Lazy Day

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.