Oct

I don't really have much earth-shattering to say, but I've gotten called out a few times recently for not blogging for a while so I'll post this to keep anyone from chirping. I played in three tournaments yesterday after playing in basically none for the past few months. I got 55th of 7800 or so in the Pokerstars sunday million which paid about 200k to first. It was a good run but frustrating to bust out so close to the big money, especially since you don't get a chance to get this deep in these big tourneys very often. There were also 3 frustrating hands when there were under 100 left that crippled then eliminated me, with a double up in between. These hands for those who care were KKpreflop, AK<JJ all in preflop and the board came A87 9 10 to make him a straight the brutal way, and the last one was 1010<QQ all in preflop to knock me out, but they teased me by making me a straight on the turn only to have him make a full house on the river (QJ9 8 8). I ovbiously had a bunch of chips to be able to lose these pots and remain alive. I was still around avg. chip stack when the last one happened which added to me wanting to chuck my laptop out the window and into the street (I held back).

Last week I played in a tournament (I know I said I haven't been playing tournaments, but these are the only kind I've been playing and only a few of them) that got the winner a seat into a 10k buy in tournament in the Bahamas in Jan along with a flight, spending money, and 7-10 days at the Atlantis hotel which is amazing. I got heads up with a very known, successful player with about a 2-1 chip disadvantage. I battled to even, back to behind, then when he had 120k and I had 80k I got it all in with 88 vs A4 and he of course won which sucked.

I played at Commerce 4 times in Oct and about the same about in Sept with pretty good results minus one awful day that was semi-hard to swallow for a couple days. During that bad session I played with James Woods (on TV show "shark" and used to be in movies like Casino and others) and Jack Haley (played 10ish years in the NBA in the 80s I think) and to keep it tame in case they somehow ever see this: My initial impression of both of them after only sitting with them for a few (4-6) hours each was not extremely favorable. Of course I'm discussing character, not poker skills which, since I mentioned it, both of them had about 4% of they thought they had in that department.
I've been playing online cash a good amount as well and doing pretty standardly (new word) well. In other news I've been playing NHL 09 for PS3 against my roommates and shootout mode online which is pretty fun. I haven't played hardly any video games since soph. year in college when I dominated NCAA football 03 on the regular. As nerdy as it is, I have to admit that this game is really fun and I'd say I've averaged 1-2 hours on it over the past few weeks. I've also been playing a lot of basketball which is currently preventing me from typing with my right middle finger because I jammed it pretty bad today.
Last week/weekend I was in La Jolla (San Diego) for five days which was amazing. I am also going to NYC on Nov 11 with two of my friends to stay with another one of our friends who lives in Manhattan. After eight days there, one of them and I are heading to Nashville for five days. I'm really excited for this trip since I've never been to NYC, and I've only been to Nashville for one day and I loves it.
If you have anything that you really enjoyed in NYC, whether it's well know or not, restaurant, bar, whatever, please let my know because we have eight days there and want to make the most of them. We're going to a NY Rangers and NY Giants game so far. You can leave a comment on here and I'll let you know if I liked it too.
Til next time...

Me+WSOP+ESPN=????

I am anxious to see what ESPN chooses to put on their coverage of the world series of poker tomorrow (tues). I was called and told that I would be on the episode tomorrow at 8 or 9 pm eastern time. They actually told me which one, but I can't remember for sure. After they play whatever hand(s) they choose to that I was involved in, I'll comment on what actually happened or how I feel about what they had to say. ESPN loves one guy that I busted out of the tourney so I won't be shocked if the guy makes me the villain. We shall see...

Poker and other random stuff

After the world series I didn't play much poker at all in July partially because I some things to do in different places, and partially because I wanted to take a little break. I thought to myself that maybe I had gotten a bit burned out for the first time, but then I realized that it's pretty natural to not be as enthused to play after playing in the WSOP. Analogy: After the Rockies finish playing in the World Series (of baseball), they probably wouldn't play as well a week later in an exhibition game. It doesn't mean that they don't love playing baseball, they just don't need to get their work in the week after playing at the pinnacle of their profession. (I'm glad I could get that Rockies analogy in because I probably won't be able to use it after this season.) Anyways, I also knew I'd be running around the country for a couple of weddings and to go back to Denver for a while. My brother got married in Cincinnati and one of my best friends got married in the twin cities area. They were both unbelievably amazing weddings as everything went perfectly in both and all guests, family, and brides/grooms had great weekends. I was the best man at my bro's, so I gave a toast at the reception which I thought I wasn't nervous for until I couldn't eat the meal they brought out because my stomach was full of butterflies.

Between the weddings I went to Denver for a couple weeks and played golf a ton and just relaxed. I played in the member/guest golf tournament at my dad's golf club and obviously won it out of 72 teams. It was really fun to win it with him for a lot of reasons with the most prevalent being that he LOVED watching me compete in anything, especially baseball, but I had never really competed on the same team as him.

I guess I also moved after my bro's wedding and before I went to Denver. I really like my new place compared to the old place, and I like the location better too. Since getting back here about two weeks ago I've really been in "health mode." This pretty much just means getting good stuff from whole foods and eating a lot of healthy food and smaller portions when at home. I've also been working out almost everyday including doing cardio everyday which I've never done before. Needless to say, this is a good thing to be doing, especially after a summer full of eating, drinking, traveling and thing of that nature that probably weren't the healthiest. I've also been playing poker a lot.

It really took me a long time in this post to start talking about poker which is kind of unusual for a blog about poker, but I'm not a good blogger (we went over that a couple posts ago) so I'll give myself a pass. I've only been to Commerce once in the past couple weeks, but I've really been getting after it online with quite a bit of success. Two sundays ago I decided to play tournaments for the first time since the big score in the Full Tilt tournament. I played about 8, and cashed two while winning one of them. I actually didn't win the whole thing, I chopped it with the guy when we got heads-up because I had played with him before and knew he was a good player. I was pretty proud of doing so well in this tourney because it was a heads-up tourney where you play one guy heads-up and then the winner goes on to play someone else. It's kind of like the NCAA basketball tournament except we were playing poker instead of basketball and it wasn't run by the NCAA. there were like 350 players, so I had to win 8 matches to get to the final match where we chopped. The reason I was proud of this one is that the field was stacked with top online pros and guys that usually play huge buy-in heads up cash games. I've been playing a lot of heads-up cash games and this pretty much verified that it's getting pretty good. First and second place were like 10k and 18k, so we chopped it for 14k. Other than that, cash games have been going well too and I've had two of my biggest online cash game days ever in the past couple of weeks, and also one of the worst. I don't really have any plans for tournaments or anything in the near future, but I'll probably try to get to Commerce more often to play live.

One thing I almost forgot that I might make another post about in a week or so, but don't hold your breath. Someone with the film production company that produces the world series of poker called me and asked me some questions and told me that I will be on the show on Sept 16 at 9pm eastern time. It should just be for one or two hands, but still the most TV time I've ever gotten.

World Series Main Event

I got knocked out in 571st place out of 8500. Not exactly what I was looking for, but it was worth 23k, which is nice. I never really got anything going, and was below average chips for a lot of the tournament until I went all in preflop with QQ and ran into AA and KK. I was very happy how I played because I really got way less big hands than I should have in three days, so I had to earn chips the hard way for the majority of the tournament. I was involved in about 4 hands that were filmed by ESPN and significant for different reasons, so I'll be interested to see if any of them get televised.

Bad Blogger

For the past couple of weeks I have been thinking to myself that I am a really bad blogger. Not just due to the fact that I've been like a once every 3-4 weeks type of guy, but mainly because I make claims that I don't follow through with. Like, it's completely unacceptable to say in a post something like "ok I need to rest up for some huge world series of poker event where millions of $ will be on the line, and if I bust out early I'll go play some big cash games," and then not post a word for the next three weeks. If I were someone who tries to read my blog, I would at least one of the following: 1) unbookmark my blog (if it ever was) and never check back ever. 2) text or e-mail me telling me how bad I am at blogging/life because I never update during the WSOP which is basically the only poker event that anyone cares about. 3) Cut the internet at my house because I obviously don't know how to use it. 4) Stop being friends/family members/acquaintances/strangers with me.

I had been planning on making this my retirement post, but then I decided that I don't really need to retire the blog. However, from this point on, I am not going to claim to be a guy who is going to post everyday or even every week or every month. When I was in vegas from the end of may to June 18, I had the internet in my room for about 5-7 of the days, and the last thing I wanted to do at 3am after playing 14 hours of poker was to log on and write about the bad play I made to bust out of the tournament and the following 10 hours of cash games I played. I really thought that I'd be able to make posts from my iphone, but I don't think I can which made it tougher. Had I been able to do that, I could have posted every day after a tournament something like "all in preflop with JJ against someone who overplayed 99. 9 on flop, good game me." or "tried to bluff someone cuz I thought he was bluffing me. Turns out he wasn't. Back to the cash games."

With this in mind, I will now try to recap the last 3ish weeks. I already posted about my first 3 WSOP events. After that, I played in three more of those, 3 $550 tournaments at Venetian and a $1060 at Bellagio. I didn't cash in any of them, leaving me 0-10 in tournaments on the trip. I did have decent stacks in the last 2 WSOP events, the Bellagio, and a massive stack pretty late in one of the Venetians. I started to really feel like I was playing well in tournaments toward the last five after feeling like I played below my A game in 2-3 of the earlier ones. 0-10 might sound bad, but it's actually very easy to do. Since about 10% of players get paid any given tournament, an average player would cash in 1-10 that he/she played in. Given my history, I would generally cash in about 2-2.4 out of ten. I could bust out some statistics and figure out the chances that I could go 0-10 with a sample size of 10 to show the large variance, but I don't feel like it and would probably screw it up anyway.

WARNING: This post is about to take a 180 from negative to positive :)

If you had told me that in my 20 days in Vegas in June I would play in 6 WSOP events ond go 0-10 in tournies altogether, I would have thought it would surely be a losing month, and probably by a lot. In actuality, at the end of each night I was there, I was up for the trip. I absolutely killed the cash games like I never have before for this long of a time. I wasn't playing very high stakes, 5-10 and 10-20 only, while 10-20 has been my game of choice for the past several months. I ended up coming home with the amount I brought+my main event buy-in (10K)+another good chunk of cash. Considering the fact that tournament results were so poor, I was elated to have such a good trip.
I had a lot of fun there too. I went golfing once, went to the pool several times (I love the Wynn pool, even if it is 105 degrees outside), ate good food, watched a lot of sports, and played a lot of poker.

I got home on Friday the 20th I think and decided that I was just going to relax and not play any poker until I returned in early July for the main event. Sunday morning rolled around and I had nothing to do and the house was vacant. I decided that I may as well try to win a seat to the main event as I did last year so I don't have to pony up the 10k myself. I signed up for 2 WSOP satellites and I also decided to play in the big sunday tournaments on each site as I do most sundays. I got very close to a WSOP seat when I took 5th in a tournament that gave seats to the top 2. I had a nice stack, but was forced to get it all in preflop with AQ vs. a maniac with KJ. Of course I didn't win as a 62ish% favorite in that hand. I would have had a massive stack and been all but a lock for one of the two seats. Literally about 5 minutes before that hand I had busted out of the stars sunday million when I ran QQ into a guy's AA that he played very well and I busted out of that after having a very promising stack. Although that was worth $1400 (1st place was like 160k), my blood was boiling after the two consecutive bustouts from tournaments that looked so promising about 10 minutes before. I went from being on the brink of a big score to below even on the day in about ten minutes. To my credit, I took a lap around my room, kept my composure and focusing in on the one lonely table remaining on my screen: The Full Tilt 750k guaranteed (their big sunday tourney). This tourney was still quite early, not even to the money yet. I went from a decent stack as we entered the money, to a very short stack, to top 10 in chips with 200 people remaining. We widdled ourselves down to the final table where I stood 2nd or 3rd in chips. Quickly I became the chip leader and stayed that way until we were 7-handed and I got a guy all-in with 66 vs. my KK. Nothing is easy, so the 6 on the flop left me just below the middle of the pack. As blinds and antes escalated and 3 more players got eliminated, I became the short stack. At this point I was guaranteed 30k with 50k going to third, then 80k, and 132k. I got all in twice (and way behind) within about 20 minutes, but they say luck evens out and my A3 sucked out on A10, and my A10 sucked out on JJ. Now all of a sudden I was back to above average. I now started picking on one played who was obviously scarred to bust out and my stack continued to grow until I was heads-up and about even in chips. I immediately started playing very aggressively, and took a 7 million to 3 million chip advantage. My opponent was a very good player from Sweden, so I knew that he was going to try to make a move soon. After his preflop raise (which was not uncommon, he was probably raising about 30% of the hands) the flop came J 6 3 and I had J8. After he bet around 700k, leaving himself with about 1.5 mil, I really thought he would be calling my all-in raise and I would be two cards away from the win. He ended up having AA and now he had a 6-4 advantage. I got down to 7-3, battled back to even, lost 1.2 million bluffing, and then this hand came up as he was ahead 6-4. He raised, I called with 96s. flop was 9 7 3. I had raised him about 3 times on the flop after he had raised preflop so I figured that at some point he would think I'm full of it. With that in mind, flopping top pair heads up made me believe that I had the best hand here about 90% of the time. So he bet the flop, I made a small raise hoping that he thought I was full of it, and he shoved all in for what little I had remaining. He had 10 10 this time, and he held up to win the tournament.
I was very happy with how I played heads-up. I really controlled the match and I feel that it would have been over much sooner had I not been the won picking up the majority of the pots. It was fairly unlucky of me to flop top pair when he had overpairs twice, but in heads-up against a good player with blinds so high, there's no way I'm ever folding either of those hands. I would have liked to win, but I have no regrets and 80k.

I'm leaving for vegas again tomorrow to play in a free tournament that the Wynn is having for all of their players that played for 50 hours in their room in June. The top 10 players each get 10k. I don't know how many players qualified, but I hope it's not very many. After that, the main event of WSOP starts July 3. There are four day 1's, so I will play one day between July3-6 and then again on the 7th or 8th if I'm still in. For the players still remaining, everyone continues on the 9th.

PS- I know I'm supposed to spell out numbers instead of using the actual numbers, but I didn't. If it bothers you, you can cut and paste it onto word and change tham all before reading it.

Quick Update

I have not been able to update as much as planned because I can't figure out how to add new posts from my phone which I thought should have been very easy. I am leaving right now to play in a WSOP event right now after not playing since wednesday because my brother's bachelor party was in town last weekend. I played in two more events last week that I haven't posted about. I busted very early in both. The first one I was all in with AA vs. QJ on a J55 flop (I was 90% to win), but a jack hit the river to send me out. The other one I got all in with 66 vs. AA on a 8 6 3 flop. Again I was about a 90% favorite in the hand, but the turn and river were both diamonds to give him a flush, and I was left with almost no chips.
Cash games on the other hand have been going very well, and I have to leave right now.

WSOP event #2

I played in the second event of the 2008 World Series of Poker yesterday. It was the largest non-main event in WSOP history, and the 4th largest live poker tournament in history. It was a $1500 no-limit hold 'em event, which is the smallest buy-in at the WSOP. I busted out about 3 hours which was fairly standard because you only start with 3000 chips and the blinds start at 25/50 (you don't start with many chips). I wasn't unhappy at all because I thought I played well and just didn't make any hands and ran into some hands when I tried to make moves.
However, I jumped right into the cash games at the Rio and played for about 8 hours with a break in the middle to eat dinner with a friend of mine that lives in Vegas. I ended the night up 5600, which is an excellent start to the trip. I am currently in the hotel room playing in the big sunday online tournaments, and then I might go play some cash games later tonight.

Off to Vegas

It's Thursday morning, and I'm going to be driving out to Vegas in about an hour. I'll be there until June 18 mainly playing poker. My dad is out there now for work, so I won't be playing until Saturday and I won't be playing next weekend because my brother is having his bachelor party. Other than that, I will be trying to play as much a I can handle. On Saturday I will be playing in a World Series of Poker event, and probably about 5-8 other WSOP tournaments including the main event. I will do my best to update frequently when I'm out there.

May has gone pretty well so far. After finishing up coaching in early May, I got to play live at Commerce a couple of times. Both times I had very good sessions culminating with the largest cash game pot I've ever won in my life.

Last weekend I went on a trip with 7 friends from college and had a great time. Aside from that I've been trying to get various things done because I won't be home much in the next couple months. I'm very excited for this trip, so hopefully it goes well.

April

I guess I know I haven't been updating very much when my titles are just months. I've been playing almost exclusively online for the past couple of months due to coaching baseball everyday in Laguna. I usually get somewhere between 0-3 hours per night in, but I've been spinning my wheels a bit. It's not bothering my at all like a 2+ week breakeven/losing stretch would which I'm proud of. When I decided to take the coaching job, I decided that I was ok with three months of 0 income. I knew that I would be able to play some, but not a whole lot. I guessed I got what I asked for, netting $3200 in online cash games, but I gave a lot of it back in tournaments.

I did have another close call for a seat in the WSOP main event. This time I was the chip leader with 4 left when I got it all in with 88 vs. AQ and lost. I liked my chances when we got to 4-handed, but I would have loved it if I could have gotten 3-handed with a huge chip lead. I haven't played a whole lot of qualifiers, but hopefully I'll score one before they stop running on June 22.

Speaking of June, I booked my rooms in Vegas up until the main event this week. I'll be out there May 28-June 18, then July 2-???? I'm getting pretty excited for playing in the WSOP events, and just playing a lot of live poker. I had a blast last year during this time, so hopefully I will again this year.

May has started out promising. I played 3 online tournaments on Saturday and cashed in 2 of them for a profit of 1200. I took 4th in one of them which seemed like the first final table I've made in years. However, I went 0 for 5 the next day for -1500. Cash games are going well, as I am up close to 2000 early in May. It feels like it could be significantly more, as I have gotten pretty unlucky in some big pots. It would be nice to have a good May to allow me to head to Vegas with some momentum (and money, jk).

On a non-poker related note: I have really enjoyed coaching this year. Our team started the year horribly with an 0-3 record losing all three games by over 10 runs. Since then we have turned it around and we are 10-6, and have won our league title. More important than the record is that they have gotten so much better as a team, and now instead of coming to the field everyday expecting to lose, or being indifferent, they come with a desire to win. It's tough to break a culture of losing, but these kids are going in the right direction. Also, the Laguna Beach varsity team finished at 14-15, which isn't great, but with one winning season in the last 25 years, the program appears to be on it's way up. I'm going to get some food, then head down to Laguna for our last game of the year. Hopefully we can finish it off strong.

March

March was pretty uneventful from a poker standpoint. I've been coaching the Laguna Beach JV baseball team which is taking up a good chunk of my days. I've been playing a little bit online the last month until the last 10 days or so when I really picked it up (when I say picked it up, I mean I've been playing like 2-4 hours instead of 0-1 hours a day). It's been going pretty well in cash games, but I haven't had much success in tournaments online since the LAPC. Oh well, that's the nature of tournaments.
I've been dabbling a little bit it world series of poker main event qualifiers. In the few that I've tried (probably about 15) I have a 2nd, 7th, 11th, and 13th. In these you basically get nothing for 2nd and a 13K prize package for 1st (except when I got 2nd it was good for 1500). The 2nd place was very disappointing after I lost the heads up match against one of the top internet pros. What made it worse is that I went onto his site (he owns a very highly regarded poker instruction website) about 15 minutes later to congratulate him, and found out that he had been sending me messages trying to split it with me even though he had the chip lead! Boy did I feel like an idiot. Oh well.
I played live once in march and lost $4200 at commerce which made this month barely a winning month. Although March was my worst month since June 07, I didn't expect anything out of it because I knew coaching would be very time consuming.
April will be almost all online as well, and then it will be less than a month until I head out to Vegas for the world series. I haven't figured out my schedule out there, but I'll pretty much be out there for most of June and the first week of July at least. It should be fun, and I'll try to update this more all the time but especially when I'm out there.

LAPC Main Event

This post is a little late I guess, but I busted out of the main event on Sunday. Somehow I managed to make it thorough the minefield that was Saturday with about 11,000 chips from my starting stack of 20,000. We only played for just under 10 hours on saturday which is less than I thought because I was very tired. I was involved in many interesting hands on saturday and unfortunately I only won a couple of them. I was in many tough spots, and just kinda ran bad in general. I was missing flops, my opponents were hitting flops, I had bad tables and seats, and I didn't pick up enough big hands. Overall, I was lucky to get through day one, but as a short stack I only lasted about 1.5 hours on Sunday.
Usually at a starting table of these events you will have a couple very good players, a couple solid players, a couple decent players and at least one or two pretty awful players that are very good to pick up ships from. However, my starting table had to be the toughest in the tournament. Here is the lineup:
Seat 1) Brett Jungblott (Part of "the crew" from the early 90's, a known live and online player)
Seat 2) Erik Lindgren (one of the top 20 most know pros, millions in career earnings)
Seat 3) Josh Ariea (more than one WSOP final tables)
Seat 4) Jennifer Tilly (actress, wasn't great but she finished 12th in this tourney)
Seat 5) Vanessa Selbst (online instructor and very good player, at least one WSOP final table)
Seat 6) Juan Carlos Mortenson (2006 WPT champion, 8.2 million in career earnings)
Seat 7) Me (some guy who looks like he got lost on the way to the library)
Seat 8) Nenad Medic (Full Tilt poker pro, won the world poker tour at Niagara Falls, etc.)
Seat 9) Some guy who was a world poker open bracelet on and was a good player

So basically I had an all star table even though there are many younger internet type players that are sharper than some of these guys right now. I felt very comfortable among this group and after playing at this table for 8 hours before we broke, I definitely feel that I would be a long term winner against this lineup although it is full of big name pros. All in all, I enjoyed the tournament, it was a good experience, but nothing really went right, which can happen in any given tournament.

On a positive note, I've been doing very well online playing 6-handed and especially heads up. This short month is going to end up being my best to date as I expect to finish the month up in online cash games and tournaments as well as live cash games and tournaments.

Weekend poker

On Saturday I went to Commerce around noon and played 10/20 NL. It went well, there wasn't really a whole lot of action, but I felt like I played well in a few medium sized pots and I ended up $1100 in about 5 hours.

Today (sunday) there was a very good lineup of online tournaments. I played in 9 and cashed in 4 of them. I got pretty deep in the poker stars $100 with unlimited rebuys, but busted out in 16th when I got AA all in preflop vs. KQ. That really sucked. 1st place was worth 51k, and 16th was $2200. Even more disappointing was the ending to the Full Tilt $2 million tournament. This is one of the biggest online tournaments of the year where the winner gets about .5 million, 2nd in 276k, and so on. I busted out around 140th out of 6000 or so. When the chip average was about 80k I got all in with QQ vs. AK for 300k in chip. I lost that coinflip and was left with like 90k in chips. I still had a decent chance, but if I had won that and had 400k in chips I would have been 2nd in chips with about 200 left and I would have really liked my chances. Instead, I went through the blinds a couple times and then went all in when everyone folded to me on the button with 99. The small blind woke up with QQ, and I cashed for about 2k.

I netted about 2500 today and was pretty close to a big score in 2 of my 9 tournaments. I think I'm playing well right now and having a very good month so far. I am about 90% sure that I'm going to play in the LAPC main event next saturday. This is a World Poker Tour event and first place is always well over $1 million, and I'm pretty sure it's over $2 million. I think it will be a fun tournament so why not give it a shot.

Good Week

As I mentioned in my last post, I would be attending another LA Poker Classic (LAPC) event on Thursday. This was a $1500 buy-in no limit hold em. I ended up playing for 12 hours on Thursday until 13 of us were left. We then broke for the night and play resumed on Friday at 7 pm. I went into Day 2 3rd in chips behind David "Dragon" Pham and someone else. Pham was named the 2007 player of the year for the second time is his career, so he was obviously a good player. Also remaining was Men Nguyen who has been the player of the year 3 times in the past 10 years as well as some other good players.
After we got to the final table of 10 players I doubled up the short stack of the tournament when my 66 fell to his 1010. then after going through the blinds a few times and the one blind level jump, I found myself short stacked. I moved all in with 3 players left to act with A8. Pham had 99 in the big blind, and I was eliminated in 9th place. I was pretty disappointed for a while with this result because I questioned how I played the 66 hand and because I had my eye on the $71,000 first prize, or even the 40-some for second or 30-some for third. I ended up winning 5400 for ninth, which was still good.
I also played cash games for like 2 hours on Thursday before the tourney and made like $2500.

Yesterday (Sunday) I decided to play in the $330 with unlimited re-buys LAPC event. For the first two hours, players were allowed to re-buy at any point that they were under 1000 in chips, or double re-buy if they had 0 chips. So I double rebought to start the tourney, then busted and double rebought 3 times in the first two hours. One time I lost a coin-flip (AK vs. QQ), another time I got a guy all in on the flop with 44 when I had JJ, and he made a flush, and last I gambled with J8 suited all-in preflop against two other players. At the first break they also give you the option to add-on or double add-on. I of course chose to add-on twice which is pretty much a must in these tourneys. After all was said and done, this 330 tourney was actually a $3030 for me. I knew that 1230 was the bare minimum that I would use, and 3030 was the top end of what I felt I should be using on this tournament. Anyways, it worked out because I made it through Day 1 again and into day 2 where 18 players remained out of the almost 800 that entered. This time I was 14th in chips and quite short stacked to start day two. There were many interesting hands along the way, but in the interest of keeping this post a reasonable length I made it to the top 4, where we decided to chop the prize money. I was 3rd in chips at the time and I ended up getting $87,660. This was close to second place money with was fine because the blinds had gotten very high, and soon we would all be forced to gamble a lot. I generally don't like to chop, but 4th place was 42000 and 3rd was 64000 while 2nd was 99000 and 1st was 167000. I felt that I was better than my opponents, but they were all willing to gamble, which was not good because I would have to be attempting to steal blinds very frequently. Since they were all that type of player, I didn't see an easy was to accumulate chips at this stage, so I felt that a chop was a good choice. Also, $87,660 is more than double and other single day win in my life.
All in all, it was a great day and week, but my brain is complete mush right now, as I just got back about an hour ago, and I am falling asleep. I may or may not post more about this win, but if you'd like me to post some interesting hands or anything else, just leave a comment on here, or contact me however you'd like.

Feb 6

Today I went to commerce to play in the $540 6-handed Turbo No limit tournament in the LA Poker Classic. I knew that this would be a good tournament because the majority of players would have no clue how to adjust to a 6-handed turbo structure (assuming the had a clue to begin with). This turned out to be true and in the early stages I increased my chip stack from 2500 to 10,000. Then after all of the original players from my starting table had busted, I knew the new players would be trouble. They were 3 older men who were pretty much there to gamble. These guys pretty much put the clamps on my aggressive play which is essential in this structure with their "oh what the hell, I guess I'll call" type of thought process. I lost a couple small pots and the blinds escalated very quickly until I was short stacked and went all in after everyone folded to me in the small blind with A4. Of course the big blind had AQ and I got saddled with my second straight late but not late enough finish. I was somewhere in the 40's out of 260 and 18 got paid. Oh well, I guess I'll just win the $1560 buy-in tomorrow.

The good news is that I got there a couple hours early and won 1800 at the 10-20 NL cash game. I played really well and made a couple hands and I didn't really want to leave, but the tournament started and I had to go.

When I got home I watch Juno which was very unique and good. I then played for an hour and a half online and made $300. After I stopped I put the new update on my iphone and wrote a blog entry at the same time.

December and January recap

I guess it's really been a while since I have posted on here, so sorry to anyone who counts on it to maintain stability in their life. I guess I'll just use this post to kind of give a catch up summary.

During my last post I was in the middle of the worst downswing of my life. On all of the forums and blogs that I read, there are always a few very good players talking about downswings, but I had never really experienced one for as long as this one. It only lasted for about the first 10 days of December, but I put in a large volume of hands, so it was probably about equivilant to how many hands I usually play in 20 days or so. It was pretty tough some of the time, but I was very proud of how I responded. By Dec. 20 I was back to even for the month, and then ended up actually having a very solid month.

I continued to play very well in January and had an excellent month. I played live 6 times and the rest was online, and I played very little the last week or so of Jan. I am going to be coaching the Laguna Beach HS JV baseball team, so I had a bunch of stuff to do for that, and I had friends visiting. I also got an XBox 360 and I've been playing a lot of Madden against my friends and online. It's nice to start the year off well.

The LA Poker Classic is going on right now at Commerce Casino and I have played in 3 of the events so far. This is one of the top 10 tournament series of the year worldwide. Like other tournament series, they start with smaller buy-ins, and end with a main event, which is a 10K buy-in for the LAPC. I played in two $540 buy-ins and a $1070. I haven't cashed yet, and the closest I came was last night in the 1060 when I busted 43rd or so and 27 places paid. The two times that I had a lot of chips in the pot were when I had AA vs. KK all-in preflop and a K flopped, and my final hand when a big stack raised preflop and I went all-in with AQ. He called with J10, which was borderline only because I didn't have a ton of chips, otherwise it would have been horrendous. Obviously a jack on the flop sent me packing. I feel like I've been playing well and I'm a break or two away from making a run at one of these. One cool thing about yesterday was that I sat next to Hevad Khan for a couple hours. He took 4th or 5th in the main event of the world series last year which was good for a million+ dollar payday. He got the most camera time of anyone by far because he acted very boisterously to put it mildly. He was actually a very cool guy and I was surprised that he instantly knew who I was when I told him my online name. Despite losing in all of these tourneys, I have been doing well in the cash games that I have been playing before and after the tourneys. I have been playing 10-20 No limit which is new to me in the last few months. I have been doing well, and feel that I'm always in the top 1-3 players at my table. With any jump in stakes you have to get used to the increase in variance. For example, one day I lost a $7100 pot and a $4600 pot and left that day up $300. Another day I went from up 1200 to down 3600 and left up 1400. these swings are the nature of the game and I know that I am not maximizing my potential is I do not play these games that I have a large edge (advantage) in. I have hardly played any online this month, so I am up a little bit for the month despite not cashing in a tourney yet.

More updates to come...