job in trouble again

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

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

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

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....

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

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)

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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?

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

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

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)

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

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