Mooke Curse Yadda Yadda Yadda, Chat Bans and Lost

Pretty usual day for me in the Mookie last night. Played well, in the top half of the field for the first 90 minutes or so, and then I had AA sucked out on viciously by AK an a nearly allin preflop situation, thank you runner-runner broadway. I would have to say I am probably running at around a 33% clip of winning with AA in the Mookie. It's so fucked up, I get AA dealt to me in the Mookie about six times a year, I play them all perfectly and I still lose four of those six. Meanwhile, other people are dealt Aces six times an hour in the Mookie, and somehow they win eight of them. Don't ask me to explain, I do not understand it. And then of course came my allin reraise with TT, called by the JackAce and of course an Ace on the turn and I am just about done. How many times can someone make the superior play with superior cards and lose in one tournament? Anyways, congratulations to Emptyman on winning I think his 18th Mookie title. Empty is a good player, but it's getting to the point where it is a flat-out insult to your game to win the Mookie. Winning the Mookie basically means you are a luckdonk suckbox idiot and that you seriously suck some huge balls at poker. There, I said it.

In other news, for you poker forum readers out there, it seems that ftp has really gone nuts about banning people's chat recently. On pocketfives there is a great thread that details a number of people's chat being banned for a month over the past week or so for typing in the most innocuous statements I have ever seen. Stuff like the letter "A" 10 times in a row, or "asuigdshjpoishfdsfu" or something similar after a particular suckout, typing in non-insulting and non-dirty movie quotes, and similar things. Blonkament player ANIguy had his chat banned the other day while railing KOD in the FTOPS #9 tournament, for typing "SHOVE SHOVE SHOVE" into the chat as an observer at the tables.

I don't get it.

When Chad got his chat banned for life the other day, although I still find the penalty to be recockulously extreme, I figured maybe it was just a culmination of repeated warnings and offenses and a zero-tolerance policy like what Indiana University laid on Bobby Knight some years ago after one too many ridiculous chair throwings, reporter thrashings and player chokings. I also figured it might have something to do with Chad embarrassing the shiat out of a few of the ftp "pros" in the chat over the past few days by taking huge pots from them and then publicly proclaiming them the fish that they are in the chatbox. Of course that is a redonkulous reason to ban someone's chat, but I wouldn't put it past full tilt given that the pros "own" the company or whatever. But now seeing all these other ridiculous chat bannings, I really can't tell what is going on.

And even more inexplicable to me is how my chat has not been banned as well. Over the past few weeks when I was running so bad, I must have used every swear word in the book (adding an extra letter here or there of course to get by the oh-so-clever full tilt obscenity filters) in insulting these dickheads for their dickheaded play. How someone gets banned for saying "SHOVE SHOVE SHOVE" while my "YOU FUUCKING COOCKHOLES WILL NEVER WIN SHIIT" and "CAN'T BELIEVE I FUUCKED YOUR MOM AND SHE HAD A LITTLE SHIIT LIKE YOU" go unpunished is completely beyond me. Someone suggested to me that it just has to do with the luck of the draw of whether someone at the table reports you to full tilt or not, but I'm not buying that. You'll never convince me that anyone around the table reported ANIguy for typing "SHOVE SHOVE SHOVE", there's no way anyone complained to full tilt about that. For some reason, full tilt has just gone way off the deep end all of a sudden, and for the life of me I wish I could figure out why, and why it is seemingly being applied as selectively as it is. Craziness.

Another Lost episode tonight, and tonight is the night when we allegedly learn of another member of the "Oceanic Six". Word is that it will be a certain member of the Iraqi Republican Guard, although I know of no details to support that claim but I'm pretty sure it is correct. Just like I'm pretty sure that Ben's "man on the boat" will turn out to be none other than....Michael. Yes, the same Michael who sailed off with his son about two seasons ago, so like 13 years ago in real-time since that episode was aired. How that all fits together I will never know, but I will say this: since the decision to official air 48 more episodes of Lost -- no more and no less -- the show definitely seems so far to have taken a serious turn for the better. Gone so far have been the completely wasted episodes like Hurley finding the abandoned truck, and the introduction of wasted new characers like Libby et al, and instead the producers seem to be creating each episode with a real purpose now. We're getting solid plot, and a number of solid answers, in every episode, and this is something that I hope to continue, even if they do keep introducing new questions to baffle us along the way as well.

A couple of other Lost thoughts that I had....First, does anyone else think that the polar bear skeleton that Charlotte found last week is going to somehow be the fossilized remains of the actual polar bear that Sawyer shot on the second episode of the first season? Like somehow, that this confirms that the island is somehow in another time, back in the past or something like that? What did anyone else think was meant by that polar bear skeleton scene, if not that? Totally intriguing. And also, why was Daniel Faraday crying so hard at home when he saw that the remains of Oceanic 815 had been found in the waters of the Indian Ocean? Some have speculated that he was crying because he knew that meant he would have to go back to the island. It's an interesting theory, but not one that I think makes any sense. Why would finding the plane with all the passengers aboard and dead mean he has to go back for his "rescue" mission? If anything, I would think it's the opposite. No, given that we already see that Miles is a ghost whisperer of some sort, I am betting that each of the four members of the "rescue" team were hand-selected because of some sort of special power that they have. I don't remember where I read this (maybe it was Goat's blog?), but I like the theory I read somewhere that Daniel's special power is that he is some kind of empath, someone who feels all the feelings of all the people on that plane, their families and their friends when he saw that the entire plane was located with everyone aboard and dead. One thing is for sure -- that show is crazy, as crazy and as awesome as ever.

And who was the jackass who made fun of me here on the blog a few weeks back for saying Lost is the best show in a decade? As long as you realize you are making fun of about 10 million other Americans as well, then I'm fine with you clowing on my blog like that. But it's not like I'm on here saying American Idol or some shit like that is the best. I have little doubt that Lost will be looked back upon as about as good as it gets in television drams once its run is done at the end of 2010. And I for one can't wait.

Riverchasers tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt. We are playing straight-up no-limit holdem this week, $11 buyin, password is "riverchasers". Not sure if I will make it given the Lost episode set to air at the same time, but we'll see.