Celebrity Poker Sighting?

Spotted Greg "FBT" Mueller in a restaurant sitting at the table next to mine in San Jose while I was up there on business. Guy looks still pretty buff, considering he's an ex-professional hockey player.

Bay Area 1-outer?

Got back from San Jose on Friday evening late. Got to play a bit at the Bay-101 before my flight left. The 20/40 and 40/80 limit games boards were extremely long when I got there a little after 6pm. I also put my name on the 8/16 game, and finally got called for the 8/16 game around 7:10 pm. The first hand I played, I raised a kill pot (Bay 101 8/16 plays with a half kill, which was odd to me, to be suddenly playing a 6 chip/12 chip structured game, but whatever), with two nines, flopped top-set, got 3-bets in on a 9 8 5 two tone board. Turn was the ugly 7, but it got checked through, and river paired the 5, and I got a river raise in.

Then the next substantial pot I played, I raised in the hijack with pocket jacks, again in a kill pot, with like 5 way action preflop. Flop comes K J 7 two tone. SB donks, BB calls, couple of folds, I pop it, SB 3-bets, BB calls 2-cold, I pop it again, SB calls, BB calls. Turn is T that completes the flush. SB bets, BB 2-bets, I call, SB calls. River is a 7. SB bets, BB calls, I think, make a small speech, 2-bet, SB smoke 3-bets, BB folds AQ faceup, I cry-call and get shown quad 7's, which along with K7 suited, is the only other hand that makes any sense. I suppose he could have had pocket kings, but from the preflop action, and from what I had observed of the player, he was not the type to slow play pocket kings pre flop.

So I guess in theory I got one-outed, but I wasn't technically even in the lead on the turn. So it's technically hard to say that I got a bad-beat.

10!

Don't ask me how, but I collected 10 W-2G's all in the span of about 5 hours. I hit 10 four of a kinds playing $10 jacks or better. Apparently, the law is if the payout is over $1200, they have to issue you a W-2G. I think that's kind of lame, because hitting a 4-of-a-kind in this game only pays back $1250 for a $50 bet. Including the bet of $50, the payout is exactly $1200. I would think that for larger bet amounts, they should increase the limit, to say something like max($1200, 300*x), where x is the amount wagered. So even though I "won" $12,500 according to all the W-2G's, in actuality I only won something like $5000, since I was recycling the money through the machine in chase of the elusive royal flush.