LOLOLOLOLOL

this is what happens when you mix weed brownies and 200/400 NL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aolVYSMRw_0

i can't decide if i like "we'regoingtoownhissoulfortherestofhislife" or the dramatic pause as they wait for the river to come better.

the funny part is that i went to high school with the kid not-at-the-computer, and am good friends with his brother. yoni told me that ariel was a baller these days--i didn't know he was "let's get wicked high and play 200/400 NLHE HU and win 100k while giggling uncontrollably" baller, however.


as for me, well, a month in vegas yielded a few thousand dollars, all of which was spent--uh, distancing myself from reality?--while in sin city. this included a couple o8 tourneys (venetian deepstack and the 2k event), both of which included a chiplead early and no money to show for it after a horrendous run. but the cash games went well, and i had "fun," so i suppose i can't really complain.

i've returned to 3 straight 100BB days at shlo8, so i won't be having to get a job as planned, at least not right now. i had a rough session today, but it closed with me dismantling 3 different guys heads up, so i only ended up stuck 100 all told. phew.

this weekend's the pitchfork festival in chicago, which i'm really looking forward to. it's a great lineup, although the timing could be better since i'm still trying to pull myself back to the 30/60 territory i want to be at these days. ah, c'est la vie, i suppose. i only have a week longer here before i have to run off to canada, NYC, and then back home to blacksburg for a huge family reunion. i may need more luck with that than at the tables....

checky turns to dark side, NL cash games

well, after getting felted for the first time ever in an o8 cash game (omg bad runs--i'm 1/2 pot for 7 on nut low draw and nut flush draw situations), i've gone over to the dark side. yes, i am playing NLHE. and god, it's funny. i've doubled up in each session so far within the first 2 hours, and there are some pretty funny hands involved:

venetian (entitled: how to get a great image):

my plan for this 1/2 session was to get extremely drunk and shove as much as possible postflop. we're currently 6 handed.

hero is sb with A10.

2 limpers, hero completes, bb checks.

flop A23 rainbow. hero checks, bb checks, utg+1 checks, dustin/navybuttons (who is playing the same drunk/craziness as me) bets 20, hero shoves for 180. utg+1 calls all in, dustin calls all in. dustin has 22 and rivers a boat, utg+1 has 45. LOL.


also at venetian (entitled: after you get a game going crazy, how you make the mobneys):

hero is mp3 with KJ. 4 limpers, CO maniac makes it 20 straight. we see a flop 5 way.

flop KQ3 rainbow. check to CO who shoves for 260 or so. all fold, hero instacalls, knowing he's good. KJ is indeed good, obviously, LOL. CO says he had a queen. hero does not believe him.


but here's a more legitimately interesting hand of 2/5 the rio, and not part of a drunkfest:

hero is mp3 with J9h. 1 fold, hero bumps to 20, a LAG/tricky player (who occasionally gets overly fancy, but is very good in general) repops to 40 from the SB, hero calls.

(villain's range here is fairly large, but usually his 3bets are larger if they're not legit hands and he doesn't want to see a flop out of position. i'd say his range here is 99+ and AJ+, maybe KQs).

flop K99 rainbow.

sb checks, hero bets 60, sb checkraises to 150, hero calls.

(now i'm pretty sure he has AA or AK)

turn bricks off, we both check, me behind so i can induce a bluff on the river.

river A. that's either a really good card or a really bad card, since i'm 99% sure he has either AK or AA. i really am sure that it's not KK, since i got the feeling he really didn't like that i called his checkraise.

sb bets 200, hero calls. my hand obviously can't really stand a reraise, and if he has AK he can't stand a raise, so i figure my best course of action is to just call behind. if the guy was a worse player, i'd repop him on the river, but i know AK ain't calling and AA is reraising me. he has AK, woot.


so yeah, i'm actually kinda liking the NL thing for now, but i still think the game is boring. we'll see how long this little experiment lasts, but it's been really easy thus far to look like a retard early in sessions and get insane action later on when it really matters. in general, i've been very proud of my play, not only in NL but in all games. my reads have by and large been insanely sharp, but i've made a couple small-ish mistakes not really acting on them with complete abandon.

but it's saturday today, and i'm sipping coffee while watching the big lebowski before i take my daily swim and head over to the rio to make some money. this 10k goal thing may be within reach yet. we'll see.

days 2 and 3

well, days 2 and 3 of the wsop have been relatively uneventful. 2 days, 2 lengthy O8 sessions, 2 horrific starts to the tune of -30 bets or so, and 2 good comebacks to get back in the black. i'm playing extremely well, despite the modest results: i've folded top two pair on a no-low, no-flush, no-straight board after making a very good read; i've checkraised when i put the guy to my left on a non-nut flush draw to my nut flush draw when it gets there consistently; i've made good reads on people, knowing when i'm getting freerolled; etc. but i still can't turn it around. three times already, i've flopped a nut low-nut flush draw type situation in 7-8 way pots, gotten 5 bets in on the flop, and had to fold the river. but that part has to even out. right? right? bueller?

anyway, i'd forgotten what it's like to play at a table where literally every hand gets shown down. it's strange not even having to think about bluffing, isolation, etc. after playing shorthanded for so long. this live stuff is, well, pleasant by comparison :).

also, best of luck to chris (wrto) and steve(7stud) today as they begin today in the money of the LHE event. chris had a top 3 stack for a bit, but both are on the leaderboard to begin the day. after a coffee, i'm headed over to the rio to cheer them on.

vegas, baby!

well, after 24 long hours of driving, a broken thing-that-holds-the-windshield-washer-fluid, a whole lot of construction, and a few ugly housemates, my WSOP month of vegas has officially started.

but i haven't played any real poker yet. day one consisted of a swim (yes, i went swimming. yes, it was the first time in over 3 years. no, i didn't drown.) in our gorgeous pool, a stocking-up of beer and "food" at the grocery store, followed by dinner at the wonderful venetian noodle bar with some fcpers and a private table at the venetian poker room for some mix game fun and some bowling afterwards. while i was waiting for everyone else to get in at the house, i went to mandalay bay and railed JC and Jared at the WPT final table. i couldn't really see very well, nor could i stay too long, but it was good to say hi to JC during the break.

the mix for the 4/8 mixed game was O8, badugi, 2-7 triple draw, razz, and LHE. nothing that exciting really happened (outside of frequent 5-bet straddling), but i did see mark (nosup4u) make what was quite possibly the sickest value raise i've ever seen in LHE on the end. we were playing extremely sill(-ily?) and there were 3 or 4 straddles on. thom (hfactor) looked at only one of his cards and raised. we eventually saw the flop 6 handed or so. it came J106 with two spades. thom led, mark raised, i cold called with K10d on the button, as did dustin (navybuttons) from the sb. thom reraised, and mark called as did dustin and i. the turn came and offsuit Q. thom then looked at his other card and led into mark again. mark raised, i thought for a while, eventually putting mark on some sort of two pair hand, and then called, taking a few sips of my corona and admiring my middle-pair, oesd monster. dustin folded and thom called. the river bricked off, thom checked, mark bet, i folded, thom raised, and showed mark a king. mark thought for a while, saying "you don't really have AK, do you?" and eventually managed to pull a sicko value raise out of his back pocket. thom capped, mark called, and thom showed K3 for king high while mark raked in a slightly-above-average-sized 200 dollar pot or so with his QJ.

but fuck it, dude, let's go bowling. mark and his friend james left so that they could rest before the event today, and scott (nutzbuster), dustin, josh (gilbertology), ray (troyomac), thom, and myself hit the lanes over at the gold coast. i admit to having campaigned for this venture quite hard over the course of the evening since i had brought my bowling ball cross-country, but in the end i think everyone had a good time. in the first game, dustin, thom, and scott took it to ray, josh, and me (i blame josh's 34, lol), and the side bet will lead to us having some embarassing signatures on fcp for a while. but in the second game, we decided to up the ante and switch the teams around, playing for $3 a pin, and dustin, josh and i gave ray, scott, and thom 7 pins. we won by 38 pins, SHIP THE C-NOTE!

today i'm going to start the grind over at the wynn, and i might wander over to the rio to wish some fcpers luck in the NLHE event. if anyone finds any good o8 cash games other than the wynn and mirage, let me know.

ftops doesn't suck, then i go broke (almost)

well, i managed to work my way to a 10th place in the ftops horse event (1010

then i went on a wicked tear at the cash games, so all was well in jamie-land.

skip to this week.

o. m. f. g. worst five days of poker in terms of bets in history. 3/4 of the bankroll flushed in five days with very, very few discernible mistakes. wrap wheel straight flush draws, capped 5 ways, no pots (three times). KQ

it's all just pretty nasty. i think the plan for now is to become an absolute poker bonus whore for a bit until i can get my bankroll back in gear. it makes me feel dirty doing that stuff, but sometimes the situation gets dire enough to be a bonus whore for a while. meh.

happier stories forthcoming, i promise! :)

i haven't written in a while. i'd apologize, but no one has complained, so fuck you all.

FTOPS is starting tomorrow, and i'm drinking heavily to celebrate. heavily. i haven't really tied one on in a while, and my tolerance is just pitiful. i admit it--three beers and i can barely see straight, despite the eloquence my readership has come to expect: quite the far cry from my senior year of near-perfect pub attendance, i must say. but drinking is awesome, quite. i nearly forgot that over the course of the last couple months.

anyway, i'll be playing all the events, and hope that FTOPS goes much better than WCOOP. read: i hope that i can win the one all in as an 80% favorite that i need to so that i can actually make some money. i've played a few tourneys to warm up, and they've gone well. 3/5 cashes, one 5th place. PLO8 is the first event, and probably my best tournament game, so i'm really looking forward to hitting the ground running. i've been playing a lot of PLO8 these days, and absolutely crushing it. after learning the intricacies of O8 through limit play and then going back to PLO8, it really seems like people are just playing with their cards face up. so yeah, hopefully i'll be getting off to a good start.

in other poker news, the bankroll has permitted moving back up to the best LO8 money on the net, which after my short return i have beaten to the tune of 75BB/100. that's obviously sustainable. and no, i'm not telling you where it is. you'll ruin it for me, and it's my bread and butter game.

i've also decided to make it (somewhat--no one reads this shit anyway, lol) public that i've taken on some students, all of whom are from FCP and really showing some progress since they've started working with me. this is a good thing, i think, since the one thing i really miss about grad school is teaching. i'm honestly quite proud of my students--they're working hard, asking the right sorts of questions, and learning a lot about general poker theory, the mental preparation part of the game, and the specifics of some new games. and most importantly, the group gets along great--really great--which is an absolutely necessary part of any good learning environment, IMHO. i'm not going to say who they are at this stage of the game, but they're fairly well-known FCP faces and really diligent as students, which is why i have nothing but good things to say about them.

outside of poker, i occasionally watch cnn and heard that we had this "election" thing recently. and i'm proud of you, america. honestly. i'll say significantly more about that when i'm less drunk, but for now i'll leave it at this (which, coincidentally, is really all my now-defunct thesis was ever trying to say--you guys may get excerpts later):

liberal, progressive: these are not bad words. don't ever let fox news tell you that they are. for whatever reason (by "whatever reason," i mean "money," of course), the right has claimed the exclusive privilege of defining the political rhetoric in america of late, and their equation of "extremism" with a genuine concern for civil liberties and the underprivileged in our society is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the media. on tuesday america showed it was smarter than that, and for the first time in a while, i can say that i'm (relatively) proud to be an american.

wcoop can go straight to hell

well, i'm done with wcoop. officially. i played four tournaments, went all in a total of six times, all as a 70%+ favorite, and won 2/6 of those hands. today's awesome bubble in PLO was due to a sweet KKQQ goes down to QQ98 on a 9-10-6 flop when donktastic went runner runner spades on me (i had two backdoor fds too). it's all so sick. so. sick. 4 events, 6 all ins total, all as a favorite, 2 bubbles, 0 cashes.

the thing about tournaments, i realize, is that you can't win every 80% shot out there. it doesn't work that way. but when you're all in ONCE the whole tournament as an 80% favorite, you should be able to win that one. you should. sometimes, at least.

at least the LO8 run is still going well. i'm still beating the 5/10 and 10/20 games on party to the tune of 5-10BB/100 depending on the day. for the sake of my sanity and my bankroll, it's nothing but LO8 and the sng thing for a long, long time.

other than the DN protege charter member final tonight, i am not playing any more tournaments AT ALL until i'm playing 20/40 again. if i break that promise, someone please shoot me.