Foxwoods

So I got into Foxwoods last yesterday afternoon to play the 10k. I drove up to KC at about 4am to catch my 8:15 flight... it was delayed until noon. So about 12 hours after I leave Columbia, I land in Hartford. According to Foxwoods, the casino is close to the airport, but it turned out to be another hour cab ride to finally to get to the casino. Spent another hour figuring out where to register and an hour and a half waiting in the queue. Finally I had my seat... table 9, seat 5. Hit a little club with Joey B and Dottie, and made it back to the hotel in time to get a good 6 hours in before the tournament.

So then the tournament starts.. we're very deep stacked. The table draw turned out to be less than ideal. Only one player at the table that I don't recognize. I last 12 hands.

Hand #1 - Fold
Hand #2 - in the cutoff with AsKh... player to my right (the only unknown) raises to 150. I reraise to 450. Shaniac in the SB calls. Raiser calls. Flop comes 8s2s2c. Check, check. I check. Turn comes Js. Shaniac bets 750. Raiser calls. I call. Turn comes 3s. Shaniac bets 3100. Raiser folds. I try to convince myself to fold... really only three hands that I can put Shaniac on here, and all of them beat me. But maybe he's on a bluff with 9T or something even worse. I call. Eights full.
Hand #3 - I raise to 125 with A3s. McCabe calls behind me and the BB calls. Flop JT3. Check, I check, McCabe bets.. fold fold.
Hand #4, #5, #6, #7 - Fold
Hand #8 - McCabe limps utg... Shaniac limps... LA player limps... Huey limps... unknown in SB limps. I have AJo in the BB. I make it 400 more and take the pot.
Hand #9 - Fold.
Hand #10 - LA player makes it 150 to go... unknown on my right calls. I have 22s on the button. Call. Shaniac makes it 750 more to go. LA calls. Unknown calls. I call. Flop 6c3c2d. Shaniac makes it 2400. LA makes it 6400. I put shaniac on an overpair. LA, I put either on an overpair, overcards with a flush draw, or a bigger set. Never occured to me that he might have 45. Again, I try to convince myself to fold bottom set... but I call instead. He has 45. The turn comes a Qc, so now I have a flush draw with my set. Waiting for 9 clubs for the flush or 10 boat cards. They don't come. I think I'm the first player out. GG.

So yeah... I think most people in those spots probably would have played pretty similar. And then they'd go home and talk about the bad beats and how the deck conspired against them. I know better than that though. If you're going to be great at poker, you've got to be able to fold pocket queens preflop and you've got to be able to fold a set on the flop. It's that simple. You can't blame losses on cards, because you really shouldn't be paying that much attention to the cards you've got in the first place. Starting with monsters, or flopping monsters, usually just gets in the way of a well-played tournament. The events that I seem to do the best at are the ones where I never pick up aces or kings. But whatever... I'm not b

There's an interesting psychological aspect to tournaments, and it's this: you only feel good about a tournament when you win it... and the closer you get to first place, the worse you feel when you get knocked out. It actually doesn't feel that bad getting knocked out super early in a big event. It's over and you can kinda relax. But anytime you're one of the first ones out in a major, it means you were playing longball poker, which really isn't the correct strategy in these things. Next time I play a big event, maybe I'll finally muster up the courage to try and take it down without ever looking at my hand. At least I'd last longer than I did in this one...

The Game

I recently read a book called "The Game", which is a really interesting book by this guy named Neil Strauss, aka Style, who is an ex-Rolling Stone author (How to Make Love Like a Porn Star among others) and average frustrated chump (AFC) who infiltrated the secret society of pickup artists (PUA), learned their secret ways, and became a pickup guru (PUG). It's a really interesting book. Here's a few interviews with Style himself on the View and also some brit show. Awesome.

WSEX

I know I've posted about WSEX before... but I'm posting about it again. Since the ban, I've been playing online like it's going out of style. I figure the online action is drying up and we've got about nine months before the easy money turns into hard money.

Anytime someone asks where I play online, I always drop the WSEX site. That site is the nuts. Yeah, I know their software sucks. Their customer support isn't that great. But come on... it is a rakefree site that is big enough to actually have a good chunk of action. It's got a steady collection of 5-10 games, 10-20, and occasionally a 20/40, 30/60 or even 100/200. For the true grinder, you can't beat it. And it's just getting bigger because they aren't breaking their players.

The other day I was playing some 5/10 limit headsup with my buddy Tony on Absolute. We both bought in for a thousand and started hammering away at each other. I got pretty lucky and was up about $200... he was down about $350. We had paid $150 to rake for like an hour of headsup play. At 5-10 limit!!! It's ridiculous.

The only problem I have with WSEX is that they still collect rake and then return the rake to you every monday instead of just eliminating the rake altogether. This is SUCH a bad move on their part for reasons I'm not even going to go into. But the cardroom would be doing a lot better if they just stopped collecting rake to begin with.

Play at WSEX. Rakefree is good for your bankroll and good for poker. They don't pay me to say this shit... I wish they did. Unfortunately, I don't think they care about the cardroom or poker at all.

The next time you're feeling wornout after a losing session of 3/6 on stars or some other site, remind yourself that it would have been a winning session on WSEX. If you are playing anything less than 30/60 online, then you are doing yourself a disservice if you aren't playing on WSEX.

The 3 Things That Change a Person

My buddy Darin is always telling me that there are three things that change a person: success, failure, and time. And he goes on to say that you don't really know someone until you've seen them through all three of those things. I think it's a good theory.



I was checking out the Poker News and got to see some more about the Jamie Gold case. Seems that his defense is claiming that the 50% deal that he had with Leyser was a "promise to give a gift". Here's the first four paragraphs of the story from PokerPages.
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2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP) champion Jamie Gold filed a motion last week to dissolve the preliminary injunction preventing Gold from collecting half of his $12 Million Main Event winnings. The injunction was the result of a lawsuit Bruce Crispin Leyser filed shortly after the 2006 WSOP, claiming Gold had verbally agreed to share half of his winnings to compensate Leyser for securing two celebrities to represent Bodog at the WSOP.

Gold`s motion, which was filed at the U.S. District Court of Nevada on Wednesday, November 1, 2006, admits that Gold did promise to compensate Leyser, but as a gift, not as compensation for services which Leyser says he provided to Gold.

The distinction between a gift and compensation is legally important, as compensation for services provided is an enforceable contract, whereas a gift cannot be legally enforced as it is only up to giver whether it is given.

In the motion, Gold completely denied that he promised Leyser a share of his winnings for arranging for two celebrities to represent Bodog. "Gold did not discuss sharing the proceeds from Gold`s participation in the WSOP - let alone agree to do so in exchange for Plaintiff (Leyser) securing celebrities."

Instead, Gold claims that he received his seat to the Main Event from Bodog.com because of his prior tournament experience and an agreement to wear Bodog`s logo during the tournament. As it had nothing to do with securing celebrities for Bodog, Gold says that Leyser`s claim of a deal to secure celebrities for Bodog in exchange for a share of the WSOP winnings is totally inaccurate.
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All I can think is... really? We're supposed to believe that Bodog hooked Jamie Gold up with a ten thousand dollar seat because they heard he was a player and wanted him to wear their logo. Really?!? I'm sorry man, but that's like the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Ever.

And we're supposed to believe that Jamie Gold is some big player in LA, former agent of huge stars like Felicity... and yet when he has some sort of job to secure celebrities to wear the Bodog logo he has to rely on some Brittish guy he doesn't know that well to hook him up. For free. So the conversation went like this...

"Dude! Thanks for hooking me up with Matthew Lillard and that other celebrity. It was really cool of you doing my job for me so that I could get to play in this tournament. So cool, in fact, that I'm going to do something nice for you if I win. I'm going to give you a gift of exactly half of my winnings. After taxes, though. And there will probably be some paperwork you're going to have fill out if I cash. And then I'm going to give the other half to my dad."

In the story, Jamie said that this guy Leyser started harassing him when he got to the final table... and then IMMEDIATELY filed a lawsuit (with Mark Seif acting as lawyer, it turns out) when Jamie wouldn't give the guy his gift. So I guess the lawsuit got Jamie all pissy and he was like... fine... if you're going to act THAT way, I guess I don't really think you're that cool anymore and I'm not going to fulfill my promise to give a gift. And there's nothing you can do about it because there's nothing on the record that really indicates we ever had a legal contract.

Honestly, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I can't believe this guy wins $12 million and then stiffs his backer. What a joker. And come on... I understand it has to suck handing some near-stranger $6 million. But would the pill really be easier to swallow if it was less? Nope... I think Jamie would have welched no matter how much he won, but since he won the motherload now it's actually a big enough sum to warrant legal action.

It sucks dishing out a big percentage of a win. Whether it's to players you swapped percentages with, backers, taxes, whatever. It sucks. But there is something that I keep reminding myself everytime I'm put in the situation. It's a little adage I heard one time. The quickest way to get rich is to make other people rich.

The dumbest thing is that now Jamie's reputation really is a little messed up. People aren't going to want to do anything with him. It wouldn't be so bad if he could actually play cards... but this guy is a one-hit wonder. I saw the PPV and anyone else who saw it or spent a few minutes watching the broadcast where you could actually see his cards will school him at the table. The guy is a tellbox. He can't help himself. And you can get away with that in one big tournament. But not two.

I'd really kinda like to see the next lawsuit, Gold vs. Gold, where Jamie gets sued by his dad.