Hodgepodge Post
I was just perusing the blogs and got a kick out of Flipchipro's 9 excuses for a Vegas trip. It gave me a particularly big smile because this very afternoon I booked my flight for my buddy Odogg's bachelor party in Vegas. I arrive Thursday, September 16, at noon, and leave Sunday at noon. The BP trip is on top of the August 17-19 stop that Mrs. Cheap Thrills and I will be making in our favorite city. Gonna work on building that poker bankroll tonight . . .

Speaking of which, before heading out the door last night I got in about an hour of $1/$2 at Absolute last night, and booked a $25 win. I'm now in the black across all levels from .25/50 to 2/4 at Absolute. That is a good feeling.

Amidst general boozing and hanging out with friends last night, a poker game did indeed break out. Unfortunately by that point in the evening there were only 4 of us. Desperate for some poker action, but knowing we were pathetically shorthanded, we did a $1 buy-in tournament. My buddy Spaniel (real name is Daniel, don't ask about the nickname) took the win. We then tried a little pot limit Hold'Em with 1 and 2 penny blinds. It was the first time any of us had played pot limit and it was sorta interesting. Everyone was pretty tired by that point, though, so we called it quits after only a dozen or so hands. Hopefully we'll be getting back together for a real poker night later in August.

I put in an order with www.viptrades.com for 75 more poker chips today. My set came with 100 red, 100 blue, 100 green, 50 black, and 150 white. I've also got 25 custom-made chips from the wedding, which we treat as black. I've been using casino-standard chip values of red = 5 (either cents or tourney dollars), green = 25, black =100. Blue varies in casinos so I made it 50 (makes it easy to play .25/.50 limits). White in casinos is $1, but we don't usually use either pennies in money games or single dollars in tourneys, so I had previously made white equal to $2/$200. Now that we've tried pot limit with penny blinds, I'm going to make white be pennies. But I don't need 150 pennies, hence the VIP Trades order. Once it arrives my set will look like this:

50 white (I'll throw the other 100 in a drawer somewhere since I haver a 500-chip case)
100 red
100 blue
100 green
100 black (75 regular, 25 wedding chips)
25 purple (worth $5/$500)
25 yellow (worth $10/$1000)

At the very least, with this setup I'll have replaced most of the mostly-useless white chips. The purples and yellows will be helpful for coloring up the final 2 or 3 players in a tourney, which not only will make it easier for them to count their stacks, but will also free up a lot of chips for the side game that often starts up. The purples and yellows might also eventually see use if we start playing for higher real-money limits at home (I'll have $480.50 in total chips). Plus the two new colors will make my set look cooler :)

The 75 new chips cost me a whopping $12.75 plus shipping. (I have the very common suited edge metal-insert type. I know some people hate the metal insert, but I don't really mind. Remember, I'm cheap.) They were .17 each, which is 10 cents less a chip than they were when I bought my set last year. Just another benefit of the poker craze.

OK, off to play poker.
posted by James at 7:30 PM