Bama 8 and 0 + Poker Update

by Shannon Shorr | Published: Oct 28, '08

Not a whole lot's been going on since I last posted. I went to Birmingham last weekend as Alabama was up in Knoxville playing Tennessee. The weekend was a really good time. On Saturday I joined my Mom, sister Heather, Heather's boyfriend Ben, and a few other friends to watch the game at a bar called Fox and the Hound. Thankfully, Bama had no problem with UT and improved to 8 and 0. We still sit in the number two spot. Our remaining games include a homecoming affair against a scrubby Arkansas State this weekend, at LSU next week, and then home games against Mississippi State and rival Auburn. Bama probably can't be worse than like 6 to 1 against winning the National title. Just making it there would be sick. One time.

A lot of people forget that in 2005 Alabama opened up 9 and 0 before losing to LSU at home. Hopefully we'll be 10 and 0 after beating them this year.

During the week I've kind of just been lounging around and watching a bunch of baseball. Life is pretty boring during the week. It makes me miss the never-mundane Vegas life. I guess this is the case for like 99.9999 percent of the population during the week though. It's definitely been a different experience being back here in college at age 23...but whatever.

Quickly, some poker. Sunday was a successful day for me, as I turned like 200 percent ROI over the tournaments that I grinded. I got off to a good start early when I satellited into the upcoming 5000 dollar FTOPS event for 520 bucks or something. Later, I made a deep run in the UB main event but busted 27th or something. I ran a really risky bluff for all my chips in that tournament. This is something I don't usually do since people never fold, but it felt right. Simultaneously, I impatiently bubbled the PokerStars 500.

The highlight of the evening came around midnight though as I finished up the night with an outright win in the 215 dollar Mixed hold 'em event on Stars. Of course, this is half NLHE and half limit hold 'em. The tournament only had like 125 entrants, so the win paid 5600 or something. It's not about the money so much though. The most wonderful feeling in tournament poker is, of course, outright victories. It's very rare nowadays because of the large fields. I got really lucky in the NLHE portion with like 9 players left when I thought I had the best of it and stuck it in on J74 or something with 33 and the guy turned out to have KK. Turn 3. Sowwy. I feel like I played pretty exceptionally in the LHE pretty much all tournament long. A lot of people just have no idea how to play LHE.

I think grinding heads up NLHE for just the couple months that I did early this year has helped my all-around poker game immensely. I feel like I am hand reading as well as I ever have, and I'm certain that I am getting that good, thin (and max) value.

That's all I got. Hopefully my entries will get exciting again soon.

Shannon Shorr is a professional poker player from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He finished fourth in the Card Player 2006 Player of the Year race. You can follow his progress at shannonshorr.com.

Any views or opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the ownership or management of CardPlayer.com.