuit event! He has been very impressive in many live tournaments, in addition to his outstanding online results, coming in second at the US Championship recently among many others. I really admire his playing style and table presence, which are both calm, confident and aggressive all at once without being abrasive or obnoxious as we see with so many players these days. Some even consider it part of their “game” to engage in constant trash talk, which is really just compensation for their Poker shortcomings (like buying the gigundo big truck because you aren’t that well endowed etc etc). Anyway, I’m a big fan and can’t wait for the broadcast of this event so I can see it unfold. Way to go Jordan!

I like to watch the Rocky movies to get myself pumped up for…oh wait, that’s Daniel Negreanu. I listen to the sound of my own voice talking smack whenever we engage in family gaming, WOOT! The wifey and I often find ourselves embattled in the dark art of hand-held Yahtzee, that some demon spawn invented in the dungeons of Hell several years ago to enslave us all into staring at five random dice (assuredly with subliminal messages of PROCREATE and/or SCRATCH YOURSELF) hoping to match them up in a scoring configuration. The Yahtzee off is yet another realm where I have absolutely no chance of taking her down. She holds the high score with I think 514 points (rigged) even though I did post a 420 awhile back (holla). We even played a game of Carcassonne today which I promptly lost. Carcassonne is a european-style board game that we love to play. Everyone we’ve introduced it to loves it just as much as we do. Sounds like a good Christmas present to me, huh? I’m going to train by finishing off my Disaronno Sour and contemplating pushing the buttons correctly.

I decided to make an abrupt end to my work week today (it’s good to be the King) and am starting off my mini-four-day vacation where I anticipate not getting any projects done around the house (or anywhere else for that matter), opting instead to stare blankly at my computer screen while an endless array of random teenage poker players donk me out of tournies with substandard hands. If that doesn’t get my blood flowing, perhaps I’ll be back here to promise site updates that won’t happen anytime in the near future due to my total lack of motivation to do, well, anything. But as a change of pace, and to help get my code back on, I recently revamped my wife’s site Nicostuff.com which came out pretty f’n cool if you ask me. She’s received some great comments on the new look, and her post count is far surpassing that of your humble narrators. I’m a big fan, sweetie. Good job!

I’ve been taking the business end of an endless streak of bad beats in some heads-up qualifying matches lately, among them AA vs. J3 all-in preflop with a 6-7-8-9-T board followed promptly by KK vs KJ and a JJ4 ending to my session. I run gooooooooooooood. Somehow I managed to breeze through one of the satellite matches to earn a $26 token for my entry into the $24,000 tourney tonight. I’m also keeping an eye on the HORSE event currently running in the WSOPE (World Series of Poker Europe), although HORSE hasn’t been keeping my interest of late. I’ve been into watching donkeys lately :)

Yesterday was again a full schedule of tournaments that actually ended well, with final tables in three different tournament formats: PLO (Pot Limit Omaha), 90-player SNG (Sit and Go) and a standard Hold’em tourney. I also had a 20th place finish in one of the Hold’em tourneys which was nice but I don’t like to just make the money, I like to go deep and push into the better payoffs found at the final tables of these things. The day started off badly, bubbling the 100+9 satellite tournament that would have put me into one of the huge Sunday tourneys where the notable players make their livings. After playing very strong Poker and cruising into the final 9 players, my cards started to dry up and with several shorts (short-stacks) at the table I was forced to fold to alot of all-ins while I played a basic waiting game. Unfortunately, with the blinds and antes steadily increasing, you can’t afford to do that for very long. Soon I was right there with them, picking my spots to push with sub-optimal hands (and occasionally some monsters) and rebuilding my chips up to a respectable level. We got down to six of us with the top 4 winning seats. The player to my left opened for a big raise after I folded in first position and the next player repopped him all-in which he insta-called, flipping over AA. The opponent tabled QQ, putting him in great position with dominant odds, only to have a flop come with two Queens in it giving his opponent Quads six-handed! I’d like to say I felt sorry for the guy, but all of a sudden I was back in contention, albeit as the table short stack. I didn’t really mind this, as my play was greatly simplified: I would push when I caught a great hand or when I felt the table dynamics would allow me to bluff-down a pot. Time and time again I stole the blinds, only to have them put back in the pot rapidly with our short-handed table. Finally, I was dealt JJ in the Big Blind which is very powerful here, and had the button limp in as well as the small blind. After a short think, I pushed all in and saw the button immediately fold. Great, I though, the Small Blind would have to call off almost 60% of her stack with a hand that she had originally limped in with, usually indicating a weak Ace or King or connector type holdings. After typing, “Sigh” in the chat box, she eventually called with….AK. Wow, two monsters at this point in the tournament both in the blinds, and she had accidentally concealed her own strength (I’m sure this wasn’t a play, given her reluctance to put me in with AK and then to call with it given the circumstances) by weakly playing her strong hand against the short stack. Alas, the king comes directly on the flop and I’m bounced out on the bubble. “Sigh”.

After that, I forced myself to refocus after I ranted for about a half-an-hour to my wife about my bad run with Jacks (I had also went out of a tournament in 6th after taking JJ up against KQ with my opponent catching four flush board cards to send me to the rail in a previous tournament…argh). I played well in my very next tourney, posting a top 20 finish which lessened the sting a bit, but feeling renewed I decided to register for a PLO tournament where they start you off with a double-stack (3000 in chips) which allows you to work your stack and accumulate chips with more leeway than the usual 1500 provides. I started off slowly but soon I was vacuuming chips at a rapid pace, even pulling them in by bluffing occasionally, not exactly a common feat in Omaha. I found myself in the top 5 for most of the tourney, finally finishing 8th while simultaneously final-tabling one of the 90-player Sit-and-Gos with a 4th place finish and even a final table in one of the $2 Super Satellites (which only offers a seat to first place). All in all, a good recovery from a disappointing finish and a much more enjoyable end to my Poker day.

Most of the time I’m working on a page, coding it or trying to figure out some CSS code or something, I’ll have the TV on in the corner to help make things less monotonous. Probably the top movie I’ve watched recently on HBO was “The Departed” which stars such heavy-hitters as Leonardo Dicaprio, Matt Damon (where is Rounders 2) and Jack Nicholson. While I’m not usually that big a fan of Leo, he was awesome in this one as well as all the other actors. The movie itself had a tight script and even more tense feel from the very start, and just as you think you’ve got the ending figured out it takes a series of twists and turns that leaves you sitting there with your mouth hanging open saying WOW. Great film, one of the best I’d seen in awhile.

I also caught a very strange, slightly indie kind of flick a few weeks ago called “Salvage”. In this bizarre offering, which almost feels like you’re watching some kind of home video footage, a young girl is having vivid nightmares about being murdered by an unidentified crazy hick type of character. Time and time again she is brutally taken down after valiantly trying to escape or stop the killer, only to wake up and be forced to relive the same ghastly sequence (albeit with different circumstances each time) again. Of course, no one believes here and everyone thinks she’s crazy, which adds to her desperation. As time goes on, she starts picking up clues on how to stop this cycle (and also on who the killer actually is) and the tension continues to build. I won’t give away the ending, but it was actually good in a this-is-my-first-movie kind of way and was a great random find by me while flipping through the channels. Now I’m going to try and make it through “Rat” which the preview says is about a “woman who becomes furious when her husband returns home from a bar and transforms into a rat”. Yep.

I was just reading about GrandMaster Nigel Short receiving a warning for calling the FIDE Vice President (and Deputy president) dunderheads in an interview concerning cheating allegations raised against fellow GM Veselin Topalov. The Ethics Commission (is Chess that hardcore that we even have an ethics commission?), protractors and pocket protectors in hand, stated Nigel “exceeded in the expression of his opinions, abusing of the right to criticism and committed a conduct likely to injure or discredit Mr. Zurab Azmaiparashvili’s reputation, thus violating art. 2.2.11 of the FIDE Code of Ethics”. Huh? It’s not like he said they were closet crackheads, he called them dunderheads. He has to clear his reputation after that? Is he worried about applying for a job and having the dunderhead comment come up…sorry, sir, but we don’t take kindly to dunderheads around here. I love the game of Chess, but why are all of our top players and officials so, well, geeky? I know it’s Chess but c’mon! Every time any two Chess players argue online it’s like they’re trying to write it in Shakespearean prose. They use way to many words that I have to grab my dictionary to understand, and they just end up nit-picking each other back and forth. Just state your opinion and don’t make me get out my decoder ring to understand it. Not that I have one of those but :)

“Action” Dan Harrington took down the prestigious 2007 World Poker Tour Legends of Poker tournament, beating out some great players along the way such as David Pham and Joe Sebok. Dan, as you all know, is the crusty-looking old fella who has a wealth of poker knowledge the size of the Library of Congress brewing beneath his trademark Irish-green hat. He wrote the seminal books Harrington on Holdem I and Harrington on Holdem II (highly recommended) which gave players an intimate look into the detailed analysis Dan puts into each and every hand he plays. He also holds the distinction of final tabling the World Series of Poker main events two years in a row (2003-4), outlasting the constant land mines of massively large fields now present even at the $10,000 buy-in levels, with a World Championship victory in 1995. Harrington took home over $1.6 mil in prize money, including two guaranteed seats into WPT events next year as well. I’m a fan of Harrington’s analytical style for the most part, excluding his views on pocket pair strengths and some of his “tighter” by-the-numbers outlooks but it is hard to aruge with results. Good game sir!