Lesson #1 – Apparently, I don’t squat about football. 0-2 on the championship games. On the plus side, I’ve been predicting all year that Jake Plummer’s performance would eventually normalize to his career curve. Still, it was almost painful to watch him revert to “Jake the Shake” during the biggest game of his career.

Lesson #2 – 95%-5% is not a sure thing, no matter what people complain about. Last night, I ended up third in a SnG losing multiple times to runner-runner flushes (at least three) and two-outers (at least two). Luckily, in almost every case, it was to shortstacks. Of course, the last one was the killer, losing to a two-outer on the river. K9 for me, J9 for him. KJx on the flop. He pushes me, I call (naturally). J on the river. IGHN. Sigh.

Lesson #3 – Working for a living is hard, especially starting out with an established company with SET ways of doing everything. I’m re-learning how to define training and e-learning according to the company’s established protocols. Every company does things differently and “training” to your company might not be the same as “Training” is to my company. Identifying all these little pitfalls and paradigms is the hard part. Actually performing the job is relatively easy.

Is it my imagination or are there only a couple of poker tournaments on television and they’re just repeated over and over and over and over again?

Given the appalling level of play and the lack of personalities, the UltimateBet tournaments are the worst advertisements for poker. These people look and act like trailer trash and/or D&D graduates and their ascension to the top of the UB ladder seems to be the equivalent of a welfare recipient winning the Lottery and becoming the richest guy in the city.

On the other hand, the FullTilt sessions are more entertaining and while the “Learn from the Pros” title is self-aggrandizing, the information is somewhat useful, moderately interesting, and well presented. Plus, it’s only a half-hour. It’s cool to watch a hand from the past and hear the pros argue about “what they were thinking”. Of course, since we’re much more likely to find ourselves across the table from one of the braindead UB geeks than a pro, most of the tips might not have immediate practicability, but they make for good television.

I had to bail on a poker tournament being thrown by one of my buddies (16-seats, $40 buy-in, 100% goes to prizes) because my mom invited us over for my wife’s birthday on Saturday night. Dammit. My wife pulled one of those “It would be really nice to have us all there…” faces, and my dreams of local poker glory were torpedoed. I may head over later in the evening since there may be a second tournament launched later with sufficient interest, and the busted players are usually up for a ring game.

Super Bowl XL prediction – Ratings will be down about 5%. The best thing that could happen to Fox is that there is a snowstorm on the East Coast on Super Bowl Sunday.