The Series So Far

It's kind of a circus at the Rio. There are so many people playing every event and the registration lines are hours. People are waiting hours and then giving their chips away.

I got into Vegas at 9:30am on Wednesday morning. I couldn't check into my hotel room until later, so I headed over to the Rio and decided to play a little nooner tournament. I got fourth. All day I was tangling with one of the house dealers and I spotted a little tell. It finally got four-handed and there was this spot where I could have used it, but didn't pull the trigger. We were the middle stacks and he raised all-in for a little more than I had. The blinds were huge at this point... like 20% of our stacks. I look down and see K9o. Normally, it would be a fold... but there was something that told me he was on a complete steal. I folded anyway, figuring that at best I was 2:1 and I'd be better off just shoving against his blind. I asked him to show a bluff, and he turned over 54o. I'd really regret not calling that bet when two hands later I shoved with KJo and he called with AQ. No help. I picked up a few hundred dollars for my trouble.

The first WSOP tournament I played was the $5k Mixed Limit and No Limit event. It was a new structure where we'd play half an hour at no-limit, then half an hour at limit. My first table had John Friedberg, Neverwin, and Doug Lee... with Todd Brunson getting moved to the table pretty early. I had to work just to stay even and never really got a good start. Then I got moved, which can be the kiss of death in a tournament. My new table was no better... Jeff Madsen, Josh Arieh, Freddy Deeb, and Sam Grizzle. But there were worse spots. A few tables over, Johnny Chan, Phil Ivey, and Daniel negreanu were right next to each other.

I continued to struggle to stay about even, then the following hand came up in the limit round that I should have been able to get away from. I had KQs from early position and brought it in for a raise. Mistake #1. Should have just folded to begin with. Freddy Deeb in the SB re-raised. I called. The flop came out K95. He fires out. I call. Turn comes a J. He fires out again. Now there aren't too many hands I can put him on that I can beat, except a pure bluff with something like AQ or 67s. But I decide to look him up. Mistake #2. The river came another J. He fired in again. I called again. He turns up AK and I'm pretty short-stacked.

Then the NL round came around and I made an open push with ATo. Freddy Deeb called in the BB with 88s. The flop came out with a ten and an eight. Ouch. Turn was an eight, river was another ten... so I ended up making tens full versus quads. But that is kind of a sidenote, since the money went all-in preflop. So that was it... my end of the first tournament at the WSOP.

The next day was the $1500 NL event. It started an hour late because of all the people trying to get in. Early on I got a pretty nice chip lead at my table with 6000 by sucking out. I raised with 87s and the SB called with 55. The flop came 875 and we got it all-in. The turn came a 7 and I was saved from an early exit.

The same player worked up his small stack back to about the 3000 we started with and then got his revenge. With the blinds 50-100, I raised to 300 with KK from second position. A player calls and the kid from before makes it 1100. I reraise all-in. The guy in the middle folds and the kid thinks for a second before declaring that he's caught and calls his last 1900 off with Q7s. The flop was Q72. So then I'm back down to where I started. I hung around for awhile longer, then with the blinds 100-200 I raised for 600 with A8s, got called with QJo, and got it all-in on the flop with two hearts and a Jack flopped.

Today I play another mixed tournament... this time Omaha/8 and Stud/8. I have to buckle down and not make any mistakes. I think it's a real leak to be a smoker. I start to really crave nicotine about an hour into the two hour sessions between breaks. I've got to focus today... take my time and not give any bets away. Every bet counts in a tournament.

Prop Bet #7

I just lost another god damn prop bet to Darin... this time that Gary "Bones" Berland did NOT win three bracelets in one year. God damn wikipedia.

To World Series Glory

Today my buddy Darin played a trick on me that was pretty funny. He called the house line pretending to be from Harrah's, asking if I was planning on playing any of the events this year at the World Series. I got all excited for a second, figuring maybe they were going to comp me a room or something. But then when I said yes, he told me I was barred from playing. My heart sunk and I asked why. He said it was because of my past issues with Pokerstars. I totally bought into that, since I figured they are a sponsor and might have some say into who can and can't play. Then he cracked up laughing and the gig was up. Weird sidenote... I heard Paul Phillips one time actually did get barred for some things he said about the tournament. Seems that is so against what the WSOP is all about. Looks like I won't be complaining about the 9% rake.

So yes... I'm playing the series. I'm planning on playing 34 events. The first event will be the $5k Mixed Holdem event on Friday. Hopefully there won't be a lot of down-time because I'll be playing day and night... but I'm going out there on my own this year and have a lot less distractions. If I get knocked out early on a certain day, I'll have a lot of time on my hands. So I'll try to blog about how the tournaments are going.

I have a goal for this series. Four bracelets. Two bracelets has been done to death. Three in one year has been done before. Five times, actually... by Ted Forrest, Phil Ivey, and Phil Hellmuth... and old-timers Puggy Pearson and Gary Berland. But four... now that's never been done before and would go down in poker history as the greatest achievement ever in poker. Especially with the way the fields are these days, four would make a legend. So here's to World Series glory.

Booneville, MO... or... the worst drop in poker.

I went to go play some live poker today for the first time in awhile. There's a riverboat casino about a half hour away from Columbia. The place is in the middle of nowhere, but it's packed on the weekends and has a little cardroom with six tables and all of them had action. The highest they spread is a 2-5 NL game, so I sat down with $500. Here's an interesting thing... in Missouri, they have a stop-loss and you're not supposed to be able to lose more than $500. There are ways around it, though. My buddy Tepen says as long as you have chips, they'll play... so you can stock up on chips and sit down with whatever you want, really.

Anyway, back to the game... I sit down and see that here in mid-Missouri they rake 10% maxxing out at a whopping $5. Plus $1 for the bad beat jackpot. So each time you win any decent sized pot, after you're done toking the dealer you're looking at $7 or $8 gone forever. This makes any game pretty hard to beat... but I honestly don't think that the lower limit games there (i.e. the 3-6 limit holdems) are beatable at that structure.

The 2-5 NL game is still plenty beatable, though... get this hand... utg player makes it 15 to go. Donkeyfish player calls with 75o... next guy calls with QTs. Flop comes out TT6. UTG checks... donkeyfish checks... trip tens bets 15. UTG calls. Donkeyfish calls with his three-straight. The turn comes an 8. Check-check... QT bets out again for 30, losing the utg player, but donkeyfish is still in there with his straight draw. River comes a 4 and donkeyfish actually check-raises the guy at this point. I swear I'm not making this up. How is he even in the hand to begin with, but after the flop... I mean... come on! The 2-5 NL game was that soft, and if it's always like that it's beatable even with the worst drop in poker.

I took down $500 in about two hours. About $200 came from donkeyfish when I had AKo, raised preflop on the button, and hit the king on the flop. He had KQ, and decided to pay me off on every street. Lovely. I need to start getting back into playing, because this whole sitting around not doing anything routine I've been in since December isn't exactly paying the bills.

So... gearing up for the WSOP. I booked a room in Vegas and my flight. I'm getting ready to go out and hopefully win another bracelet. My goal is to have three of these things by the time I'm 30. Can't get shown up by guys like Fischman and Madsen... the first one is supposedly the hardest, right?

That was a crazy game of poker

Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Ok all... I'll level with you. You might have noticed I haven't posted much in the last couple months. Truth is I've kinda lost my taste for blogging. It's thankless and it doesn't pay anything. But then I heard about Adsense and I'm trying it out. How cool would it be if I can give up poker and just cover my nut by writing a post every day or two instead of hustling every day? I signed up with Google Adsense, and I'm testing it out this week... so expect a lot more posts for a few days. Please help support my blogging by clicking on an ad or two. It really does make a difference.

BTW - Another movie recco... Idiocracy. It's by Mike Judge, who does King of the Hill. It's a good movie. Check it out.

La Vie en Rose

I went to Club Vogue lastnight to chill with my friend Jay. I was only planning on stopping by for a few minutes. The place was hopping like I'd never seen it. There were so many fur coats and guys all around that looked like stone-cold killers. And a lot of them were from "The Hill", which is the Italian area in St. Louis. It made NO sense for all sorts of reasons. Like, why would anyone wear a fur coat in a hot club? And why would a bunch of gangsters be in Columbia for Mardi Gras when everyone in STL knows that Soulard is the place to be? Well... outside of New Orleans, of course. Everyone should do a Louisiana Mardi Gras at least once in their lives. It was making some of the girls in the club feel very nervous, but they relaxed a little when I told them our crew would protect them (lol).

Then... some huge drug bust happened outside in the parking lot. Eight cop cars... guns drawn... mexican standoff kinda stuff. Supposedly it was some sort of drug deal gone wrong... but I'd be willing to bet that there was something else going on. It felt like smoke and mirrors.

Once the word started spreading, there was this mad rush to the front door, but they wouldn't let anyone leave the club for like a half hour while it was all going on. And then they all stuck around until about a half hour after the place closed... THREE HOURS LATER. The way I was parked, I was completely blocked in by four cop cars.

The whole scene reminded me of one of my recent discoveries, the highly underrated State Property 2 where some guy who looks a lot like LL Cool J is telling his closest crew how he wants to be a quarter trillionaire right before they all go to the "party". Very much like a death-speech. I can't figure out how it only got an IMDB rating of like 3.8/10. Damon Dash... if you read this, please cast me in State Property 3! :) It's a good movie. Check it out.

So finally, we got out of vogue and me and a couple buddies (Caleb and Benadict) came back to my place for some poker... Benadict had blown all his money at the strip club, so we had to get creative. I said I was putting up this green craps blanket I won back in Tunica in a trivia night because I knew that Tom Hanks was the voice of Woody from Toy Story. Caleb put up his shirt. Benadict asked if he could put up his half-empty pack of camel lights. Seeing as I'd stopped smoking a month ago, I was like "Hell yeah! I would love those."

So we started playing, but then a few minutes into it Benadict started craving a cigarette. He asked if he could bum one from the prizepool, and we were like "No, buddy... they don't belong to you anymore." So then he asked if he could trade his favorite Adidas hat for the half-empty pack back. Of course, I learned long ago never to stand between a bitch and their nicotine fix... so we gave in. Looking back, we should have made him squirm all night with his addiction because he came back in refreshed and took both of us out. So I lost my blanket and Caleb literally lost his shirt.

I think it's so much more fun to play poker for things other than money. It reminded me of one of my favorite things about Ali... her home games were all played with what she termed "booty" and she had chests full of the stuff that she had won from stupid tourists. Think Benny and Joon. I won't give it away, but it has one of the best poker scenes of any movie. It's a good movie. Check it out.

I can't remember having such a good time in awhile.

Sgt. Poff's Hometown Heroes

I've been reading up on my Kurt Vonnegut lately... he wrote his last book a few years ago called "A Man Without a Country". It's very good, but not like his usual novels. He quoted a guy named Eugene Debs in the book. I'd heard the quote before, but it rang true again. Yup... Indy really turns out some winners. Vonnegut... Debs... Derek Brown. It's a good book. Check it out.

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Love is not a sunday drive... it's a motorcycle ride.

Merry Christmas!

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