Golf and Poker (hand analysis at end)

I'm on both golf and poker kicks as of late. I've got a tee time Saturday at one of the nicest public golf courses in Seattle with a few friends from college who I've never played with, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm not very good at golf, but much like poker, I have some ability, just no consistency or willpower to stick with it and become "good".

Today I didn't take any substitute assignments and spent the middle of the day out on a golf course by my house. The forecast called for 50 degrees and a 50% chance of rain, but I ended up having sun and what felt like 60 degrees from hole 5 on to the end. I was solo, with nobody in front of me, so I decided to try something a little different and play a solo "best ball" style round. I played today for practice, not for a score, so if I felt like I could hit a better shot I'd drop another ball and give it a whack. In some instances this meant hitting four tee shots, but with no one else around it was all gravy. Today's round really was exactly what I was looking for, with lots of practice and even hitting the dreaded driver a few times!

My sexy score (pre-mulligans) was 8 over for the entire round, and a cool one-under on the backside. I started off really slow, and think I should be able to shoot around par on the front side, too, if I hit close to my best shot each time. I parred a few of the par 3's without taking any mulligans, but only birdied one hole WITH mulligans, which seems a bit sad. The birdie hole was the second hardest hole on the course, a dog leg left with a creek about 150 yards out at the dog leg. I hit a straight drive (amazing for me!) which curled a tad left and cleared the creek, leaving me about 120 yards to the pin. I landed a 9-iron about 10ft from the pin and sunk my longest putt of the day for bird!

I tried to count mulligans, but I'm not sure how exactly to count them fairly. Fair and mulligans don't really go together, do they? If I hit a second ball and use the second ball, I count a mulligan stroke. If I hit a second ball, but use the first ball, I did not count a mulligan. If I hit a second and third and fourth ball, and use the fourth ball, I only count one mulligan stroke. By this system, it seems like each mulligan stroke should really count for more than one stroke to adjust accurately, especially when I hit the first two balls into the water and take the third shot, and only count it as one mulligan stroke (which would normally have me shooting 5 or 6 instead of... 2). But when I putt, if I have a six-foot putt and miss it, but make the same putt on my second try, it makes sense to count that mulligan as just one extra shot (because even I can make the remaining 1-foot putt from my original shot).

I had 26 mulligans, which balloons my score up to a much more recognizable score around 100. And that is each mulligan at one stroke, if I push each mulligan up to 1.5 strokes, I didn't have as good a round as I thought! The round did feel good today, and just the confidence of making shots was great for me today, even if it took me three or four attempts.

---

On the poker front, I played in a $1 tournament last night on Full Tilt and six hours later I finished in 64th out of 8,656, good for $11. It is a lot of fun having hundreds of thousands of chips to play with, especially when you start with 3,000! I hit a 9-hi straight flush within the first orbit of the night, got paid, then knocked the same guy out a few orbits later with AA. Now that I think about it, I don't think I gave any bad beats (outside of knocking out shorties) all night, and only took a few myself, which is odd for a $1 tournament.

One hand from the tourney stands out, and it happened with about 125 people left.

Blinds are 10k/20k, with an ante of... let's say 1k. I've got 375,000, and one of the chip leaders is at our table with around 700,000.

I find JJ UTG+1 and raise it 70,000 or 3.5BB.

Folds to big stack, who calls in MP.

Folds around to the BB who pushes for 170,000 total.

I clicked for more time...

What do you do here? What hand ranges do you put MP and the BB on? Outcome tomorrow!