The Crooked Link

Life of a Low Stakes Gambler...

Thursday, January 29, 2009

More Super Bowl Bets

I took some more Super Bowl action today. First with Alex who accepted my 1.5 to 1 money line odds so I'm putting up my $75 against his $50 on a Steelers win. Then with Luis although this one is a little different. I've been trying to sell my new Sidekick 08 because it still doesn't seem to work with my SIM card.

It's the weirdest thing because it's not the phone that's defective since I pop in my sister's SIM card and the phone works great, but it's not my SIM card either because I pop my card into my sister's phone and it works also. So I don't even know what the problem is and just want to sell the phone and get something else.

But anyway, so Luis wanted to buy it from me for $150 but I wanted $200 for it. So we decided to leave it up to the Super Bowl. If the Cardinals win, I'll sell him the phone for $100. If Steelers win I'll sell him the phone for $200.

So I'm selling the phone either way. I actually paid $150 for the phone but still have a $50 mail in rebate voucher that I haven't sent in so I don't really lose money if I sell the phone for $100.

I'm still trying to get a little bit more Super Bowl action on the FCP forums although that'll probably only be in the $20 range and maybe another $20 on props. Don't know if I'm going to place a bet on BookMaker yet. I'll probably decide on Sunday.

Speaking of Sunday, it turns out I might have to come in to work which sucks. I doubt we're even going to be that busy but my manager wants me to come in anyway. This is going to be a hectic ass weekend at work cause I have to work tomorrow from 4pm-1am then Saturday from 9am-1am (double shifts ftw!) and Sunday from 2pm-10pm.

At least I can look forward to a nice paycheck!

Oh yea, almost forgot I bet $10 on the Mexico game yesterday and lost. LOL, I had actually forgotten they where playing but I was at Best Buy and using the Internet on one of their laptops and remembered about the game. So I rushed home to see if I would get there in time to bet it. I did and they freaking lost. They're going to get crushed by USA in a couple of weeks too probably.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

1st Super Bowl Bet

Got my first Super Bowl bet down yesterday with Mauricio from work. Even money, straight up with no point spread, for $50. He only wanted to bet $20 but I pushed him towards $50. I'm also offering Alex 1.5 to 1 odds for another $50 so he's still considering that. (True money line is like 2.3 to 1 but w.e.)

I'm also probably going to get a couple of bets down on the FCP forums with my Stars poker roll so I REALLY hope Steelers don't lose, haha.

Oh yea last night before I went to bed I placed a tennis bet on Federer -400 for $20 to win $5 so I cashed on that. Sports betting roll now stands at a healthy $150 plus like an extra $20 that I have saved up in BookMaker's Loyalty Rewards program but I don't plan on cashing that in yet.

I played a quick one hour 5NL session yesterday morning before work and made like $7. Then this morning I lost a $5 HU match but took 2nd in a $6.60 6 max SnG. Will probably put a couple more of those in later tonight.

I also got a stake today to play the Stars 200k Guaranteed on Sunday so I hope to make a deep run in that. There's even more incentive to run good in this one because there's a last longer bet with 9 other FCPers and the winner gets staked into a $55 freeze out. I just hope I get to play it because there's the possibility that my boss asks me to work on Sunday since it might get busier than usual because of the Super Bowl. I hope this doesn't happen.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Good Sunday

Sorry I haven't updated the blog this whole week. My dad got injured at work and had surgery this past Friday so that was pretty much the only thing on my mind the entire week. Surgery went well though, so that's good. He should be back at work in a month or so.

Anyway played a little bit of poker online today with good results. I had been planning to deposit some money on my Stars account sometime this week but just hadn't had time so I played a $4.40 on a stake today and managed to take second for $144. Obviously cause I was staked I only got $72 but that plus another $15 I had on Full Tilt should be enough to make something happen.

I gotta admit I ran extremely well through out the whole tournament winning flips and dodging coolers. I actually got really lucky around the final table bubble when I ran my Queens into Aces but was able to suck out with a flush.

I started the final table 4th in chips but it quickly got down to 5 handed where it remained for a while. That's where I took kind of a sick beat. I made an awesome soul read where I knew my opponent was really weak on the turn and I decided to put him all in with Ace high. He decided to call me with a 5 high flush draw with one card to come and he obviously got there. That was the biggest pot of the tournament at that point and would have put me in a commanding chip lead 4 handed. Instead I was down to 40k.

When it was 3 handed I was still shortstacking around 35k-40k while both my opponents had over 100k. Got lucky and cracked a dude's Jacks with 8c9c and then got to HU with about a 5-1 chip deficit. I played Heads Up pretty poorly though. Way too passive til I got impatient and bluffed with a hand all the way and got called by like 2nd pair.

Oh well, I'll take a $144 cash anyday. It was the first final table in a while too which was nice. So right now the onlie poker roll stands around $91 which like I said earlier should be enough to try to build off of.

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Also managed to cash on a soccer parlay for $15 to bring the sports betting roll to $145. AC Milan easily won 3-1 while Real Madrid struggled but squeezed out a win against Depor.

2 Team Parlay................$20 to win $15
-AC Milan -0.5
-Real Madrid -0.5



Day Profit: +$15.00

Day Record: 1-0-0

Total Record: 203-203-18

Bankroll: $145.41

Total Profit: -$54.59

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On a completely unrelated note, I've been on the most normal sleeping schedule in a long time the past week or so.

I've been waking up around 8 or 9 am and going to sleep around 10pm at the latest. Yesterday when I had to work til 1am I got home and was COMPLETELY pooped out and went straight to bed whereas I would usually jump on the XBOX and play til like 7 in the morning.

I'll definitely try to keep the normal sleeping schedule cause I just think it's a lot healthier than going to sleep at 7 or 8 in the morning every day and waking up at 3 or 4 pm.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Mas Futbol

Nice 2-0-1 day yesterday although it would've been 3-0 if Chivas had been able to hang on to a 2-0 lead. Instead they forgot how to play defense and the bet pushed with a final score of 3-3.

The Chelsea game was actually a lot closer than I thought it would be and I ended up winning that in injury time. Chelsea was down 1-0 but tied it in like the 87th minute and then won it in the 92nd so I got lucky there.

Another parlay today although not as heavy favorite as yesterdays. From the 3 games the one I'm worried about the most is probably the Toluca game. They're the defending champs and they're at home but the Mexican league is just so inconsistent that an upset is very possible. Real Madrid should roll over Osasuna and the EPL game should be interesting since both teams are in horrible form but I think Tottenham can pull off the home win.

Looking at some later picks I'll probably take Santos at home vs America. I've also got $20 on that game with Alex from work.

Haven't decided yet if I'm going to throw some money on either football game today.

3 Team Parlay..............$20
-Toluca (pk)
-Real Madrid (-0.5)
-Tottenham Spurs (pk)

Santos (-0.5)............$20

Pittsburgh Steelers (-0.5)............$15


Day Profit: -$10.17

Day Record: 2-1-0

Total Record: 202-203-18

Bankroll: $130.41

Total Profit: -$69.59

Saturday, January 17, 2009

$60 Parlay

Going to start Saturday morning off with a nice $60 parlay. Arsenal (PK) and Chelsea (-0.5).

Risking $60 to win $22. Big juice I know, but that's been my thing lately so whatever. I decided to start gambling it up a little more to try and build a roll faster. Might lead to brokesville but I'm okay with that.

If I hit the parlay then I'll add a couple more soccer game picks tonight and if I lose it, I'll throw the last $50 on Barcelona tomorrow or something.

2 Team Parlay.............$60
-Arsenal (pk)
-Chelsea (-0.5)

Chivas (pk).................$20

Chivas v. Cruz Azul Over 2.5............$10

Day Profit: +$31.24

Day Record: 2-0-1

Total Record: 200-202-18

Bankroll: $140.58

Total Profit: -$59.42

Friday, January 16, 2009

T-mobile is putting me on tilt



Sorry folks but I'm on mad tilt right now and really need to vent.

I just got off the phone with T-Mobile and it seems like they've essentially screwed me out of $150 bucks.

Last Monday I ordered the Sidekick 08 from t-mobile.com which was an upgrade from my previous phone, the Sidekick 3. I went ahead and got a two year extension on my contract as well to get the phone for $149.99 as opposed to the retail price of $299.99.

Okay so I got the phone yesterday and I figured it was going to be as simple as popping in the SIM card from my old phone into the new one.

Not quite.

For some reason the phone would not get any signal and it took me to a screen that said I had to wait 24 hours for the data services (AIM, Internet etc.) to work properly but that I should still be able to make calls and send texts.

Well when I tried placing calls a message would read "Hardware Problem" or something like that. But this was last night and I was at work so I could not call t-mobile to see what was up.
So I called t-mobile up a few minutes ago and explained the problem.

Lady said a simple phone reset should fix it. So I reset the phone and still nothing. I would get a signal for like the first 30 seconds the phone was booted up and then it would disappear. So she had me try a bunch of other stuff including testing my SIM card on another phone to see if that was the problem.

The SIM card worked great on my sister's phone so it was deemed that the Sidekick was the one at fault. Okay at this point, am I crazy for thinking that the most straight forward and logical solution would be for me to send the phone back and have them send me a new one?

I guess not. Apparently since I didn't purchase insurance on the phone, they can't do anything about it. No money back no nothing. I'm stuck with a phone that was SHIPPED already broken and I'm liable for it.

Okay hold on. I'm going to put this post on pause for a minute and take a drive down to the t-mobile store since I'm guessing they're already open by now.


to be continued in a few minutes...

Alright, I'm back and things seemed to be worked out now I guess. But first let's go back to the original phone call to t-mobile earlier this morning. So the lady keeps insisting that there's nothing I can do and basically t-mobile isn't responsible for the defective phone.

WTF? Seriously?

She's putting me on mad tilt at this point so I hang up on her and then decided to drive down to the t-mobile store. Some dude checks the phone out and checks SIM card and what not basically doing all the stuff the lady made me do over the phone. He says the phone is defective but that I can just call t-mobile back and they should send me a new phone regardless if I have insurance on it or not.

So I come back home and call t-mobile again and finally start talking to someone with a bit of brains. She's super cool about it and tells that I can in fact get a new phone because the one they sent me was a defective model (I don't know what the earlier rep I was talking to was smoking.)

So I just got back from the UPS store where I shipped the defective phone back and I should be getting a new one sometime next week. Why this wasn't the first thing that was proposed when I called is beyond me but whatever.

It still sucks that I'm going to be without a phone for a week though (I sold my Sidekick 3 yesterday) but I think I can get a loaner phone from the t-mobile store til mine arrives.

So, that's been my morning basically. 3 phone calls to t-mobile, a trip to the t-mobile store and another trip to the UPS store. Oh yea and I haven't slept all night and gotta be at work in 3 hours. Yay me and my crappy Friday morning!


Thursday, January 15, 2009

Sub-Zero


Today is expected to be the coldest day in Chitown in over 10 years. Temperature right now is at -10° and it's expected to dip all the way down to -40° with wind chill factors. So yea, it's pretty fucking cold to say the least.

Let's hope the freezing temps are not an omen of things to come in my gambling endeavours, haha.

Haven't played online poker in a long time. Gonna try to deposit sometime in the next couple of weeks. Not sure how I'm going to go about it though cause MoneyGram is no longer an option on Stars and most debit cards get rejected. I'll see what other viable options they have.

Probably going to deposit $200 and play the 6 Max $6.60 SnGs exclusively. That's about 30 buy ins which should be enough to handle the variance of short handed SnGs. Going to try and build the roll and move up to the $13s.

No sports picks today I don't think. I'll give the NBA lines a look but probably nothing til the soccer games this weekend.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

English Parlay

So Sunday didn't turn out as bad as it could have, but it was still pretty shitty thanks to the Giants being a bunch of donkeys.

I go 3-1-1 and end up losing $20, lol.

And another thing that sucked was that I initially wanted to parlay the Real Madrid and Manchester United picks which would have given me even odds, but BookMaker was being gay for some reason and didn't let me do that. So I only won like $10 off those two picks while laying like 3 to 1.

My biggest bet of the night (and the biggest bet overall for a while) was Chivas and they ended up winning but it went to a penalty kick shootout so the bet pushed.

The bankroll stands at $91 and the plan was to wait til' the weekend soccer games but the two big English clubs are playing today. Both big favorites so I decided to parlay them for $41 bucks. Enough to leave me with a $50 bankroll in case one of them loses.


2 Team Parlay..............................$41
-Manchester United -0.5
-Chelsea -0.5



Day Profit: +$18.26

Day Record: 1-0

Total Record: 198-202-17

Bankroll: $109.34

Total Profit: -$90.66

Sunday, January 11, 2009

This might be a bad day...

Okay, I think I'm officially on tilt territory after yesterday. After losing the soccer parlay by one game (stupid donkeys on that Liverpool team man) I dropped an extra $10 on the Titans. That obviously wasn't too smart, haha.

So I'm making some "tilt" picks today. It's not really that I don't like the picks, it's more the fact that I'm betting way to much on them which is going to end up with me being almost broke if I have a bad day.

But hey...it's Sunday. Let's gamble.

Chivas -0.5 (-200)....$50

Giants -0.5 (-205).....$40

Steelers -0.5 (-310)....$30

Real Madrid -0.5 (-420).....$20

Manchester United -0.5 (-150).....$10


Day Profit: -$18.55

Day Record: 3-1-1

Total Record: 197-202-17

Bankroll: $91.08

Total Profit: -$108.92

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Remember the Titans

Tennessee -3 (EV).........$20

4 Team Parlay...........$5
-Arsenal -0.5
-Liverpool-0.5
-Olympiakos -0.5
-Inter Milano -0.5


Day Profit: -$25.00

Day Record:0-2-0

Total Record: 194-201-16

Bankroll: $109.63

Total Profit: -$90.37

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Early Cold


Seems like I'm battling the symptoms of an early cold. I don't get sick often but when I do, it hits me hard.

And I really need to get back on a somewhat normal sleeping schedule. It's so messed up right now that I feel like shit all day long. Today for instance I got 3 hours of sleep. I need at least 5 to function somewhat coherently throughout the day so with 3 hours I'm a little out of it right now.

And since the night shift manager decided not to come in to work today I'll probably have to stay a couple of hours extra tonight to cover for him.

I just wanna go home, drink half a bottle of NyQuil and sleep for 10 hours straight.

I have work tomorrow night as well which is going to suck major balls if I'm not feeling better by then. And I can't call in sick cause we're short staffed as is.

Sigh...

Oh well, nothing left to do but throw some money on the BCS Championship game and a couple other soccer matches, to help kill time.

Fuck it, I'm taking Florida on the moneyline. Don't want to deal with them having to cover the spread. If they lose, they lose. I'll post the soccer picks later.


Florida -0.5 [-195].......$20

America -0.5 [-117]........$5

Chivas -0.5 [-160]...........$9


Day Profit: +$10.83

Day Record: 2-1

Total Record: 194-199-16

Bankroll: $134.63

Total Profit: -$65.37

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Interliga

Bankroll dipped below $100 for the first time in a while after the Colts lost on Saturday but a nice 1-0 win yesterday by Pachuca has the roll up to $100.57.

Two games today. Chivas and America. Both big favorites and both worthy of $20 plays.

America -0.5 [-165]...........$20

Chivas -0.5 [-180]..............$20



Day Profit: +$23.23

Day Record: 2-0

Total Record: 192-198-16

Bankroll: $123.80

Total Profit: -$76.20

Monday, January 5, 2009

Friendly Home Game/ 09 Goals.

Got a text invite Saturday night for a small stakes poker game at my guy Mackenzie's house. He's home from Yale for winter break so he called up a few people to get a game going. It was cool seeing him and a bunch of other dudes I hadn't seen in months.

Macken is actually the nephew of Denver Broncos' ex coach Mike Shanahan as his mom is Shanahan's sister. So we were talking for a bit about the possibility of his uncle coaching Dallas in 2010.

Anyway, back to the poker game. We decided to play .25/.50 NL and I bought it for $20. Nothing serious really, just enough to keep the game interesting. Everyone was just fooling around and having a good time. I came out the big winner at the end cashing out for $70 for a nice $50 profit.

I think we were too loose on the banking situation though cause everyone was just basically putting their money in the bank and grabbing their own chips which led to us being like $10 short when it was time to cash out. I decided to pay it off just cause I was the big winner of the night and I didn't want it turn into a big deal. We'll just be more careful next time.

We played a couple of hands of blackjack after the game just for old time's sakes while Macken, Furico and I reminisced about all the gambling we used to do in the school library and the time we got kicked out and banned outta there for like a week, lol.

Good times...

Anyway got home from the game around 9:00 and I was tired as hell so I ended up going to sleep pretty early which led to me waking up like at 4 am today. Haven't been able to go back to sleep so here I am blogging instead.

I planned to do a long new year's resolutions post but I'm to lazy for that and I'll basically outline some of the major things I want to accomplish both poker and non poker related.

As far as poker goes, I basically want to start playing live more. A LOT more. I think the $200NL game at the charity casino is soft enough that I can beat it at a win rate of $12/hour. Why $12/hr? Well, I don't want to set any monetary goals but I want to see if I can make enough in the $200 game where I could possibly consider playing poker full time at a sustainable win rate that compares to what I make in my current job. But this is something that I want to discuss further in a separate post sometime later this week.

As far as online poker goes, I'll definitely be throwing more money on PokerStars but I haven't quite figured out what I want to focus on. I've had good runs in the $6.60 short handed SnGs so I may try to grind those out and then build the bankroll to where I can move up to the $13 SnGs by the summer and possibly the $25s by the end of the year. I may also dabble with the Double or Nothing SnGs to see how those play out.

So that's it as far as poker. On to none poker related goals. Number one is to probably start taking some classes in CC. I think this is the most important one because going back to school is I think going to help me with the rest of my goals since it'll give a little more structure to my days, something that is seriously lacking right now. For example, goal number 2 is getting in shape and taking better care of myself, but when my days consist of going to sleep at 6 am and waking up at 4 p.m. that near impossible.

So with school I'll be forced to follow a more "normal" regimen which is definitely a good thing.

I also want to buy a car hopefully by the time Summer comes around. This is kind of questionable right now though, just because I still need to do some money planning for other things like school and buying some other random shit I've been wanting to get like a video camera, a Wii and another Plasma for my room.

There's also been talk with a friend of mine about the possibility of getting an apartment together but I'm still not sure about that one. I'm not really in a hurry to move out to be honest. At least not yet. Maybe sometime next year.

So that's pretty much it I guess. Play more poker, go back to school, get in shape and buy a car. I don't expect to accomplish all of these things but that doesn't mean that I won't put my best effort into them. Wherever I find myself to be by January of 2010, I think I'll be cool with it.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Double Whammy

Indianapolis [-2]......$20

Chivas [Pick].......$20



Day Profit: -$20.00

Day Record: 0-1-1

Total Record: 189-198-16

Bankroll: $82.54

Total Profit: -$117.46

Friday, January 2, 2009

Holiday Hangover


So I've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus this past week just bumming around enjoying what was left of 08 and looking forward to 09.

My mom, sister, and I all pitched in to get my dad a new 50'' Panasonic HD plasma for Christmas so I've been spending most of my time sitting in front of that beast playing Call of Duty 4 and FIFA 09. Compared to the 20'' LCD monitor where I do most of my gaming, the 50'' plasma is 1000x better especially because of the HDMI hook up compared to the A/V cables.

We're also going to be getting an HD receiver from Direct TV sometime next week so I'll pretty much be glued to the television the next few weeks, haha.

Anyway New Year's Eve was pretty chill at the Ortiz residence. Not much was planned because both my dad and my sister work til' pretty late. My friend Peter came over around 2 to chill for a bit playing Rock Band 2. Then we started messing around with the BB gun his girl got him for Christmas. That was pretty fun, lol.

I was trying to bet him that I could hit a Soda can from about 25 feet away and was willing to LAY odds but he didn't bite. Good for him as I hit that shit straight on, lol. Then I wanted to see just how much it would hurt to get hit by one of those bbs so I volunteered myself to be shot in the back by my little sister.

That wasn't fun.

I wasn't expecting it to hurt so much cause the fucking bbs weren't even the real metal ones, they were plastic. But they stung like a bitch nonetheless, lol.


I'm definitely getting one of those guns though cause they are fun as hell to just fuck around with. Thinking of getting probably an MP5 or an M16. Going to do some online researching on that.


Anyway back to New Year's Eve. So after I got shot at with the BB gun we just chilled watching Saving Private Ryan and I fell asleep. Woke up around 7 and my sister and I went to the grocery store to buy some stuff for dinner. The highlight of that trip was me spending like $11 on one of those stuffed animals claw vending machines. Those always tilt the shit out of me. I finally got the fucking stuffed animal I wanted though so that was good, lol.


Right, so dinner was pretty awesome overall for the mere fact that my whole family was sitting at the table which rarely ever happens because we all have such weird schedules. New Year's day was pretty slow. More Cod4 and FIFA 09 as well as dropping $15 on the Blackhawks v. Red Wings game that was played at Wrigley Field.


Chicago got off to a strong start going up 3-1 but ended up losing like 6-4. So that, along with an earlier play on a Manchester game, has the bankroll down to about $102.

Anyway that's what I've been up to this past week or so. I don't want to turn this post into a New Year's resolutions type of thing cause I'll probably do one of those tomorrow.

I'm off to watch the Toluca v. Morelia game. I've got $10 on Morelia with Alex from work although he's sightly pissed and feels hustled cause I didn't tell him that Toluca was bringing their B-squad to this match. Oh well, haha.

P.S.- To the douchebag who cut me off today on the way to work and then gave me the finger as I proceeded to cut HIM off, may you have a not so very Happy New Year sir.