Monday, July 18, 2005

Is it Monday Already?

Oy!! What a weekend. I almost melted as temps. rose above 90 for the first time in months. I was beginning to think we would never see sun again here in the lovely, picturesque (I love that word) Pacific NW.

It was so hot, I was unable to catch most of the equine action this weekend, but I will let you know that I participated in the NTRA's national Claiming Crown Handicapping Championship at Canterbury.

I didn't do too badly. Based on one pick per race, $2 Win/Place, I had 4 winners and two places. Not too bad, especially considering I touted all at once which is never that successful, especially in a tournament setting.

My major issues with shi deal is that the NTRA had a site up and were doing a great job of updating standings every race. That is until about the 3rd or so race when the leader board went blank (as it it still is today).

WHO WON GUYS? WHERE THE HECK DID I FINISH? Did I enter just for fun? I don't think so.

This is where the NTRA and other "older school" horse entities fail to capitalize on promotions/marketing. Here they go with an awesome idea of a free handicapping contest (I mean really, the Claiming Crown is pretty cool, but how excited does one get over 150K claiming races? Well I was pretty darn excited when it was promoted as a free tournament with a seat at the national finals on the line.

Then they go and screw it up by not keeping up the momentum of a great idea.

It is truly annoying (for lack of a better term) and completely unnecessary. Just another example of poor management and marketing showing a lack of internet savvy and project completion. Did I miss something? If you have any information on this, please let me know!!

On a slightly different note....

With the passing of the weekend, the $7.5 mil. WSOP finally ended and after 13+ hours at the final table 39 yr. old, father of 4, former chiropractor Joe Hachem outlast over 5100 other poker players to win the largest payoff from the largest filed of competitors ever. The saddest part of this for me is that Paul at taopoker.blogspot will no longer be filling my days with visions of crystal meth neighbors (never fun, but often time funny), hookers, free drinks, and poker shenanigans (oh yeah, he also provided runny commentary throughout the 6-week WSOP extravaganza)

Big-ups to Pauly for keeping us all informed. My work last week was severely limited to do constantly refreshing my browser looking for updates. If you want to check out Pauly's site here you go:


  • Tao of Poker


  • I shall return later as my blood starts to get flowing a bit...

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