NFL Pick'em Invitiation, and Another Mookie/Dookie Wednesday

OK not too much time for what is going to be a late post today, as I had some personal business to attend to this morning that kept me out of pocket until the afternoon. So I will try to keep this short and sweet today. Yeah right.

On the poker front, let me start off by saying a heartfelt congratulations to NewinNov for winning this week's Mookie tournament. Newin and I don't chat all that much at the tables, but I've watched him play a great number of times and he is definitely one of those guys that seems to "get" the aggressive nature you have to have to be able to win mtts, something which I contend actually very few people in our group can honestly say. Me, I lived up fully to my promise yesterday that I would be dead money in the Mookie, when I eventually called an allin rereraise preflop with my KJs (soooted donk) about an hour in and went down to somebody's pocket Queens. It really is unreal how often I lose with Queens, and yet how seldom I seem to beat them. Not that I gave myself a good shot with the KJ move there -- that was pure donkery, and exactly the kind of move that I've been prone to lately in the nlh mtt tables, and it cost me as it should have last night when my opponent basically had to have me dominated by a high pair or an AK-type of hand. What can I say, I told you I was gonna donk and then I went out there and donked like a blogger. Yay for me.

I did manage to win the Dookie on Wednesday, which was Turbo PLO which has always been one of my favorite and I think my best games. This is my second Dookie of the year -- the first I believe was in PLO8 and now this one in PLO -- and my third Dookie overall in about a year and a half of playing in Mookie's Wednesday night tournaments. I looked under the cap and it turns out the actual cash value of winning a Dookie is 1/1000th of a Mookie win. So, I am 0.3% of the way to winning my first Mookie everyone!! Woohooooooo! Just 997 more victories at donkeylimit poker variations and I will have backed into one of my big remaining poker goals. Oh the joy.

Outside of poker, Thursday night brings the beginning of the new NFL season, with the Colts hosting the Saints at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. The Superbowl champion Colts are favored by 6 points at home, and I am going to go with the Colts to cover the 6 points on Thursday night and begin their title defense with a solid victory against one of the NFC's best teams. Come season's end, as of right now I do not expect the Colts to make it back to the Superbowl this year, but in general I do expect a nice showing and at least a one-touchdown victory for the Colts tonight as the Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne show kicks things off for another year.

Which brings me to my last item for today: my NFL Pick'em league. I did a Pick'em league that I announced here on the blog last season and it seemed to go over well, and this is something that I have done myself with friends for the past several years. This year will work the same as in past seasons, where we will pick every NFL game every week straight-up (not against the spread), and we will assign a confidence rating (1-16 in full weeks, 1-14 in weeks with teams with byes) to each game each week depending on how confident you are that the team you've picked to win will actually win that particular game. It's a good system and by the end of the season we should have a very good idea of who is the best at picking the NFL winners based on overall Pick'em performance.

I would love to have as many of you as are interested join in my Pickem league this year. For the first time, I am not going to start tracking picks until Week 2, to give everyone a chance to get a look at every team one time via their Week 1 games before we start making our picks, so the deadline to join the league will be a week from this coming Sunday, just before the Week 2 games officially begin.

Here is the information for you to register for my free Yahoo! NFL Pick'em league:

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In order to join the group, just go to Pro Football Pick'em, click the "Sign Up" button (or "Create or Join Group" if you are a returning user). From there, follow the path to join an existing private group and when prompted, enter the following information...

Group ID#: 33287
Password: eagles

Yahoo! will send you a confirmation with further details once you have completed the registration process.

Yahoo! Pro Football Pick'em
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/pickem

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So come out and join my league for some good old-fashioned fun times and trash talk. If you like the NFL then you should love playing NFL Pick'em with the Big Boys!

Thursday night at 9pm ET is the latest Riverchasers tournament on full tilt. Password is the ever-original "riverchasers" for this event. I'm already registered and I once again look forward to some donkage. Pray to the poker gods that you are at my starting table, because my first table is also likely to be my last given the way I've been playing the blonkaments lately. See you tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt!