October 30, 2007: Draftmix Freeroll #1

Not surprisingly, I didn't win last week's $100 Blogger Challenge at Draftmix.com. As detailed last week, my team was autodrafted, so I didn't really have any dreams of winning the top prize.

Here were the final standings. My motley crew finished in 4th place.

A new $50 freeroll draft was conducted tonight. First place gets $35. Second place gets $15. A total of 10 people signed up, and I ended up with the 3rd pick.

Here's my team - in the order I drafted them. I like this squad much more than last week's team:

1. Peyton Manning IND (QB)
2. Braylon Edwards CLE (WR)
3. Clinton Portis WAS (RB)
4. Earnest Graham TB (RB)
5. Lee Evans BUF (WR)
6. Dallas Clark IND (TE)
7. Chris Chambers SD (WR)
8. Washington Defense
9. Jeff Reed PIT (K)

I hope to participate in a few more drafts this week. I've already got $110 in my Draftmix account - so we'll see if I can win a little more cash this week.

October 27, 2007: Full Tilt Update

I haven't had a chance to play a ton of poker this week. Last Sunday, my wife went to the humane society and purchased a new puppy that we've named Lila. Here is a quick picture:

Lila is very active and doesn't like to give me a lot of free time at the computer. So, like I said, my time at Full Tilt Poker has been limited during the past seven days.

Regardless, I have been able to increase the balance in my Full Tilt account. Thanks primarily to a victory in a $10 18-man tournament earlier this week, I made a little over $100 again this week. Here's what my account balance looks like right now:

My quest to reach $1,500 continues . . .

October 25, 2007: Draftmix Blogger Challenge

Despite the fact that I was looking forward to tonight's Draftmix Blogger Challenge, my laptop decided that it didn't want to cooperate. Instead, technical malfunctions in the Schroeder home prevented me from attending the online draft. In other words, my laptop wouldn't work. That's a bummer, considering that the winner of this 1-week fantasy football draft gets $100.

Thankfully, the website allowed to "autodraft" my team - based on rankings already in the system. I didn't get the players I would have otherwise targeted, but I suppose it could have been worse.

Here's my team. It's not terrible, so maybe I'll get lucky. I don't even know what my draft position was in the 10-team league. Regardless, I guess I'll be rooting for the Giants and New England this weekend.

QB Eli Manning (NYG)
RB Lendale White (TEN)
RB Kenny Watson (CIN)
WR Randy Moss (NE)
WR Wes Welker (NE)
WR Shaun McDonald (DET)
TE Desmond Clark (CHI)
PK Rob Bironas (TEN)
DEF New England

October 23, 2007: Draftmix Results

Apparently, I did pretty well at the new Draftmix website this past weekend. Participating in 5 nightly freerolls last week, I won three of the fantasy football drafts I participated in. Yay for me! I guess that my many years of fantasy football experience paid off for one weekend of the NFL season.

Heading into Week #7 of the NFL season, I had projected that Laveranues Coles and the Seattle defense would do well. As it happened, things fell nicely into place and I was able to draft both of them in several of my drafts. That equated to success! Coles caught a pair of touchdown passes, and the Seattle defense had a good game against the pitiful St. Louis offense.

All told, I won $85. Coupled with the $25 I had won the weekend earlier, my Draftmix account is up to $110. Considering the fact that I haven't invested any money into this new wesbite, I'm happy to have $110 in my account.

Here's a quick link to the website that summarizes last weekend's activity at Draftmix. As the site suggests, "Last week was all about stv1313." I can't argue with that, can I?

Unfortunately, Draftmix is upgrading the website this week, so I'll only be able to participate in one freeroll - the $100 winner-take-all Bloggers Challenge this Thursday. Wish me luck!

October 20, 2007: Full Tilt Update

Slowly yet surely, my Full Tilt account balance continues to grow. After starting with $10, I was up to $227.10 when I made an entry into the Sketchbook last weekend. Today, I can proudly report that my account balance looks like this:

Generally speaking, I'm focusing my energy on heads-up tournaments. I'm continually amazed by the donks that play these tourneys. Admittedly, these tournaments aren't very exciting, but I can't complain with the profits. The people who play $5 and $10 heads-up tournaments don't seem to know what they're doing.

A couple weeks ago, after watching my $10 increase to somewhere around $75, I promised my wife that I was going to turn the $10 into enough money to buy into a $1,500 WSOP event next summer. Now that my balance is up to $343.85, that goal actually seems attainable.

Slowly yet surely, I'm going to grind away at Full Tilt and see what happens. As I've mentioned to a few people, I feel like I'm playing a video game. "Winning" the game means reaching $1,500. It may take a while, but I'm chasing the dream.

More updates to come . . .

October 17, 2007: Draftmix Blogger Challenge

I've mentioned this site to a few people already. For those of you who like fantasy football (and who doesn't?), I recommend checking it out . . .

I have registered to play in the Draftmix.com Blogger Challenge.

October 16, 2007: Fantasy Football Update

It's been a good start to the fantasy football season. Combined, my cumulative record is 21-3 in the four leagues I'm playing. I imagine that this will be my high-water mark, so let's document where I stand.

From best to worst:

(1) Here are the standings for the Milwaukee Keeper League ($50 entry fee). As the standings show, I'm 6-0. I already have a 3-game lead in the Diamond Division.

(2) Here are the standings in the Wisconsinite Fantasy Football League ($115 entry fee). I've been playing in this league since 1994 and I've never won the championship. Maybe this is my year. As owner of the "Marquette Warriors", I'm 6-0 so far this year, although I only hold a 1-game lead in the Wisconsin Division. My college roommate is giving me a run for my money!

(3) Here are the standings of EHSI's Fantasy Football League ($85 entry fee). As the defending champion in this league, I have a reputation to protect! As the owner of the "Physically Unable to Perform", I'm 5-1 so far this year. I must defend my title!

(4) Here are the standings in the Numnuts League ($100 entry fee). As owner of "Toss Me Your Balls", I'm 4-2 thus far - my worst record to date. I've been runner-up in this league the last four consecutive years. I am, without doubt, the Buffalo Bills of this league.

So, there it is! I'm 21-3 thru the first six weeks of the season. I certainly hope that I'm able to hoist a couple (at least!) championship trophies in a few months!

October 13, 2007: An Update

I've certainly been neglecting this blog, haven't I? To those of you still checking it periodically, I commend your devotion. Here's an update of my recent gambling activities:

During the 2nd weekend of September, I visited Las Vegas and personally witnessed the Badgers beating UNLV in Sam Boyd Stadium. Although the game wasn't the blowout people imagined (I think that Wisconsin was favored by 26 points), I thought it was a good and exciting football game. The Badgers won 20-13 and scored the clinching touchdown late in the 4th quarter. In hindsight, the Badgers aren't really as good as thought, so the narrow victory was probably appropriate.

For the most part, I didn't find great luck in Vegas. I lost while playing blackjack and gave a lot of money away at the Wheel of Fortune slot machines. However, I won a few hundred playing late-night poker at the Excalibur and won a tidy $800 playing video poker. I hit my first-ever royal flush while watching the Packers beat the Eagles Sunday afternoon - and that was worth $1,000 all by itself.

If I didn't count the $1,000 video poker jackpot, I would have come back a loser. However, since that's not the way it works, I actually came back with a profit of about $600. Unfortunately, my wife lost about $1,000 herself - so we came back a bit lighter in the wallet. Thank goodness I won some money, or it would have been a pretty depressing ride back on the airplane!

When I came back from Vegas, it was pretty easy to take a break from online poker. Eventually, however, I wandered back to the tables and found $10 sitting in my Full Tilt Poker account. I believe they put that money into my account to entice me back. It worked!

I took the $10 and concentrated exclusively on $2 4-man Heads-up Sit 'n' Go Tournaments. In this format, two heads-up games of Hold 'em are played simultaneously. The two winners then face each other, and the ultimate champion wins the $8 prize pool. The other three players get nothing.

I have found great success at these tiny tournaments. Risking only $2 in each 4-man tournament, my $10 grew all the way to $100 in a little less than two weeks. On average, I've been playing 2-3 tournaments each night, and I can't recall ever having a losing night. I must've won 3 out of every 4 tourneys I played - which is a rather hard-to-believe winning percentage.

Last night, I decided to change things up a bit and joined a $3 multi-table tournament. A total of 582 peole signed up to play, and it was a rebuy tournament. During the first 60 minutes of action, everyone was allowed to rebuy if they were eliminated and we were all given another opportunity to buy an additional 2,000 chips at the end of that time frame.

I found decent success during the first 60 minutes, and I never bought in for anything more than the original $3. I didn't buy more chips at the end of the first hour, and I buckled down for a long session of poker. At the end of the first hour, we still had 530 people playing - primarily because most people kept rebuying if they lost all their chips.

After all was said and done, I ended up playing poker for over 5 hours. I finished in 8th place and suffered a tough beat when I was eliminated. Here's the final screenshot of the top 10:

For my efforts, I won $129. Considering the fact that I only paid $3 to play, I experiended a pretty good return on my investment, ehh? It would have been nice to do a bit better, but beggars can't be choosers.

So, after having only $10 in my account two weeks ago, I have exactly $227.10 sitting in my Full Tilt poker account as I type this Sketchbook entry. I'm going to continue to concentrate on the 4-man Heads-Up tourneys (they seem like easy money) and we'll see what happens.

I'll keep you posted . . .

Daily Sketch: Up $217.10
Month-to-Date Sketch: Up $217.10