POKER TIME!!!

Ok guys, it's time for what this blog was originally intended, poker poker poker. Well, Karen left Thursday morning in Tucson, so Thursday afternoon I found the Desert Diamond casino, a short little 25 minute jaunt from our hotel. Honestly, I was not interested in playing great poker that day, I just wanted to get my feet wet and play some hands, and, at most as really possible, gamble.

That being said, I was probably the best player at my table, but boy did I not show it. I started playing tight, but thought that was boring and played every hand for 3 rotations, limped, called raises, everything, I just didn't care. It was a 3/6 full kill game (meaning some hands could be 6/12), and all things considered, I wasn't THAT big of a loser in the game, losing $156. The way I was playing, things probably should have been a lot worse.

But, losing money sucks! So I vowed the next time that I would play there, I'd play my "A" game. It didn't take me long to get back there, as Friday provided another opportunity. Now, this time unfortunatly we didn't have access to our vans as they were checked out for the day. So I called the casino shuttle, and they came to pick us up!

Now, if I knew then what I know now, I definitly would not have gone with this idea. But that's for the end of this particular story. So I get to the card room, play the same game, and wouldn't you know it, it's 4 of the same people that were there yesterday. Now, just because I played like an idiot doesn't mean that I didn't watch what others were doing! I was on a tight schedule of 1 hr and 45 min for that session and I evened everything up living a winner of $154. Ok, that's still -$2. Nothing really special happened this session it was just a matter of the best hands holding up. Things got a little crazy though the next session.

I skipped Saturday as it was Carrie's birthday and we went to a bar called Dirtbags, prolly the best name for a bar ever. It was nice though, oddly enough. Had a few drinks, went back to the hotel. Sunday we had 2 more shows, the 2nd one being a 6pm show, a time I don't think I've ever performed at, and loaded out my drums right after the show, as usual. I had to go back to the cardroom though as it would be the last live game I'd play for probably a month. I knew that I owned that game as I hoped some of the familiar faces were there that I knew.

I drove on down after the show and sure enough there were 2 people that I had played with. Let me set the scene, the game had a lot of money on the table. There were 2 seats open, they play 9 handed, and the seats were the 3 and the 9 seat. Let's go though seat selection shall we?

The 3 seat would mean that the "chipleader" and I hate using that term in a limit ring game, would be my big blind when I had the button. He was one of the players that I had played with in my previous sessions and EVERY time I'd seen him he had a mountain of chips that he then lost about 40% of. He wasn't a very tricky player, but he would flop 2 pair like crazy and people paid him off.

The other seat was to the left of a woman who had a mountain of chips! Prolly close to $380-$400. Which is alot of the game we were playing. I will say that I had to go with a kind of stereotype for me here. Also, the player to the right of that person was a foreign man who had about $45 and was very anxious about pots and kind of half standing half sitting on his chair like every pot was instrumental to him. Very neurotic player.

So this blog is in the form of a quiz. Not to say that I'm right, or smart or even good, but question 1) Where would you sit?

Question 2. You are in MP with A6. Folds to you. You raise as your image has been portrayed as tight aggressive. You get 2 callers in the blinds. SB is a very loose passive player, bets and check raises draws all day. BB is an older fellow who is tight passive. Flop comes T63 rainbow. They check to you, you bet, get 2 callers. Turn is a another T. Check to you again. You bet again, get 1 caller in the SB. River is a K. The SB now leads out! What do you do? What range of hands can he have? Should you call, fold or even raise?

Question 3. You have won 2 pots in a row and the game is now a kill pot. You then win another 2 pots on top of that for 4 in a row and people are really starting to fear you at the table it seems. You post $6 and happen to be in the BB anway, which is fortunate. You look down at the ol' Gus Hansen T8o. There was a limper UTG and the older tight passive player limped as well. You check. Flop comes 79J rainbow giving you the nut straight. A quick glimpse around the table reveals that the UTG player has started to load up on chips perhaps not realizing that he doesn't go first. You obviously check, he bets, and tight old guy calls. What do you do? How do you play the nuts in first position when people fear you?

Regardless of that first answer let's call that 3a). You're obviously not folding. Now a Q comes on the turn making KT the nuts. What do you do now? How do you extract maximum value? This is question 3b).

Post your comments, I'll be back in a couple days after hearing responses with my answers. They might not be right, but at least I'll tell you what I did. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Thanksgiving blog to follow this one!

Greetings from Tucson!

Now, I don't really like this picture of me, but considering that I haven't posted a picture of me since I left, I felt like I had to at some point. Besides, the really nice part of it is the sunset anyways...

It didn't come out nearly as good as the picture of Karen there:



So we flew into Tucson on Monday morning, after leaving Texas at 645am, flying to Dallas for a 3 hour layover, then off to Tucson. We got in at 12:15pm and Karen was also flying in from NY. Her flight landed right after mine and we got our rental car and headed up to the hotel. They gave us a mid-size car, and told us they had a Chevy HHR. Karen had never seen one, but I glimpsed one last month in Indiana and thought it looked pretty cool. Kinda cheap-futuristic-ish, but I liked it. Karen warmed up to the car over time as it handles really well.


Nothing really exciting happened on Monday, just did some laundry and got lost trying to find the mountain trail that would bring us to a good view of the sunset. Tuesday we went to the mall and did some damage. I guess it's an inherent feeling of living out of a suitcase looking at the same clothes over and over again. Oddly though, I only bought a couple shirts, a pair of jeans, a black fleece for when we play in cold pits, and a pair of black sneakers, as I only have one, and I wear them every day. "But Gregg", I can hear some of you asking..."where did you get that track jacket from the first picture?" The answer may shock you. Urban Outfitters had a mega sale starting on Wednesday and I got that jacket for $5!!! Yup yup, $5. (This is more of an inside joke as people on tour are sick of me talking about my $5 jacket.)

Tuesday night, Karen sat in the pit with me for act II and afterwards we went to a local bar people raved about called "Frog and Firkin". The kitchen closed like .23420390 seconds before we got there, so we had a beer and relaxed outside at one of the outdoor tables. On the other side of where we were, there was a free poker tournament going on. Apparently there is a Pub League out here and it travles from bar to bar. It had also started before we got there, and couldn't get a seat.

Wednesday we went back downtown to eat at Frog and Firkin. We met up with Jeff (trumpet player) and Steve (trombone player) for lunch. Afterwards we walked around the college downtown, went to Urban Outfitters and later went to the aforementioned mountains you see above you. Karen came to see the show that night, and although there were technical malfunctions that night, the show went off well and everyone seemed to have a great time.

Thursday morning we woke up and watched Lost and South Park from the night before that SOMEHOW magically appeared on my computer. Oh the internet, you do everything...It was then that Karen had to go to the airport to go back to NY. It was certainly a great visit and I can't wait to come home in a month!

Thursday night there was a cabaret by the perfomers in the show here at IBT, the gay bar here in town. It was a great time with everyone singing songs NOT from Oklahoma, thank god. The locals weren't really having it though, but that didn't ruin the night at all. Afterwards, Steve, Jeff, Andy (who plays Judd) and I went out to the straight bars. Stuff closed kinda early though so we only had till about 1:30 before heading home. A very fun night indeed.

I found the casino on Thursday too. I'll post soon about Thurs and Friday's sessions. I'll leave it in a new post so my family can weed through it as it will have poker jargon they won't understand/care about. Some very interesting play indeed, and in my opinion, the best poker that I personally have played in a while. Wow, this is a long post, it took all of Act II today!!

Greetings from Galveston, Texas

Ok, so I'm not in this picture, but this is the hot tub from our hotel in beautiful Galveston, TX. Most of you don't know who these people are, so from L to R: Karyn, Jillanne, Heidi, Matt (back) and Kasey. This was this afternoon before we got to the theater, where I am currently, typing in my dressing room.

We got here yesterday, had a show last night, and some of us stuck around town to hit up a local bar, Molly's. Last call is around 2, but we left around 1:30 and headed back to the hotel. I got the brilliant (albeit slightly drunk) idea that going in the hotel hot tub area would be a great idea. So I went up to my room to get a towel and headed to the hot tub which was lit up very nicely.
Had a great time just relaxing with some people in the hot tub till about 330, then passed out asleep. Little headachey this morning, headed down to Wendy's for some food, and afterwards bought a new hat and sunglasses. I'm at the theater now for a 3:00 and an 8:00 show. Well, we have one more show tomorrow night in Texarkana, TX, then we fly off to Tucson where we'll be all next week. Updates might be slow next week as Karen will be visiting and we plan on doing some day trips and having the show at night. See ya soon!

Hey all. So this week after having a great time in Fayetville, we had a day off on Monday, a "golden day" as it's known. This is a day with no show and no travel. Had to enjoy it as it is our last day until the end of the leg where we clearly have all day off to do whatever we like. On that day, I headed up to Walmart and bought the new Star Wars: Battlefront II game, and the new James Bond game, From Russia With Love.

People were going to "On the Border" for dinner and margaritas around 630ish, then seeing Chicken Little. I however, not over my sickness yet, was exhausted. I took some Sudafed and passed out from 6-10pm. This was the worst time ever to do this as we had a really early bus call the next morning and I had napped and would likely be up all night. Well, I was up till 430 and we had a 7am leave, which meant a 630 load time for the bus.

To those who are not familiar with a typical day for me, it goes something like this. Depending on how far the venue is from where we are the night before, we leave anywhere from 7-10am. We stop for lunch in between 11 and 12 for an hour, then back to the road. We usually arrive at the hotel around 2 or 3, have time to shower or whatever, then back on the bus to bring us to the venue around 5ish for soundcheck, fight call, and then, have a little time off, do the show, pack my drums up, get on the bus back to the hotel, sleep, get up, repeat.

That's only when we're at a venue for 1 night. Granted there's alot of nights like this on this tour, we have 3-7 day sitdowns which is nice. Another nice perk for me specifically is that my drums travel with the trucks for the show, and there's someone who has the job of setting up the pit in each city, including my drums. Tonight was the first night that everything was more or less perfect, just a couple tweaking things here and there, but it was great tonight.

Tuesday and Wednesday we played Monroe, LA. Man does that place ever smell! They claimed it was on swampland and that was the reason, but whew! That place was just nasty, nice venue though. Today we drove to Tyler, TX and did a show at the University of Texas. What a beautiful space that is. The hall had amazing acoustics, everything just sounded amazing. 2,000+ seats, we filled them all, and they had a great time. I'm also getting amazingly good at loading out my drums (packing them up). I've discovered that since the book scenes can get a little long, I can pack up any unnecessary percussion instrument that I don't use in the show anymore. By the time the show is really over, I have only half of what I started with in front of me. I got a little self concious of people in the balcony being able to see the drummer packing up equipment DURING the show, but hey, we're only here for 1 night, oh well!

Tomorrow morning, really today as it's 2:45am when I'm writing this, we're driving down to Galveston, TX. BUSH COUNTRY INDEED!!! Ironically, I bought the new Al Franken book today The Truth (with jokes). I plan on putting it on my drums tonight so I might get shot by a curious audience memeber!

So yeah, I don't really WORK that hard on this job. I get driven around to places across the country, have someone set up my gear and transport it for me, play a show that's not terribly hard, and go to Walmart on my days off. Ok, maybe that's just positive thinking as I AM on a bus with 28 other people that I say EVERY day for the next 6 months. I do the SAME show every night, and Walmarts look generally the same. Also, family, friends and Karen are sorely missed. But hey, I'm an optimist.

Once I get more pictures taken, they will be put up. I apologize for my laziness in this matter.

So where did I leave off last time. Ahh yes, Halloween...

We stayed in College Station until Thursday. We drove to Shreveport, LA that morning and got to the hotel around 2PM. Left for the theater around 445 to go to sound check. Did sound check, signed a few autographs for the collectible posters, and then did the show. Loaded out my drums because we were only there for the one night. Funny story for the night though:

In the Overture, when we hit the "Oklahoma" theme, there's an orange "OKLAHOMA!!" logo that comes up on the front scrim. However, when it came up this night in Shreveport, the logo was upside down. Some quick thinking from the projectionist decided to flip it but apparently it got stuck and then stayed vertical, not even fitting at all on the scrim. After some more flipping, they probably decided that if we made it correct now, it would appear as though this was all a giant mistake. So how do we through the public off from thinking such a thing? The brilliant move of just rotating the logo VERY quickly for the rest of the overture. Spin Spin Spin Spin Spin etc. A good laugh was had by all.

The company manager, stage manager, and reed player walked with me down the streets to the El Dorado Casino. My first live game in 2 weeks! The 1/2 NL game was 11 people deep, but the 4/8 limit HE game was open seating so I sat on down. We could only afford to stay for an hour as we had to be back on the bus by 7am the next morning. So the 4th hand I'm sitting for I get the ol, QJs in the cutoff. The game was very passive, and this is a hand I play anyway in this type of game so I limped in. 5 way action, we took of flop of KT9 with 2 clubs. Jackpot! No scare cards came off and I had 2 people paying me off on every street for a nice little pot. This would be the only hand I'd win for the session. A few bad beat stories that no one wants to hear, so I'll just give you the net result. Poker session = 1 hour. -$16 for the session. Not bad really, but I'm sure I could've beaten that game up if I had more time. There was only one person to worry about and he looked like Chau Giang. The person to the left of me just called with the nuts on the river because he didnt' realize he acted last in that particular hand.

The next day we drove to Fayetville, Arkansas, which is where I am now. Fayetville is a kickass town with some great bars and shops. Had dinner tonight inbetween shows at the Hog Brewery, or something like that. Had the beer sampler which had all different kinds of beers. Banana Wheat something, one had a carmel taste, one a blueberry taste, one was a stout, another was a red ale. Good place, good service, and real close to the performing venue which is gorgeous! We've had really good sales so far for the past 2 weeks, playing venues no smaller than 1200 seats, and selling no less than 80% of tickets. This weekend alone in AR, is booked at 98%. Everyone seems to love the show and we get treated really well wherever we go.

We have these cool backstage passes and there's always rooms with free foods and drinks in each city. Each place usually sets out 5 posters for everyone in the show to sign so they can display it after we leave as well. Listen to me, I sound like such an idiot. Also, being on tour is pretty cool, because you NEVER have to clean up after yourself. You're in town for one day? Housekeeping will clean it up, not a problem. This may turn into a really bad idea for later in life when I return home. (It may already be, just has to be decided)

In other news, I'm still kinda sick. Just really congested, it's been about a week now. More people are getting it now too, so people are just breaking down. Also, I'm getting lonely sometimes and miss people from back home. Karen's coming out in a little over a week to Tucson though, which will be much needed time to hang out and relax as I only have night shows for the time she's here. Also, there's a casino 2 exits away.....but that's not for another 8 days. Thanks you guys for reading, whoever is actually reading this mess. I'll be back after the weekend with another update as we go back through Louisiana and Texas again. Later!

Halloween 2005

This is my favorite costume from last night

Mr. Slave!!!! Brilliant...

This is how we roll to the movies...rockstar parking always. Actually, wherever we go we get rockstar parking, no walking ever...

Saw Saw II last night, having never seen Saw I, I went in fresh. I really enjoyed it, even though Karen said Saw I was awful, and she had no intrest seeing the sequel. It was mindless entertainment with a novel twist. I have to go back and see Saw I now. Well, that's all for me right now, we have our official opening in a couple hours here in Texas. Go Aggies!!!