I lost a dear friend tonight and my best friend lost his best friend.

Julie — I love you very much and you are already missed.

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JFLO accompanied me up to Tulsa for my game at Oral Roberts. The game went well — the coordinator of officials was there and it was the first time that he had ever seen me officiate, so that is a good thing! Great atmosphere at Oral Roberts — they put on a heck of a show for their basketball games. Scott Sutton is the coach — son of Eddie Sutton, retired OSU head coach, who was also in attendance (I know my mother-in-law Mindy will appreciate that tidbit!)

JFLO and I hit the Pappadeaux’s lunch buffet in Bush’s Terminal E before our flight.

We went up a day early and may or may not have gone straight to the poker room at the Cherokee Casino

The Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV was going on and it was day 3 of the big $5000 buy-in tournament. They were down to the final two tables when we got there and there were several recognizable faces (if you watch poker on TV anyway). That’s Todd Brunson in the black jacket at the table there — unfortunately, he busted out before the final 9, which is all that paid in the 164 entrant tourney!

JFLO at the table sportin’ the iPod!

That’s Scotty Nguyen playing in his own tournament — nice! He busted out 4th or 5th… I took this photo from the seat where John and I were playing $1/2.

An 8-way chopped pot!!! Everyone checked the A 10 10 flop, the 6 on the turn and the 6 on the river… A $2 would have taken it down, but apparently we were all scared! Yeah — that is my 5 3 of clubs there and JFLO’s Q 5 on the right — you see the kind of crappy hands he plays!

Another photo of one of the final two tables — that is Gavin Smith in the blue baseball cap just to the right of the dealer. He does well in a LOT of tournaments and you may have seen him in KFC commercials during the WSOP broadcasts.

Was taking a photo of the table when the dealer was dealing cards to me — I thought this photo came out cool!

My chip stack midway through the night — after buying in for only $100! Woohoo!!!

This dealer looks like fellow poker degenerate (and often times, host) Jason Perkins — so we had to take a photo. The next night we showed Seth (Jason’s doppelganger) a photo of Jason, along with the rest of the table, and we were laughing about how it looked like him. A few hands later Seth said, “That dude really does look like me!” — LOL!!! And, yes, I used the word “doppelganger” at the table.

The final table — the guy in the baseball cap on the right is Ray Henson from Houston. He is not a “famous” poker player, but placed 12th in this years main event. He went on to get 2nd to TJ Cloutier in this tournament for a $120K payday. Nice!!!

TJ and Ray heads-up … with $300K on the table! Sweet!

Took this photo and emailed it to fellow poker player John as he was hamming it up at the table. He bet and it was obvious (to me) that he had a good hand. I think that he thought the other guy was going to fold, so went into this little act — it ended up working and the guy called with a worse hand. I mostly stayed away from this guy — he was a solid player that knew what was going on in the game. He built up a $100-200 stack to about $1200 over the course of the evening!

Also, note the chips in front of the guy in the blue shirt, because I had ALL of them a few hands later when he stacked off on a Q 10 9 x board to my pocket jacks, calling my all-in on the turn with a 10 7 — pair and a gutshot. Nice hand, sir!

My stack a little later in the night — with my “lucky Scotty” chips on top. That is JFLO’s pitiful stack behind the drinks.

Day two of poker… JFLO orders a brownie AND a cookie. The waitress brings over the largest brownie ever known to mankind!! I took a photo, but had to take another with a poker chip for reference so that you could see how huge this thing was!!! Yes, he ate the whole thing!

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That’s the brand of cab you have to take to the Candlewood Suites hotel here in Fargo. There’s no airport shuttle, but the hotel picks up your fare. This is definitely a small town - I left the hotel at 6:00am and was at the airport, PAST security at 6:12am!
The game at North Dakota State went well last night - an easy-to-work blowout. Good sized crowd, but pretty quiet - although I imagine if their Bison hadn’t maintained a 30-point lead throughout, they may have been more active.
Normally I would not be taking a 7am flight home, but I flew on miles (the ticket to Fargo would have cost about $500!) and this was all that was available. The good news? Somehow I got my upgrade to Minneapolis yesterday and all the way home today. Sweet! Also, I’ll be back in Houston by noon - and Carrie and I are planning to meet Brendan and Julie for an early dinner tonight.
I never thought that officiating would take me to Fargo, North Dakota, but it’s been a fun trip!

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Quick blog update… I haven’t been too inspired lately to post, but have been busy. If a picture’s worth 1000 words, this post is going to be several thousand words long!

My game at SUU went well and I got a good report from the observer — Summit League off to a good start!

Vegas was CRAZY on Halloween — people’s costumes were OFF the chart!

Played some poker in Vegas while I was there (and then later that week when I got back home — in the Anadonko game, pictured above) … Vegas wasn’t so good — I played ok and in one big pot got a guy to put all his money in drawing to 3 outs on the river… Yeah, he hit.

Hung out with Bob Haak — a referee buddy of mine in San Antonio while working a few games there… Natalie hooked me up at the La Mansion on the Riverwalk — it was sweeeeeet!!!

My sister does nice things for me because I hook her up too! For example, when I got my iPhone last month (and, yes, it rocks!), I sent her my old BlackBerry. I needed something to ship it in and my iPhone box just happened to be sitting on my desk, so I used that. The photo is a takeoff on “No, you can’t have a pony.”

Spent a LOT of time on planes… and missed my flight coming back from San Antonio because I had the time wrong in my calendar! Almost ended up driving back to Houston, but caught the last flight out!

Happened to notice this Amber Alert at Bush Intercontinental. The significance of this is that I programmed the interface for the airport personnel to upload photos and text and have it transmit to the FIDS (Flight Information Display System) monitors — where all the arrivals and departures are listed.

Visited with Julie and Brendan … some and MDA and some at home … Glad that they are back home now!

Worked last Friday at Texas State … Some genius scheduled the women’s game for a 5:30pm start before our 7:00pm game. We started at 7:50pm — nice! Also, not sure that Brad (my co-official) was taking my photo here!

Carrie and I with mimosas on Sunday … at the Cheesecake Factory, of course … Carrie wants to go there all the time — and, no, mom, we don’t ever cook!

My mom got a new Mac! Sweet! I went by Sunday afternoon to drop it off, as I had had it delivered to my house to put some software on it, set it all up, etc. My dad bought it for her as an early Christmas present — and, yes, that is the 30″ monitor! Nice!!!

I ended up staying over Sunday night and most of the day Monday hanging out in Chappell Hill. We went to lunch at this little cafe in town and hung out most of the day. I worked some, helped her get setup on her new Mac, and just chilled out a little — it was a good time!

Thankfully, she does not have as much RAM or hard drive space on her notebook, which means that mine is still a little better … Because if my mom had a better computer than me, my head might asplode!

That is all for now… Carrie is pulling up and we are going to dinner… Odds are good that it is going to be Cheesecake again! (Sherry — I will be sure to take pictures for you!)

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