WSOP and Le Cordon Bleu

My dream is to go to both. One will be a reality and one will probably remain a dream. Can you guess which one? Read on...

In case you don't know, Le Cordon Bleu is the finest culinary school in the world. They have branches in Paris, London and Ottawa and the best of the best go there. Hell, it's where Julia Child began her culinary career in order to feed her new husband while they were stationed in Paris. I have no aspirations to become a professional chef but it's always been a dream to go there and learn. Drumroll....and I am! Yes, next February I turn 40 and am enrolling in a 4 day bread baking course at the original Paris school as a birthday present to myself. My brother who also has a passion for cooking is going with me and I'm really looking forward to it. Good bread is as good as it gets when it comes to food. Give me a loaf of crusty bread, some cheese and a nice glass of bordeaux and I'm in culinary bliss. If I can fund a portion of my trip with poker winnings all the better. I'm the Poker Chef damnit!

That's one goal down and one to go. The other is the WSOP main event. I came oh so close about a month ago in a frequent player point tourney on stars where 1st place got a $12,000 package and everybody else got squat. I made it to the final table as the chip leader and we played down to 7 players when the following hand happened:

UTG is now the Chip leader with about 115,000 in chips and I'm 2nd in chips with about 90,000. Blinds are something like 1,500 - 3,000 and UTG raises to 12,000. I pick up QQ on the button and pop it up to 30,000. UTG calls and we see a flop that comes down K x x. UTG pushes. What do you do here? If I call and win I'm the huge chip leader and to me that's very important because only 1st cashes. I called...and lost. Yes, he had AK and I busted out 7th. Of all the hands I've lost playing poker this is the only one that haunts me. I realize that getting into the main event via a FPP satellite is a real long shot and I probably blew my only chance.

There is the huge 150 guaranteed seat tourney on Stars July 16th. If there is a large enough overlay I may consider ponying up the $370 buy-in for a last shot of glory.

Played a little NL cash and a turbo(which I won) and won a whopping $4.65. I've been treading water lately and am really ready for a nice run.

This weekend I'll be unpacking all my books and will begin reviewing ALL the cookbooks in my collection. Stay tuned...

Bankroll update: $207.38

I may be a convert...

to NL cash games that is.

After spending the evening working in the yard and attempting to get my kitchen in order I barely managed to log onto Poker Stars to get into my 9:30 "home" game. I wish I had missed it. After poorly playing A-10 and losing a third of my chips I flopped trip nines and decided to slowplay vs a very agressive player. It worked great until he filled up on the turn and I busted out 9th out of 11. Ouch. Guess it beats being the bubble boy. So after that I played some limit and a few SNG's and lost a bit more. Then came the NL cash game.

A friend of mine has been pestering me to play NL cash for some time now but I've stuck to limit and SNG's and MTT for NL play. Since Party has the fishiest players I headed over there for an hour session of .10-.25 NL and it was tasty. I 2 tabled and basically doubled up within that time frame. It's a small sample of course, but the play there is pretty bad. I'm still trying to get over my SNG mentality where paying attention to the blinds is of paramount importance. I've yet to read a book on NL cash games so I'm still a little cautious but the more I play the better I'll feel.

Speaking of books, I've just finished reading the 3rd Harrington on Holdem book and I really thought it added a lot to an already great series. In fact, HOH is the gold standard for tournaments and it's not even close.

For all my playing tonight I won a grand total of 36 cents. Fear me.

Bankroll $202.73

The Move

One house down, one to go. We've moved into our new home and close on our old house tomorrow. Needless to say, due to the chaos of moving,settling in, getting our old house ready for the new owners to move in etc... my poker and cooking have been nearly non-existant. However I'm going to do my best to play my weekly online game tonight with a bunch of friends. The wife has big plans for landscaping this evening so even that may not happen.

The good news is that I have all new appliances! Shiny stainless steel.My range is my pride and joy...it's a GE Profile with a convection oven.I was ...this... close to splurging for the Wolf commercial range but it was $2,000 more. If I was a better poker player I'd have that in my kitchen right now ;) I'm still trying to figure out what will be the first meal I'll cook on it. Probably macaroni and cheese for the kids!Oh well, the quicker I get things settled here the sooner I can get back to playing poker and cooking gourmet meals.

Coming soon: An in depth review of books in the Poker Chef's library...

Well that sucks

Here yesterday I'm talking about goals to move up and now I'm in fact moving down. Lost $60 today and I can decribe in one word why: Aces. Yes, in 600 hands I had them three times and ran into them three times. The three times I had them resulted in a net loss of $40. The three times I ran into them I had very good second best hands. Net result: loss of $30. Throw in three bust outs in SNG's, two by bad beats when I had a very good chance of cashing and there you go. I dropped down to $.50-$1 and won back a bit to lessen the sting. Don't get me wrong; this isn't a whiny post about bad beats because honestly as long as I make the right decisions I'm happy. If you stick around on my journey I promise to post it all, the good and the bad. If I go busto you'll be there with me (well, I hope not literally, the wife might get mad ;). Believe me, this is nothing. At the beginning of the year I went through a 180BB downswing that took me 2 months to get back to even.

The good news is that I started importing my SNG's into Poker Tracker; the bad news is that my ROI and ITM are at 0 ;). As you can tell, I usually just laugh off bad days at the "tables." Poker for me is really just a hobby and I have no intention of ever going pro. I've got a good job and I play for the thrill, competition and for a little spending money, plus I really do believe it gives you decision making skills that can cary over into the real world. Granted it's a hobby but still a degenerate one for me :)

Well, the clock is chiming midnite and it's my last day as an Illinois resident. After 39 years as an Illini I'm moving across the river into Iowa. In about 9 hours all hell will be breaking loose with buddies expecting beer and pizza showing up to get me moved.

BR update: $202.37

Goals

I've never really been a goal oriented person and I think that's hindered my growth as a poker player. Here it is a year after I started playing $.50-$1 limit and I'm currently grinding it at $1-$2. I never really had any goals and therefore I've stripped my bankroll by about $1,200 through cashouts and am only playing with a roll of about $250. For some this may be too small a roll for $1-$2 but I'll drop down if things get bad. Oh, I also play $11 SNG's. My BB/100 is 3.62 over 26,000 hands and my ITM for SNG's is prolly 50% or so (I don't keep good records on these. I know, bad Eric!) So with that in mind here are my short term goals for the rest of 2006:

1. Don't deposit or withdraw money
2. Keep better records in SNG's. ROI and ITM are must knows
3. Learn to utilize Poker Tracker to its fullest extent
4. Take a shot at $2-4 and the $22's when bankroll hits $600 and move back down if needed
5. Post daily results here to keep myself honest.

So with #5 in mind here are todays results and my starting bankroll for my goal:

Poker Stars SNG: -$11 (I won't bore you with back to back bad beat stories ;))
Party Poker LHE: -$3.50 (about 250 hands of blah)

So bankroll sits at: $264.44

Oh, and I play under the name griffondg on both sites in case you want to tag me as a fish ;)

Rating the TV Chefs

OK, time for some cooking talk. To be honest I don’t watch much cooking on TV anymore. There was a point in my life where Food TV was my default TV network, but there comes a point where after watching someone demonstrating how to scrape the seeds out a vanilla pod for the hundredth time where enough if enough. With that said, I still do watch some shows while others make me want to poke my eyes out with a cooking thermometer. Ratings are based on 6 Stars (hey, everybody else uses 4 or 5 but not me, I’m the Poker Chef Damnit!)

6 Stars

Julia Child
Yes, dear Julia is the only member of the prestigious Poker Chef 6 Star club. What I love about Julia is her unpretentiousness and her damn common sense. Don’t want to be fat? Hey lardass, don’t eat so damn much! Eat everything in moderation and you don’t need to drink diet pop and eat fat free foods. She never considered herself a true chef but a very good home cook. She’s everything I aspire to be in a cook.

5 Stars

Jacques Pepin
Jacques is the master when it comes to technique. In fact his Cooking Techniques TV show is the only cooking video I’ve ever purchased. Jacques is old school and went through the rigorous French apprenticeship program. If I could have the skills of any one chef it would be that of good ole’ Jacques’.

4 Stars

Alton Brown
I’d really love to give him 5 stars but I can’t. Why you ask? Well, it comes down to that he’s no Jacques Pepin. I love Alton and would love to hang out with him but he’s not in the legend category…yet.

Anthony Bourdain
Truthfully he could rate higher but he doesn’t actually cook on TV, he just travels around the world eating exotic food. I also have his Las Halles Cookbok and it’s great. The tone of the book is that you’re a lowlife wannabe and Tony is teaching you how to cook real bistro food. If you’re a masochist like me you’ll love it.

Mario Batalli
This is based on his Malto Mario show since I’ve yet to watch Iron Chef America. He’s passionate about his food and culture, two things I like seeing in a cook.

The Iron Chefs (Original series)
Talk about cooking under pressure. These guys made some awesome looking food in an hours’ time. Too bad I burned out watching this show because I’ve never seen the American version.

Jacques Torres
Most of his creations I can only dream about making; they are that complex...and I love making complex desserts. He's a joy to watch in the kitchen.

3 Stars

Jamie Oliver
He’s English and I’m an Anglophile so this is where he rates. Slightly annoying but hip so he’s middle of the pack for me.

2 Fat Chicks
Can’t think of their names, but is that really important? English? Check. Their show had a warm feel to it and I like that. Plus one of them died before they could jump the shark.

Tyler Florence
Not sure why I’m rating him this high. Maybe I’m secretly gay and don’t know it? Nah, he’s passionate about food and seems to want to help people learn how to cook. But he’s still kind of blah.

Bobby Flay
The boy can cook, no doubt about it, but he also comes off as a prick. My favorite Bobby Flay show was the Barbeque show with the redneck. Too bad I liked the redneck better.

Rachel Ray
Let’s face it; if she wasn’t so cute her annoying voice and laugh would rate her about 1 star, but she’s hot so she moves up. Life is so unfair to ugly people.

Sandra Lee
I like her show even less than Rachel Ray’s; in fact I despise the concept of it. But…she’s even hotter than Rachel Ray so here she is…grrrrr.

2 Stars

Emeril
Poor Emeril. I used to like his show but now you couldn’t pay me money to watch it. Emeril has not only jumped the shark, he’s dropped an atom bomb on it. I did eat in his Fish restaurant in Vegas and it was very good. Sidenote: when not in front of a live audience he moves up to three stars


1 Star

Martha Stewart
She’s a ripoff in every sense of the word. She acts like she can cook but I’d go up against her any day in an Iron Chef competition and kick her ass.

Ina Garten
Talk about pretentious; she lives in the Hamptons, has a rich husband and just reeks of snobbery. If she was thin and attractive she’d move up; see Rachel Ray.

Sara Moulton
It pains me to put her here since she worked with Julia Child at one point, but Jesus she’s SO annoying I can’t help it.

No Ranking

Jeff Smith
The Frugal Gourmet was the show that began my love of cooking and for years Jeff Smith was the best. Unfortunately it appears he did some very bad things involving young boys. None were ever proven but there were a number of settlements out of court. I trulely miss the Frug that I grew up on; he'd be at 6 stars.


There you have it, the first draft of my rankings. If I haven’t included your favorite chef it’s probably because I haven’t seen their show, or more likely, I can’t think of it now. Or they just suck too much to mention. I’m sure I will update this in the future.

What can you do?

I say this regarding the home game I played last night. 16 players and I consider myself one of the better ones playing but I was so card dead that I probably only saw 8-10 flops the entire evening. I busted out 8th and that was really just a matter of being swallowed up by the blinds. I know some players would say that you don't need good cards to win pots and I can somewhat agree up to a certain point, but honestly when you're continually getting 9-2 off suit there's not much you can do. The good news is that we played a losers game with 8 people and I got into the final 2. We agreed to chop the $80 and then play one more hand to determine the "winner." I won so the net for the night was $10 to the good. Not bad but frustrating. I haven't cashed in our main event for the past three times so I need a strong comeback next month.

Anyway, it's Fathers Day I'm going to enjoy the day with my family and grill some steaks later today. Happy Fathers Day to all dads out there.

Grinding through the low limits

Yes, I'm a degenerate low limit poker player. I started playing online poker about a year ago and have primarily played $.50-$1 through $2-4 limit and have played a ton of $5 and $10 sit-n-go's. I've also played a number of MTT's and have a pretty good record in those. So for the past year I've got about 26,000 hands of limit in Poker Tracker for a profit of $1,200 and I'm up about another $300 in SNG's. For me, not too shabby but compared to others it's barely a pip on the radar. Of course I work full time and have a wife and 2 kids so my poker playing is limited to when the family is sleeping.

I think one of my strengths as a poker player is my ability to avoid tilting. It's easy to tilt when you're playing limit and build huge pots with big draws only to see them not come in a dozen times in a row. Or when you continually get outdrawn by calling stations who should never be in the pot in the first place. One way I avoid tilting is mixing up limit and no limit games. I'll play limit exclusively for a month or so but when I get close to the tilt limit (which is also caused by burnout) I'll switch exclusively to NL SNG's with the occasional MTT thrown in. When these get stale I switch back to limit. By doing this it keeps the game fresh and I make better decisions.

As for sites I play on, I only play on Stars and Party. I prefer Stars in every way except for the loose, passive fish that permeate Party. Hey, money's money so I'll follow the fish.

Hmm, what kind of player am I? More to come in later posts...

I'm jealous

OK, so there's this chick named Julie Powell who became famous for cooking every recipe out of Julia Child's (as well as Simone Beck and some chick named Louisette something-or-other) book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She had a blog that's actually quite entertaining and it's linked here: http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html.

Why am I jealous? Maybe she has talent and I don't? Nah, it's because she made a commitment to do something really cool and stuck with it for an entire year. I mean this chick went through hell slaving away in a kitchen all night after busting her ass all day at work. I'm also jealous in that I wished I'D have thought of doing it when I was single and had no kids because I'm just crazy enough to have tried. Hell, she even got a book deal out of it (which I haven't read but will eventually I'm sure).

With 2 young children and an incredibly picky wife I could never take on a task like this now but if I could come up with something similar I'd love to give it a go. Any ideas? Bueller?

Bounty

How long will it take before I have my first comment? Ooooh, I'm so excited! In fact, I'm going to hand out a prize to the first person who leaves a comment. Hell, you can call me a dickweed and it'll still count! I've yet to determine the prize but it'll be a dooozy (well, if a $5 prize is a doozy to you then you're in luck). More later.

I'm a Virgin no more

Welcome to the first blog post for the rest of my life. Yawn.

The intent for this blog is to allow the world (hi mom) to see my witty recolections of all things poker, cooking and Formula 1 racing (No NASCRAP here!). I figured pokercheff1 sounded even worse than just pokerchef, so my true love(F1) will just have to be left out.

I believe I said something about being witty...maybe next time.