Saturday, May 27, 2006


phil hellmuth, jr. relaxing while not being pressured by jimbo
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getting bad with the bad boy of poker

I sat across the table from arguably the best poker player in the world today.

It is Player appreciation weekend at Ultimatebet.com and Phil Hellmuth, Jr., the bad boy of poker is making surprise appearances at tables throughout the weekend. I was sitting at a $.25- .50 no limit table with two or three other players, when guess who shows up. He sat directly across from me and we went heads up three times. Twice, I was on a draw and he raised me big on the turn and I threw them away. The time I will tell everyone about (and as I get older, the story will get better) I had Jack/Queen of clubs and I raised fifty cents. Phil was on the big blind and he called me, as did someone else. I had a flush draw and straight draw on the flop and Phil checked. I raised fifty cents and he called. I hit the nut straight on the turn and bet again and he called again. The river was a rag, so I missed my flush, but I had the nut straight and there was no hand that could beat me. The board didn’t pair and there were no more than two of any suit on the board. To non-players, that means the straight was the best hand. The straight to the ace, which I had, is the best available hand in that circumstance. Players like Phil and I would call it, therefore, the nut straight, or, in shorthand, the nuts.

I bet big and Phil came back over the top. The third guy folded. I went all in and Phil called. Phil turned over JQ off suit and we split the pot.

I told him I’d tell my grandchildren that I went heads up with Phil Hellmuth and I didn’t lose. If he replied, I couldn’t tell. There were twenty people waiting in line to get on the table and two hundred observers and everyone was chatting.

I sent Ultimatebet an e-mail and asked if the player I had played was poker’s bad boy. They replied that according to their records, I had, indeed been playing this afternoon with Mr. Hellmuth.

I tell anyone who will listen that I absolutely don’t like Phil Hellmuth when I see him on TV. He was anything but a jerk this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have to change my mind about him.

I'm sure that Phil reads my blog regularly for tips to help keep his game sharp. The following is a special message just to Phil. I took it easy on you this afternoon, but look out next time, because I'll be playing for real.

At least around the table and here in Jimbo’s world.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

another poker tournament

By having a blog, I qualify for an annual poker tournament. While many of you may think this is a shameless attempt to do anything to get into a tournament without having to pay any money, you'd be right. By putting this thing on my blog I get a free entry. If you blog and want to enter, you can too.

Texas Holdem Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

Monday, May 15, 2006


maid of the seas
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a joke? a fairy tale, or the truth?

I read this today on Yahoo!

Am I lost in some distant reality or is there something I don't understand?

Read it on the link below.

Presidential administrations gone wild

the colonel, the idiot and the maid of the seas

Once upon a time there was a graceful bird that was known by everyone as the Maid of the Seas. The Maid of the Seas was sleek and beautiful and she carried people across the ocean and brought them safely back home.

In the same period of time, there was an evil dictator who tortured and killed his people and spread his violence to all of the other countries in his region. He hated the United States. Some might have said that he hated our freedom, but he didn’t give a crap about our freedom. As a matter of fact, he probably would have laughed had anyone suggested he hated our freedom. He probably would have said that anyone who said he hated our freedom was some kind of dope, and he would have been right.

“Oh, Mother Goose,” many of you are probably saying, “You’re talking about that awful Saddam Hussein, aren’t you?”

No, children, I’m talking about someone who was so much worse than Saddam that he made Saddam look like, well, some kind of pussycat. I’m talking about a man who called himself “the Colonel.”

“Wait a cotton-picking minute, you Mother,” some of you are saying right now. “If you’re going to start bad-mouthing Colonel Harlan Sanders, you’d better bet that we’re going to open a king-sized can of whup ass.”

No! No! No! I would expect to have my ass whipped if I spoke irreverently about Colonel Sanders. I’d welcome it, because I would deserve it. I’m talking about Muammar Qaddafi, one of the lowest-life pieces of crap you’d never want to meet.

Anyway, the Colonel saw the Maid of the Seas carrying Americans from one side of the pond to the other and it ticked him off. He sent his henchmen to bring her down. It was a few days before Christmas—a holiday the Colonel disrespected—when his secret police brought down the Maid of the Seas, killing her and the Americans she carried. This atrocity would remain the worst act of terrorism against Americans until that sunny September morning in 2001.

Many years later, in that great country which was to have been the destination of the Maid of the Seas, the third character in our fairy tale, the Idiot, sought to be the leader. Somebody pulled some serious shenanigans, miscounted some votes and the Idiot was “elected” to be the leader.

The Idiot wasn’t smart enough to do the job he was elected to do, so he had some of his terrorist friends knock down a couple of buildings on that previously-mentioned September morning and his people were so frightened they would eventually make the mistake of electing him again.

Then the Idiot started a war and de-stabilized another foreign country, giving the terrorists a place to run around and do what terrorists do. There were as many terrorists there as there were maggots in a steaming pile of dog feces warming under the August sun. If one were to ignite a flare in that country in the dark of the night, it would illuminate scores of terrorists scurrying across the desert floor, like cockroaches spotlighted by a sixty-watt light in an urban tenement kitchen.

The Idiot had made the world a haven for terrorists, but he still was not happy. What could he do, he asked himself, to aid and abet yet another terrorist?

The Idiot went to the office of his second-in-command—a man who was known as Shotgun, after the weapon he loved to discharge when he had gotten a few drinks in him. Shotgun was cleaning his namesake weapon when the Idiot paused outside his office. The Idiot was careful to announce himself before entering Shotgun’s office so as not to take a load of birdshot in his smirking countenance, as Shotgun was known to shoot from the hip (first, and ask questions later).

“I want to bring the Colonel into the fold. I want to restore diplomatic relations with him and his country,” said the Idiot. “He was the one who brought down the Maid of the Seas.”

“They say that the camel jockey used Semtex,” said Shotgun. He racked his signature weapon and added, “Give me this baby and a pint of Old Granddad and I could’ve done her just as good.”

“So we’ll do it, then,” said the Idiot.

“Sure as hell,” said Shotgun. “Now hand me that bottle from inside the top drawer.”

So the Idiot decided to make friends with yet another terrorist, because one never knows how much help one will need if the other party ever gets into power. And so the Idiot, the Colonel and Shotgun became fast friends. Legend has it that even to this day, if you listen really closely, you can hear the three of them, firing away, blasting their empty bottles full of birdshot.

From the looks of things, my children, this appears to be one of those fairy tales where not everyone lives happily ever after.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

crack the code. crash the symbols

A woman’s reputation is besmirched by people spreading falsehoods. The man who knows the truth is murdered. As he is dying, he leaves clues that only a few people can decipher. The clues lead us through a mystery that has more twists and turns than a roller coaster.

Oh, by the way, did I mention the woman was God’s daughter-in-law?

Despite the fact that The Da Vinci Code has been on the bestseller list for a year, Jimbo just got around to reading it last week. I mentioned that the movie based on this book was coming out later this month, and a friend who had the book loaned it to me.

Thanks, Tim.

Anyway, if any of you are among the few who haven’t read the book, I would suggest getting it on to your “to do” list as soon as you can. This is the best book I have read in a while.

The Da Vinci Code is about a college professor, Robert Langdon, who writes a manuscript about symbolism in which is a key to unlock a secret that has been protected for decades by sinister society. When a curator at the Louvre in Paris, who is a member of the secret society, is killed, he leaves clues for Langdon to help lead him to discover the secret. The police interpret his clues as an accusation that Langdon killed him, so throughout the book, Langdon is running from the law, trying to find the solution.

We find that Leonardo DaVinci was once a member of the secret society and the primary clue left by the curator is to lie on the floor mimicking the drawing of the Vitruvian Man, Da Vinci’s famous sketch detailing the relationship between anatomy and mathematics.

Langdon is aided by the granddaughter of the curator, who is a code expert, and by combining their expertise, they are able to twist their way through this suspense novel.

This is definitely on my “recommended” list, and I’m looking forward to seeing the movie later this month.

At least, that’s our opinion here in Jimbo’s world.