Moving

I got back to Lincoln yesterday afternoon and spent most of the day apartment/house hunting in Seward. It's not as easy as I thought it would be. I am trying to find a fairly nice two bedroom place somewhere fairly close to campus, but there just aren't a lot of options. It seems like there are only two types of apartments to get.

1) Old, run-down, two bedroom $400 - $500 a month
2) Nice, new, four bedroom duplexes $900- $1,200 a month

I can't see how anyone would get the older apartments if they had more than two people. The difference in quality is quite decisive.

There is one apartment complex that is significantly nicer than all the others, so I set up a walk through today at 6:00. If everything works out I will probably rent it and get everything moved to Seward this weekend.

That's my news for the day :)

Finally

My unbelievable trip is finally almost to a close. However, it did get even more bizarre before I got to Lincoln. I'll write a full ridiculous report after the holidays. Through everything though, if I had to do it again, I'd say that I'd be about 20:1 to make it home for Christmas. Everything just BARELY worked out.

Right now I am going to take off to go to Burlington, Colorado and spend the Holidays with my Dad's side of the family. I will post again after the weekend, until then everyone have a very Merry Christmas. Also thanks for stilling keeping up with the blog, even through these uneventful poker-less months. I am looking forward to '07 where I already have some big things planned.

another night across the pond

At least I made it to London today, but my flight was delayed 5 hours out of Dusseldorf, so I missed my connection to Chicago and am currently at the Marriot in London. In other good news, I have to rent a car to get from Chicago to Omaha because all flights are booked till Christmas. I am looking forward to the 11+ hours of Driving from Chicago to Colorado in the blizzard that is forecasted. At the moment I will consider myself lucky to get to my family before Christmas Eve. sigh........

Bad Beat

Ughhhh.... The weather in London sucks. My flight got canceled from Dusseldorf to London so I am staying another night in Germany. I have the same schedule tomorrow so it will hopefully just set me back one day, but they are saying the weather looks bad tomorrow as well so we will just have to wait and see. The worst part about this is that I booked my trip in two seperate legs... meaning that I booked from Dusseldorf to Chicago, then Chicago to Omaha. This would normally be no problem if everything went as planned, but now I have to get my CHI-OMA flight changed manually, instead of with the rest of the trip. It is kind of a pain, but what can ya do.

They put me up in a nice hotel, so that is good. I will get a good night's sleep and hopefully be able to get home tomorrow night.

Wicked Family Fights

I'm about to head back home tomorrow, I have a had a great time over here and always love spending time in Germany but I am ready to see my family for Christmas too. My flight leaves at 11:05 from Dusseldorf and I don't get into Omaha till midnight.... :( four hour layover in Chicago

If you aren't a poker player/fan you probably won't be terribly interested in the next part of the blog. If you do happen to be a poker player (as 95% of my non-family readers are probably) then you absolutely need to read on....

If you haven't heard already, the biggest scandal to hit the poker world in some time is going down as we speak. Apparently in the last three days the on-line poker world was taken aback by the 3:12 a.m. post on 2+2 by recent poker kinda-celebrity Brandi Hawbaker (a.k.a. Brandi Rose). I won't go into the details of the post but it involved accusations towards "Captain" Tom Franklin involving theft, manipulation, and sexual assault. You can read the post here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php Cat=0&Number=8448402&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

This, needless to say, sparked thousands of responses and reactions across the poker world. Brandi claims that she is still owed somewhere in the range of $9,000 from Mr. Franklin and has been hitting up his friends looking for money (Phil Gordon and Doyle Brunson have both reportedly given her cash) Many of the responses this post has garnered involve accusations about Brandi herself. Several very well respected individuals in the poker world have spoken up with their stories about Brandi Rose. Recent WPT champ Mark Newhouse has been one of the most vocal and his story paints a very different picture of this girl. You can read Mark's story here:

http://www.pocketfives.com/4F749D4A-E243-42BC-80AE-03D5AC4C74BA.aspx

All sorts of rumors are circulating about the validity of Brandi's claims and many smaller stories have been coming up that bring her integrity into question as well. She really claims to be at her "rope's end" and it has been reported several times that she has attempted suicide recently. Not to be out-done, the ever eccentric Dutch Boyd has decided to get in on the mix and has been acting very, very odd over the last week. He claims to have been in an asylum recently and just got out in time for the DBNAPC. Also, an alleged incident between him and Brandi Hawbaker occurred two nights ago in which she claims that he stole her passport and she punched him. The details on that rumor are very unclear. But, it is very clear that something has gotten into Dutch Boyd recently as you can tell from these two videos:

http://www.pokerwire.com/results.php?title=mike-matusow&uid=25034
http://www.pokerwire.com/results.php?title=daniel-negreanu&uid=25022

*you have to wait for the Dutch cameo in both

The biggest controversy of all involves all three of these characters (Cap't Tom, Brandi, Dutch) in a video where Dutch alludes to himself being taken into the desert by Tom and shot in the head, with two graves dug beside him (referring to Brandi in the other?). This video and others can be viewed at:

http://www.pokulator.com/poker-videos/

*player seems to work some times and not others
There are several other videos on this site that show exactly how far off the deep end Dutch appears to have gone. There are reported stories of him acting very bi-polar during the tournament's first two days. He received several penalties for acting out of turn and left the room, only to return carrying a pizza box and saying something about having a hard drive stored in a toilet at The Orleans Casino.

Other links to sites with information:

http://www.bankrollboost.com/brandi-hawbaker.php
-Info on Brandi Hawbaker

http://www.pokerlistings.com/blog/wpt/season5/whats-eating-dutch-boyd
-Dutch's antics at the DBNAPC

http://kickasspoker.blogspot.com/
-General info on the incident

http://www.dutchboyd.com/blog/2006/10/selling-out-never-looked-so-good.html
-Dutch/Brandi banter about her controversial Full Tilt photo

http://people.tribe.net/kallisti
-Brandi's own personal blog where you can get a feel for exactly what goes through her head

This is the most excitement, gossip, controversy the poker world has seen in some time. I'll try to keep up with it but the international travel tomorrow will make it hard for any "Breaking News".

Apologies

I'm sorry I haven't blogged for almost a week. I think this is one of the longest stretches I have taken off in the 9 months that I have been writing. There really hasn't been a lot of news to report as of late. I am still hanging out here in Bonn with my friends. We are having a really good time just chilling and enjoying the ridiculous amount of free time that our occupations give us. I have also untaken a pretty large project on-line which has been taking up a lot of my time. I have been doing a lot of code writing and app development and am pretty much teaching myself and learning as I go. I have a limited knowledge of basic computer languages, but have really been pushing myself lately. This knowledge will end up being really helpful down the line if I ever need to teach any basic coding classes at the HS level.


I have 9 more days over here and the only thing that I really want to see in Western Europe that I haven't already is the French Riviera and Monte Carlo. So I think I am going to head down there for 3-4 days before I leave. I may take off on Wednesday or Thursday, we will see.



In other news, although my good friend Shannon Shorr dropped down to #5 in the POY race, he has a chance to get back up to #2 today in the $5k NL tourney at the Belliagio. As many of you have read on his blog, he has an average stack with 19 left after day 1 and is eyeing the 400k+ first place prize. Shannon also is on the cover of Card Player College edition this month and has a really great article written up about him. You can check it out at the link below. He's a genuine, stand-up guy and I am proud to call him a friend of mine.

http://www.cardplayer.com/cpcollege/article/16345

Ughhhh

Everything that only has a fleeting impact on my life is going wrong. The Baskets lost the other night in their game to Cologne. They played alright for the first half, but the Cologne went unconcious from behind the arc in the 3rd quarter and it really disrupted Bonn's whole game plan.

The Huskers played fairly poorly against OU and managed to lose by two TD's. This is a very sore subject with me. I feel most sorry for Auburn.... War Skers. Any side bet Brandon? Also NU basketball lost to 1-5 Rutgers, won't look good on an at-large resume come Febuary.

I play in a very competitive Fantasy Football league with a bunch of college friends. My Fantasy team is trying incrediably hard to give away the last spot in the playoffs. I need something to go my way this week.

My good friend Shannon just got knocked down to #3 in the Card Player Player of the Year points race. A cagey vet named Nam Le snuck ahead of him with a final table the other night. Shannon still has a few more chances to reclaim the 2nd spot so I'll be cheering him on.

I also came down with a mild case of the flu a couple days ago. I think I am getting over it now, but it is never fun to get sick.

Ahhh, woe is me, my life is so awful.

Update

Well I am still here in Bonn, enjoying my time spent with these friends. We have been pretty busy doing quite a bit the last few days. On Thursday night I tagged along with the team to scout an opponent in Cologne. The team we watched was pretty good, the only player I really recognized was Kenny Gregory from Kansas, but they played really well as a team. Bonn has a big game tomorrow against Cologne, it's a pretty huge rivalry so the game is sold out, but Stark managed to secure me a ticket. I am excited to see these guys play.

Tonight we are stayng up late and watching the USC - UCLA game at 10:30, then the NU - OU Big XII Championship which starts at 3:00 a.m. here. One of the guys has a Slingbox (probably the greatest invention in 5 years) which is the reason we are able to watch them. I am pretty excited to watch the Huskers dominate OU, and I would really like to see USC go down so the REAL national title game between Ohio St. and Michigan can be played. Being from Southern Cal, John is a HUGE USC fan so it will be fun to cheer against each other.

Poker wise I have actually been playing quite a bit the last couple days. I have been trying my hand at 1/2 NL and I just can't seem to grasp the game. I think I am playing well, even though I have been running very poorly, but I still don't think I would be a big winner in th game. I am down about $1,200 through 3,000 hands which is 6 buy-ins and seems like quite a bit. I think that even if I was running average I would only be up a few hundred at the most which makes me think that I am not grasping something. I think I may switch back to 5/10 limit as that seems to be my bread and butter. I have always felt that I was a pretty exceptional limit player but the monotony of the game wers me down after a while. Alright, thats all the news I have.