I decided this week that I had better get my head back into poker. I haven't been playing much at all, and, when I did, I really wasn't interested. After dropping a little in the rankings this week, I suddenly had enthusiasm to do well in poker again.

I played great poker this week. I had two 13th place finishes on Tuesday and Wednesday nights with pretty horrific bad beats putting me out - lost AA to A7s and QQ to J10s On Thursday night, I was playing the Paradise 50k and really enjoying myself playing well. The tourney was unusually large with 733 players which made for a sweet 15k 1st prize. <READMORE>

With 23 players left, I was sitting in 5th place with 217,000 in chips. My table was really passive which was great for the upcoming bubble and short-handed periods. The only person at my table who I had to worry about was SamENole and he only had 40,000 in chips, so everything was perfect. Blinds were 6k and 12k at this point.

That's when it happened. My comcast cable internet service went out. Although this was the first time that its happened to me mid-tourney, I had actually tried to prepare for the situation. I set up the dial-up service in my laptop that we use at my business to clear credit card transactions. So, I calmly switched it over to dial-up and dialed in. My heart-rate jumped when the server sent a message that I was already logged in from another computer. Doh! My manager didn't disconnect the modem before leaving work.

Now its serious. Plan C was to call the few poker buddy cell numbers that I have saved in my phone. Turns out all of them are not that great at poker because no one was still up at 12:10 CST. What happened to all that money you spent on Real Poker Training? Geez, try to the JohnnyBax method and play 79s.
Now, what is plan D? I have my laptop scan for other wireless networks in the area and am surprised to see that there are 7 networks. I even more excited to see that 3 of them don't have security enabled. It's on now, I felt like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. Duh, duh, duh, da, da duh, du, duh, duh, duh.

It just wouldn't be right if I could just connect and resume playing. Turns out their service is not quite strong enough to make Paradise run, although it does connect for just a moment. So, now I need better reception. I try going out in front of my house and sitting on our bench (in my underwear no less), but the service gets worse. I then give the backyard a shot and get the same result (although the 55 degree weather has mysteriously made my underwear a little looser). I figure I have no choice now but to go up and down the street to get closer to these available networks. After carefully considering the options, I decide that I had better put on shorts - just in case I see my hot neighbor.

I take my laptop and jump in my Infiniti FX35 (bragging a little) and pull out of the drive way and go West about 100 feet. I scan, and I lose the networks. I turn around and go East stop and scan again. I repeat this process up and down the block and around the corner. I would move up about 30 feet and have my computer scan for wireless networks. Then, move up a little and do it again.

Now, I've got a really nosey neighborhood association that I was sure was going to bust me. Imagine the rumors: "Did you hear that Mr. Carter was out at midnight peeping into everyone's house with his laptop glowing in the front seat looking at Porn waiting to run up to Ms. Smith's house and ejaculate all over her front door." The stay-at-home moms in my neighborhood just live for this kind of stuff.

Anyway, back to poker, I finally get reconnected by tapping into someone's wireless down the street. We are down to 10 people, I had 17,000 left in chips, the blinds were up to 30,000 and I was 2nd to act. Somehow SamENole did what he always does and was up to 400,000 in chips or something ridiculous. I picked up QJo the very first hand and put my pittance of chips in the middle and lost to AK. I finished 10th after missing 37 minutes of action. When I came back home about 1:00 am, my wife woke up as I climbed into bed. She asked me where I had been. I told her I was at the neighbors house cleaning off her front door. She said "oh" and went back to sleep.

The lesson: have a better backup plan than I did in case your internet goes out. I figure that my service going out cost me anywhere from $2,000 to $14,000. My wife told me to look at the bright side - it probably saved me from busting out sooner. Funny, I don't remember marrying Julie Andrews. I hate optimists.

The other lesson: don't assume the guy lurking around in the car at midnight in front of your house with a laptop glow on is doing anything other than playing poker. You don't know, it could happen.

For the week, the results were so close to being great, but just a little off.

16 tournies,
7 in the money finishes - 8, 13, 13, 24, 27, 43, 44

Next week, watch out. I'll be the guy at Starbucks jumping up and down outside the store at 1:00am in the morning because I just won a big tourney using their wireless network.
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