Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

I am a donkey. Played on a very loose aggressive table with a guy raising preflop usually 25 sometimes 15. Everybody calling. My buy in looked feeble next to their stacks. Priced in on draws all night. His continuation bet would usually be 25 with pots already at 125-150 and my open ended straight draw or nut flush draws out there. By the time it'd get to me in position 2 out of 3, or 3 out of 3 would call putting it between 175-225 on a 3-1 shot. Then he'd keep pricing us in with tiny raises on the turn. Needless to say they didn't hit or I wouldn't be calling myself a donkey. Still, those early misses told me what kind of night it was going to be. I get it in later with two pair and a guy catches an Ace on the river for a higher two pair (A4s). Rebuy. Things go alright. In early positon with KK (limp), out of control raiser limps this time (1 out of 10 times he limps) and his buddies almost out of control raisers also limp. Okay, 6 in I have to fold to an...

Played some morning poker. Came in 6th at Boomtown's tournament. Some highlights: Limp with pocket 4s (late position, blinds are 200-400), 5 in the hand. Flop is J84 (two clubs). First guy bets 400, second guy calls, third guy raises to 1k, 4th guy calls. I push all in (4K more), first guy calls (I have him chipped), second guy calls (we both have him chipped), 3rd guy stews forever (he bumped it to 1k!) and folds what I think is a flush draw, 4th guy calls (we all have him outchipped). Turn them over: AJ o/s, KK, A4, and my set of 4s. Guy that folded was indeed on the flush draw. He would have hit it but I boated up. Would have been sweet to take him out too as I don't think I've ever busted 4 players at once. I don't know if I've ever busted three at once (not counting SNGs or online) as it is. I also went through a stretch where I nailed every single flop only to get counterfeited. It was unreal. I thought not hitting a flop for an hour or so straight was bad eno...

Back on track. Hit Harrahs hoping to play with the Arena bowl crowd and sat down to a table that was crazy. Then huge (drunk) stack who sucked out on two big hands walks away. Couple of other bleeders departed and I was left to battle with 7 or so regulars. It was a long, long battle. Got up and stayed there and played rocky the rest of the night. Kept going up and down with decent hands. When I finally got my good stretch of cards it wasn't good.... I got AA, was trapping a kid who has bet into me with nothing in the past, he hits his queen on the turn and I finally get some play. The river is another Queen and he thankfully only bets 20. I call knowing I was beat but hoping he was betting the King from the flop. No he had a weak queen. He had the chips to double me up and has made big losing calls in the past so that two outer stung a bit. Very next hand AK suited turns up empty. Then very next hand KK. Board is Q85 two hearts. Turn is the A. River is the queen of h...

The dream is over. Played in morning tournament, it went something like this AK, make two pair on the flop lose to trip queens. In the evening started off well. Won three first hands. All down hill from there. Got snapped off for all my chips when I hit my set on the flop with pocket 8s. Running 6s gave me a full house. My buddy to my left had pocket Js and flopped top set. Ended the evening making two pair on the flop. Guy calls with q high. I know he nailed his 10 on the turn and I donk box out by calling his bet, knowing I was beat. More details to come.

First off, what a longwinded dipsmit I am. Read my previous post and in short it says: I'm so smart. I can read people great. My big hands held and I have a big head. Well, poker can give you humility. Tonight, I ran bad. Poor starting hands all night and this time when my big hands didn't hit I played them like a lunchbox. So... basically it was a complete reverse... but on the bright side I still posted a profit. However, my profit was so thin, if not for the discount gas at Sam's Club I might not have covered my drive to and from Harrahs. Still it was a profit and I'll mark it as such, primarily because at the last dealer shift all the money jumped up from my table. I followed them to the cashiers after riding the hump all evening and basically barely getting over even. The other games were full so I'm glad my experiment has some wiggle room for circumstances just like tonight. Went up about 100 after sitting out two dealers, yeah I am patient, KQ in th...

Tonight couldn't have gone any better. Had a little bit of luck, played great, and on a fun table. I realize why I'm such a better live player than online player. I had let my online bad streak recently get to me and hurt my confidence a little. Thanks to Gene D for the pep talk before playing tonight. Online I've taken some bad beats and I wrongly focused on the losing instead of just making the right plays. It's hard to do when its running bad. Returning to brick and mortar and relying on my reads regained my head. Made two massive lay-downs and got paid off on my big hands. I didn't get many hands, they were either huge or shit. No getting in the sandbox hands (two faces in position, pairs or suited connectors) so I looked like a rock waiting for playable hands and just agressively playing the strong hands I got. Probably went through a dealer and half until this hand (I love it when patience is rewarded). KK: Flop is K87 (all spades). Bet, called. t...

Sorry for the silence... been at the beach. Now, that I'm still not tan but rested, I'm throwing myself into the poker room full time this week so look for plenty of updates unless I'm just playing poker and sleeping. I have an "agreement" with my girlfriend that I have to play poker every single day until I post a loss. Hopefully that won't end on Day 1 and as this is open ended hopefully I'll make it through the week. I'm interested to see how long this streak will go, for those interested here are the parameters. I can spend no more than two and a half rebuys in session. This is my standard limit anyway. However, I will not place any upper limits of when to leave as a winner. I normally do--barring unusual factors; the table is especially soft, a drunk or weak player shows up just as I'm about to leave, or I'm keyed in on a big stack etc. Should I chose to play in a tournament and not cash in it, I will have to win that money back i...

Finally some Hands and some poker talk... Made a stellar call, in the final three of a tournament, to cripple a guy and guarantee myself top 2 money. Flop was rags. Turn a brick. River a brick. I got AQ no pair. Guy bets every step of the way. My read tells me each time he doesn't have it. At the end, the bet is big enough to cripple one of us, but I can still survive if I fold. I think about it for 3 minutes and then decide to trust my gut. Dooschbag turns over a lowly 7-2 (no pair), I win. What a schmuck no need to bluff off almost all his chips there. Why did you call he asks me? I couldn't really answer, I just knew even with a board of rags he didn't connect and he didn't have much. At another final table this asshole who works in the hotel club gets into a hand with this big teddy bear nice guy from Texas. Ahole raises, nice guy reraises, Ahole calls. Flop brings an Ace (I put ahole on KKs the way his face drops). He bets despite himself and then get...

Met up with another friend of mine, who moved out to Vegas to become a poker pro. When we did we saw what appeared to be the filming of a porno at the Harrahs outdoor carnival bar. We saw the "plot" part guys so settle down. Anyway, this 4 or 5 attractive, but porn star attractive so not, raided the bar and started grinding with people in the audience as a dude filmed them. After molesting two old black guys, one of which had a cane, they started heading our way. I gave them the look of death, I'm not being in any part of a porno movie. All the while an old guy named Cook E. Jar sang along to 50 cent, bobby brown, and every hip hop artist. He was 57, white, and fat. Surreal. Yet, so surreal, with the security guys taking pictures with the porn stars, and a guy sporting the Ronaldo triangle cut and a Soul Train circa 1984 suit getting down even when the music stopped, and women of all ages baring their breasts it is a stop you should make in Vegas. Great free ent...

Ran into a college buddy who 10 years ago moved to Sweden and fell off the face of the earth. Nobody has heard from him. He was stunned when I called him over waiting in line for the $500 Satellite at the Rio. He had no idea who I was and I of course f'd with him until he did. Turns out he married a Swedish girl, got tired of the unending sunlight in the summer and became an online limit poker junkie. The rake alone from his last year was $100,000. He's the type of guy that could be a poker millionair in a blink of an eye. He's working for a Euro company taking care of all their Main Event contestants. As I've remarked before I wasn't too impressed with that contingent in the cash games or tournaments I played but I wouldn't be surprised if one wins the M.E. If so, I hope it's one of my boy's.

Also, the two NFLers that tried to kill each other in Vegas earlier in the year, walked into Caesers at the same time, randomly, while we were playing there in their late night tournament. I must be bad because I was running a bluff on a kid who called me down on a danger board, with me betting every step of the way, with Ace rag. Couldn't get anything going in that tournament but I might have been a little impulsvie. A specific Louisian politician I keep seeing at the Wednesday tournament at Harrahs (new orleans), and at the bigger visiting tournaments was... playing at Caesers in Vegas. I get back and read some old papers from when we were there and the Times-Picayune is quoting him about Road Home stuff, and I'm thinking he must have stepped away from the felt to take those calls.

After my friends run of bad luck we decided to watch some summer league games at the Thomas and Mack center. Great deal. We got to see three to four guys per NBA team that will be starting and basically had our choice of seats. Not only that, the GM for the Hornets was approachable, so to alot of front office guys and players just watching from the stands. David Lee from the Knicks has a hot ass girlfriend. They watched the young Knicks play and three rows back, draftee Spencer Hawes and rookie of the year Brandon Roy spent more time in the stands staring at her than their Washington U boy Nate Robinson playing. Isiah Thomas was there. That made the concession guy fill better because he was no longer the dumbest guy in the building.

I went with my friend who may do some blogging for GCP. Unfortunately, it took him some time to get used to live action play and when he did he started a horrible run of luck. On his last day, his win it all back day he sat down for a cash game in our hotel... With the mandate to play tighter than a drum, he did... only to lose set to higher set, lost flush to higher flush, and full house to full house. Not only that, this absolute jackass who took both of us for a couple hundred our first night there, by shear dumb play, played in the Main Event and was in the top 5% after the first day. He also stopped by my buddy's table just to (rub it in, gloat, brag) let us know. Other than that, I think the trip is always judged partly by the distractions. As my bud said the pool at the T.I. was a great one. He thinks part of their payment package for the waitresses is a trip to plastic surgeon for knockers overflowing is an apt adjective so to uncontainable. .

David Beckham has landed. Yawn, goes the collective sports media. But is it a big deal? Yes. Because the world's biggest sporting icon is now playing stateside. So while we might read a courtesy piece about this in our sports section or maybe in Living with a feature on his wife it's a bigger deal than the brick and mortar newspapers would have you think. A better guage will be the amount of articles we'll be reading in two weeks we'll be reading about what a huge failure it is. The pundits will tell us soccer is still boring and Beckham is the epitome of that. He being a virtuoso only in passing well and dazzling none. Think the Simpsons episode where they parody the sport, "passes left, passes right, passes left.." well David's the man at that. This is like John Stockton showing up to play in an Italian league in 1995. Well, John Stockton if he had Johnny Depp's looks and was married to Jessica Simpson. I'm eager to see just how creative the Ge...

Read the articles on the glummed faced Main Event contingent, those sullen and non-fun participants that started the event, and what's being attributed to the cause of their stick-in-the-mud mentality? It's because the online sites pay their winners in cash and those winners then have to use that 10k, they actually hold it before they buy their seat. Suddenly, they realize the value instead of it, and it's no longer getting a Full Tilt entry certificate so the money is actually real and they are all playing to win. Ummm... not exactly. Anybody who has won a "seat" be it a $1,000 or a $50,000 HORSE seat appreciates the value of it. Nobody isn't thinking this 10k could be better spent on 10 flat screens around my house or I hold in my hand a decent used car. On top of that, besides Kimmono lady, and companies inserting stooges into the event for P.R. purposes everybody has been playing to win. Just because it's a freeroll makes you less desirous of 5 m...

I almost went to rehab. Rehab being the sunday pool party at the hard rock. Lots of stories to tell but no time right now to tell them. Slept all day yesterday after traveling overnight and being incapable of sleeping on planes with my 6'9 225 chiseled granite frame. Woke up today and headed to the new tournament at Harrahs. Not a bad deal. I discovered after the first round everyone, perhaps used to the old 1 rebuy, was tight at my table, I had to change gears. Course knowing you have to play loose and getting a steady diet of 8-2, Q-2 (seems to be the two hands I've most been getting the last six months) are hard to do. Still, I bought a couple of flops with a preflop raises and large continuation bets when my opponents betrayed their hands when I had crap. The few hands the dealer dealt me I'd get beat to the pot with raises, reraises, and big calls. Laid down AJ to AK. Laid down pair of JJs after a board of 1075 brought a 10 on the turn. Lady called me preflop, and a bi...

I travel to the capital of sin tomorrow. Here is my plan. Get off my flight at 9:30 am. Rush to the rio. Buy in to the main event satellite. Win seat to main event. Meet up with Shiznoats get some time in the hotel poker room for the discount rate. I had a friend of a friend tell me a rehab story. His first 12 step meeting he started off by saying, "I'm XXX, I'm here because I partied like a rock star." All eyes went to somebody else in the circle. He followed them and settled on a gentleman that had superstar presence. Immediately, the guy started making weird musical noises. Then the guy goes, "No... You didn't party like a rock star I used to party like a rock star!" My friend of a friend lived outside of boston and it only took him 30 seconds to learn that steven tyler was a dipshit. What's my point? I'd say I'd party like a rock star while out in Vegas, but truly I wouldn't party like a rock star because Steven Tyler has...

Didn't chop it. Played a little bar game, GeneD and my friend Joe also played. Felt bad because I knocked Joe out in 4th (pay three). I don't collude but in those circumstances I'll only bet my friends if I hit my hand. I put him all in on the turn when I hit my aces and he called. I thought he'd know to fold. Anyway, I took 2nd. Here's the hand that knocked me out. Drunk guy I was playing against was playing well heads up. He was very aggressive. Usually I like to steamroll my opponents with reraises and pummel their inexperience heads up. The fact that I've maintained a tight aggressive image all night means when I shift gears it's usually too late before they catch on. However, he was the aggressor and coming back at me. I truly think this guy was getting a good run of cards and my instincts told me he had the goods when he was pushing and I had to make laydowns with no connections on my flop. At some point he's getting close to 2-1. He...