Life in an underworld

Secret update

2010-02-01T18:36:00.001-08:00

I figure no one is really reading this anymore, so this is just for me really (But obvious shameless plug for anyone that is reading). I shall forever cherish the day I re-learned that there *might* be a god:

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3726/100ccccc.png

Some really sick swings recently, and an insane amount of deep runs and final table appearances, but this was definitely a great way to end a weekend. Hopefully it shall continue, and if it doesn't...well, I'm still ready to grind for it.

WSOP rules

2009-05-08T21:10:00.001-07:00

Things have been ok recently. The city is finally getting nicer for spring, just in time for me to ship off to the desert for the summer. Unfortunately (or, fortunately...) I'm trying to put a ton of hours in this month, both coaching and playing, so I may not see the sunlight enough, but vegas should bring plenty of both, I think.

The houses of the last couple of years have trickled apart, so hopefully I'll get to see all those guys while I'm out there. This year, the new crew will have a house in the same area. Greg (Gramps), Scotty, and Samer (braminc) are staying with me in the house for the entirety of the 6 weeks. John (aka bjorn, aka kleath) will be with us for a month, and Chipchucker keeps mentioning coming out for a week or so. Should be a pretty sweet time.

In non job related news, I joined a DC kickball team with a bunch of people that I grew up with/went to high school with. Our first game got rained out, but we got to meet a bunch of the other teammates at a bar in Adams Morgan, and I'll get a few games in before Western work season. Really looking forward to it, as I'm finding that working 'full time' at home puts a strain on getting out of the house enough.

That's about all in the way of life-lights for now. See you on the flip side.

-Alex

Moroccan food rules....probably

2009-03-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

Sophie's (brother's girlfriend) birthday dinner last night was pretty interesting. We went to "Marakesh", a Moroccan place in Chinatown (Yeah, I thought that was pretty sweet too...Moroccan in Chinatown....) I wandered around for a while trying to find the place, but eventually caught up with some of the older bro's old gang and we found the crew.

A belly dancing show, 3.5 hours, and 7 courses later, only one of which required or came with eating utensils, we were all pretty stuffed. I have to say, the meats were some of the best that I've had out in D.C. The tea was a perfect, warm ending to a huge dine-out experience. I guess another warm hand towel at the end would've been nice, but a great time nonetheless. If you're in Chinatown in D.C and want a unique restaurant that may provide you with some new cultural experiences, I say go for it.

Nothing else terribly interesting. Going to be trying to crank out the work load as best as I can with trying to dodge life logistics and holidays until I ship off to the desert for a good part of the summer. Holla.

A

Sigh

2009-03-06T01:20:00.000-08:00

Casey (Bones) and I did a review of my play at a 1-table shorthanded high buy in sng on Deucescracked. I won't go into the same length of a rant I went on on the forums there (here), but my philosophy on videos, why I make them or what I do in them really doesn't have to do with my actual decisions so much as the analysis behind why it's good or bad.

In fact, sometimes I make the mistakes on purpose because I believe it to be a more effective way of providing the viewers with the quality content, both on an introductory and a more advanced level. And in most cases, elaborating on these decisions (and the unintentional or more debatable plays, of course) in the threads after the videos are posted so members have a chance to speak to the coaches about it on a more interactive scale (sometimes, as in this thread actually, this is where some talk of the more advanced concepts come out moreso that just don't come up in any type of game-play video or in-game type of analysis setting or context).

Anyways, apparently a lot of the viewers do not share any aspect of this sentiment, because the small-sample (aka meaningless?) star rating seems to be average at best, where the analysis we put into the video + thread seems to be pretty thorough and reasonable especially given the context of the video and its relative boringness (to some of the awesome non sng content, or non live play content of SNGs, what have you) of content I've gotten good feedback on or think another coach did well in the past etc.

I guess the reason why I have such a hard time with it is their actual presentation of evidence (hell, the one guy said it was the worst video he'd seen)- they use the mistakes I make in a video to exemplify why it's a bad video, when, combining the video with the thread, I think it makes for the most effective learning tool, assuming their goal is to watch it and think about the spots, similar spots, how things connect and the nuances to the plays (and mistakes) made or when it might become the right play. It's just really tough to combat that when it takes me fighting against a 'you're terrible' with nothing constructive added, or when the 'something constructive' is what you fundamentally believe is constructively the argument for the opposite. Or something like that. And even moreso upsetting because I don't feel that this person intended to 'troll' or be an idiot with his comments (who knows though, so many of them, right?), but rather to try and say that I did something bad and analyzed it badly, the bad analysis part due to bad mouse-clicking on mine/Bones' end of this instance being something I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. Since when has anything in this world been 'black and white', especially as it relates to poker, and even *more* specifically, short stack poker where your edges (and mistakes) come in decimal increments under 1% a lot of the time? The irony of it all being that, with the aforementioned revelations on my philosophies here, plenty of my videos where people find and discuss mistakes made for reasons unbeknown st to them, people have reviewed as 'very good' or 'really valuable' in various ways.

Will someone just tell me I'm a bad speaker or writer already? In my entire life, I've felt that there are 3(ish) teachers that I've respected in terms of their profession and how they treat it on every level basically. But I can't count the number of times I've received a "B" on a paper that says "Great job!" with no other comments or criticisms, leaving me only to ask one question: "Where's the A, bitch?" Or when a criticism makes no sense, some unwillingness to change the grade because they already gave it and it seems subjective to them and you're the student and they're the teacher.

I'm honestly not real sure what the motive is and I guess I'm trying to figure it out now because I'm in this 'teacher role', and have been in videos for many months now, and among a lot of positive, constructive feedback, I s'pose one can't help but realize that they can't be perfect at what they do, and perhaps someone telling me something I should do differently that made sense would go a long way (and for me, admittedly 'stop caring' should be the answer it seems, especially in my profession). Perhaps I can't figure out their angle because I was never allowed to tell a teacher in school that they sucked, and why I thought so.

I guess this rant is done. As always, thanks for reading.

-A

[Re] Learning PLO

2009-02-22T07:17:00.000-08:00

With an effort to stay true to my love for cash games, I figured I'd stick in a brief update in an additional effort to not suck at updating my blog quite as much. So yeah, I've decided to get seriously back into Pot Limit Omaha and make that one of my primary game-focuses for this year in addition to a few other games.
I will be continuing tournament work for www.deucescracked.com, as well as my coaching in SNGs and MTTs, and only plan to become more active with the team over there as time goes on and as my multi-game understanding and volume increases.

Hopefully if I don't forget there'll be some more interesting blog posts in the future. For now, here is a report of the superbowl party that I attended in Vegas a few weeks ago. Definitely worth checking out:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/36/stt-strategy/trip-report-second-annual-sttf-superbowl-sng-party-nsfw-405979/

(scroll past the poker part at the beginning if you only want to get to the rated "R" section)

I also paid for that trip in a single 5 hour Bellagio cash session playing only nl500, going to show down exactly 1 time in 5 hours. So that was cool. Think that's all I got for now, stay good everyone.

A

"It cannot be sustained; in a rational society"

2009-02-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

Main site: http://theunionmovie.com/TheUnionWeb.html

Actual documentary: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1657827965975839596&ei=VCt-SaWoAYrSjgKkiIHNDw&q=union+business&dur=3

When you think about the reason that people dying from use of this plant/paying for fighting against it comes from its status as illegal only and directly, it's sort of depressing. But I found this incredibly informative and of great academic interest from economic, political and medical standpoints. I did completely lose faith in our government and society because of it, though.

-A

job in trouble again

2008-11-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

The infamous UIGEA is back to bite us poker pro's in the ass.

http://theleachlist.blogspot.com/2008/11/fed.html

Help us out guys! Good luck everyone.

-Alex

Greetings from Glasgow

2008-09-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

So I arrived in Glasgow yesterday and was greeted by Dale (daleroxxu) at George square, in the center of the city. We spent some of the day walking around and checking out the main part of town, but I was (and am still) pretty out of it, and had to come back here to sleep it off a bit. I skipped a night of sleep getting here, and probably spent 13 hours sleeping yesterday, and still feel pretty tired after more bus-touring of the city today. Hopefully I can shake the jet lag by the time I get to Amsterdam on Sunday. For now, I'll just try and relax and enjoy Glasgow. There are some museums, distilleries, and a bit more touring to do around here, not to mention Edinburgh which is only a 45 minute train ride from here. We'll see what happens, but I'm enjoying myself thus far and hopefully will continue to do so for the duration of my time here. For now, we've just heard of a spearmint rhino that opened about 5 minutes from Dale's flat.....gogogo? That's about it for now, thanks for reading.

Alex

PEACE America

2008-09-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

Booked my ticket out of here for my 2nd trip since the drop-out heard round the world. We're headed to Europe ladies and gentleman, first stop: Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. Dale (Daleroxxu) lives in Glasgow so I plan on crashing at his place for a week or so, leaving on the 21st. Around the beginning of October, if all goes according to plan, at that point I'll head to Amsterdam for a while and see what's going on there.
Other than that, today was a cool day. I didn't put in nearly as much volume as I would have liked to, but I coached for 3 hours today, and played for an hour for a really nice 2k hour ($2500 day total). A high buy in MTT student of mine and I were playing the same satellite to the FTP 1k monday event. In one particular satellite tournament, 2 seats paid to the event, and we took down both seats, all while his student was sweating him live through the tournament. Pretty cool to see the ownage tree trickle down, and to have good days. Until next time.......thanks for reading.

Alex

A couple of seconds of ESPN time

2008-08-27T22:19:00.000-07:00

Well, ESPN never aired my world series final table (they said they may the night before it took place but wasn't hopeful from that point on really), but I did get a piece of time on the tube sweating Peter (Apathy).

http://www.pokertube.com/Movies.aspx?movie=7355&KeyID=1&title=WSOP_2008_Ep11_4_4

About 3:50 in, on the right side when they flash to Peter's section. It'll suffice until another run next year, IMO.

Weird week....

2008-08-26T19:50:00.001-07:00

We went up to Philly for the livestrong weekend. It was a really nice experience and a powerful time for everyone I think, with my brother having survived TC in a relatively lucky-manner thus far with minimal changing in his daily life.

My brother Matt and I drove up to meet our parents at the hotel there on Saturday. On the way up, he got a very unfortunate phone call about a sudden death of someone in a social circle close to him. As soon as I heard the term "best friend" and "sudden death", something that comes up for me more frequently than I've ever admitted over the past 17 years, came up again. The memory of my best friend, Josh.

When I was around 5 years old, Josh died suddenly of meningococcus bacteria, that eventually caused meningococcemia/meningitis. He was dead 48 hours after the bacteria entered his system.

Memories are hazy from back then, but I have a very vivid photographic memory, and I've never forgotten a lot of my childhood with him and with other close friends growing up at home. Especially now with all of this crazy traveling and random last minute stuff happening in my life, I spend a lot of time on the road reflecting, and his memory is coming up in a way that it never has before.

For so long I've just kind of remembered him as my close friend of the past, the one that I could never get back but that died in a tragic happening like anyone else might have in the past or will in the future, for any number of reasons....but I realized something. This week, for the first time ever, I realized that I never truly mourned his death. Being so young, I never fully processed it at the time. After that, over the years, the memory never came up in any other way than is mentioned above; I just successfully avoided it, basically.

Anyways, that all changed, and a lot of emotion has been happening recently as what seems to be a 17 year delay in mourning occurring over my best friend and my memories of him. Today I visited his grave for the first time ever and it was....emotional, to say the least. It felt good though, and it had to be done, and it certainly won't be the last time I visit him. Something that needed to be done before travels to Europe, IMO.

I'm doing ok with it now, but it'll be a slow week trying to get back on track. I have coaching, playing and social obligations that I'd like to fulfill, among continuing to crank out travel plans, as I might be leaving within the next 2-3 weeks! I hope all goes well, we'll see what comes of it. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Whats upppppp

2008-08-20T19:32:00.001-07:00

Heyoooooo!

So I'm sitting around Georgetown in D.C and realized I haven't updated this in a couple of months, since midway through the Vegas trip probably. Since I'm not doing much at the moment, figured I'd pop in for an update. I am way too lazy to give you a full update to cover all of that which has happened since the last update in its entirety, but we'll see if we can't capture the rest:

I ended up playing the main event of the world series, $10,000 No Limit, at the last minute, when my friend Max bought up all my action and sold some of it off to the other guys living at the ranch.

The short of it is that the main event was wild. A long day one left me sitting at a pretty 71k up from the 20k starting stack, and finishing in the top 100 of day 1C. Day 2, I ended the day with 73k on what was literally the most insane single day of live tournament poker that I've ever witnessed or played. 71k to 110k, down to 20k down to 10k, up to 25k up to 60k, down to 30k, up to 80k down to 40k up to 70k and I ended just above 70 ending off the day squeezing JohnnyBax for my last few K in my stack.

Day 3 was horrible. I was playing well and owning the table, but made a bit too trigger happy of a move and ended up costing myself the tournament a couple hundred from the money, finishing a very disappointing day 3 exit of 950/6000. Busting out of the main event hurt more than my final table exit, so needless to say it wasn't a good day all in all after the bust out. I'll go into details another time, but it was a great experience and I did learn a ton this summer. Vegas was fantastic. A lot different than last summer but still as usual a valuable and fun experience. Can't wait for next WSOP.

So, since the middle of July, I've been back in Washington, D.C with nowhere to live. I was essentially forced to move out of my apartment with Aaron (manchild) and Steve (tubasteve) because the commons people are a bunch of morons and drive everyone who comes into contact with them insane. My parents are having our kitchen redone at their place, so I decided all in all, crashing at my brothers place for a while was a good idea. He said he was fine with it, I have the couch and essentially my own room, and living in Georgetown is great. I walk everywhere so get plenty of exercise, and it's just a beautiful area in the city, and I do enjoy city living.

Since being here, I really haven't done a whole lot other than hang out with some friends, go to the gym, and try to play a shitton of poker. I really am aiming to make a ton of money this month and next month to set me up for easy living in europe and during my travels. I will of course try my best to keep up with the volume while abroad, but I figure may as well do it when I know I can instead of whatever the unknowns of traveling might bring, if I end up not being able to play for any amount of time, etc...

Most of my volume, I've decided to make in big tournaments recently. I don't suffer from the "big score" mentality, though I do enjoy it thoroughly, and I am also playing some small field MTTs, and STTs (and cash games).... it's moreso that I feel well versed in STTs and never put in the same study or volume in MTTs, so while I feel confident in my MTT game, I felt this was the time to get in the volume and the study with it to balance out my tournament game.
Additionally, I've been trying to watch the deucescracked cash game videos, namely krantz's heads up videos and any other ones that I have time for. When I do put in cash time, I'm trying to make it at heads up. I feel heads up still has plenty of weak opposition, and will give me an opportunity to ensure that I'm not mega tabling, truly am focusing on my reads, hand reading, deeper stack play, etc... I feel the overall balance for myself of single table and multi table tournaments, in addition to cash games of all types, even if its weighted in one direction, is crucial to my development and thought process as a player, and eventually I'd like to work more time into the games that I haven't spent a ton of time working on recently, even though I do consider myself to put in time at all games still and will continue to do so.

In other related news, this week episode 8 of Last Man Standing, the final episode in my 'introduction to SNGs' series, aired and I'm happy to say that the series, in my opinion, was a success overall. I really felt lost in coming up with content for a lot of the episodes, simply because no one has ever put together any similar material as this in the past, but I felt I came up with the bare essentials, and a thorough explanation of the basics for any n00b with a basic poker foundation to get started playing STTs at the low buy ins. Some jackass trolls me on the forums everywhere, and goes into all of my videos and rates me a 1/5 on the star scale under each video without even watching it in order to bring down my ratings, but other than that, the comments are very positive and I'm glad that this was my first series produced. There are certain aspects of this series that became somewhat stressful and overbearing for me, and as a result I'd like to take a short break from video making, but when I return, I'm probably going to cover some MTT content due to high demand, and we'll see what happens from there. I haven't planned anything overly specific yet and don't want to say anything/get anyone's hopes up too early.

So other than the basic hanging out, I plan on continuing my regiment of gym/people/poker until my exit to Europe, probably coming in September, or as late as sometime in october, depending on what tournaments, various poker classic series, EPTs, etc... I end up playing, and when I decide on Amsterdam. As of right now, I plan on extended stays (at LEAST 1 month) in both Amsterdam and Israel. Other than that, tentative stops in the UK, spain, Czech republic, Greece, or anywhere else I deem appropriate are possible while abroad. Don't know how long I'm gonna be away, but likely to be several months.

I think that's about it. I'm heading up to Philly this weekend for a Livestrong 5k walk. I probably won't update this much while home, but will definitely aim to get back into regularly updating (as long as internet allows for it- and it better!!!) when I take off on travels. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Caesar's shananigans, The Last Man Standing, and some visitors from my hood (short update)

2008-06-21T02:46:00.000-07:00

So, I've been pretty busy recently even though I haven't done anything. Isn't that so ironic? I don't get it either. I decided to play the caesar's $330 deep stack event with Travis (costanza_g). Despite a great structure, the tournament was completely rigged. The field was fantasticly soft, softer than any $1500 event at the WSOP (for those that don't know, this is saying a lot). I don't feel like recapping too many hands as there weren't a ton of interesting ones, but I flopped the nuts a lot early and that got me a lot of chips; and I cruised through the day despite having to make some tough (but correct) laydowns. We all got pretty short as 6/1200/300 came and went, and by the time 800/1600 level rolled around, I was shoving any profitable spot I could find to pick up pots, which no one else was doing, it being a live tournament. I pretended to look at my cards when it folded around to me once in the SB, and when the BB folded to my shove, I peeked at TT. Rigged. A few orbits later, it folded around to me again in the SB and I again pretended to look at my cards before sticking it all in. The big blind woke up with AJ, and after tanking, called the shove. I squeezed and tabled 93o and he bad beat me for the win! wtf? how is 93o no good there? Anyways, it wasn't, and I was out of the tournament in roughly 50th/375 after 10.5 hours of tournament play. blech.

Beyond that, I haven't put a ton of time in at the cash tables, but I am planning on putting in a session tomorrow and a marathon session in the coming week. We'll see about other tournaments, as I have to plan around my ongoing deucescracked project, "Last Man Standing" which will be my first formal video series (3rd-10th videos done for the site, though) for the site. It will cover the basics of online SNG play, and will hopefully be one of many series and other standalone videos to come. I'll be working on seeing the peoples, putting in some cash time, and putting this series into the final stages of compilation, creation and production, among some of my one on one coaching obligations. Should be fun and busy.

Today held a nice afternoon, with a few good friends of mine from home coming into Vegas for the weekend. They played the $2,000 pot limit hold em WSOP event, and after they busted, we went back to their very nice suite at the venetian to relax and hang out with the girls and his dog who he brings everywhere. When we went to Amsterdam, Baxter came. When he went to europe another time, Baxter came. When he comes to the desert of Sin City, Baxter came. Quite the world traveler, that dog. Anyways, nice to see some of the hometown crew, and I'm sure I'll see them once more before they skip town. Looking forward to a good weekend. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

A shootout, a stripping chef, and Love.

2008-06-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

My apologies for the lack of updates; I'm lazy, and am also trying to do a lot of stuff out here that is off-PC, so haven't dedicated much time to sitting and writing. Anyways, I know everyone has mentioned the shootout and recent Vegas happenings, so I figured a trip report was in order of the recent sin city highlights. Let's see...

Early last week, I decided to play the $1,500 No limit hold em shootout, event #17 of the world series of poker. My housemates didn't tell me that they were going to register for the event the night before, so, I rushed to the registration desk at 11:30am for the noon start time for the event that was capped at 1,000 entrees. I registered and the lady said that there were 10 spots left in the tournament. Phew.

For those of you that do not know how a shootout works, unlike a standard no limit freezeout, where players get eliminated and tables merge together as the field shrinks, you have to win your table to advance to the next round of this tournament. Effectively, it's a series of winner-take-all sit and gos.

My first table was super soft. Two to my right was Lee Markholt, recent WPT champion, but beyond that I recognized no one and the play was extremely weak. I knew that I had to take all the chips at the table, so I started out with a very aggressive gameplan to capitalize on the tight, weak play. I think I ran a 35% VPIP (voluntarily put money in the pot; essentially, played really lose) with a 30% preflop raise % 10-7 handed. I simply did not let up on my table, hitting hands and keeping the pressure on when I didn't hit with bluff raising, squeezes, etc... no one was playing back at me so I had no reason to slow down. Finally, the really enjoyable part of the table was getting involved with Lee Markholt for stacks. After a recent squeeze where he flat called a raise and folded to my 3-bet-squeeze behind, he made a comment along the lines of, "It must be sooooo easy for you. Just raise raise raise. Some people's ranges are like this (showing narrowly spaced-apart hand motions). YOUR range, is like THIS (Spreading his arms out wide). I merely smiled and raked in another pot before he soon open completed his small blind, and I checked with T3o in the BB. On a flop of Q32r, he check/called 125 at blinds 50/100. The turn was the king of spades, putting out draws with the Queen of spades, and Lee donked 300 something at me. I called the bet expecting him to donk at me with a pretty wide range of hands that connected with the turn, or air cause he was pissed off at me. The river was a ten. Shipit. He led 600, and, without realizing it, I muttered "this would be the nittiest call" under my breath, only for Lee to hear the comment unintentionally. Debating between calling and raising, I opted to set Lee all in, and I jammed (by the way, I would've opted to call because I didn't expect lee to call with worse too often, but in the end figured that he could donk it up and that there was thin value in the move if nothing else given the structure and dynamic thus far). He turns to me, and repeats what I said. Crap, he heard me. He tanks and tanks, and says "this would be an interesting spot to bluff. only way you could have me though is if you rivered that ten". He decides after a few minutes to call all in anyways with K5o, for top pair no kicker, despite having assessed the situation perfectly after his expert flop float. Way to go. He wouldn't sign my copy of the cardplayer magazine with his picture on the cover, either. So lame.

I cruised through this table, stacking at least half of the 10 players, and got heads up after about 3.5 hours with a big nit that outlasted the rest of the table with his nitness and well timed picking up of aa/kk. I made a biggish call against this player heads up when I had all of the chips anyways. He commented about knowing how he'd have to make a move to get some chips for the uphill battle, so that made it easier for me to pick him off. I checked the bb with J6o after his SB complete, and we checked a flop of A94. On a turn 6, I led and he called. On a queen river, I checked and he bet roughly around pot, which was probably 1500ish. I tanked and decided that this guy basically never had an ace or a queen, so unless he decided to turn a random 9 into a bluff/thin bet, that no made hand really made sense, so, sticking with my "when in doubt, call" philosophy, I called the river bet, and he wrapped the table, said "nice call", and mucked 87o faceup, and my 4th pair is good for most of the rest of his stack, and the match was over on the next hand.

Round 2:

It was a solid 5 hours until the start of round two, because we had to wait for all 100 tables of the 1st round to finish in order to advance. Finally, a 9pm start kicked off round 2 of the shootout. This table was definitely not as good as the first table, with Noah Boeken and Keith Sexton to my left in addition to an aggressive swedish player also having position on me, and a Canadian pro a few seats to my right that I knew because he was friends with the canadian shipitholla balla's (inyaface, apathy, bigt).

Early in the match, there were fireworks. With 30k stacks and blinds 3/600 with an ante, mark, the canadian pro, had been splashing around a bit early after we had talked post-1st round about how I had been running over my 1st table. He opened to 1800 and was called by an older man directly to his left. With 99 on the button, I popped it to 8,000 cold. I think I should have flat called in retrospect. Anyways, pretty quickly, Mark shipped in his slightly below 30k starting stack, and the older man folded, when it was back to me. It sucked to be in the spot but given the structure I didn't see how I could fold with 20k in the pot with the slight dynamic going on between us. He knew who I was, and even though I wasn't at all 100% sure that he was responding to that, he had been splashing around a bit and I expected him to flat call/think for at least a few seconds with his big pairs some % of the time. All things considered, I decided to make the call and was up against Mark's AK with tons of overlay; the situation that I was hoping for. No A/K and I doubled early, sending Mark to the rail (sorry pal). I tried to use this double up to my advantage to run over the table a bit, but with tricky players behind me, I didn't find much help with that, having Noah Boeken flat all of my pf raises and multi way pots frequently. In light of this, I decided to do it the old fashioned way: coolering everyone of course! And so it began. I stacked Keith Sexton when we both flopped overpairs, AA>JJ. He wouldn't shake my hand :( I busted another random player when I flopped middle pair and the nut flush draw with A7ss and turned the nuts, when he open jammed his stack into me. Yay. Soon thereafter, I busted Noah Boeken with KK beating AQ on a Q high flop. Basically, it all fell my way at the table, coolering the tougher competition and getting shorthanded with nits. I got three handed with a cute blonde and a chatty southerner. The blonde was a big nit that pretty much telegraphed her hands constantly until we got heads up, and the southerner talked and talked and talked about everything, and when he didn't have something to say, he'd stare you down when in a pot with you. I used his nitness to my advantage when I chose this shorthanded situation to turn up the heat. One funny hand we played:

He completed his sb and I checked 93o in the bb. The flop was 6 2 2 and he check/called my flop bet. The turn was a ten and he check/called again. The river was an ace, and he checked, I thought for a second and bet about 2/3 pot, which for some reason, he viewed as a huge overbet, and he went into the tank. I tried to stay still and stare at the board while he hmmmd and hawed over his big river decision. He said something like "I don't think you've put me on a hand, I think you're just throwing chips into the pot". He was partially right, I simply didn't feel he called down 3 streets with like any hand he had there, and he would've likely check/raised the turn or led the river if he had a deuce from the way he was playing, and he certainly didn't have any pocket pair or ace in his hand, so I basically was very confident that I could get him off of virtually any of his holdings. I'm not sure how right I was, or how truthful he was, because he said "I have king high; I feel it in my bones that I'm good here". And, after much thought and more chit chat about what I could have, he threw his hand away and I took in a nice sized pot with my 9 high. Yay.

I chipped away at them before Michelle limped the button and the chatty southerner shipped in 25 or 30 big blinds with A2o out of the small blind, to be called by the buttons A4o. He flopped a deuce, but she rivered a wheel, and that was that; me and my cute older blonde opponent were heads up for the final table spot, me with about a 2:1 chip lead and what I felt to be the clear skill advantage.

I'm not sure if this was done on purpose or not, but Michelle John actually played a very good style against me heads up. Out of the blue, she went wild. On a checked down board of 6789T, she fired 50k into a 7k pot. I was shocked, she hadn't done anything like that. A couple of flop stabs that were 4x the pot, and soon I realized; she wasn't overplaying big hands, she was bluffing big and forcing me to have a hand to put money in. This is of course a very high variance style, but while the player with the skill edge is trying to play small ball, this is a very effective style to play with and reduce my edge. I had to pick up a hand against her, but not before I confirmed what she was up to. With blinds at 1500/3k with an ante, she opened to 9,000 and I reraised the bb with 92o to 26,000. She called fairly quickly. At this point, I knew michelle pretty well and knew that she'd auto ship any hand that she felt was strong enough to get it in with preflop, and would pretty quickly fold anything that was in her garbage range, so she had to have a hand somewhere in the middle, though I wasn't entirely sure what that was. I saw her make a big call to an all in against a somewhat erratic player with AK high on a low flop, but much earlier in the round and with much less at stake. On a 5 3 3 flop, I open shipped my chips in, setting Michelle all in after he call of my preflop 3-bet. She laid back in her chair and said, "are you pulling my own move on me?" Yes Michelle, I realize what you are now doing, and yes, I'm pulling your own move on you. After anothr minute or so, she mucked her cards, saying she folded a small pair, which had to be 44 or 22. ship the big pot. At this point, I had her a bit better than 2:1 again, and picked up T9o and checked the BB after her SB complete. On a flop of Q T 4, I check/raised michelle all in and she made the call with Q6o. Damn it, she overbets these spots with a confirmed nothing, and now coolered me...crap. "9 ball!" I cried out, and sure enough, I binked a 9 on the turn and locked up the 10 seat at a World series of poker Final table. Ship. it.

By this time, I was way over tired, and at 4am, after a long day of matches, I went home to try and rest up. I barely slept 3 hours that night, and spent equally as long staring at the mirror. A bit after noon, Rob (Bobbofitos) and I drove down to the Rio to have lunch with 2+2 mod TT pre-FT. I had gotten a lot of texts from the Deucescracked team saying that they would be there to sweat, and was feeling good about my edge at a table that now played more like what was effectively a $330,000 sit and go. I ate what I could, said my goodbyes after what was a very pleasant lunch with the two of them, and took off on the long walk from the grille to the poker room. I put on my head phones and blasted Nelly's "On the grind" all the way down. I was more nervous that basically any other poker situation I'd been in in recent memory. This bracelet was mine.

I got to the table and found out that the final table was being covered in the main observer area where everyone could kind of walk by and see the action. The table was tougher than the first two, but still with some very weak play going on. Matt Gianetti (hazards21, a good 10/20 regular on stars), and sbrounder, a solid mtt pro, were at the table, along with another known but slightly donkish online mtter and a russian cash game professional. Gianetti was clearly the best overall at the table, but given the tournament structure, probably didn't have too much of an edge on me given my sit and go experience. Krevchenko, the russian, came after everyone early and went pretty crazy, bet/calling a preflop raised with 86cc and sub-50bbish stacks, and floating a King high flop out of position with a flopped gutterball straight draw. He of course rivered it and amassed a lot of chips just with bullying and taking down the blinds and antes, which were worth a lot from the get-go. I tried one unsuccessful squeeze on him, but other than that, really tried to stay tight early given the payout adjustments that now had to be factored in for the final table.

A bit into the table, I picked up AQ against Krevchenko and flat called one of his frequent preflop raises, with the big blind coming along. The flop came AKx, and I flat called Krevchenko's flop bet. On a blank turn, krevchenko led for about 110,000 and I jammed for about 400,000 more. He counted out the chips and didn't take long to call, flipping up ATo. The river bricked and I was up to about 1.7 million in chips from our million-chip starting stacks. I tried to find profitable spots to open pots but still had to stay pretty tight throughout the early part of the tournament. I was 2nd in chips after the first break, and feeling good.

After we sat back down, the first hand brought my rise and fall. A kid that was not particularly good at all, playing scared money, opened the small blind at 15k/30k/ante3000 to 90k, and I made it 310,000 to go with AKo. He INSTANTLY shipped it in for roughly 700,000 more, and, after counting out my chips, and realizing that, with this pot I'd have roughly 1/4 of the chips in play 9 handed, made the call happily. I was shown his AJ. Nice insta shove, kid. He bricked the flop, but an ugly looking jack on the turn, and another on the river, was like a huge blow to my stomach. I turned around, barely able to look at the table anymore, and realizing that my run at a WSOP win was quickly slipping from my clutches. I was down to 600k and a lot of work to do. After the new york kid went apeshit on his turn spike, I regained composure and sat back down to the grind. I finally picked up beautiful looking JJ under the gun, and made it 100k, already knowing I'd be going with this hand for what remained of my tournament life. I was reraised to 300k by a young kid in middle position, and shipped the rest in. I was up against QQ and got up ready to head for the rail. "Where's the jack this time?" I asked sarcastically, and when none showed up, I was sent packing in 9th place/1000 for a very disappointing, but still very cool $10,000 cash. I was consoled by friends and the Deucescracked executive team, and headed out of the rio as soon as possible to unwind from a very stressful couple of tournament days. On the bright side, I was the first deucescracked coach to ship a final table, and second 2+2 moderator to do so ever, so those were some cool highlights to be a part of. Below is some of the press I got during the tournament, so if you want to read a couple of random updates/see a couple of pictures, here it is: http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2008-world-series-of-poker/event-17-1500-nlhe-shootout/id54585.htm

I didn't play poker for the next several days, and really just needed to unwind after the way the final table played out. It was very tilting, but keeping my composure about it now is very gratifying, officially being a professional at this point, and knowing I have to get over stuff like that to succeed long term in this game.

The next day, I woke up to some news that we had a personal chef coming over to ask us about what food we like, and to prepare a few meals for us. Apparently, some of the boys in the house met our lovely chef at her 2nd job as a Rhino dancer while indulging in some of her lap-artistry (yeah, she's a stripper), and found out about her cooking experience. The first meal was salmon, rice pilaf, caesar salad and spinach was was very very good, and it was followed by spicy meatloaf, also a very good dish. I think we have a winner of a chef. And it would only be proper of us to go visit her at work and show our support.

The other night I got a phone call from Todd (bigt/snoop Todd) who mentioned that there was an extra ticket to the Cirque de Solel show "Love" at the Mirage that night, and invited me to go with him, Alan "The usher" Sass and his girlfriend, and Lefort. The show was fabulous. I've heard not quite as good as some of the other Cirque shows, but given that it was my first one, I very much enjoyed the artistry and the whole thing was really well done in my opinion. It was a very enjoyable experience. We went over to Social House at Treasure Island right after, which is a late night sushi/sake place. We got to go over some higher stakes cash game hands that todd and lefort had played, and hearing and indulging with everyone at the table on poker strategy was a rare treat for me. I do spend a lot of time with them but being able to discuss and immerse in strategy with them always keeps me thinking on a higher level. They really break down hands incredibly well and are very comfortable thinking through the necessary thought processes to succeed in tough no limit hold em cash games. Todd being a top nl cash player really puts the game into perspective well, and keeping up with them in strat discussion is a very cool experience, and keeps me at what I feel is an emerging world class thought process and approach to the game as I continue my development as a player, teacher, and student of the game.

After dropping a cool $550 on a late night sushi meal for the 5 of us, we headed back to the ranch (their mansion) and hung out for a bit, relaxed post-outing, and a bit after 330am, I decided to head home.

With many ups, downs and fun experiences, it was certainly a fun week overall. Hopefully, I'll be back to claim my world series bracelet, and check out the rest of those awesome cirque shows while I'm at it. That's about it for now, thanks for reading.

-Alex

Oh, and I played some random tournaments online today for about an hour and a half session... +1500

WSOP is clearly rigged

2008-06-07T00:09:00.000-07:00

just kidding. 1500 event didn't go so well, not that that wasn't to be expected, though, with the size of the fields and amount of variance in these things. I got my 3k starting stack (not a great structure) up to 6k by the first break, just grinding down people in small pots with pre flop raises and continuation bets/well-timed stabs. My first table had team pokerstars members Elky and Victor Ramdin at my table. Luckily, neither of them are particularly good at this game, so my table was overall pretty soft as a result. The only real pots that I played at my table consisted of me sucking out on this weird LAGish big young kid when I flatted his small preflop raise utg out of the bb with T9. I check/called a 8TK flop and a jack turn, and the king on the river was checked through and his T8o was no good (whoops!). A bit later, I repopped a middle position open with AQss and on an 8 high flop shoved over the original preflop raiser's flop donk-bet. He tanked for a long time and folded. Soon thereafter, I raised KJdd and was called by victor ramdin in the BB. Flop came KK2 and victor check/raised me from like 425 to 800 something, a little more than a minraise. I asked how much he had behind and he said "not much". I asked again and he gave me his retarded response, along with a number of something like 2k behind. I called and he check/folded an ace turn (that paired him up I think, too) when I accidentally put him all in but left myself 500 chips behind when announcing it and miseyeing my stack. I don't think it mattered a ton but it inevitably looks stronger than I wanted it to, and I would have rather stacked Ramdin than Cripple him.

A bit after the first break, a random donk at the table opened, and the button re-shoved for about 2500 at 2/400/ante. I 4 bet over-shoved AK into the 3 bet shover's AJ, and of course I could not suck out on the AJ [after the jack peeled on the turn]. That took me down when it would otherwise have put me up to ~12-14k and a well above average stack. After that, it was pretty much all downhill. I was moved tables and quickly donked off about 2500 when I raised T7s utg and got called by the button. He wasn't particularly deep, so we ended up getting it in on a ten high flop after he flatted QQ pf, which kind of sucked. I probably should have bet/folded this spot, but the randoms in the shorthanded event play particularly awful, and I had no read on this player at all, so basically getting like 2.5:1 on the shove, and thinking that he's probably dumb, I felt like he could make enough shoves with a big 8 (2nd pair top kicker on a board that he thinks I probably missed), or whiffed overs coming over the top of my continuation bet that I should just call the jam in-game. Oh well. After that, I was basically in push/fold mode, and got a bit of a stack ground back up, but to no avail. Grounded back down to around 14bb with antes, the small blind open-completed and I shoved Q4o in the big blind. He thought for a few seconds, said "lets gamble" or something standard and dumb, and limp/called with QJo. Standard, good game.

After that, we went to Craig's (Irieguy) for a barbeque and to watch the lakers game. Basically all of the 1500nl bustout's, aka everyone we know out here, was there hanging out. After the last person, Todd (bigt349/snoop todd) walked into the house after busting out, upon finally realizing that not one single person we knew was left, we kind of all looked at each other and said "wait, don't we all do this for a living? these 6 max games?" Pretty funny moment with a bunch of stoned/drunk poker players that just busted periodically throughout the day. Overall, a great barbeque and a good time though, especially watching hundo's fly through the room as people kept making random prop bets on what was happening in the basketball game.

Today, I headed down to the Rio to sweat the 5k shootout and play some nl500. I played a bit of cash to start the day, and quickly went up about half a stack when the table limped around and I completed 76ss. On a flop of 9sTsK it checked around to the button who led about 30 into 35, and I check/raised him to 135 total. He tanked for a long while and put his last 100 in over the top when I obviously insta-called the last bit and he showed me T9. A beautiful 8 peeled on the turn, completing my gutshot and leaving the kid really pissed "that people raise on draws and get there" or something ridiculous. I'm not quite sure why everyone is always at the top of their range against me out in Vegas, but, at least some of the house luckbox is working, as Ryan took down his 1st table of the 5k shootout, advancing to the round of 36 tomorrow. I don't think anyone else we know is still in so, let's hope for him shipping a bracelet in a coupe of days.

After leaving the series today, we headed back home with Scott (scotty12). We went back to his place to hang with the other half of last year's WSOP house, and then we ended up at green valley ranch casino for an excellent sushi dinner. Sadly, my luckbox just doesn't usually work right, and I was goated into credit card roulette, the game of flips for the dinner bill that I NEVER EVER WIN EVER NO MATTER WHAT EVER. After having called that I got stuck with the 300 dollar dinner bill *again*. Staaaandard (god damn it, one time let me not lose that stupid rigged game, please).

We donked around at the roulette tables for a little while thereafter before coming back home to relax. I'll probably go down to sweat the next round of the shootout and hopefully to play more. I'll also probably be playing the 1,500 shootout on monday, and an event in the caesar's mega-stack tournament series next week as well. Maybe I can win some money at this tournament thing....or just do the smart thing and grind cash games. One way or another, we'll find out what it'll be (if not hopefully both lucksacking a donkament and putting in cash-game time). That's what's been going on the last day or two, thanks for reading.

-Alex

ahoyhoy

2008-06-05T09:56:00.001-07:00

whats up everyone?

and a solid month + goes by with no updates. I should preface this by saying that the blog will now be primarily a poker blog, because my thoughts otherwise honestly probably aren't worth sharing here. Basically, I finished school this semester and took off as planned to vegas for my long break from school. I got here late monday night, and Rob (Bobbofitos) picked me up from the airport. We headed straight to a mexican restaraunt at the venetian where we met up with a bunch of other 2p2ers out here that we all know: the entire shipitholla crew and probably 10 STTFers. It was great to see everyone, although this whole time many have walked straight by me without recognizing me with my 'new look'. Kind of funny when they realize though.

I didn't do much the next day, as I was still meeting up with people/checking out town again, and feeling tired from travels and what not. In the afternoon, we headed over to the wynn and I sweated Rob and Ryan (Mistaken) playing a shorthanded 10/20 game. Lets just say that I've never seen anyone cut open a short handed deep stacked cash game the way Rob did that night. I don't think he missed a single blind raise on his btn, and he stacked pretty much everyone at the table at one point. Some highlights:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?p=4495366#post4495366

lol, but seriously...he won a 40k pot off of a rich guy from manhatten that thought his Q4 was good enough for a turn open jam of 17k into a pot of like 1500 on a KQQK board after the turn. just overall kept showing down big hands or owned the opposition...standard bobbo.

We hit the rhino after his nice +30k session, and had a good time celebrating.

Yesterday, the highlight of the day was sweating Andrew (good2cu) own the 5k mixed hold em event (#4). He was knocked out in 3rd, but played well and had us as a huge, loud and roudy cheering section. The rio staff hated us, but we'll definitely get on TV if they air the final table, so Andrew should get a lot of exposure :) Zeejustin then lost to eric lindgren heads up, which is unfortunate for justin because he really has played well from all I've heard and consistently goes deep in these WSOP events. I'm sure he'll pull out a bracelet eventually.

After the bust out, we headed back to the shipitholla mansion for some chill/down time, as most everyone is playing the 1500 dollar 6 man event today. While we were talking, Travis (Travestyfund) offered to put me into the tournament today, and, being that I haven't played yet out here, though this would be the best time to get my feet wet.

Sorry for the brief entree- Gotta get ready to play now, but I'll try to keep this updated pretty regularly at least while I'm out in Vegas. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Greetings from the middle east

2008-04-26T04:59:00.000-07:00

Mini update. I'm at my friend Andrew's place in Jerusalem, Israel. It's gorgeous here, and I think I'm going to be spending a bit of time here during my travels of the future. I'm staying with the family in Tel Aviv, about 40 minutes away, and will be headed back there soon, but just wanted to post and say that I'll be trying to update more fully upon my return home. I have a ton of school work and will be bogged down for a couple of weeks until the end of the semester but will do my best to some worthy posts in.

Also, I believe I'll have my blog linked up to Deucescracked at some point soon. They take worthy articles from blogs of the execs and coaches, and consolidate them into the "articles" section at the DC site. They've been doing this for a while and there are tons of good articles, I highly suggest indulging in many of them. Anyways, look for that, and otherwise I'll be trying to throw another update out soon. Hope everyone is doing well and running good. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Drama bombs

2008-04-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

Well, on top of the Pokerstars fiasco of the last several weeks (which has been temporarily resolved, I hope permanently soon...), a lot has been going on. Last week was one of the worst weeks that I've had in a long time. Physically, emotionally, psychologically. It all came down on me at once and I really had a lot of trouble getting through it, and I think the recent experiences have helped answer a lot of questions for me, and give me a bit more focus as to what I need now to help me figure out stuff later.

College is really a big strain on me right now....fake social relationships, my personal issues with the idea of contemporary America's 'big public state university' that has screwed me and thousands of others over for years running, my issues with my actual field of study and the occupational implications of the future. So many things. Sooo many things. It got to a point where I realized that I needed a break. School is important enough to me that I know I want a degree for freedom of choices later that might require one. I think the idea of today that people go to college just because it's convenient or considered standard or normal though, is completely insane.

People should go to college because it's right for their life goals and choices and what they believe is 'right' for them, however they define it. Intelligence is not and should not be defined by a college degree. Some of the most brilliant people ever had never even experienced formal education much less university/upper level education. It's just so insane that it has turned into what it is today. While it's certainly right for me to finish, it's not right for me to finish now. I need a break to ensure that I will want to finish when the time comes. I know that doesn't sound right but, if I stay and keep going the way things are, I have a strong feeling that I'm not going to be able to make it. I want to do this so that I can take some 'me' time, and also put in stuff that I think I need to do later in addition to the stuff I want to do now. I don't want to go into too many specifics but that's a lot of the general situation.

As for the next step...well, muscling out this next 6 weeks+ of school. I'll be headed to europe to see my sister and hang with family and friends in Greece and Israel for the holidays in the middle of April, and just trying to end the semester strongly before and after. After that....well, my first call after leaving my parents' house tonight to tell them of my plans was to my friend Rob (Bobbofitos) to book a room at Chet Bobbo for a single queen sized bed for 6 weeks in Las Vegas, NV. Thaaaat's right, VEGAS BABY! I'm headed back for 6 weeks this summer and going to make it an even sicker time than the amazing experiences I had of our month out there last summer (especially finally being 21!). After that, we'll see...I'm bouncing around some ideas :)

That's all for now- I'm exhausted and have an early wakeup and a somewhat full day tomorrow. Hopefully, at least starting after school ends for the term, I'll be updating this thing with more regularity. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

F You pokerstars

2008-03-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

I need to rant.

Basically 16 days ago I request to cash out 600 bucks from stars. Not a problem, always takes 3, maybe 4 business days in slow situations. Once it took five I think.

The 10th business day has come and gone after they saw allow up to 10 for this electronic check. They first feed me the "wait till april 1st because of easter back up" and then follow it up by saying it's out of their hands. My bank has no record of any such transaction occurring.

WTF? If I knew this was only the 600, I'd still be really pissed, but at least I'd be able to move on. I'm now afraid to cash out because I have no idea where the fuck my money is going.

This is on top of having to see a specialist about my back problems of a year now. Yesterday I headed to the doctor and he basically said I have a really severe lumbar strain, and he gave me a cortisone shot and a month's prescription for physical therapy. Just got back into the gym after this fiasco a month ago, and now I'm told I have to cut back again. Awesomeness.

The rest of the BS I probably shouldn't talk about on here, but lets just say this is quickly shaping up to be the worst day in a long time. Sorry for making you read that, this entry was a necessary rant....maybe next time it'll be more interesting? Or at least some better news......hopefully......hopefully....

AMT signs with Deucescracked!

2008-03-20T22:59:00.001-07:00

So, I'm really sorry for not updating this for so long, a lot has been going on. I'll try to keep this short because my brain is fried, lets see...

I think it started about a month ago when my back finally healed for the most part, and after 8 months out of the gym, gaining weight and increasing frustrations with...everything, I finally decided a small dose of pain, a haircut and a new attitude would help a bit. And so it has.

I went back to my freshman year look of short hair, a goatee and earrings, which I happen to like a lot. I added one to the left cartilage so I'm sporting 5 instead of the 4 of a few years ago. I've been back in a steady gym routine, and though not really "dieting", I have cut out some of the excessive crap from my diet, which has also helped. I'm sleeping slightly more normal hours, usually in bed at 130 or 2am on school nights instead of 430 or 5am...yeah, I know, I'm trying ok?!?

Anyways, around the time the work out routine started, my roommate Steve (Deucescracked coach tubasteve) had a conversation on aim with Deucescracked co-owner, Entity. My name was thrown into the mix, and Deucescracked, having been a cash game training site, started looking into building up their tournament infrastructure. I got in touch with DC owner Joe Tall, and more than a month later, I've submitted my first introduction video to them and I've been brought on to head up SnG's for their team and assist in building up the tournament realm for them. I'm very, very excited to work under Krantz's label and look forward to the opportunity of taking on more students and growing the coaching business. Deucescracked is a truly phenomenal site, having just set up two national offices on both the east and west coast, and they really are an organized, great group of people. I couldn't be happier with where I'm at right now with all of it. Here is my page if anyone wants to check it out: http://www.deucescracked.com/coaches/AMT

I'll be coaching SnG's of all types, and doing some work with larger field multi table tournaments as well. We have lots of ideas for video series' and coaching ideas so look for big moves in the future!

Beyond that, I'm going to try and buckle down with school. I've kind of resigned to my fate of not being able to get in playing volume as long as I'm a full time student, so my efforts will be largely geared toward coaching and not going insane in school, and also trying to get my affairs in order for summer classes, and some long term planning for my year off. I'm also planning on hitting the bar more, because I live right next to all of them and lets be honest, I don't drink enough.

Anyways, I hope to be updating this more often but I'm really lazy and a lot of other stuff is going on with the transition, school, approaching world travels, etc... so we'll see if that actually happens. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

series of random updates?

2008-02-16T08:42:00.000-08:00

School sucks. I'm trying to play a lot more poker to prepare for my year next year. Did I mention school sucks? Poker kinda sucks too, but really only because I don't play a lot.

Since I came back from Vegas, I've just gone to class, hung out with the peoples, played very minimal amounts of poker, and not done much else except thankfully, start to get back to the gym. Already feeling good about it, but will only start back with 2-3x/week and progress, I don't want to fall off a routine like last time when it usually has such a positive impact.

A momentous occasion, though, in my little sister graduating high school and ending the era of the kids in my family going to that private Jew school of death. No, I did learn a lot there, but the school is going downhill fast and we're glad we're finally done with it. She gets 3 months abroad in Poland/eastern Europe/Israel and 6 months of no school, which I'm insanely jealous of. That trip was one of the most memorable of my life and I dearly wish I got to take it again.

That was basically all I've done of note since coming back home. I can't wait till spring break....at which point I have no idea what I'm doing. I do, however, know that there's been some progress coaching wise. In the last week or two, I've received an influx of messages from 2+2ers who come to me having seen my videos before having heard of me from the STT or coaching forums. Though many don't end up taking coaching, I'm at a point where 2 new PM's/day is pretty common. Sadly, I don't think I'm taking full advantage of the thin tournament coaching market. That may be remedied soon, though (updates if it does, of course). I also have a new video that should be posted on Donkit/sharkscope in the next couple days. Sadly, its only 31 minutes and I do not get in the money, but I felt that I got into some great spots for a video and the owners thought it worthy to post anyways, so check that out. It's me 3-tabling the FTP 22/33 STTs. Sad results but a good video in my opinion.

Beyond that, I've also decided that every few weeks I may try to come out with some sort of poker article on my blog for readers, as a better method of updating beyond stupid random life updates that no one cares about (but that people still read anyways? go figure). If anyone has good topic suggestions, feel free to leave it in the comments here, or let me know via the forums or AIM. I already have an idea for the 1st one, which I may try to write and release this upcoming week. The topic is of course the hot one in my poker world right now- coaching. We'll see what happens with it all.

Further, if anyone has any good suggestions of where to go for spring break, let me know. I can't think of anything else to write, hopefully the next updates will be more interesting, I just needed something so people would stop yelling at me to update :) Thanks for reading.

-Alex

The rest of vegas

2008-01-26T22:42:00.000-08:00

I realize some reading my blog don't want to read/don't understand the poker jargon...plenty of this will be non poker related, so just skip over the stuff you don't want to siphon through.

We woke up the next day and there really was nothing noteworthy going on during the day. I was pretty tired and having some general stomach issues, and while Steve played for a while, I just decided to hang out with Owen for a while and relax. We decided that Tuesday was a good day to take Vegas up on one of their illustrious shows, and after hearing all of the hype about the Blue Man Group, we booked two tickets for the 8pm showing at the Venetian.

We got to the Venetian around 6 with nothing much else to do, and decided to play some poker to pass the time. Steve sat some limit Omaha 8 or better and, still being tired and somewhat out of it, I didn't want to sit 2/5 or 5/10, so I sat some 1/2 300 max and figured I'd splash around some. I didn't do much splashing around, though I did run my stack up +300 then down to even. At least the table was fun. A drunk middle aged guy who was very enjoyable, a hick kid who we made fun of (including the dealer) because we felt like it, and a bunch of random kids who moved around from unlucky seats and got pissed when I turned them for stacks. It was a limped pot, I had about 300 and limped behind a bunch of limpers with A3o. The flop came 963 and I the small blind, a foreign kid with sunglasses and a gangsta flyayayayyyyyy jacket on led for like 7 bucks into a 13 dollar pot. It folded to me, and realizing I had only bottom pair, called the bet. I also realized that this kid was only leading strongly the way he did with a likely 2 pair, and a less likely set (this type of kid check/raises or traps with hands that big), so, reasoning that if I out turned him I would stack him, I called. The turn was the georgeous ace filling my top and bottom pair, and the small blind led, I raised and he 3 bet all in, and I snap called against his 2 pair and he mucked the river bitching about how he floped 2 pair (he showed 96o). I know I'm not supposed to tap on the aquarium, but he switched tables soon after so we all had a good laugh at him, myself and all the rest of the fish at the table. It was fun, except when I flopped top top (top pair top kicker) on a king high flop, got turned by the nut flush draw and the drunk guy by the king of spades (giving me top trips) and getting minraised...I had to call the minraise reasoning that this drunk idiot was playing stupidly in many other spots heads up against me and he could have a worse king a lot, and I was also never calling any reasonable river bet from this type of live donk...As usual, I have a knack for getting bad players to check back flushes to me on the river, and I was no good against the A4 of spades. standard.

I ended up even on this short cash session, and me and steve headed to the blue man group showing. To say the very very lease, THIS SHOW WAS FANTASTIC! Honestly, best live performance I've ever seen or heard about. Unreal what these guys can do with the audience and with their own talent. Every minute was entertaining, I was honestly just smiling and laughing the entire time. Really, a great, innovative, contemporary and interesting showing. I highly recommend it for anyone that can take loud volume and a fun, unique night for all ages and audiences.

The next day, Steve met with a student of his for a live coaching session and I went to my Aunt's house that lives in the Vegas suburbs. I want to take a second to tell you about my Great Aunt Elaine. She is the single most amazing family member still alive in my family. I don't know her all that well, as I've only recently been able to frequent Las Vegas, but she is quite an interesting woman. Shes in her 80's and well past legally blind. She lives alone (with her daughter frequenting) with her 8 cats, and is a funny, interesting and talkative woman but one that never loses your interest in the subject. From death to politics to gambling to girls to school to life to animals to our family, nothing bored me while we were engaged in conversation. It was a very nice two hour visit, and I then headed back to Monte Carlo to eat at the awesome buffet in the Monte Carlo.

I highly recommend this buffet, with a mix of really 5 or 6 different ethnic categories, all very good (French, Mexican, American, Italian are the ones I remember, I think some chinese food and european dishes as well) and SOOOO much to choose from. Even if you're never staying or gambling in the Monte Carlo, if you're looking for a reasonably priced, all you can eat buffet on the strip conveniently located, the Monte Carlo buffet is a pretty good choice.

I got ready, put on my best shirt, and headed to the Bellagio. I put myself on the 5/10nl list and racked in for the 1k table max. I had decent control of this table, but there were many characters and interesting hands and situations coming up. There won't be much coherency to this next portion of the report, so it'll just be a string of random hands and stupid crap but a potentially fun read, so take that as you will:

Starts off ok, I'm getting some respect even though the average open raise is to 50 or 60 with a 1k cap buy in so it played a bit big. Feature hands: I limp UTG with A4ss and a bit over 1500 in the effective stack sizes. a few limpers behind and huge donkey makes it 40 to go out of the sb. I call and they call behind me. Flop comes AT4 with two hearts and the preflop raiser checks, I lead for 110 and get check/raised to a bit over 300. I jam for about 1300 and the donk goes into the tank. He took long enough that it was very obvious he had AK/AQ, and I was rooting for a call. He did end up calling, and it was all bad news after I tabled my hand and said "don't bad beat me sir. No queen and no king!!" Well, as you can tell, the turn was a queen and the river a king, so the 3,000 dollar ish pot was not mine. Sad, I said a quick curse at the table, which I immediately apologized for (I never curse or drink at the table, it interferes with my seriousness and love for the game, so I get very upset when I slip up in a big pot, but sadly I'm only human). I immediately regretted my reaction because I later spewed off a stack to a nit idiot who has apparently won a million dollars playing tournaments, but plays cash games horribly awfully. He thinks he's gods gift to poker, which is why in his drunken and tilty state I made a big (and spewy) call against him, but I gave him too much credit and donked off a stack before having to work for it back later in the night.

This same kid was yelling drunkenly and talking smack to everyone, his favorite phrases being "LICKY LICKY!" and "STOP IT!" in his incredibly gay imitation voice (name that movie?), and trying to pick fights with me for taking too long to act. I guess my <5 seconds was too long, because we really got into it later. For the time being, though, I just took advantage of how bad he was, and watched him fold JJ to my single 3 bet preflop out of the bb with TT. We were over 150bb deep and he said "the flop is gonna come ten high and im not gonna know what to do". That would've been nice, but I just accepted his constant small mistakes until his 400bb stack was gone. Sadly for him, even if I showed KK he probably should've called my 3 bet in position with JJ. lol donkaments. I ended up playing a solid small ball lag style 5 handed with this kid, his friend, some random australian (?) guy and another dude. I was the only one to 3 bet pf in 5 hours 4/5 handed, and no one played back at me, but there were two sick angleshooting hands both involving the douchebag nitfest kid who thought he was god's gift to poker for lucksacking one live tournament back in 2005.

Before the shorthanded festivities, he limped preflop and they took a multi way flop that quickly became heads up post flop that I was not involved in. A middle aged asian regular bet and got called by the kid on a King high monotone spade board. The turn was a blank and the guy bet and got raised, and called the raise. On the river, the kid overbet jam the pot after the asian guy checked on a paired king 5th street, and the asian guy asks the kid for a chip count. The dealer says "he's got your covered, sir", and the asian guy quickly says "no, I have bills". Under a huge napkin and coffee mug, he pulls out like 1300 in benjamins and the entire table is just like lol is this a joke? And the dealer calls the floor. The dealer explains the situation, with the nit kid complaining along with us, and the floor manager makes her first awful ruling of the night, stating that the bills are obviously in play because they were on the table. The asian then goes into the tank and then calls and mucks a king to the kids flopped flush for a very sizey 250-300ishbb pot. very sick re-angle, and even though I had no respect for this kids cash game, nice hand sir, nice hand.

His second angle wasn't so nice. He was talking shit to me later in the night because I was playing very aggressively short handed, the only one reraising preflop and not shutting down incredibly often. He raised the CO and his friend on the button called, and I was ready to raise 40 to 160 with whatever garbage I had (actually it was AK lol). I reached for a benjamin and took my left hand back to get 60 in chips. I was in the process of sliding my bill across the line and the chips were coming in my other hand (note: my hand never came off the bill), and the kid immediately yells "STRING BET!" and his friend almost in unision despite not paying attention, yells "STRING BET!" and the unobservant dealer has no idea whats going on. The nit drunk idiot kid gets to explain to the same awful Bellagio floor person what the situation was, claimed I took my hand off the bill, and she instantly believed him and said I had to make it 100 to go. Great ruling ma'am. Do us all a favor and stop being a splinter in the poker community's ass. I asked the kid straight up out loud then and there, "Do you really have to take cheap shots at me to try and see flops cause you're that scared?". He didn't like that and I c-bet and they both instantly folded. looool live players are my favorite. I still ended up losing about two stacks in the game with the 3k+ pot loss with the A4 and the spewed stack, but I played well minus 2, possibly 3 spots and felt very good about my game at the end of a 13 hour session.

We slept all day the next day Until I woke up at around 8pm and was sitting online before IMing with Casey (Bones) about meeting up for food, and possible poker and a visit to the famous spearmint Rhino. We met up at the Bellagio cafe and had dinner, then headed to the poker room. Bones got on the 2/5 list and I sat my final session of 5/10, while Steve played 4/8 and then 8/16 shorthanded limit hold em with a short stacking Sam Grizzle (lol!) I was stuck a bit over a stack on the week going into this last session, but the last session proved to be no less interesting than the first two.

I sat at my first must move table two to the left of who turned out to be another 2+2er (TurnstoneMBD of the brick and mortar forum if I recall his name correctly) but didn't play there for long. I went to the main game and immediately was engaged in the mainly asian, but interestingly crazy table. Most noteworthy hand: Aggro asian raises in MP to 40 with 700 in his stack, guy calls in the hijack with the same stack, small blind who has my 1400ish stack covered (and who had check/raised the last flop and took it down uncontested) calls and I call in the big blind with AJ of clubs. Flop is T6c5c and both the blinds check, the asian preflop raiser bets 120, gets called by the hijack and the small blind check raises again to 380ish, maybe 400 actually. After reasoning through my reaads and the spot, I decided I had to stick it all in, and that's what I did. The asian, to my surprise, called all in, as did the hijack! THE SMALL BLIND WENT INTO THE TANK! What have I done!?!? All 3 of us got up and started pacing, and the small blind ended up folding what he claimed to be an overpair (wow he's terrible for flatting an overpair preflop in that spot? lol liveaments?) The turn brought an offsuit 7 and the river paired the ten with the ten of clubs. I asked who had the boat and announced my nut flush, and the asian mucked, and the hijack tables the 74 of clubs for the flopped open ended straight flush draw. Whyyy. Well, I luckboxed that one, but everyone was seriously at the top of their ranges (the asian flopping bottom 2 pair) and I couldn't narrow anything down enough for me to see playing it another way. It was a nice spot, much in contrast to the gross spot I got into soon after when I raised 60 to 300 after several callers and another asian opened in MP. I had QQ and the asian tanked and called, and it was heads up to the flop of KT9 with 2 clubs, both of us being well over 200bb deep. Ew. ew ew ew. I ended up check/folding to a 700 dollar pot size bet and he later claimed to have flopped a set which I am inclined to believe but am still not 100% sure about it. I also didn't see another way to play this, but perhaps leading and praying could work against some idiots. It felt gross but I was proud for the seemingly standard, but gross line I had to take in that spot.

I ended up a couple stacks in the end and made money on the week, albeit short a few thousand that I should've definitely made, and still felt good about the week and the experience.

5am rolled around and Steve, Bones, Jshuttlseworth, and MikeCH were all rooting for the spearmint rhino visit long awaited by all, and that's what we did. That place is a fun time, and the theory that playing hard to get with strippers creates better lap dances is confirmed because, that was a great time. Bones runs both very good and very bad with stripperaments (he can elaborate if he wishes), but the short of it is he was able to set himself up taking a stripper home with him who wanted to role play. SHIPIT. Though I never had the luxury of that story to tell, we all had quite the time between a fun bellagio session, and a trip to the rhino, followed by an authentic northern chinese breakfast. This breakfast featured lots of rice products and some great beef sandwiches and dumplings. Overall, not a breakfast I can see myself getting used to, but one that was very enjoyable and glad I tried it. I ended up driving a drunk Jshuttlesworth's car back to the monte carlo while he was going to play drunken 1/2nl at 10am while me and steve packed to check out a couple of hours later, in prep for our trek home after a long, but interesting and very enjoyable week in vegas. We packed our stuff up and decided to watch tv and relax before having to check out, in our very tired and dozey state.

Not long after, we got a bang on our door and we heard lots of yelling in the hall. We opened the door and a bunch of people were running to the stairwell. A couple turned back to us and yelled: "THERE'S A FIRE UPSTAIRS! ITS SPREADING! WE'RE SUPPOSED TO TAKE THE STAIRS, GET OUT!". now, the last time I ran near a fire was with an oxygen mask on and a hose line in hand with some older, experienced firefighters around. This was a few years later and a bit different of a time. We ran 27 flights down the stairs with all of our luggage, and got outside to the site of floors 28 and above being up in flames. It was a sad sight, and I immediately thought of what would happen if we weren't leaving that day (Friday). We would not have had our stuff packed and we would not have been awake, or easily woken for that matter. Yikes.

We watched the crazy scene for a while before deciding to get to the airport early and just hang out before the flight. After delays and the craze of a big Las Vegas casino fire, I had had all the excitement I could take for the week, and we got home at about 2am last night. Quite a week I should say, and I'm glad we did it. The semester starts on Monday, which I am dreading, but, such is life and I'll try and make the best of something that I loathe in school. Wish me luck this semester I guess, it may or may not be a bumpy ride. Hope that was a coherent report, sorry I did a bunch of jumping around. Thanks for reading.

Alex

p.s- a couple of pics from the fire above our hotel room:

[URL=http://imageshack.us][IMG]http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/2997/vegas005fa1.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Vegas day 1

2008-01-22T00:28:00.000-08:00

So myself and tubasteve got into monte carlo in las vegas yesterday afternoon. Soon after we got in, I got a call from MikeCH, a friend and 2+2er, saying that he was finishing up a 15 hour session at the bellagio, and to come over to talk 5/10 staking. I got to the bellagio and mike threw me my stake in the form of a 5,000 dollar chip for the next few days. He told me to not give the nits action, and I should be the best player at the tables, and goood luck.

Well, being that I was pretty tired from traveling, I didn't want to test the waters at 5/10 just yet. Nearly all of my Las Vegas experience in live cash games lies in 2/5nl, with some 1/2-1/3 and VERY little 5/10. We headed back to the hotel for a nap and to just rest up and watch the giants/packers game (God what a terrible game, ONE TIME GREEN BAY CMON). Afterwards, Owen (Jshuttlesworth), who just moved out to las vegas this month, called and we met up to walk around and grab dinner while Steve remained passed out in the hotel room. We had a good talk and a decent meal at the cafe downstairs in monte carlo, and of course i lost the flip for the bill because i never win flips apparently. All the same, an enjoyable re-entry to one of my favorite cities.

Today, I woke up around 1030 am local time (130pm body time) to Steve telling me about his +3.5 stack 1/2 session downstairs while i was asleep. After we talked and finally decided to get out of our respective beds (not the same one, sorry to dissapoint all of my filthy readers), we headed down to eat before walking down to caesars to check out some donkament information, as we both figured we may as well try to play one live tournament while we're here, and Caesar's apparently has the best structures (and similarly ludicrous 20-25% rake that every live tournament has). To this day, I've never seen worse poker players than I've seen in live tournaments specifically.

We decided on the 7pm 150 buy in nightly multi, and since it was around 230 at this point, we figured we'd start with a bellagio cash session.

I changed in my 1k bellagio chip for a rack and sat at the "must move" 5/10nl game while steve decided to play some 4-8 limit hold em.

Needless to say as with most any live poker game, the players were nothing to write home about. I was easily the best player at either the "must move" or the main game that I was moved to shortly thereafter. As with any live games, people limp and call too much and dont raise and fold nearly enough, so it makes for an interesting time in these 5/10 games where some people realize maybe aggression is the way to go, but have no idea how to implement it ever.

I lost nearly have a stack on an early bluff where, in a limped pot on a board of A2dAdxA when I bluffed every street into trips then rivered quads. I had a good feel for this situation and reasoned that this player seemed capable of folding everything but maybe TT/JJ and quads. obviously, even though the draw bricked and i felt like i had it read it, it didn't work out when i had to fold to his shove and he showed me AQ.

I rebought to full and not much went on after that until moving to the main game (I did repop a straddle, got 2 callers, flopped TP on a weird monotone board and took it down with a turn bet when the flop checked through for a nice medium sized pot). The main game was much jucier at the time of my moving then the must move. there were a couple seemingly huge live ones that I couldn't wait to get into pots with. My wish came true when one particular idiot was steaming after people hit flush draws in 2 big pots vs him, even when he grossly over bets the pot for fear of the draw, and insta-stacks off on the river when the draw gets there. Anyways, the donk opens to 50 and i repop right behind him to 200 with AhKh. It folds back to him and he quickly calls. The flop comes J83 and he check/calls my continuation bet. The turn brings the Kd, giving me top pair top kicker and putting out a ton of draws. Donk open james into me for like 450. I go into the tank for not too long before deciding that he probably has top pair and is afraid of all the new draws, or picked up some type of combo draw himself and got excited. After short deliberation, I called, and the river was a seemingly ugly offsuit queen, but villain flipped up JTdd for 2nd pair and a busted running flush draw and my hand is good! That was pretty much the biggest pot I played. A lot of other ones just involved me playing small ball aggressive poker and picking up a lot of small pots which adds up nicely in the end. After all, the goal of no limit hold em cash games is to get those blinds! I finished the session up 1 stack, and was feeling a bit tired while Steve said he was getting a bit bored with limit. We decided to take a break and rack up for a while and see what was going on.

We came back to the hotel and after some down time, made our way back to Caesar's for the 150 tournament at 7pm tonight. Live donkaments are rigged. I simply, as always in live tournaments, could get nothing going. play small ball lag poker, making it a TAG game and just trying to pick up hands, and rely on people continuously playing awfully (very reliable assumption in live poker in my experience)....neither style worked, and I just couldn't pick up hands when I needed to. I still managed to read into people's souls, where I folded AQ and 99 to single raises in front of me and was right both times. Unfortunately, soul reading isn't enough and with the tournament structures, it was an early exit for me when I jammed 10bb on the button over a limper with T9s at t200/ante25 and the small blind put it all in behind with AJs and held. good game, F U live tournaments!

Steve was still in, so I decided to head to see if Owen was still playing at bellagio. After getting a text from him saying that he was going clubbing, I saw a 3 card poker table on the way out of the Caesar's casino and decided to take a seat. I mean hey, if I can't make money playing the game I've played for all of my personal funds for years, I may as well try my hand at something that requires absolutely no skill. Apparently, I was right again. I bought in for 100 and lost it. I bought in for another 100, and placing the 2x 15 dollar bets every hand, was ground down to my last 20 dollars of the 200 invested on 2 occasions. On the second, I was dealt three sixes. Shipit! For those of you that don't know 3 card poker, you play against the dealer and/or against your own hand strength (aka making a pair or better). I had both bets placed, and got paid 30:1 on my trips and 4(?):1 on my beating the dealer with trips. I finished my short three card session +500ish. I'm changing professions....

My back was in extreme pain for most of the afternoon and evening, so I came back after that to just try and rest up for tomorrow. The rest of the week is intended for lots of 5/10nl at the bellagio, and seeing the people I know out here and perhaps one of the many famous vegas shows as well. I'll probably try and keep up with daily reports, though if not, expect some variation of further reporting soon. That's about it for now, thanks for reading!

Goodbye Atlantic City, hello Las Vegas! (AC trip report)

2008-01-18T07:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm sad to say that our apartment's journey up to Atlantic City was not overall as successful as we all had hoped.

We got into Harrah's in AC late monday night after some hotel booking difficulties. I realized that I was a bit tired from driving up, and that I really wanted a good night's sleep the night before the 11am start to the 300+50 no limit event, which was event #1 of Borgata's WPT Winter poker open.

That good night of sleep never really came for one reason or another, and I found myself pretty tired but still amped up and excited for my first live tournament series since turning 21 and being able to actually play the events (as opposed to the my world series stint where I could only ever get away with playing cash games). We got to Borgata right before tournament time, and Steve (Tubasteve) and Aaron (Manchild)were seated for the event in the main poker room, while I trekked along to find the convention center upstairs where most of the event was occuring.

I'm not sure why, perhaps subconscious/bodily nerves (I consciously was ready and felt ok it seemed), but I started to feel a bit queezy walking into the huge archway of escalators for the WPT area upstairs. I guess being able to finally pull out a tournament ticket for a bigger live event got to me somehow, because not too long after we started, I had to get to the bathroom for a quick calming of nerves (do you really want to ask about the details? Thought so.) I somehow convinced myself that there would be good players here and that I had to play better than them. Well, it is good to play better against your opposition so that goes without saying, but, my assumption on the quality of play was laughable, for lack of a better description. Seriously, I though 2/5nl at the world series was the easiest game in the world, when really limping and calling is the new betting, folding and raising in Atlatnic City.

After I sat back down, I felt ok, though my stomach still playing games with me. I very very quickly felt I was easily the best player at this table, and soon thereafter lost a sizey pot when I check/raised out of the small blind against a big blind lead with a combo draw and he called and called a turn bet with flopped top two. I saw this player make many weaker leads so unfortunately, while I don't at all regret my line, it didn't work out too well. I was quickly ground down from our original 5k stacks to as low as 2.6/2.7k. Around this time, some guy that wouldn't stop talking about his strategy (cliff notes of his strategy: folding A7o in the sb in level 1 to a utg big raise is apparently a "tight fold". Also, as with EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERSON ON THIS PLANET APPARENTLY, he hates starting a hand with 2 jacks...? Dunno, last I checked, paint pairs were a good hand) put it all in with a short stack over my utg open with 77 and I thought for a few seconds before calling with TT. I flopped top set to clinch it and I got a few chips back.

Soon thereafter, I was lucky enough to flush over flush someone and bust another player, and after that, with a few light resteals and c-bets, I was quickly back up to 8k in chips and feeling good.

The break came and we switched tables. The next table, though I never got any solid reads on many of the players, seemed pretty soft as well. Soon after I sat at this table someone limped in front of me in middle position at 75/150. I made it 600 over the limp with AKo, and got called by the very talkative/joking European guy immediately to my left. If you're unaware, middle ages European guys at these major live events seem to play fancily and get out of line easily. That, combined with no one knowing how to do simple arithmetic, led for a sad downfall. Anyways, we took a flop heads up of AK9 rainbow. $$$- I wish. I checked the flop expecting it to be very easy to get a guy like this (from the little I knew of him) to take the lead in the hand and get to play a big pot by the turn. He checked behind. The turn put out the Js, so the board was AK9sJs. I led 1000 into the 1300 pot and got called. The river put out another spade, and has Phil Hellmuth said on TV last year, I decided to check the river with that Hellmuthian voice in my head going "NOT SPADE- SPADE!" Really though, I simply decided that I had no solid read, but in classifying players realized that I just wasn't sure if I could profitably call a shove if I led at the river, and that he could definitely bluff with how much I underrepresented my hand. After I checked, he bet 2k and I quickly called and mucked to 6s5s. Yeah, sucks because I checked the flop, but I like my line after talking it over with some people given that I was relatively readless. That was how I planned to get the most value out of my flopped monster and it just didn't work out. Such is life.

Very soon thereafter, a TAGfish kid opened to 400 at t150 and I jammed 88 for my remaining 3k from the cutoff. He tanked, and did his stupid song and dance about how he has AK and that he doesn't think I could do this with AA/KK. I've seen this song and dance a hundred times, and not once has anyone ever folded AK in this spot. I stood up, waiting for his oh so surprising call, and lost my race. good game.

Manchild and another couple of friends of mine from home cashed in the event which was nice, so I took my illustrious 5% from a friend for his deepest finish of our group at 18th. Ship the 150 dollars that I got instead of the 5k I should've gotten when this idiot called a flop shove from my friend on a 9 high board with QJo against friend's 77 because my friend called him a coke head earlier in the night. River jack, good game in 18th place.

After chilling out for a while, I decided after I had busted to play the second chance tournament, the 200+30. The tournament was equally as soft, and the result similar. I realized I was in for a long (or short?) one when 5 peopple limped in on the first hand, I raised the button big and everyone called. Needless to say that didn't work out, though I did make some things happen in this event, and I got my stack up to nearly 20k from the 6k starting stacks before running into a wave of cold cards and fast blind/ante structure. I shoved A7o into AKo at the 600/1200 level, and as standard a push as it was, was out of my 2nd multi of the day.

It didn't surprise me, just not how I wanted to spend my day...feeling like crap and playing decently but losing. I'd rather have just stayed in bed for a good day 2 if I had foreseen it, though I will say it was a great experience and an overall good time.

Unfortunately, my woes continued when I was strapped for cash (the problem with being an internet player: plenty online, none around when you need to sit with live fish). I sat 1/2 instead of some juicy looking 2/5 games to grind up a bit of money before jumping into it, especially as I haven't played live since Las Vegas during the world series. Well, yeah, that didn't go well. The table's average stack was probably at least 100bb's, so the standard raise was naturally to 15 or 20 preflop. All I can say is, if I knew I'd always get raises and huge flop bets called when I had monster pairs I would just start open jamming them for 150 bb's preflop. Sadly, none of those monster pairs ever held. Despite people thinking that bigger raises=more of a reason to call with draws/lower effective stacks (?), it didn't pan out for me, and as laggy or taggy or nitty as I had to go to adjust to varying table conditions and players, I just couldn't put it together with the cards. Except for my one flush in the tournament, I didn't hit a draw or see the refreshing aces in the hole one time in 3 days. I rarely made a pair and no one ever folded to anything, so sadly, these series' have a bigger luck factor than one might be accustomed to. Again, I think I played pretty well with only a couple of minor errors all things considered, so I'm just looking to put it behind me and make Vegas a good trip.

Couple fun hands from my late night cash session: raise preflop to 20 (yes, at 1/2) with QQ. Old guy calls, idiot kid who thinks hes god's gift to poker (because he has the big stack at the cash table zomg!) calls out of the blind. Flop is 552 2-tone, and I lead for 60. Old guy calls, kid calls. The turn fills the flush, obviously. I check, old guy bets 60, kid folds, I tank and decide that he probably has the flush, but at basically 4:1, the fact that I'm never calling a river bet from this guy made it worth it for me to spite call this turn bet and see if he showed up with a bare draw/worse overpair/crap/whatever. I called, and I talked him into checking back on the river with his flush made with Q9hh. Yeah, the kid also had called pf with 43o, and the flop bet for 25% of effective stacks on that paired 2-tone board with his open ended straight draw. Nice one kid, god's gift to poker indeed.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the really depressing report. At least some friends hit decently in the tournaments (another friend cashed in the second chance the next night after I played it). I'm also going to try to put in huge volume until vegas so I can keep up with my online bonuses/VIP stuff and what not on pokerstars. Hopefully Vegas will bring a happier trip in the sklansky-bucks department :) Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Oh also forgot to mention that I played a 120 buy in live sit and go also. Obviously I lost that one, but yes, in multi's, single tables and cash games, the players all seemed comparably bad. JJ shoved utg, queens with a slightly bigger stack than me (but still very short) reshoved, and I called with JJ on the button. Since we were both more or less drawing dead preflop, and the flop didn't bring me me only glimmer at a scoop or chop, that one was an easy exit. And if one more person open limps and calls a raise with AK pf or states how awful a hand JJ is I'm going to throw a kitten.

We ended the trip by missing our exit on the highway in the heavy snow/ice/rain and turning a 3 hour drive into a 7 hour ride of joy...that was also fun. Thats about it I think.

Post-Amsterdam, Pre Atlantic City and Las Vegas

2008-01-11T15:35:00.001-08:00

So things have been relatively hectic. Amsterdam was nothing short of amazing, even though I didn't get to hit a lot of the attractions that we wanted to initially. Its an amazing city with a lot to do and very nice people. My friend Steve brought his dog also, so that made the trip that much more interesting.

We got there mid-morning on the 26th of December, and I immediately had to take a shower after the grossness of overnight trans atlantic travels. In my 3 minute shower, I managed to put out the electricity of the marriot we were staying at because of a leak conveniently located directly above the building's electricity mainframe. Good times.

The rest of the trip was filled with red light district walks, coffee shop visits, walks through the town, personal group-famous tram rides (note: these trams do not stop for pedestrians. Walkers beware), and just a lot of fun in seeing a new place and its history. Couldn't ask for a better way to end 2007 other than perhaps having run well playing cards in December. I have a lot of Amsterdam pictures up on facebook to check out if you're friends with me on there. Otherwise you can email me or PM me on the forum and I can send you some if you'd like.

I got home new year's eve, and didn't set foot in my apartment until 9/930pm that night. I got a call from high school friends saying they were out for new year's and, having not planned anything, they asked me to come out. I was pretty beat from not having slept and a crazy 5 days overseas, but since they were just 5 minutes down the street, I couldn't say no to hanging out with old friends. We ended up going to the only bar open and had a great night hanging out and celebrating. The next day was the end for me, and I've more or less been in complete lazy mode ever since with abrupt travels and time changes and just running around getting my act together for the month.

Since coming back, I've been seeing friends that I don't get the opportunity to hang out with often, and trying to come out of a no-volume poker rut. I've been trying to pad my roll for AC and Vegas trips. I've had a solid start to the month profit wise, but still haven't gotten in the volume that I need to. I plan on trying to play a lot the next few days until our AC departure online, with hopefully one live 1/2 or 2/5 nl session for a refresher night pre-AC. On the morning of the 15th, event #1 of the Borgata world poker open, a 350 buy in no limit hold em event, will be going on. I plan on playing this event, and if things go well, possibly event #2 as well. Beyond those tournaments, I will likely focus on the side games.

We come home from Atlantic city on the 17th or 18th, and I'll be home for 2 days before heading to Vegas for 5 days for more live play with my room mate Steve (tubasteve8). Should be a good last few weeks of break, we'll see what happens in AC! Thanks for reading.

Alex

Hello blog

2007-12-25T18:18:00.001-08:00

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. Ever since School ended for me (Dec 13th) I've done a whole lot of lazying/nothing. Kind of pathetic, but it feels great :) Let's see if I can recap...

Dec 11th was my birthday. It sort of sucked, as it does every year because its right before final exams and most people can't come out to party etc... but this year there were a good amount of kids out as it fell on the last day of classes, and I did decide to say "F it" on tuesday and abandon any plans to study to make sure I enjoyed the day. The way I see it, 21 is too big not to remember. I didn't make it as big as I should have, but it was a good time. A new bar just opened in college park (finally) called "The Thirsty Turtle"...corny, I know, but probably going to be one of the better bars to be at in the coming months, and a big relief of the overcrowding issues plaguing our small college town of sex, drugs, and alcohol.

After I got through the proceeding next couple days, and final exam, I decided to really relax despite trying to refocus and pull back up from my recent major-downswing. I spent a good amount of time over the past few days hanging with friends, and seeing family and a cousin from Toronto that came to visit. We spent a good amount of time in DC at and around my brothers place in Georgetown. Overall, its been very relaxing and very nice to be on the "doing nothing" break and catching up with people that I so easily lose touch with.

Despite needing and wanting to relax, I do have serious plans to refocus poker-wise and otherwise. December began with my aforementioned huge downswing, and I still have barely put in the volume required to recover from said downswing. Amsterdam is coming up tommorow, so there won't be much poker time in it for me, which is absolutely fine. Recently, I read a thread posted by Phil Galfond (Jman28, an amazing poker player), which really reenforced the principles that I've tried to approach poker with in my time spent playing the game. It really seems to negatively impact ones self overall when they play when they truly don't want to or are not in the right mindset to, but to only play for the sake of playing, boredom, or just trying to put volume in blindly. By not playing when I don't feel like it or am not in the right conditions to, or have something "better" to do, it really helps me focus when I do sit and put the time in. This allows me to really "want it" when I put in my long sessions of multi tabling and cutting myself off from the world to focus to the best of my abilities and put in a lot of games. That said, December has really been a disappointing month with little to no volume, and almost all downswing. Its ok, though, because a lot of other stuff was good and I've continued to learn a ton via going over hands and continuing to prepare coaching lessons for post-holidays for my students.

My first order of business is to finish off 2007 with a bang, and do Amsterdam to its fullest extent. I really want to have a crazy time, so I can get it out of my system in time for a great January and year of 2008 to follow. A friend of ours is making the last minute booking of the Amsterdam trip with us and is bringing his dog, who he has a special note for as his "emotional support" and medical permission to have the dog sit with him on the plane and stay in the hotel with us :) Should be a good time.

When I come home, I expect to find a good bar with friends to hit for new year's, or at least something fun to that effect. Waking up January 1 will bring the new, full month dedicated to business (and seeing the people, of course). Being that I want the month to be poker-oriented mainly in order to finally make some serious moves, I decided to book a couple of trips to meet these goals. Atlantic City and Las Vegas are more or less officially on the docket. With WPT Borgata happening in mid january, it'll be a great opportunity to meet more 2p2ers in continuation of the summer's vegas experience, get some live tournament experience, and get some more cash game time in. Just after this I'd like to try and get to Las Vegas with the same goals in mind and really get my act together for 2008. I have an offer from some accomplished live Vegas professionals for partial backing in bigger cash games, but we'll see what develops with my own comfort, bankroll and planning on that front.

To my students- Don't worry about coaching, I will continue to accommodate lessons even with my travels, its a very important part of everyone's development, and, though a lot of lessons will need logistical shifting, it'll all be worked out for both parties. I also just came out with Donkit/Sharkscope video for 6 man SNGs and I should have another one going up of me 4-tabling micro stakes games (I felt this would be beneficial to many of the viewers). I didn't have time to record another one before getting stuff together pre-Amsterdam, but I will be making a couple more upon my return home.

That is a basic recap of whats gone on and what I'd like to have go on. In addition to my poker goals and desire to finally finish school, I'd like to get back in shape also and continue my world travels. This will most likely be my last blog post of 2007, so expect an Amsterdam recap, and big things in 2008!!! Thanks for reading.

-Alex

LALALA

2007-12-09T14:05:00.000-08:00

Most of these occur at or near a bubble, or are just ridiculously gross. Not quite sure what the hell is going on other than inexplicable horror. All of these in themselves are standard. I've never seen it all happen like this at once. Have a peeksie on my blog!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1783047
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1782940
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1767928
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1790733
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1790742

everytime i get KK an ace flops or i bubble etc etc....
my worst full table- sng downswing ever....kinda sucks. Compounded by marginal error , these swings will be among the worst i ever face in my career id say in terms of severity of negative earn (as opposed to total $ swings)

End of the month

2007-12-01T12:49:00.000-08:00

I finally had a semi "quiet week" with school, but unfortunately I came up just short of platinum star because of my detrimentally low volume at the beggining of the month. If only November had been a 31 day month....

On the bright side, I killed it on PokerStars in the last sessions of the month going for platinum star, mainly at the the 60 dollar tourneys playing 10-20 at a time continuously. It seems that most reading this aren't inerested in non-poker stuff so here are some stats of my last 3 days (aka most of the months volume) for those that wish to view them, and also for those that wonder if I actually ever play (click on image to clear it up)

or same thing at: http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/5541/chargery1.jpg

Definitely a strong finish to what was a disappointing month in the way of volume. Not a huge sample of course, and I did get pwned at my small sample at the 60 STTs of the last couple sessions, but it's not too big a deal, the downswing had to come in some form! I have to say, if thats what I can look forward to in the way of downswinging then I think I'll get by :)

My 4th Donkit/sharkscope video should be up soon as well. I am just playing one table to go over some 6 man SNG strategy (39 turbo). Turned out fine, though one hand heads up I had Freudian slip of the tongue and assigned a range of "Aces and Kings" to the button opener when I mean to illustrate a tight range of Ax and Kx hands, not just AA/KK. Sorry for the confusion, a note will be posted with the video to clarify the commentary on that one hand, otherwise it looks ok. My next video will be made shortly as well, though I haven't decided on the content just yet.

I have some school work coming up again for final exams so my volume won't be much better, but I'm essentially completely done for the semester on December 13th. Look for things to bump up big time after that (including Amsterdam!). Stay tuned and thanks for reading.

Alex

Quiet week

2007-11-28T14:09:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving break was great. Spent a few days down south at my grandparents and got some much needed family time in. It's always nice to see my grandparents, aunt and uncle and family friends, as I probably get down there two or three times a year, tops nowadays. The actual thanksgiving feast was amazing, by far the best meal of the year, and lived up to every ounce of expectation that I had for my grandmother and aunt's excellent cooking.

I came back friday night and got to spend saturday with some close friends from home. I went to lunch near home with a few of them, and later that night my closer friends came to my apartment at school for football, beers, and relaxing. It was definitely a great time. I don't think I'd seen one of my closest friends from home in 6 or so months, and most of them are not around in general so thanksgiving still remains a closely tied holiday.

School has been quiet since friends left and classes started up for the week. Luckily, I have a couple of days off from heavy course work until final exams start up again soon. The bright side is a likely great winter break is on the horizon.

I haven't played much poker...and by not much, I mean I think I've played 2 sessions this month. Pretty pathetic, but I'm going to charge ahead to sneak in platinum for the month regardless and turn up the heat. Then, when break starts, I can continue. Hopefully that plan works, I am certainly capable of disappointing myself. We'll start with 300 games in the next couple days, and go from there. Thanks for reading.

Alex

hrmph

2007-11-18T15:15:00.000-08:00

The week was tough, as expected. I got lucky midway through the week and found out that my 30 page final english paper was due monday (tommorow) and not friday. I have gotten to play no poker, and spent about 20-25 hours outside of class doing school related work. Unfortunately, my exams did not go as well as I'd hoped despite starting preparation earlier than I normally do, but hopefully I can stop the bleeding and finish the semester reasonably. There isn't much more that I can think to do beyond what I am already doing, so I'm just going to stick it out.

The plus side to finishing the week was a very very fun weekend. Friday night we had a party in the apartment and had a nice showing, and an overall good time (highlights: my roommate running around in a poncho and an off-duty stripper showing up). Last night, my friend Leah had a "WTF" theme party, where the idea was to dress in something that would elicit a "WTF?!?!" response when walking down the street. With no time to gather an outfit, I went in a nice array of sweat pants with baseball spandex on top, brown dress shoes, gloves, and the very same poncho from the previous night. I must say, I think I may have been the best dressed. My roommate Tim ended up showing up with a few friends and shared enjoyment, with lots of beer and some really good 7 layer been dip. Tim couldn't resist topping off the party with karaoke, and I must say I've never seen anyone get quite so into it before. Another good, fun night.

This week brings gathering the loose ends of my english paper together, go over some coaching stuff, and getting to the last couple days of classes before thanksgiving break. I am very much looking forward to a couple of days off before the last leg of the semester (including birthday!) I don't know that heavy poker volume will continue until after final exams, we'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading.

Alex

The weekend before death

2007-11-09T15:34:00.001-08:00

If death came in school form, it would be next week with a 30 page paper and two exams. This won't leave time to do much else, so any desire to go out would have to happen this weekend. I guess it was bound to happen eventually. Thanksgiving break will still be amidst work, so most other things will be waning in the final month+ of the semester.

All that said, I'll either go out and do something tonight or stay in and grind, as I just won't put in much other time this month. I'll still be allowing plenty of time for coaching and videos but won't be getting too indulged until winter break arrives. FTOPS (Full Tilt's big tournament series) recently began so I may be jumping into a few events this weekend, perhaps starting with tonight's 200 buy in pot limit hold em event. We'll see what happens.

After all that is over with I'm really going to have to take proactive steps toward finding a house for next year, as we do not really want to stay in campus apartments anymore and having a house allows for much more freedom and entertainment. Also, since I'll likely only be here for half the year next year, I'd need a place to go in the spring and a house would solve that issue. Moving back home is not something I can ever really foresee, but I do love the area I'm from so I'm not opposed to staying locally for now. TBA, a year off abroad is also in the cards. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

A slow start to November

2007-11-05T19:45:00.001-08:00

Well, with all of the BS ive had to deal with in school and what not, I really haven't had time to sit down and start grinding for the month. My main focus is going to have to be getting through school work, so I expect volume to wane for the next several weeks. Coaching/posting/videos will have to make up for lack of table time.

There really hasn't been too much going on thats note-worthy, I'm still trying to qualify for WPT (world poker tour) bahamas so I can spend winter break at a couple of WPT events, as our apartment has already planned to get up to Atlantic city for the world poker open at Borgata in January. I'm extremely excited for this as it will be my first live tournament series as 21+...at long last, in about 5 weeks it'll be time.

Also, my fraternity's semi-formal/dated party is on wednesday in D.C and im planning on going to that, which should be the highlight of the week. Hopefully more exciting updates to come. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

October

2007-10-31T21:48:00.000-07:00

meh at October. A lot has happened this month that signifies so many transitions, both psychological and material...hard to explain, but its been a weird and somewhat depressing month. I'm not at all unhappy that its over. Recently things have been relatively quiet, and honestly that is really ok with me, I haven't been going out much and have been trying to maintain a good balance of playing time and do-nothing-relax time in order to enjoy the balance to which I've grown accustomed.

Poker went pretty well this month. I only got in about 500 tournaments, mostly mtts, and a few hours of coaching/video making for a total of about +5k. Not bad considering I worked about 60 hours in total for the month, but I can't help but think if I got in more volume like I told myself I would that I'd be closer to the 10k mark than the 5k mark. Oh well, hopefully soon. I finally regained platinum star VIP status on pokerstars also which hasnt happened in months due to not being here in the summer to play enough and just not putting in the time at the stakes I should be playing to maintain high VIP status. Its probably too late this year, but next year I will for sure become a supernova VIP...i look forward to that. Thats about all for now, I look forward to November, and much moreso, December. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

sick

2007-10-29T23:32:00.000-07:00

I hate being sick. I woke up yesterday with a sore throat and general feeling of the common colds deathness (yes, I made up that word), so I basically did nothing all day. I sat in the dark either in my circular "chill" chair or in bed watching Arrested Development DVDs and trying to stay hydrated/medicated/rested. I'm feeling slightly better today, hopefully tommorow I'll be good to go. I decided to get to all of my classes despite the sickness, so I went from wakeup at 1030 to around 4pm without food and with very little water (Stops at fountains), and being sick and tired that just isnt much fun when you're going at a pretty fast pace during the day. Generally I don't have a problem getting through my schedule but on days like today it proved more difficult.

I came back and relaxed some before fraternity meeting, which I went to before coming back to make my 3rd video for donkit/sharkscope. I am 4 tabling 27 turbos in this video, so look for that on the site(s) if youre interested, and please, feedback always welcome via 2+2 messages, comments here, aim/email. I think it turned out well and I got into some good spots to discuss, including an early game situation that rarely comes up in sngs that was good to talk through for the audience. I'll announce when that is posted. Otherwise, there isn't too much else going on. Ideally I'd like to get in one more session tomorrow before the end of the month, we'll see if I can come through and not continue to be sick/too tired to want to put in a serious session. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Rainy Day...but not a bad one

2007-10-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

Cruddy weather out, but I've never minded the rain so much so it didn't go too poorly. lets see:

school: I had to present a lesson in English today so I had to get dressed up for that...not ideal with the water coming down on you, but it went fine I think. I skipped Badminton after that because frankly I didn't want to run 10 minutes away from my apartment, mess up my nice clothes even more and just go through the wednesday process, so I got lazy and called it quits after english. Kind of a dull rainy day I guess.

Poker: I got home and hung out with a friend upstairs, and after a couple hour, much needed nap, I sat down for a session, starting with the 55 buy in 50k grtd on stars. I added some mtts in and I was playing my usual regiment though not as intensely, I don't think I ever had more than 12 games going. Anyways, got in 35 tournaments and made 1k, which helps me crawl out of losing weekend. We'll see what happens next, I hope I can get time in to grind in the next week with the end of the month coming, I should have platinum star (VIP Status on pokerstars) and hopefully about 1k tournies for the month. We'll see about profits.

Also, my second Donkit video will be up within the next few days, so look for that on www.donkit.com or www.sharkscope.com if you want to check it out, Its another two tabling video. I'll be making my third video for the site soon and am open to suggestions of what I should play. If you have anything you'd like to suggest, feel free to leave it in the comments or email me (alex.triner@gmail.com) or to PM me on the forum. Thanks for reading, hope everyone is doing well.

-Alex

lol

2007-10-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

Poker: yeah that didnt go at all as planned. Basically after I downswung thursday night, I made it all back/friday saturday and then some, only to go -2450 yesterday. Sick career single day loser. Just multiply thursdays blog post by a factor of 5 and you'll get the idea. Truly amazing, here are just 3 representations of how it went:

The quality of play: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1614291
A typical early game beat: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1614035
When I finally went deep, it went like this: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1613726

So yeah I wont post them all, that would take a while, but it was less than desireable. I'm looking to pick it back up this evening and hope I don't have to take a break.

School/life: My brother and a couple friends were in town for the homecoming football game (UMD v. Virginia). We went tailgating for a few hours but I didn't stay for too much of the game as it was just ridiculously crowded and I was better served going to find a tv to watch with people.

I've been fighting back pains since last semester (pre-summer) and they've been acting up, so I've tried to stay loose stretching and heating and carefully avoiding class :) Well, not really, but I skipped my first this morning that I have in a while, just to relax and kind of recover between back and poker and spiting school for making me miss homecoming.

Other than another two english assignments, the week looks relatively light so I'm gonna try to get out some and just make this a relax-week. Gym? Maybe...maybe...
Thanks for reading.

-Alex

gahhh

2007-10-19T23:51:00.000-07:00

not a great end to the week.

stuff: school kinda blew this week. Got a bunch of mediocre grades back...not a huge deal but just not what I'd like to end the week with. What sucked the most was that I basically had to sit out of homecoming altogether. I had midterms through tuesday and was looking forward to our famous hayride event thursday but, realizing that I had a lab when everyone was leaving, the entire week essentially went down the tubes. Oh well, I've been to every other homecoming/greek week and its been fun, and I should get a couple of more out of my time here. Hopefully my schedule will be easier to combine fraternity stuff with in the coming weeks, I was hoping I wouldn't have to miss weeks at a time.

I guess the good news is that the homecoming football game vs Virginia is tomorrow and my brother and some friends will be in town for it, so that should be fun.

Poker: blah. last night I played and got dominated both in cash games and tournaments for my worst losing night online at approximately -1600. It wasn't too fun, but I guess it does happen. It was just so unreal how all the beats can flood at you at once, when you're never less than a 3:1 favorite to win a hand and you just can't seem to win. Well, as any experienced player knows the only way to battle it out is put the time in so thats what I plan on doing. I sat down again tonight for a session and it went similarly poorly, but I did end up a couple hundred which was certainly preferably to another disaster night. Still hurting from the loss but I was winning consistently and big prior to last night so I have a feeling I'll be able to recover nicely from this. I plan on playing some tommorow during the day and making sunday a poker day as well...this is going to be the first week in several that I am likely going to play the sunday major tournaments on full tilt and pokerstars (the million grtd, 750k grtd and second chance tournaments). Beyond squeezing homework in around the football game/saturday happenings and poker, thats the gist of the weekends plans. I hope I have good news by the end! Thanks for reading.

-Alex

bread winning and spending

2007-10-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

i think ill go back to dividing the blog into poker and life, i think some people are more interested in one vs the other, and this way I can go into a bit more detail when I want to talk about hands or more about something else etc... anyways

poker: played last night for a few hours, got in 30 tournaments. Not a huge amount but during the week any 30 game day is a good one. Fortunately, I hit for 2k and had my 2nd greater-than-1.5k day in about a week, needless to say I'm on pace to tear it up this month with any more volume and any more running decently well. Hopefully I can keep it up, its nice to be shipping it more consistently.

In other news, my 2nd video for donkit/sharkscope should be posted in the coming week when they figure some stuff out, so be on the lookout for that. If anyone has any feedback for me on the 1st video, please feel free to post it here, PM me on the forums, or email me (Alex.triner@gmail.com)...I'm always looking for ways to improve my n00bness at video making and instruction.

Life: I finished most of the bout of my midterms and what not which is nice, but I have constant english projects which have been keeping me annoyingly busy.
Also, I'm still going through some back issues stemming from the end of last semester, so I'm also really hoping to get back into the gym on a semi consistent basis. Both of these tasks should stay consistent through the semester, so I'm hoping things like my poker schedule, sleep schedule and partying/people schedules will also somehow sync.

The biggest highlight right now is probably the booking of a trip to amsterdam for myself and my brother, as well as any friends who want to join. We are close to confirming details on the trip, and I'm really very excited to head there for the first time. He's been there a few times (and talks about wanting to move there after every return), so I know it'll be a great experience. If any friends want to join, shoot me an IM, its looking like December 26-31st time frame is when cheap airfare is available. As most people know, I love to travel, so going anywhere for the first time is exciting for me, and I've especially wanted to visit Amsterdam for quite some time. I have to say, things look good overall, hopefully I can stay afloat with the english work. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

long, long week

2007-10-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

I can't express enough how glad I am that this week is over. Honestly, it was just one thing after another. Teachers unhappy that I have a difficult course schedule to accomodate, midterms, people annoying me about stupid things, people owing money, general inconsiderate environments and stressful workloads, I'm just so glad the weekend has arrived. I got to play a small session tonight where MTTs were severely rigged but the 45 man sngs went well and i still turned a few hundred in profit despite a rough go at the big multis that i was playing. it seemed that flips were 80/20s tonight and whenever someone was supposed to be making a move they had a monster....just the way some nights go I guess, can't complain too much since I did come away with profit.

I've spent a good deal of the afternoon also trying to relax a bit and organize and line up more videos for donkit.com/sharkscope as well as work with some students on logistics for the upcoming weeks. Schedules are slowly coming into place. Next week shouldn't be too much easier for me due to another midterm and homecoming, along with trying to keep up steady poker work to keep up a very promising trend thus far. Anyways, looking forward to the weekend hiatus, sucking it up through the week then hopefully having some down time for online stuff/personal stuff/non school stuff.

I highly encourage those SNG and cash grinders that find video instruction useful to buy the videos at www.donkit.com and www.sharkscope.com (poker videos link), I've heard nothing but good things about both sites and the video authors and quality, and I think I'm going to be a strong addition to the selection with my first video being in full swing for sales on both sites finally!

Finally, last night after the bulk of the week was done I got to participate in some fraternity happenings finally and really got to connect with a lot of the members of the pledge class. These kids are really great kids and look promising for the chapter and our future strength, I'm excited to have them ready to go and come aboard, but I do have to say some stern talking-to's never did hurt any of them. They're close and should make us proud. I really am going to make my best effort to see to the end of the pledging process consistently and strongly as I feel this has been some of the best interactions I've had with guys that I'll be able to call brothers soon. I think thats about it in my life for now without any boring detail, thanks for reading.

-Alex

Schoolaments

2007-10-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

Yeah, school work is in full swing now. With a 30-40 page paper and exams coming up, I'll definitely have my share of work to do, but I intend on still getting to extra curricular stuff as well as try to get my time in at the tables. I did have the chance to get in about 50 games yesterday, starting out rough but finishing up strong. Two saturday sessions, a poker video, an hour of coaching and a seat to the sunday million later, i was +1800. Not a bad weekend.

The weekend was relatively uneventful, I was lazy thursday and friday, people always come in and out of the apartment to say hey but I didn't have the energy to go out and certainly didn't feel like drinking, so it wasnt until Saturday that I decided to finally go out on a weekend night in CP for the first time in quite a while. I went with one of my roommates and a few other friends to a party close by that was fun but somewhat uneventful. After, couple of us went back to a friends place to relax, listen to music and smoke a bit, and thats basically how I rounded out my night. I came back, hung out and passed out to planet earth, a fantastic nature show on the discovery channel? Im not sure, I download them because they're so awesome. I highly recommend late night discovery watching.

This week I have a good amount of studying to look forward to, hopefully with some fraternity happenings mixed in, as well as a couple of hours for for video-making and some coaching scheduled. I think my sister might be visiting at the end of the week for a night, so I have that to look forward to also. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

The venture continues

2007-09-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

With school work on the rise and general laziness I haven't yet gotten a "good" act together for my online playing regiment recently, but as I stated in my last entry coaching had started nicely enough to keep me involved. Yesterday, it went a bit further when I got an offer to join www.donkit.com to become a video author for their site. The pay is great and the work will help expand coaching and my analytical approach to play overall. This is very exciting as I've often looked forward to the prospect of working with a site for something like this. I highly recommend the videos on there for both SNGers and cash game players, videos from the likes of curtain, newt_buggs and cero_z are all well worth it. Look for my first videos to be up in the coming weeks/months hopefully.

I have a relaxing weekend more or less, as I plan to record my first video for the site , perhaps get some work done, hopefully play some, and just hang out. Hopefully all remains smooth, this has definitely been a boost to the week. I also look forward to trying to get to some more fraternity events with the new pledge class, the kids are looking good. Can't think of too much else new going on, hope everyone is doing well, and thanks for reading. Look forward to updating soon.

-Alex

post holiday update

2007-09-24T00:25:00.000-07:00

honestly, i dont even know what to post in here usually which is why i havent posted much lately. basically, school is in full swing and the holidays have kind of hit their semi hiatus, at least the the two big ones are done with. I enjoy spending time with the family but commuting to my parents' house is a big pain. Great food definitely made it worth it, however.

my sng coaching venture has somewhat taken off as well. I have 4 consistent students now through the 40 and 50 buy in levels and so far so good. Not a ton of hours put in yet but im excited to keep going and see what im capable of in this venture; I really think it will help to focus my game, and there has already been evidence of this.

I've also just been informed of another trip to Greece and Israel in the spring time, and there is potential talks of bahamas and amsterdam in the mix at other times in upcoming months. I'm very excited, hopefully I survive the semester to get there! I'm finally thinking about looking into buying a camera, might be worth it to motivate myself to make trip reports after worthy trips.

Anyways, thanks for reading, an update should come along at some point.

-Alex

-Alex

holidays

2007-09-13T06:18:00.001-07:00

well, that pretty much sums it up. i have basically nothing going on this week due to the jewish holidays/laziness so ill be doing a lot of the home-for-meals thing. Other than that, i have played basically no poker and done basically nothing with my frat so im trying to turn both of those things around currently, in addition to keeping up with school, which is so far so good. With rush come and gone I look forward to spending a good amount of time with our pledges. Last pledge class I regret not being there for as a brother and I think it hurt my relationship with some of them. I'd like to go out on a strong note in that sense. We'll see if I can be active long enough to keep that up.

I also officially started coaching this week, having my first couple of coaching sessions with some 16s and 27s STTers. Both went reasonably well for my first formal sessions for levels that ive beaten.

On a related note, I've decided to keep sit and gos in my poker regiment for now, mainly at the 60 dollar level while i continue my cash game quest through nl100, 200 and eventually to 400. This will allow me to make sure I'm not rusting up on my sng game while im still taking on students to coach at the lower buy ins. It'll also give me a shot to test my resolve at the 60s, as I have a very small sample at the level in recent memory. Ill also continue mtts and live cash games up through nl500.

All of this aside, however, its WCOOP time! Pokerstars big online tourney series starts tommorow and goes for weeks and in addition to satelliting in, I'm looking to sell some of my action (contact me if interested). we'll see what comes next, for now its holiday time. Thanks for reading, Happy new year (Shana Tovah)!!

-Alex

exhausted

2007-09-08T18:04:00.000-07:00

wow i never thought the transition back to school could be so taxing, I seriously have had a tough time running around campus like I used to, but classes seem manageable this semester so ill deal. Recently really havent been too productive, dealing with an expensive parking permit fiasco, schooling and trying to make fraternity stuff happen. I need to get back into a poker routine, i havent played in weeks and im not too happy about that. I have, on the other hand, signed on a couple of new SNG students so thats positive for my coaching career which I will continue with on the side of my cash games and limited STT volume nowadays. Hope something good comes up soon, as soon as I can find pictures from my family I would like to post a europe trip report. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

back in town

2007-09-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

sorry for the lack of update, just returned from Greece Monday night, and my body has been unusually out of whack. I've been sleeping a ton and havent had the energy to do much else (haven't even played poker since I came home). I'm feeling a bit better today even though my sleeping is still messed up so I may try to put in a session later after seeing friends and running errands. I will try to get a Europe trip report out but for now I can preface it by saying it was quite awesome, and I had an unforgettable summer overall. It was just what I needed to try and get my head on straight for the fall with everything going on. Hope all is well with everyone, I guess you can expect some report soon. Thanks for reading, wish me well in recovery.

-Alex

running late!

2007-08-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

I'm literally running out the door right now to get home before we head to the airport. My trip to europe begins today. I wont be blogging for a couple of weeks, so around the 27th is when ill be back. Hope you all end your summers well, I know I will....stay tuned for summer reports and such when I return! Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Rollercoaster!

2007-08-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, the last couple of days have been crazy.

I started futzing with some multi table sngs just for the interim pre-europe to mix things up at the 27 and 60 buy in. The last three days of them, 8-14 tabling: +600, -800,+1200. Good result, INCREDIBLY swingy up to the last few games. Seriously, tournaments of any sort in volume are not for the faint of heart, but I can't say I'm not feeling good by the end.

Other than some poker I've seen a few friends around home and been moving stuff around between the upcoming trip and moving bedrooms to the end/big bedroom of our apartment. I'm finally all moved in and everything has been good, clean and set up. I'm excited to finally have a lot of room AND a single bedroom with a big bed. Things are looking good right now so hopefully no disasters pre europe (other than the passport fiasco- who knew there was a pre-expiration date for those damn things?) Thanks for reading.

Alex

boring day

2007-08-04T21:34:00.001-07:00

i woke up at around 9am today for NO reason. I was pretty lazy and just hung around the apartment, did mostly nothing except talked to some friends. I wasn't feeling great tonight and wasn't up to going out so I just stayed in and played some tournaments online. Played for a few hours, +600 in tournies (mainly 60s with some 27s). Other than that, I have done nothing productive. Will report back with something interesting should said topic of interest arise. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

an update

2007-08-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

sorry i havent updated for a while, to be honest there isnt much worth updating on.

I have played barely any poker beyond the odd home game and nl100 and 200 online (<3k hands since ive been home), and ive been pwning those sunday million satellites for 5 seats at this point. beyond that, not much doing.

In the real world, I've gotten a chance to hang out with some good high school friends recently and its been nice. In my hometown theres a very short list of entertaining things to do without going into the city, so we've entertained ourselves with meals and movies when I leave my burrow (apartment). So far I've seen Harry potter 5 (meh compared to the book, big meh compared to the other movies), I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry (funny, not Sandler's best work but it'll do good enough), The simpsons movie (good for a final movie, not amazing) and "Once" is next on the list. I've heard fantastic things about it so I'm looking forward to it.

Other than that, things are getting cooking for our family trip to Greece/Turkey. The bride of the wedding that we're attending in Greece (close family friends) called today and told my brother and me that we are going to be Groomsmen, which is exciting because I don't do too many weddings and certainly have not been a Groomsmen for a Greek wedding. I've been on death-trips to the suit store (I hate shopping) but its definitely worth it for this trip. Hopefully all updates will be good ones until I leave. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Lazy Day

2007-07-21T20:56:00.001-07:00

I kind of overslept lunch at home so I woke up at around 2:15 this afternoon and high tailed it home. I played with the baby cousin for a bit, the friends dog, helped the sis out with her surgery recovery stuff and relaxed at home for a while. I came back and was kind of just lazying around when I figured I didnt feel like going out, so I'd play some sunday million stats and see if they were soft enough to make a quick buck. Yep, they were. I played like 5 or 6 satellites and won 3 seats for +640 post-exchange in the hour and a half-two hours i played today. I'll take it for a lazy weekend day. I will probably go out for a little while and see some people and enjoy the rest of the night. Thanks for reading, maybe something interesting will come soon.

-Alex

Edit: woke up this morning (sunday) and played two sats before I went home for a bit...so make that 4 seats for +860. ship.

Home!

2007-07-20T10:26:00.001-07:00

Ah, its nice to be back. The first stop getting back from the airport was the barber shop, where my curls and beard came off. It felt amazing to feel the non desert air on my bare face, and it was definitely necessary. It's nice to be back.

I got home and visited (/am visiting while i write this) with my sister who is in recovery from shoulder surgery. I've also gotten to hang with my parents a bit, though my mom is running around in preparation for cousins coming this evening and spending the weekend here. Other than that I'll probably hang around home, possibly meet up with some people, and stay home through dinner with the extended family. I'll head back to my apartment at some point after that where I'll get to resume life in the lazy manner to which I've grown so accustomed to doing. Its good to be back.

-Alex

Farewell Devin

2007-07-19T01:36:00.000-07:00

I woke up around 2pm today and Devin and I headed to lunch at this decent burger joint (Red Robin) around the corner from the house. We hung around the house for a while before heading out for a goodbye dinner for Devin with Rob and Travis. We went to a fantastic sushi joint called Sushirogo (spell check?) in the Caesar's palace shops. It was really great food, and it was a further pleasant experience when the hottest blonde chick I've seen in Vegas sat down at the table next to us so we had a nice view to go with dinner.

After some good sushi we dropped Devin at the airport and went to the Bellagio to put in my final session for the trip. Travis and I sat at the same 2/5 table that just started and basically neither of us got anything going in the hour we got to sit before Rob came out of the 10/20 game in a huff after losing a big flip and a sick cooler where he lost with top two vs a set, followed by donking off his final chips with 33 into AA (while getting slow rolled). -10k :( I didn't want to face sitting there tired all night so we racked up and joined Rob for the trip back to the house. Not an overly eventful day but we're winding things down here in LV with Devin's departure and by this time tommorow I'll be on a flight home. Overall it was a fantastic trip; plans changed throughout and therefore goals had to change, but I still made a few thousand and free-rolled on all the vegas expenses because of poker, pulling in a cool 65ish/hour. I'll take it.

I hope everyone enjoyed reading the reports, I'll continue to blog while home on anything interesting that may happen. Thanks for reading!

-Alex

House game at the Palms, hangin with the ballas and the Bellagio

2007-07-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

So last night we decided we wanted to play a house sit and go, and since we knew nothing in poker ever happened at the Palms, and they had spread a game for us once, we tried there. They ended up not allowing tournaments for us so we decided to play a 1/2 mix PLO/NLH. I ended -100 after donking a river bluff when JShuttlesworth called with his bluff catcher, then at the end 3 barrel bluffed one of the two fun randoms that sat at the table and dumped 1k each to our game. I was tired so I didn't play a "real" live session afterward.

Today I woke up and eventually Devin and I dropped off Rob and Dave to play at Bellagio and we headed to the shipitholla mansion to hang with the ballas for a while. We basically hung out there, watched the WSOP final table in their awesome home theatre, got messed up and ate...overall had a good time, the entire crew is very hospitable and all very nice guys despite having ridiculous amounts of money.

We left the shipit mansion and headed to Bellagio around midnight for a night session. I sat 2/5 and quickly realized that my table was the most loose/passive table in the world featuring one old guy who literally just called anyting for anything with any type of close to made hand ever. He limp/shoved JTo at one point and, when he had the betting lead would bet down with basically anything. No one was 3 betting preflop at this table and I had a pretty tight image, so when there was a raise to 25 from a solid player and 5 callers, i had to have that 140 in dead money, so I made it 120 to go with T5o (obv). A short stack moved in for 75 total, so I realized I would have to show down my hand which kind of sucked, then the old crazy guy called the 120 more. I flopped a 5 on a super drawy board and ended up checking it down with the old guy, and my T5 was good against his K7o for king high and the short stack mucked, and I took a 350ish pot down with my pair of fives. Woooooo. No real other interesting hands, stacked a couple of short stacks but not much to talk about. We ended our session around 515-530am and headed home. +400, decent.

I have barely two more days in Vegas and I have to say going into the last couple days its been awesome, and saying goodbye to the ballas was depressing because they are great guys and really know how to be both hospitable and have a good time. Hopefully the last couple days will go successfully without any shocking Las Vegas story that you hear about on the news. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

A solid night at the office

2007-07-16T06:01:00.000-07:00

After lounging around and breaking even online today, Devin, Rob and myself headed down to the Wynn, met up with Owen and Alex, and sat down for a session. I sat 1/3 which was looking nice and deep (effective stacks for half the table probably around 800, then the other half with 200 or less probably), while Devin sat 5/10 and Rob 10/20. The night was a lot of breaking even, but a nice run in the last couple hours of the session. Some key hands:

Couple of limps around I complete the SB with J8dd. We take a flop 3 or 4 ways of 7x6d5d. I check BB leads middle position raises and I repop it to 163. BB shoves 90 over that and MP folds. I obviously call, he has 77 and I brick off twice. I basically never play the hand differently (I do lead sometimes). Oh well. Quick -several hundred there. 4 or 5 hands later big donkey limps I limp A3dd we take a flop ways of K84 two diamonds. Checks to me I bet 15 donkey calls. Turn pairs the 4 and gives me the big flush. Donkey checks I fire pot he calls. River is an offsuit jack making the final board Kd8d4x4dJh. Donkey leads 75 into me I jam and he has like 275-300ish behind. He tanks forever commenting on the fact that I don't play many hands (which a) is completely untrue I was in a lot of pots and b) he said that the 2nd hand I was dealt in at the table, as well as the third and fourth), and after thinking FOREVER calls and obviously mucks. I really don't know if he could have had anything but KJ but who knows. That put me back around even, and for the next several hours thats just about where I stayed.

A long time later I end up making a flush in a blind battle vs a reasonably aggro British guy (who blows up at me when I outdrew his straight, shipit, and thats what you get for playing your hand poorly), then flop a set with 99 in a min 3-bet pot vs AK on K97 flop and the guy open jams, then we FINALLY get shorthanded around 3:30am. Live shorthanded is fun as no one knows how to adjust so I got to play 6 handed for an hour and 4-5 handed for an hour, taking just about every pot that people offered me...though most small just making sure I was in a lot of pots.

Up and down up and down, but the night ended well, that was the interesting stuff that I can remember, finished the night +400. Considering I hit 3-4 flops all night in any type of big way after an 8-9 hour session I'm pretty happy. Hopefully I'll get to play a couple more decent sessions before I head back east....there are talks of a house sit and go to take place at the palms tomorrow, so we'll see if that develops. It's about 6:30am local time now, so I'm gonna consider heading to bed. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Meh

2007-07-15T00:48:00.000-07:00

I went down to the Bellagio today to do a favor for a friend, and I decided to sit for a while. The 2/5 list at the Bellagio was not moving so a while later I walked over to Caesars to play the 1/3 500 max game. Game was nitty and not great, but I ended up getting up because I didn't deserve to make money. In an early hand I had Q8o in the bb and saw a 3 way flop of 79Tcc. It checked to the button who bet 10, both the sb and me called. The turn was an ace and i fired pot, the button folded and the small blind called. The river was a jack, and for some reason (I credit it to idiocy and not paying close enough attention) I though I only had a jack high straight, and the sb fired 80 into me. He had about 100 behind and I was sure he wasn't folding to the chop so I flat called the raise. DOH! Wow, wish I read my hand correctly because he flipped 86 (obviously) and I scooped and didn't even realize it until the dealer announced my queen high straight. Why am I dumb? I have no idea. I got up and took a lap around the room, and told myself that if I made another careless error that I wouldn't be treated to everyone at the tables' money.

Sure enough, a while later I grabbed chips to open raise a pot with AKdd and I made it 20 under the illusion that I was at the Wynn where they have 3 dollar chips. Too bad only the wynn uses 3 dollar chips and I had 5 dollar chips when I meant to open to 12. I took down the blinds, but when I realized that yet again I made a careless, inexcusable, stupid error on a routine open raise I stuck to what I said and told myself that I just wasn't allowed to play if I couldn't adhere to not playing like a moron and making mistakes that a drunk person would make. I got up +220, which was still nice, but missed out on another 150 or so in equity and feeling like I had just smashed my head into a wall, with those stupid mistakes. Live and learn I guess.

I came home, hung out for a while and got an IM from spacegravy saying to come over and hang out at the SNGicons mansion while he grinded a bit. I headed over there, watched him luckbox his way to victory by never losing coinflips, and just shot some pool and drank a bit and hung out with him, z32, and a couple of z32's friends. I wasn't dressed or ready to go clubbing so when they left I just headed back home. Not a very happening day, hopefully my head will be removed from my ass for tommorow and I can proceed with life.

Also, Dave (Green Kool Aid) arrived yesterday. He was supposed to live with us the entire month and was the reason that rob was living here at all (they're best friends outside of the online poker world), but due to life he ended up not coming out. Luckily he gets to enjoy a few days out here. "Happening" house with 8 of us here now, should be a nice last few days. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

The depressing part of life, poker, and the puppet of doom

2007-07-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

So the last week or so has brought really depressing news. There have been a few phone calls that have brought nothing but news of death, and its really thrown me off everything. My neighbor of 18 years passed away over a week ago due to long standing heart complications, and a girl that I graduated high school with passed away two nights ago from a heart attack. That mixed in with on and off talks about death with various friends and people has just put me in very downer mode.

I was about to sit for a game at the Wynn when I got a call from my good friend Josh from high school about the news. I was quickly in no mental condition to play poker, so I hit the bar instead. After some long island iced teas and beers, I was feeling more comfortably depressed and decided to walk to the poker room, as a few friends were playing in there. Al (ALreturnsLOL) bustoed his short live roll in the 1/3 uncapped game. Rob and mike were playing the 10/20 uncapped game while Ari (AZK) and Alex (Gary Stevenson) were pwning 25/50nl uncapped featuring running back Lamont Jordan and trust fund baby with 100k on the table, action Dan. Quite a site to see such bad play at levels as high as 25/50.

I headed to grab food with Rob, Ari, AL and Mike at a high class asian restaraunt, enjoyed some nice sushi, and headed back to the pokerroom. After sobering up I saw Owen (Jshuttlesworth) playing a shorthanded 1/3 game, and though still a little bit buzzed, felt like I was ready to take an edge off and sit for a while.

I bought for 500 and quickly was getting involved in a few pots. The highlights:

I open the cutoff with 98o to 15 and get 2 callers, the button and out of the blind. The flop came 5c6c7 (nuts) and I led for 40 and the button thought and called. Now, this guy was trying to call all of my hands without a showdown with his girl sitting behind him, so, though I had no solid reads, I was willing to try and show him up in front of the Ms. The turn brought the 10c, and I led for 55 and got raised to 200. I thought for a few seconds and, though it was possible he was playing his flush like this, I couldn't narrow his range enough to seriously consider folding, and I certainly couldn't raise, so I flat called the raise thinking that he shuts down with all of his made hands that don't beat a straight, and probably wouldn't run a big bluff once called on the turn. The river paired the 5, and I checked and he checked behind, mucking to my straight.

The next hand I had QsTs and called an Early position raise. In the heads up pot the flop came Q high and reasonably dry. I called a bet. The turn checked through and when the river bricked as well, the bettor checked again and I quickly potted it. He quickly called and mucked to my top pair. I love the old "he checked the turn so he can't have a queen here" thought process.

After a bit more dabbling I started feeling hangover effects, got a major headache and decided that I had to get up. Finished the 1.5 hour session at +200.

I watched some more of the big games and eventually we recruited Brett to drive out and pick us up, as Rob was planning to stay all night and he needed the car to pick up Dave (Green Kool Aid) this morning. On to puppet.....

You can read up on the rules of puppet here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=11144258&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

Basically its a sick sick game where hold em hands are dealt to the players, who ante up at a preassigned amount (1 dollar for our game) and a dead hand is also dealt (the puppet). Anyone who decides to play their hand (decides simultaneously) runs their hand out vs anyone playing and the pupper, and the pot is replaced by the loser (or losers, if the puppet scoops). You wouldn't think this game plays terribly big with 1 dollar antes, but...it does. If you scroll to a few pages in the above post you'll see both my posts (AMT) and Costanza's post with details. The short of it is that the puppet kept bad beating everyone in runner runner gutshot straights, boat>boat, and pwning actual flips and the pot quickly ran up to 2700, when bengiec wouldn't chop the pot to prove one of his ridiculous emo points about playing stupid gambling games (that he requested to be woken up to play). After one more 3 way beat where the puppet scooped, the pot hit 8k and bengiec still wouldnt chop the pot. Now, literally, we've rapidly approached puppet for ROLLS.

Futuredoc decided to play KQ for 8k heads up vs. the puppet, and the puppet turned over AK. After flipping a shit and going ballistic, he spiked a Queen on the flop, putting bengiec in the hole 4k and getting himself unstuck. It was...ridiculous, to say the least. Quite the game if you're looking to flip coins for bankrolls.

Anyways, thats what vegas has brought since the parents left town. I'm going to do my best to put in some poker time in the week before I leave, as after losing my prop bet with AZK I haven't had the motivation that I would have, and basically haven't played nearly enough. We'll see what this week brings, thanks for reading.

-Alex

Double update

2007-07-10T02:54:00.000-07:00

Not a ton going on here the last few days; we've had 2p2ers in and out of the main event pretty quickly, including our very own luke (IWEARGOGGLES) being the 1st one out of the 2007 main event! Give it up for Luke! Everyone else seems to be following in similar fashion, and running like ass, but Isura, Rob, and Devin are still in the event so hopefully we can continue to get something going for day 2.

Yesterday all we did was play online. I played a bunch of multi's, ran like complete crap in everything, but at least made all of my buy ins/entree fees back playing cash games. boooo donkaments, yay cash games. It was uber rigged, but oh well, these things happen.

Today, after a nice late mexican lunch, Devin, ALreturns (who has finally arrived in one piece, six days later off of a train from West Virginia...dont ask) and myself headed down to the WSOP to check on Rob and Isura and whichever other trout were still present in the tournament. We didn't find much but got to see Isura at the featured table with Phil Hellmuth (he ended up busting Hellmuth, shipit) and Rob working up his stack in his typical pwnerific LAG fashion.

After a bit of sweatage, we headed over to the Venetian and met up with Dan (Citanul) and his girlfriend for dinner at a nice French Restaraunt. I enjoyed dinner for the most part even though I was still somewhat full from lunch, and I very much enjoyed finally meeting Citanul. He was nothing like I expected in real life in appearance but still a good Jewish guy and was overall very nice and a pleasure to hang out with.

After Dan put his GF in a cab back to MGM, we all headed down to the Venetian poker room to try and put a short session in at the tables before Devin had to head back here to rest up for WSOP Day 2. After a ridiculous wait for 1/2, AL and I got seats while Dan and Devin played some 2/5. My session was not terribly eventful; I 3-bet every opportunity I could (4 times in 70 minutes) with J9s, AQo, 99 and KJo. All of these pots were either folded pf or folded to my flop cbet when I inevitably missed every flop. Fortunately in live cash when the other guy misses to, no one wants the pot anymore except the guy that continues to bet aka me. So I took a lot of stabs and went up and down with my stack, though no big swings. The only medium sized pot I got to play was against Scotty's (from Europtrip) brother, while Scotty stood behind him and watched. I raised QQ in the hijack over limpers to 20 and his brother called on the button. His brother called me down on a jack high board, and I made a 4 straight on the river on the J 9 x 8 T board. He folded to the river after calling down my PSB's all the way, and it was a nice 150ish pot. After this, Scotty and his brother walked off and I sat for a while not getting much going. I only ended up sitting for 70 minutes before Devin wanted to head back so he could rest up for tommorow. I ended +60, weeeee.

I'm only here for another 10ish days, so I'm going to try and put in a good amount of time at the tables, and hopefully not busto this last week+. I wish all the 2p2ers left in the ME the best of luck, and may your AA/KK start holding up. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Edit: The only other mentionable that I can think of are the last few days where I have decided to take on a few students to coach in low buy in Sit and Go's. Over the last several weeks I have gotten more PMs (private messages) on the 2+2 forums from low buy in single table tournament players asking for coaching than I know what to do with. For a long time I simply denied coaching and recommended some other known coaches/solid SNGers that posted on the forum, but I've decided for several reasons that this will be a good experience for me beyond any coaching I've done for friends or the occasional poster on the side. We'll see how it goes!

The parents are in town

2007-07-06T03:51:00.000-07:00

so today I woke up around 11 and headed down to the MGM grand where my parents are in town for a few days with my younger sister for her martial arts convention. Its a nice time for them as they can make it a vacation.

Basically we hung out by the pool all day, and had a nice dinner at a mexican restaraunt in mgm (for the life of me, i cant remember the name of it). afterward, i said goodbye to my parents and decided to play some cards while waiting for rob and his girlfriend. I was pretty tired so i decided to not play much 2/5 tonight, but I sat 1/2 at mgm and to say the least, the game was laughable.

I did run well, and it started out with a german guy calling 3 streets of betting with one pair and mucked to my overpair (AA on a K high board, obviously), and continued when I was dealt AA again, and an over aggressive swedish kid basically announced he knew i had AA preflop when i 3 bet (yes, obviously i only 3bet AA preflop), which basically TOLD me he was going to take his "call the flop, bluff when checked to on the turn" line. sure enough, thats what happened, and i shipped a couple hundred more in that pot. I bluffed the swedish kid taking advantage of my nit image, and kind of just ran the table for a while but only played for about 90 minutes before deciding I was too tired to keep going. +500.

I walked over to the Bellagio afterward then got a call from my friend misha (AZK's brother) that he had come along last minute to vegas for the weekend with Ari. Rob and his girlfriend Noel (spell check?) met up with us and mikeCH after I hightailed it to the Rio. We had a few drinks for misha's birthday, and I caught a glimpse of the 100/200 nl game going on featuring a drunk ben affleck and matt damon, and a sober daniel alaei and gabe thaler licking their lips. After a nice sit down and catch up with the boys, we said goodbye and after a long long day, headed home. I wake up in about 5 hours for a family brunch with my aunt as well, so I'll look forward to that (and less forward to not sleeping tonight). Thanks for reading.

-Alex

1/2 PLOMAHAHAHAHA and a balla dinner

2007-07-04T01:53:00.000-07:00

so this afternoon we decided we wanted to go the Orleans for some old school vegas and play the only 1/2 PLO game that we knew of. After arriving and finding out we'd have to wait a couple of hours to get the game going, Rob, Devin and myself headed to the palms to play before we met up with Riverboatking and all of the HSNL crew for a celebration dinner for RBK's 10k PLO final table.

When we got to the Palm we saw two small poker rooms, and several empty tables, so we asked if they would spread a 1/2 PLO game for us. They graciously complied and we started a three handed PLO game. Quickly, the game grew and eventually, with a couple of randoms, nathan, brett and ben joined the game as well. Albeit a "friendly" game, every other pot was a big big pot for a 1/2 PLO 200 minimum buy in, and Rob and I came away the big winners. I ended up getting it all in in a 4 way all in when I flopped a big wraparound with 89TJ vs a bigger wraparound, and two different 2 pair and flush draw hands. The turn and river were both kings, and though I was sure that the paired board made my turned nuts no good, it didnt, and the ONLY card on board that could pair and still give me the win did. I chopped a small main pot with brett and his wraparound and I took down a huge side pot that basically put me +570 on the session. ship PLOmahaha!

After the game Rob, Devin and I had to head to Nine, the upscale restaraunt at the Palms for the celebration dinner where we met up with other 2p2ers including: riverboatking, jman, travestyfund, apathy, raptor, inyaface, bigt, fslexcduck, ahnuld, us three, and a couple of other close friends and 2p2ers I did not know.

Dinner was really awesome...we completely balled out with the HSNLers on four incredibly expensive bottles of win (at least 300 each?) and all of the appetizers and main courses. We all threw down 150 for the dinner, and with a 500 dollar balance after that, we did a 17 way flip for the remainder. Phil (jman) chose number 16 and with all of our credit cards in the middle, riverboatking counted off the top. Jman and I were the only ones both from maryland, so when both of our cards were right next to each other, I thought I was in trouble when I saw blue Chevy Chase, knowing I was 1:1 to pay the last 500. Luckily, RBK flipped over the card and it read Phil Galfond. Ship not having to pay the last 500! close one. Afterward we just decided to head home, myself drunk and Rob tired. In typical expensive dinner fashion + drunkenness, I graciously vomited up the remainder of my 200(ish) dollar meal and decided to call it a night. Tommorow, there is supposed to be a party at the SNGicons mansion, so we'll see what the day brings with that. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

LOL 10K PLOAMENTS!

2007-07-03T01:54:00.000-07:00

So today Rob, Devin and I headed to the wynn to play some cash. We got there and realized the 50-name long waitlist just wasnt gonna cut it, so after meeting up with Rob's friend and hanging at Bally's, we headed to the Rio to sweat Jonas (Riverboatking) in the 10k pot limit omaha WSOP world championship event. Jonas is an absolutely sick player both at PLO and NLH and despite him being a cash game player (this is just his 5th live mtt ever!), he was chip leader from 70-17 players left when he took a hit against the biggest fish at the table in two pretty big pots, and against Doyle Brunson with 14ish left for a lot of chips as well. The donkey cold called a pot size pf open with AJT5 rainbow and they got it in on a QhTh5 flop. OBV. The donkey later busted someone when he was obviously up against the nut straight on a flop check/raise all in when he had a bare flush draw, and drawing to just seven outs (AI player had 2 hearts for the straight flush draw as well), of course hits again.
We went to dinner with Jonas, he got his game back on, and he was still ready to go and playing solid poker. Finally, the 10 player final table bubble busted with David Chiu going out in 10th to the big donkey when his AAxx got cracked by ATJ8 double suited on a J8x flop. gg David.

Even though the stacks are shallow when they ended blinds tonight at 15k/30k, Jonas is 6th/9 going into the final table and is probably the 2nd best player at the table next to Patrick Antonius. The final table lineup is: Brunson, Antonius, Marco Traniello, Jonas, Robert Mizrachi, and a couple of no names. Sick sick final table, and ill be there tommorow with the gang to sweat and watch as 2p2 [hopefully] FINALLY takes a bracelet. gogogog RBK! Thanks for reading.

-Alex

I deserve to lose

2007-07-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

after stopping off for beers and pool at the SNGicons mansion, we headed to the Rio to play some 2/5. There really isnt anything interesting to write about it....i played like complete ass. i was not thinking through hands, i chose a TERRIBLE spot to put in a 3 bet bluff on the flop against a tight player and another unforgivable river fold when I didn't believe him on the turn and still folded to a river bet after holding the fucking money over the pot, timing down and still folding....obviously I was shown the bluff. The next little while proceeded to be me calling down in spots where I figured players for one pair hands that I had beat and drawing to less than 5 outs, and they still managed to hit most of the time....I was stuck 500 at one point but managed to escape -140. I'm actually really ecstatic that I only lost 140, I felt that I deserved to lose my entire bankroll based on how poorly I was thinking and playing. I guess its good that this is my biggest losing session since vegas cause its basically nothing at 2/5nl, but I played godawful and really just need to put this behind me and get my head out of my ass.

5k 6 max event, and some shipping

2007-06-29T02:15:00.000-07:00

today was day 1 of the 5,000 dollar buy in shorthanded no limit hold em event at the WSOP, and I was woken up at 11am by Rob after his cruddy online session so that he'd have someone to go down to the event with. I was planning on sweating all the 2p2ers today and playing some side games at the Rio anyways, so I obliged right when I woke up and we headed down to the series.

Robs table wasn't anything special, but it featured Men "the master" Nguyen running over everyone. No one at the table ever folded to a 3-bet preflop, so it was really a waste for Rob and he couldn't get anything moving. At 100/200 blinds with just about 4.3k, Men opened to 600 and Rob shoved the small blind for a sizy reraise. Men literally beat him into the pot with the Js9s, and with a Jack in the door and a Ten, on no improvement, AdTd for Rob was no good. Great call Men, now I know why they call you "the master"....I also often put in 20% of my stack before the flop with no betting left with jack high. *clap clap*. I guess he did something right, because with about 90 players left tonight he was among the top 2 or 3 players in chips.

Anyways, I was walking around sweating all of our beloved trout, and eventually decided to sit some 2/5nl. I sat with the max of 500 (obv) and on the 1st hand took down a pot pf for a quick +150 when someone raised over a limper to 30, and an aggressive, young foreign player whom I had played with a few days previous 3 bet to 100 straight on the button. I looked down at the AK of diamonds and decided to jam for 500, not wanting to play this pot out of position against an aggressive player, and getting my chance to see all five cards if called. A while later, another foreign idiot sat down with a 200 stack and open to 30 UTG. I looked down at two red aces and make it 95 to go. It folded back around to him and he called, leaving himself just about 110 behind. The flop came KcTc4 and villain check/called all in. The turn and river brought sixes on both streets, and he turns over two sixes in his hand for running quads. Nice hand. Two hands later, I am in a pot with a middle aged guy that I apparently played a few underground cash games with at home in Maryland. On a flop of A9Q, I potted it with A9hh and got called. When the flush draw filled on the turn we both checked and a river put out a 4th spade and I ended up check/folding after getting runner runnered yet again. Weeeeeeeee. I didn't really want to get up from the table so sitting just under even again (still about 500), the runner runner quad fish limped UTG+1 and I made it 30 to go with the Jd9d. The F.I (Foreign idiot) calls and we take a flop of KdQXd, giving me a gutshot straight draw and a flush draw. F.I checks, I check behind. The turn bricks and we both again checked. The river brought the Ad and F.I led 55 into me. I raised to 210 and he pushed for just about 400 total. I called and he showed the Td8d for a nice deserving cooler. shipit fish. Between that and picking up some small pots i finished the session up about 400 after a few hours when the table become a cooler and/or nit fest, so I decided to get up and continue sweating some 6 man NLH.

I went over to the feared Zeejustin's table to sweat/get a chip count to send to the shipitholla ballas, when I started chatting with his parents who were also on the rail (Justin is from the D.C area as well). Eventually on Justin's break I finally got a chance to meet him and have a nice chat with him and a couple of other 2p2ers that I met up with throughout the day in the series including Slim Pickens, Noodleman, Irieguy, JSH06, and so on. Though Justin has a lot of stigma around him given the famous online scandal from a while back, he seems to be a really nice guy and certainly a solid tournament professional. He also seems to attract a lot of scuffle, because Phil Hellmuth was insulting him to his face at his previous table and he ended up calling the floor on him. Later, at the table I was sweating, another all in player ended up throwing his cards at Justin because the guy was a sore loser and thought the dealer made a mistake in chip counts. Justin's dad and this guy almost got into it with each other, but luckily ZJ's dad didn't feel much like brawling. After a while of sweating Justin, Phil (Jman) and Travis (TravestyFund), we decided to head back home. All three are in the money, Justin and Phil with some chips to work with. All of them have a shot and I'd love to see all of them final table this awesome event. Best of luck to all of them, and tommorow should be another day of similar action. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

More side games at the Rio, and a 2+2 gathering

2007-06-28T03:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we finally got out of the house after some late nighting and what not, and headed to the Rio to sweat the 50k HORSE event. After watching Zeejustin pwn for a while (he ended up in 18th, just out of the money, good game Justin), I sat some 2/5nl. I was getting cards, but no action. I was continuing to open wide just so I could play some pots against a seemingly soft table, but no one was paying me with anything. Finally, I had to three barrel bluff a guy just to take down a reasonably sized pot. A relatively weak/tight player (seemed sane at least) limp/called my raise from the hijack when I held two black sixes. The flop came Ace high with two spades and he check/called my flop bet. At this point, I was putting him on some type of reasonable draw or a mediocre Ace. The turn bricked, and I fired near pot. He very quickly called my turn bet and I narrowed his range to a big flush draw or top pair with not too much of a kicker. I decided at this point that if the draw bricked on the river, it was a good spot to go with a three barrel bluff. The river did brick the draws, the EP player checked and i bet 330 and he quickly mucked his cards saying "you must have me outkicked". Shipit. Other than that and picking up some small pots, nothing too interesting happened. +175 that session.

When we left the Rio we headed over to the Venetian for a scheduled 2+2 dinner at the Grand Lux Cafe. Even though the uber-rigged restaraunt wouldnt hold our reservation and we ended up splitting tables, the 2+2ers featured: our house minus futuredoc and bobbofitos, DF_Newb, Daleroxxu, JSH06, and most of the shipithollaballa mansion (usher, inyaface, good2cu, travestyfund, bigt, apathy, a couple of their friends), as well as Irieguy and his girl.

Dinner was a good time, and we decided to hit Tau, the club in the Venetian. As we went to the bouncer to get into the club, he quickly turned me away for having shorts on, and for having a fake ID. so rigged. He took my ID and I ended up having to pay him off to get it back. -70. sosososo rigged. We ended up going back home to change clothes, and myself, Devin and Jared (JSH) met up with good2cu, Dale, Apathy, inyaface, and two of their friends. We got a VIP booth at studio54 (club inside the MGM grand) and basically partied it up there. It was a really fun time and all of those guys are really stand up guys. I'm glad we all had a chance to chill/party together and I certainly don't think it will be the last time it happens while I'm out here.

Other than that, the 5,000 buy in shorthanded NLH WSOP event starts tommorow at noon. In addition, the final table of the 50k HORSE is being played down, so between those two events with all of the 2p2ers in the 5k event, and myself playing side games at the rio, it should be a solid day tommorow. Wish all of the 2p2ers luck in the event, we have a huge edge in this field with the strong representation of entrees, and we really need a frickin bracelet already! THE WSOP IS RIGGED AGAINST TROUT! Gl all, and thanks for reading.

-Alex

The Rio.....and the Rhino

2007-06-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

So I didnt update yesterday; heres a capturing of the shenanigans.

So 2 nights ago we headed to the Rio to watch days 1 of the 50k HORSE event. The field was obviously stacked with 148 of the toughest mixed game tourney pros that come out to Vegas/play here full time. We sweated Zeejustin sitting next to Doyle Brunson for a while, before taking a lap around the tournament and sitting to play some side games.

As usual, side games were decent/good at the Rio. I played 2/5....nothing too interesting, finished +120 and the only pot I even saw a showdown on was when a queen-latifah like chick to my left called my flop bet in raised pot on a AQxss flop. We both checked a deuce turn and I checked the river when the flush card filled (obviously planning on calling a bet with my AK) when she checked behind and mucked. She kept calling for deuces in her hands just to be dumb, and when I told her that the deuce didn't stop me from betting she replied with "oh i know, i know what stopped you from betting"...obviously implying that the flush card did. Well, missy, you are dumb and wrong....if she was right, she should've bet the river (and she would have been power owned when I snap called). But anyways, the game was weak and when we finally got short handed (to only my excitement) the game broke.

I then went to the 10/25nl uncapped game in the "big side game" section where Rob (Bobbo) was sitting with over 5k. Unfortunately, the hand I sweated was his bust out hand: Everyone had him covered in this hand and UTG+1 (big stack with over 10k) raised to 75. The button called and Rob repopped the SB to 300. Both players called and Rob led the flop dark for 625. The flop came K62hh and the big stack was basically going nuts over the dark bet, trying to figure out what the hell he was doing, and finally calls the 625. The button tanks and folds. The turn is an offsuit 3 and Rob leads 1150. The big stack again tanks and calls. The river is a Q (puke), and Rob checks. The big stack sets him in for his last 2k or so, giving him juuust over 3:1 on the pot, and Rob called with AK and lost to the 3-outed KQ. GG.

Rob was incredibly distraught (and understandably so) over the loss, so what else is there to do after losing a pot like that but to hit the spearmint Rhino aka the hottest strip club in Sin City? We did just that.

We got to the rhino around 5am and sat in their main room with girls pole dancing and tons of strippers coming in and out of the table sections dancing on guys, trying to pull them into the private show room ($$$) and what not. Unfortunately, yours truly was victimized. I was pulled into the back by a hot black chick and got my share of what goes on in the backroom at the Rhino. When I was pulled into the 2nd back room, however, I knew I was spending no less than 1,000 that night and decided to cut my losses at a whopping 500 when I overtipped the stripper in an awkward spot to save myself 500-1k more. Ouch. I was pretty pissed at myself and the situation for the night, but no one really to blame except me and the big guy down there. Such is life.

We proceeded to sit around and drink for a couple hours when we finally gathered up futuredoc from stripperaments and headed home. We got home at about 730am, and hung out and proceeded to crash for the day. Yesterday, we basically did nothing except play online. Ben, Travis, Nathan, Rob and Matt played a 109 mtt and had a 100 dollar last longer bet. Ben, being the luckbox that he is, didn't tell anyone he was going to win the damn thing. It's pretty tough to lose a last longer when you win the tournament, so thats just what he did for a cool 9.1k. We were all sitting around in uber pwnage fashion as he just couldn't lose an all in or showdown.

We then played a 5.50+r fixed limit omaha8 tourney online, and that was rigged too, so in one last hurrah we had a 5 dollar last longer on a 10 cent mtt on stars between me, Travis, Rob, Brett and Nathan. The catch is, you had to be all in every hand. I shipped it, going out the same hand that Nathan did but with more chips, and I won the last longer. Wooooo

Thats about it for now, today there will likely be 50k HORSE sweatage, playing, and a big 2+2 dinner gathering. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Grinding it out at the Rio

2007-06-24T02:54:00.001-07:00

We got to the Rio today around 11:30am for Devin to play the 1500nl event. They weren't letting in spectators for a few hours so Brett, Travis and I left to explore the wonderful world of the Wynn's uncapped NL games. Unfortunately, upon getting there we see that the wait list was hours long, so after taking a lap through the casino and checking out the scene we dropped Brett off at MGM to play SNGs/cash while Travis and I headed back to the Rio for sweatage and pwnage.

After we watched TravestyFund bust deep from the 2k PLHE event and Devin busting the 1500 event, I sat 2/5nl at the rio. The game was kind of nitty at first, but the entire session it went from nitty to random TONS of action for a few orbits, back to nitness, etc...

I went from 500-->650---> 250 after i turned a set vs. a big fish's turned straight (he didnt have a full buy in either). I rebought to 500 and ground my way back up to even (800) when, yet again, I doubled up a short stack, this time a semi nitty lady to my right who had less than 200 to start the hand. We got it all in in a limped pot with 97hh to her K9cc on a Q99ss flop. That all sucked but I continued to grind my way up when a few big hands came up.

First, I'm sitting about 850ish and mississippi straddle the button to 10. The small blind (who is the most weak/tight player in the history of poker) calls, and DevinLake UTG dark raises 15 more. I call blind on the button (obviously!) and the small blind again calls. We take a flop 3 way and its T72 all diamonds. The small blind leads, Devin folds and I finally look at my cards: TT. shipit. I make raise 20-80, he makes it 200 and I end up shoving the flop with his 300ish behind. He tanks and ends up folding A MADE FLUSH. I didn't see his cards but I did see him fold bottom set on the flop vs Devin and the big stack, so I'm pretty sure he wasn't lying.

After this, Z32fanatic came to the cash rail on the 1500nl event break (he ended up getting ITM last i checked, shipit) and during this time I ended playing a 550 bb pot for stacks. Weak/tight guy opens utg to 15, tight solidish young kid maks it 60 in mp (he wasnt 3 betting particularly light at all) and I cold call the button with two black aces. The flop came Js6s2. PF 3 bettor led 75 into me, i made it 250, he tanks FOREVER and shoves. At this point I'm putting him ONLY on two kings, and sure enough he turns over two aces...at least I'm freerolling and made like 10 or 15 bucks on the hand.

After this the only other big pot I played was when I opened to 20 with two red Kings. Guy two behind me calls. We take a flop of Q98hh. I lead for 35 he calls. The turn is an offsuit 7, and I was going to lead but in the spur of the moment decided to check. Once I checked, I thought I had made a mistake by not betting but I also realized at this point I needed to shove him in. He ended up betting 75, I shoved over and he quickly called with AQo. The river was a deuce and I stacked the donk. yaaaay.

After the 6 hour session, Rob called and said he was headed down to the rio to meet up with MikeCH and JShuttlseworth. Brett and I joined them for dinner at the rio and then we all headed to the Wynn (except for MikeCH who stayed to play 10/25nl at the rio). By the time we got there I was exhausted and the wait list was pretty long , so we rounded up matt (hippo) who was already playing there, brett, devin and myself and we headed back home while Rob and Owen (Jshuttle) stayed to put in a long session at the Wynn. I am absolutely exhausted now, but even though today was a huge grind I enjoyed the session and thought I played reasonably well. Hopefully the pwnage won't be as swingy, but will continue.

Today: 6 hours of 2/5 deep stacked at the WSOP, cashed out 1100. Not my finest session, but if I can maintain 60/hour the rest of the trip I'll be pretty happy. Anyways, it is definitely time for bed...thanks for reading.

-Alex

edit: also at my 2/5 table was this idiot young blonde kid who looked like he was 10, decked out in dodgers apparel with his fat ring and chain. The kid berated me from opening the CO and button every time...the 3rd or 4th time i did this with AKo. he called from the bb. Flop Came A98hh. he check/called my flop bet. the turn came an offsuit 7 and we both checked. The river completed a 4 straight with an offsuit 6 and the bb led just about pot or overpot slightly. I tanked and after checking the turn behind thought he was value betting AT/AJ/AQ or, being the cocky talking constant idiot that he was, was just as likely on a pure bluff. I'm a fish calling station so i looked him up and he turned over AQs. gg. he then requested a table change and got up.

Day 2

2007-06-22T04:21:00.000-07:00

Basically we sat around the house today until around dinner when we finally settled the rental car situation and decided to head out to the Rio to check out the action. We got there just in time to see Vanessa (fslexcduck) take on rekrul (high stakes NL player, very solid). The match was over pretty fast, and Vanessa was out in 4th for just over 100k. A nice score, but unfortunate when she ran top pair into a turn flush for the tournament not 15 minutes after it started. Still though, she took down some amazing players HU in the tournament including Peter (Apathy) and Doyle Brunson, just to name a couple. She'll certainly have continued success to come.

After the rio we headed over to the bellagio where Rob (BobboFitos) sat 10/20, devin (DevinLake) and Matt (the hippo from hell) sat 2/5 and I headed to Caesars with Brett (Blackize) and Travis (Costanza). I sat 1/3nl 500 max. I didnt do a whole lot here but the only big pot I played involved me stacking the mid stack BB when I flopped top set on a JT8ss flop when I led the flop and he insta-shoved.

I was up about 140 in this game when the game started nitting up slightly, and two seats opened to my left. As I was looking around to see who would fill the seats, ben (bengiec) and Nathan (futuredoc) come and take the seats. wow, what a seat change for me. The table basically sucked for me from this point on, and although they were kind enough not to constantly 3 bet me, I didn't have position on any good player at the table and the bad players weren't sitting deep enough to make a long session there worth while.

Brett and I then headed to Monte Carlo where we sat some 1/2nl. DevinLake met up with us after a rough bellagio session and sat to my right. Basically, he power owned the shit out of me. The only real pot we played together was when the laggiest player at the table straddled (standard for him) to 4, Devin called in the SB and I repopped to 16 (I should have made it 20, for the record) with the AKcc. Both players called. On a QTXr flop, I was trying to check/raise bluff the lag player thinking his betting range when checked to was going to be enormously wide. Of course, I was not so fortunate and the flop checked through. On a low diamond turn (putting out a flush draw), Devin check/called a bet of a bit under pot (35 into a 43 or something similar). The river filled the flush and Devin checked again. I couldn't really figure out what I could get him to fold on the river after whiffing my gutshot and his turn call, so I checked behind and he angrily turned over a flush. Wow I am so good at poker. Basically, I'm really not so good because I was dealt J3 more times at this table than in my poker career thus far. I got nothing going and just let the shit show continue. Only having lost about 100, we called it quits a few hours later and after meeting back up with Matt, headed back here. I finished the day +29 over just about 5 hours, shipit.

Tommorow, I expect a better day and a longer session, so we'll see how that goes. It's now 5am, 8am body time still, so I think I'm going to wind down and hit the hay soon. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

ZOMG VEGAS!

2007-06-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

ITS COMING! T-36 hours till I leave! I have run a couple errands and seen friends, but really I have done nothing for the trip. I still have loads in the way of logistics of travel once im there, meeting up with 2p2ers out there, side bets, etc... And that'll basically all have to happen tommorow, with packing. whoopee :)

In other news, since I did nothing applicably productive today, I did come out with a low buy in strategy post in the single table tournament forum on 2+2 with some insight on how to play AQ in the early levels of a sit and go. It didnt turn out quite to be the masterpiece i had envisioned, but its decent in terms of strategy posts that i've seen on the forum recently, and hey, its all I could think of. Heres a link for anyone interested in reading:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10838377&page=0&vc=1#Post10838377

Tonight I'll probably be seeing friends before I leave, followed by a day of running around crazy tommorow. Oh Vegas, how I await thee. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

Stupid Sunday!

2007-06-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

Honestly this is just a complete whine because its my blog and i'll whine if I want to. My brother has to take my car for tonight/tommorow so that makes things a bit complicated/annoying for tommorow. In other news I played some DS satellites for the sunday million because I felt like the 6 man DS's were a joke. I was right, I won a seat, I played, I saw, I bustoed. Since then I've done nothing today. This is why I never considered playing MTTs full time :P

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1163255 (If anyone wants to know why I played the hand the way that I did just IM me, I'm too burnt to relive analysis at the moment).

In reality neither of these things are that big of a deal, but it made for a mundane and not overly pleasant sunday. Thats about it.

-Alex

Pleasant Saturday

2007-06-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

Though waking up at 8am for no reason certainly was not a highlight of the day, the rest of today seemed to fall into place. I sat around the apartment and did some laundry/watched some t.v through the morning, and then went home to hang out with the family. After that I proceeded to come back to my apartment and write the introduction to my strategy post that will be coming out in the STT forum on 2p2 pretty soon. It is certainly not a comprehensive post and will be geared primarily toward lower buy in games/players, but with the quality of the forum's posts nowadays, any strategy post seems worthy. Stay tuned for that.
In other news, I had a nice profitable 300 dollar hour of playing sit and gos today after I wrote my post introduction (karma?) and soon after found out that Max (Inyaface) and Travis (TravestyFund) were deep in the 5k pot limit hold em WSOP event. Max bubbled the final table but Travis is currently around 4th in chips with 10 players left in what is a very tough looking final table featuring Lisandro, Cunningham and Brenes, just to name a few. Hope he can pull it out as this would be a great start to STTF's reign on the WSOP in 2007. Thats it for now, thanks for reading.

-Alex

Bahh

2007-06-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

Minor Downswing and major lack of volume in playing poker recently. More frustrating is that I was sleeping on and off all morning yesterday as I've been a bit sick. I finally woke up at 2:30pm to spend 2 hours on the phone with my bank for charges put onto my debit account without my knowledge of it. Turns out I was semi-scammed into signing up for some "promotional" program that conveniently doesn't tell you when they start charging you for a service (that I didn't even knowingly sign up for in the first place). After a long drawn out conversation, that situation was resolved but incredibly annoying.

Beyond that I've tried to get in some time playing sit and gos online. Ive had some ridiculously frustrating small sessions, and between that and people flooding in and out of here, I just haven't played like I'd hoped I would be, but its still nice to see everyone and if nothing else I'll get my volume in in Vegas.
I also ran into my TA from the class that I missed an "A" in by 1/10th of a point and she said I may be able to swing a grade review for a shot at that small bump into an "A". This would take a lot of pressure off and would also be awesome, so I'm pulling for this. Being sick and not doing much doesn't make for too interesting of a blog entry. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

It is ON!

2007-05-31T21:29:00.000-07:00

Honestly its not really on...other than poker and peoples, I haven't done a whole lot. Again, this is what I expect of my time at home during the summer and I couldn't be more content with it, so all is well on this end....except for school. I got my motor skill development course grade back (KNES370) and I got an 84.9%. Usually this would be pretty standard for me, except that in this class, an 85+ is an A. LOVELY. NO ROUNDING THIS TIME, NO EXCEPTIONS, NO DICE. This 1/10th of a point is costing me almost 1 full GPA point because I did not take a lot of credits this semester, so its really a killer the way this class played out. Theres nothing I can do as this is a result of last minute course grading changes by the professor and I'm shit outta luck. Meh. I run bad at life I guess.

Poker (AC Trip report): My friend and fraternity brother Chuck had a room comped at Caesar's palace in Atlantic City last night, so my roomate and I went up with him for the night. ATLANTIC CITY RULES, even though the games were a bit off while we were there.
The first time we sat was at Caesars. All of us were put at the same 1/2 table, and all I can say about this table is....wow. Every player at the table was penetratingly obviously bad at poker in various ways. The highlights were a drunk guy and an old guy, the drunk guy who wouldn't shut up, who would call huge bets and fold with little money behind later in the hand, and the old guy who made random sized bets, often over betting the pot by 10x and never folding preflop.
Specifically, the old guy and the drunk guy got into it in a pot where the old guy check/called a flop bet, announced a dark check, and then fired 55 dollars on an Ace turn card. The drunk guy flips out, the dealer never heard the dark check announced, and the floor was called over for a 10 minute dispute of the events before the bet was ruled legal (honestly, obviously the dark check must stand should the floor person confirm that it was said, but since theres no way for him to know for sure and the money was in the pot, it was the only sensible ruling in my opinion). The drunk guy timed out with 2 floor people towering over him ,and from then on basically the table took turns calling time on the drunk guy because of how ridiculous his slowing of the game was.
The only interesting pot I played in this game was when i raised a bunch of limpers on the button with 88. The drunk and old guy called (yes I know, theres a trend) and the flop came KQJ. though the old guy didnt often fold the flop, he had at certain points, and since both of their preflop calling ranges were so ridiculously wide, I decided to try and take down this already-medium-sized pot on the flop. I fired 35ish and the old guy called. This basically told me nothing except that he didnt have 43o maybe. The turn was a 4 and we both checked to another 4 on the river. We again checked and I showed my 88. He looked at his cards twice and mucked. As I was raking in the pot someone said that he mentioned he had A4o. I'm not entirely sure why he would muck trips but obviously the pot was mine at this point and I finished this game +50 even though for the most part I was completely card dead and watching the antics of the table instead of playing poker.
After dinner we headed to the Taj and I sat 1/2 while Chuck played a 35+12 mtt (I know, I cant comprehend the rake either) and Aaron (Manchild) played 2/5. Aaron had a look of death on his face the entire time so his session didnt go optimally I guess. Mine for the most part did not either but I was fortunate enough to take down three key pots in this game that gave me a reasonably nice session.
First, I raised a limper with ATdd. He called directly in front of me and we took a flop of KQJ heads up. Shipit. I was check/raised (holla) and called the raise. The turn was a 7d giving me what I like to call the NUTNUT. He lead 50 and I set him in for not even 100 more in a pot of over 100 already and he thought a while and folded. No matter what he had his play was obviously horrendous but I'm pretty surprised he didnt call given the action and the board texture. He was also CERTAINLY not capable of folding TPTK or better but was also semi weak so I'm kind of surprised I missed out on the last chunk of his stack but oh well.
The next hand I limped A5cc in MP, got called by a young kid directly behind me and took a flop of 3 middle straight cards (I dont remember specifically) with two clubs. I led and he raised 10 to 35. I called and the turn put out another club. I checked and he jammed. I called and he showed the T6cc for a lower flush. I didnt even realize he had the 9c as outs for a straight flush but he missed his 1 outer and i took down a decent sized pot even though he wasnt sitting with a full buy in at the start of the hand.
Finally, against a young Russian guy, for the third or fourth time of the session he limp/called a preflop raise of mine. I had AJo and we took the flop HU. The flop came ace high with 2 low hearts (I had no heart). As he had done before he check/called the flop and the turn brought a heart. We both checked and the river put out a 4th heart. He led 35 and with a read of what I thought to be a great bluffing spot for him I made it 80 to go and he folded. In the end I finished the trip +200 after about 6-7 hours of play. The next casino I play in will probably be in Las Vegas so I'm feeling good about that. Thats about it for now, thanks for reading.

-Alex

An update!

2007-05-26T08:30:00.001-07:00

I went on a last minute beach trip this week for a few days with some high school friends....definitely part of a balanced summer kick-off. I'm not gonna lie, we basically just drank the entire time, but seeing everyone and hanging out together after months of barely being able to keep in touch with them because of things happening at school...crucial. Great trip overall, and a big thanks to my Goldy for putting us all up and being such an awesome host (and thanks to his parents for trusting us enough to not burn down the place).

With all of that done, I got back to school last night and my roomate aaron (manchild on 2p2) had people over to drink and hang out. Not being able to turn down a fridge fully stocked with beer...yes, I think I've been drinking for 4 or 5 days now. We wound up at the bar but last night was by far the most ridiculous Ive gotten this week. I think it involved car bombs and rum at one point, but I'm still alive to tell the tale. Alex one, alcohol 0.

Other than that, looking forward to seeing everyone else I haven't seen. I plan to just continue the awesomeness that has ensued since school let out until I head out west.

Poker:

I've decided to just continue with sit and gos online until I either reach my money goals pre-vegas or have a yearning desire to play more online cash in the next few weeks. Despite the fact that SNGs are rigged, they get me to focus more than I generally do (leak that I'm fixing steadily) and the swings are much more manageable especially since I have an easier time playing deeper bank-rolled in tournaments.
I only managed to get in 250ish sit and gos in the 3 days I got to play for the PokerStars double VPP promotion. The first 2 days I was running hot and ended up at about a 33% ROI and was about to break a 1K 15 tabling 16 dollar turbo SNGs after only a few hours of work. On the third day I lost a bit but still would up with a 21% ROI over the small sample and still made more than I would have 6 or 8 tabling the 60 dollar games.
I'm also going to continue to put in some time at the live 1/2 games locally and continue to "condition"/pwn before Vegas. Though I was not all that happy with the way I played at my last live session, I still have yet to be a loser at any one live 1/2 game (at the games Ive played more than once, meaning when I stopped going to the game I had won money overall). Thats about all for now, thanks for reading.

-Alex

Back in the swing of things

2007-05-21T01:58:00.001-07:00

Cuervo shots are the only way to take shots nowadays with me and my weak stomach for most liquor. We celebrated the downstairs-jews crew's graduation with some high quality liquor. It went well overall (no one died). Beyond that, nothing terribly exciting except that STEPH IS HOME FROM SPAIN. Awesome. I'll see her today (I feel like its sunday still but I'm pretty sure now that we have monday daylight I'm officially over "the line") so thats basically the highlight of the day. My good friend Andrew is also on a breakish from the Israeli army and he'll be coming back to the states basically until I head to vegas, so I'm really excited for the upcoming months in basically every way. I haven't felt this good about stuff in a long time and all i can say is...wow, how refreshing. Those are the highlights of my life right now, onto the grind:

Poker:

I'm finally not shipping my moniez to fish. It rules.

After my bad run at 6 max cash online, I decided to accumulate my double VPPs (VIP points on stars, double for their site anniversary promotion) the way I came up online...sit and goes. When i left 9 man tournaments I was 18 tabling the 27 turbos. Recently as sngs have gotten tougher I've heard that 27s basically = 60s nowadays and I didnt feel like more variance by playing higher after a long Sng break/a straining bankroll. I decided to 12-15 table the 16s since saturday, and I'll continue to do so at least until tuesday at midnight when double VPPs end. I'll reevaluate as I put in more time playing, but so far so good. I've run at about 35% ROI over my first couple hundred games. Today alone I made back more than half of my cash downswing that took place over the past couple of months between a hundred sngs and a few hours grinding live NL200.

Live 1/2 was soft as usual, but the short trip report (its 6am and as is obvious in my writing, I'm brain dead) is that things started off terribly. I didnt feel comfortable with my friend Tim (solid cash game player, 1 of the 4 degenerates living in this apartment come the fall) having position on me, but more significantly I just had to donate in small pots until I was stuck half a stack. I rebought and again found myself stuck about 90 bucks and feeling stupid when I couldnt reach showdown with a winner against awful players when the following hand turned my night around:

Sitting with about 220 an extremely LAG asian whom I have played a lot of live cash with (he was playing much more aggro than usual tonight) raised over a habitual weak/tight limper to 12. I reraised to 40 out of the SB with AKo and the weak/tight limper cold called my 3 bet. This was a little unnerving and I wasn't entirely sure what to make of his range at that moment. The villain open raiser jammed and had both of us covered behind. There was 100 in the middle when the action got back to me with the player behind. I'm tired, if you want to talk about any of this session in detail, IM me.......I took a solid 3 minutes to put my money in, and weak villain behind folded AKo while the asian LAG turned over two queens. ack! I run good, so the flop came AKx and I doubled up. I basically played aggro in a couple semi big pots, some with the nuts some with air and ended up 300 for 800+ day combined with my SNG performance. Great day, I'd love not to lose money tommorow, but regardless, I'm going to continue to grind hard and perhaps fall asleep as it is now 6:30am. Goodnight/goodmorning/good day and thanks for reading.

-Alex (AMT)

p.s- mad props to my roomate aaron (manchild) for a monster 3k day yesterday, coming in 5th in a 6max 100 dollar MTT with 450ish runners for 2kish and about a 1k day playing cash games. about a 4k day for our apartment...not too shabby.

hmmmm

2007-05-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

Life stuff:

First day back after school/exams have been done with. I took my anatomy exam at 8am (and by "took" I mean showed up, filled out the multiple choice part of it, wrote an angry note to my TA, and bounced), and then basically came back here and did nothing. It felt nice to be a waste with no academic responsibility for the time being. We'll see what comes of it...

Poker:

A couple of hours later I finally worked up the energy to play poker for a while. Much to my dismay, the most recent downswing continues. I only played 300ish hands today because I started late, but the only big pot that I played had me getting it all in out of the SB with an OESFD (open ended straight flush draw) vs the buttons J7s (top and bottom pair). I did not improve and ended the day down almost 2 buy ins. Typical day, everything was standard but when its the 512512878 "typical day" in a row, it gets a bit frustrating. I just can't seem to get any help from the deck right now in any regard. It seems everyone around me runs well when I'm losing. Such is life.

Beyond the whining, I'm going to try and put in some time live over the next few weeks before I head to vegas. I did well in my only recent live full ring cash game outing, and the tables are great, so we'll see what comes of that. If I keep facing what I've been in the middle of for months online, it'll probably be back to sit and gos for me for a while...*shudder*. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading,

Alex

First post

2007-05-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

Ok so I finally got this blog set up. Once I decided to head to vegas for the world series for a month I figured it would be worth while to keep track of my playing and activities on here. Kind of a personal blog in that way, but anyone who wants to see what the life of a degenerate college student/poker player is like is of course welcome along for the ride. For random craziness during my Las Vegas trip, I will direct you to http://sihwb.blogspot.com/. Bengiec set up that blog without telling me so I said I'd post on both. I leave the 20th so I'm looking forward to that.
Beyond that, on this blog I'm going to keep the general stuff to [hopefully] interesting things. In my life, outside of poker thats basically drinking and running around in my underwear...so really this is going to have a lot of poker stuff, and then other random other stuff. If interesting hands come up I will probably post them here and look for some discussion/if people just want to take a look. I haven't yet decided if I want to share my actual results throughout my schedule of playing full-time. I've always been a self-conscious person to an extent, and that has trailed into poker in that way. It might force me to plug certain minor leaks in my game that are rooted in some of my mentalities....we'll see.
Finally, through writing my first entry, I've decided the blog will continue with my first day back at the tables/after the death trap that is school is finally over, which is basically sometime tommorow (thurs) through the weekend. Stay tuned, maybe it'll get more interesting....

Thanks for reading,
Alex

P.S- I couldn't think of a good blog title, I'm tired and cranky and my brain is mostly shut off.... so be creative.