Fisheye25's Poker Blog

Happy New Year!

2011-01-07T07:47:00.005-05:00

Ahh 2010 is over it's gonna be tough to have a better year after getting married and doing pretty well poker wise but I'll try. The wife and I(which is fun to say) took a nice cruise to the carribean for the honeymoon and had a good time. Seven days was a little long becuause you are on the ship for alot of it but luckily our boat had the biggest casino of any cruise ship so we kept ourselves occupied.

Anyways, New years was alot of fun. The wife and I went out to dinner with a group of friends and then to another friends house who was throwing a party. I brought a giant 4L bottle of rum that I bought on the cruise and that went over pretty well. We all drank a bunch and Josh got drunk enough to give us his true feelings about his expectations for 2011. At the end of the vid we were all pretty positive we were being attacked by gunfire:

Fun stuff....

Aside from all that it looks like there is alot of stuff coming up. There's a tournament series coming up at the Isle, Hardrock, WSOP cicuit in Palm Beach and then I'm going back to Borgata in Atlantic City at the end of the month. So between all of that and grinding razz online and live cash games I'm keeping myself busy. I'm also shopping for a new car and it looks like I'm set on a BMW M3 but more info on that soon once I do something about it!

-Jason

FTOPS CHAMPION!!!!!

2010-11-25T03:03:00.002-05:00

So it's been a little while but... Ship Razz FTOPs!! Woot. Been trying to win this tourney specifically for so long because I play alot of razz and feel like I have more of an edge in this field than holdem but never got better than final two tables. Anyways, ship like $32k plus the jersey. I've beening running super hot playing 30/60 razz the last 3 days since so hopefully this is a good sign to come.

I will try to post more and some interesting stuff just unfortunately nothing major has been going on besides that because we've been getting ready for the wedding coming up in TWO WEEKS!!! I have two weeks left to not be married, kinda crazy. I'm super excited though and looking foward to a sick wedding and party on a boat with all my friends and family. We were supposed to have a small wedding with ilke 30 people and somehow this turned into lets invite everyone we know but I like it better this way. Next update will be from married Jason after the Hawaii honeymoon!!

-Jason

Finally a good Sunday!!!!!!

2010-10-04T00:50:00.003-04:00

I'll start by confirming that Borgata didn't go so well. I busted before the dinner break on the first day which is pretty unusual because we start so deep, but that's how it goes sometimes. I started off losing some frusterating pots early and finally at 100/200 I had about 15k to start the hand and utg raised to 600. 3 callers an I made it 2600ish from the BB and the fishy woman on the button calls. It comes A 2 7 rainbow and she immedially shoves to my c-bet with A2o and that was that. I still love borgata and will be back but so much for that trip.

On to today, I was running terrible early in the day and by 6pm I was down to just 1 tourney with no cashes which is brutal. Somehow I managed to go on an awesome run and made up for all the flips I lost earlier in the day in the $55 rebuy and ended up getting 2nd for $25,661. The whole final table was very lob sided with 1 or 2 people having a big chiplead and everyone else was down to 20bbs or less. Somehow I managed to stick it out ad get HU even though the guy had like a 7-1 chiplead on me I think. I ended up getting it in flipping with 66 and lost to AK but no harm done, can't really complain about a 25k Sunday. I also made a small FT earlier in the week in the $109 6 max on ftp and got 2nd for like $4800 or so. I'm pretty happy with my approach to tourney's lately just need to save the winning flips and running good for the huge fields!

Aside from that we have some stuff to do still in planning for the wedding and that's in two months exactly almost. We sent out the invitations two days ago so it's getting close. We still have the honeymoon to book which it looks like we are leaning towards a trip to Hawii. As for poker the rest of the year it doesn't look like there is anything live until PCA the first week of January in Atlantis in the Bahamas. I haven't satty'd into the main event yet or anything but I've skipped this event for the passed few years that I've really wanted to go so I'm most likely going to make it this year. That is all for now!

Ohhh, the Braves made the playoffs today!!! WEEEEEEE!!!! Maybe a trip to Atlanta this week for the NLDS?

-Jason

Borgata Update

2010-09-19T04:26:00.002-04:00

I've been in Borgata since Monday and so far it's been one of those trips where I've had some nice oppurtunities but, no dice. First event I played was the $2150 Heads up event which was fun. The tourney is double elimination which is cool so if you lose you advance to the losers bracket and if you win the winners bracket. The eventual winner of the winners bracket plays the winner of the losers bracket and the more wins you get at the beginning the bigger the advantage you have moving farther up the losers bracket if you lose etc...

So I won my first three matches against three pretty good players. My first match took 3 hours where he had me down under 10k and I had him under 10k multiple times (25k starting stacks). Was pretty exciting, then I went on to run pretty good and won my next two. Then it went all downhill and I got crushed my fourth match and then on day 2 I ended up losing my match on the bubble and got 8th place and they paid 6, meh.

The second event I played was a $1060 6-max event and my table draw was pretty bad. I had a bunch of young online players which is never a good thing but I fared pretty well and played well. I got up to about 30k from the 15k starting stack when a hand came up where I 3-bet QQ and the kid called and check shoved a 4 8 T flop. I wasn't thrilled about it but I called and he ended up flipping up 4-5s and binked a 5 on the turn obv which got me down to under 15k. I hung around for a while and stayed alive until i shoved 66 into TT with about 50 left for over 50k and it paid 27. Another close call, gg.

Today is the final $3500 main event and I'm all registered and about to get some more rest. I really really want to make a run in this. I'm playing well and this is a great tourney and should be a really good field so we'll see I'm definitly ready. WCOOP has been running for two weeks and I've been struggling a ton getting passed key spots in these events so let's see if I can get the ball rolling in this. Bed time.

-Jason

I WON A TOURNEY!!!

2010-08-19T00:09:00.002-04:00

I am officially Sunday $215 Razz champion for the week!!! Really nothing at all, it only had 100 players and 1st was $6k but Sundays have been brutal for a while and anyone who plays alot of poker on Sundays knows how nice it feels to have a decent day.

FTOPS is over and that didn't go so well. I ended up cashing in only two events, the $109 rebuy and ofcourse the $322 razz which I came up just short in and got 23rd. I really do feel comfortable in razz tournements building up stacks because so many people just don't know how to play the game correctly and adjust to the structures of razz tournaments. But as in holdem tourneys, they take just as much luck to take down in the end which is very frusterating. I've been grinding alot of razz cash games online which is always a fun rollercoaster but the action and games have been good. Unfortunately I seem to crush the lower/mid stakes like 10/20-15/30 but everytime I move up to 30/60-50/100 I take crazy swing against aggressive players and it's tough to adjust in that game when you are running bad.

Otherwise WCOOP is starting up the first week in September and it looks like the WPT is coming to Borgata again so I will be heading up to Atlantic City for that with Josh around August 13th or so and that should be fun. I hate Atlantic City but the Borgata is really nice. We literally never leave the hotel when we go there. There are pretty good restaurants, the rooms are nice and the tourneys are great. They are run really well and professionally and the fields are super soft so I will continue to go there for a while. That's about all for now!

-Jason

$2200 Hardrock Main Event Final Table

2010-08-04T02:10:00.002-04:00

So after all of the WSOP events I decide to come home and play 1 tourney and I make a final table lol. The tourney only got about 165 players and first was $100k. I took 5th for $18k which I was pretty happy about. The structure wasn't that great late in the tourney aside from them giving you tons of chips to start and really deep levels. On day two I got soooo lucky to stay in I almost felt like I was freerolling on the final day:

At 1.5/3k this old guy limps into the small blind and I raise it up to 10k from the big blind with T-8 and he calls. The guy checks a Q 9 4 rainbow flop and reluctanly calls my 11k bet. Turn comes and Ace and he leads 15k sooo, I decided to shove for about 68k because I just felt like he was folding alot of the time however he thought for a minute and made the call with A-2o!!!! Blehhh, so I stood up to get ready to leave and bink! J on the river. Whew.

That was my first life, then I shoved AThh to a late pos raise and this kid that raised a ton of pots wakes up with QQ, oh well not lookin good....bink A on the turn! Next life, then I 3 bet commit myself with about 14 left with KQcc and this kid thinks for a long time and makes a pretty sick shove with A7o buuttttt I make a flush and got up to about 650k. Yeah I ran super hot. The final table was pretty packed with really good players despite how weak the field was to begin. Good tourney, ran hot, gg. This was a fun little warmup for FTOPS which starts tomorrow night with event 1 a $216nl event so I'm ready for a couple months of online tourneys. Updates to come.

-Jason

WSOP over...

2010-07-17T05:29:00.002-04:00

I'm back in South Florida where I live now! WSOP is officially over. I ended up busting with an hour left into day 3 in the main event. I managed to turn my 15k 15bb stack into about 100k in the first two hours of the day. It was really unexpected but I ran hot and boom I had a stack out of no where. Unfortunately the rest of the day I went on a slow decline. I lost alot of key pots, ended up with Brandon Cantu on my right with a ton of chips. Towards the end of the day I got down to about 15bbs and found JJ utg. I shove and Brandon reshoves the SB with ATs and an A falls right in the door to finish me off. Very brutal ending to 3 days of grinding really hard and struggling in this tourney but that's how it goes.

I had a great summer and played alot of tournament poker. It was a pretty refreshing change from grinding cash games but now that I'm back home and the FL poker laws have changed I am back to work grinding alot mostly live now. I've been home for 3 days now and played 5/10nl live at hardrock in hollywood every night and the games have been just as I imagined. People have no idea how to play with deep stacks and are completely clueless once the flop comes out. I've had people blatantly tell me they are on flush draws, people counting outs out loud before they make calls and just the most hilarious live tells I've ever seen. One thing is for sure live poker in FL is waaaaayyy easier than online poker nowadays. I've been playing some 10/20 - 30/60 razz this week online but it's been a few weeks since I've grinded heads up cash and it felt like the games have been pretty dead for the most part. I think I will be playing 5/10 or 10/20 live probably 4-5 days a week atleast until it shows some sign of the action slowing down, but I just don't see that happening anytime soon fortunately!

Other than poker, I've been shopping everyday with Loraine for furniture for our condo and it is so hard to make decisions. We've been to like every furniture store and stuff is starting to look the same now and we have no idea what to buy. I was kind of looking foward to buying furniture and setting up a new place but it's alot harder than it sounds. Hopefully tomorrow we will give in and just start shipping some couches and tv's! The only thing we can officially agree on is this glass waterfall with rocks at the bottom that looks really awesome but really doesn't do anything for us as far as furniture...

BTW - Pokerstars party at the Palms with Snoop Dogg was sweeeeet. Snoop's mic had Snoop dogg written on it in diamons and was probably worth more than me lol. I tried to take some pics but it was kinda dark in there and in all of the pictures Snoop came out as this glowing blob, oh well. It was awesome but not enough Gin and Juice to win the Main event. Good luck to my friend Adam Levy (Rooooooothlus) who is still in though with 27 left playing down to the Final Table tomorrow!!!! If he makes it it's gonna be party time back in vegas in november!!!! Even though WSOP is over for me I will still be updating this regularly because it was alot of fun keeping up with this and good to look back on. WCOOP and FTOPS both coming up soon online so stay tuned for both of those and tons of lol live poker stories in the near future I'm sure!

-Jason

MAIN EVENT - Day 2 + Snoop Dogg

2010-07-11T05:42:00.003-04:00

Made it through day 2....BARELY. I have like 15k going into day 3 at 500/1000 100 which sucks big time but I'm not out so it could be worse. I got up to 45k at one point today but I just went on a downhill plummet from there. I had one hand where I had to fold JJ on a 89T board in a spot where I was obviously behind against a huge nit that showed me 99. I got 3 bet relentlessly by some german kid who looked like he was 12 years old and basically stuck it in me all day long. The only way I was able to maintain chips throughout the day was 3 betting the weaker players that opened and picking up small pots and losing all the bigger pots. Bleh.

The last two hours of the day was the worst. I had two fish at my table with 100k and 200k and they would limp 90% of the time. Then the same two aggressive young kids would iso them and I would never wake up with anything remotely close to shove over. I went from 20k to 15k to end the day without ever finding a spot to gamble. Very frusteratting however this still is a tournament with tons of really deep stacks so if all goes accordign to plan I should be able to chip up to say, 200k by the second level on monday and then it will be smooth sailing!

We have a day off tomorrow and at 9pm Pokerstars is throwing a party with Snoop Dogg performing at the Palms. Ship the day off. Ship Snoop Dogg. Day 4 coming soon....

-Jason

MAIN EVENT day 1

2010-07-09T04:55:00.002-04:00

I'll post more about my day 1 in the next few days I need to get some rest for tomorrow. Lets just say I ran terrible early against some terrible players and worked a 10k stack up to 23k to end the day and I'm thrilled about it. We start up at noon and it's going to be 200/400 50 (M = 23 and almost 60bbs) so even though I'm short comparatively I've got plenty of room to play and time to chip up.

Here is the players and stack sizes of my table for day 2:

Robert Kumbatovic 111,950 AMAZON / 331 / 1
Rumen Nanev 27,600 AMAZON / 331 / 2
Herman Weenink 42,575 AMAZON / 331 / 4
Terry Graven 45,200 AMAZON / 331 / 5
Jonathan Tare 68,750 AMAZON / 331 / 6
Matthew Holupko 42,050 AMAZON / 331 / 7
Patrick Clay 9,150 AMAZON / 331 / 8
Jason Sackler 23,225 AMAZON / 331 / 9

Chipleader to my immediate left so that should be a fun little party. Looks like fun and I'll be reporting back late tomorrow night with the results. GL me!!!!

-Jason

Event #56 $2500nl plus MAIN EVENT TOMORROW

2010-07-07T05:57:00.003-04:00

Wheeellllppp it's here - main event tomorrow. I'm actually pretty excited and I'm not going to write much here now because I'm about to get some rest. Just a quick catch up since I've had 5 days off or so since the $2500:

Good table, had alot of Europeans which I think is a good sign for the main event. Pretty weak play overall and if I could have this table for my main event table tomorrow I would be thrilled! I lost a few pots early in some spots where I tried to chip up and eventually won an all in for 13k or so AK> AT. Couldn't get much going after that. A hand came up blind vs blind where I limped in with 9T and flopped T96 agaisnt a pretty weak opponent. He called the flop and turn and the river brought a 7 which I wasn't happy about, however we had a similar hand earlier where the board ran out similar and the guy bluffed the river on a 4 straight board and I called with top pair and was good. This time he bet again pretty small and I paid him off with his 85o and had to sigh it off and try to chip up again. However I failed and eventually in the last level of the night I shipped A6ss in mp into the BB who called with 88 and it was all over baby. GG.

That was that and moving on to tomorrow. After the whole summer I'm a little under even which isn't the greatest but I can't complain too hard having invested alot. I think grinding tournaments all WSOP was a nice change from playing cash all year and surprisingly I never got burnt out from it. I'm excited to get back home after this tourney and go back to the real world but not until I give this my all. I signed with Pokerstars to wear their logos and everything for the ME and in return I get 50k vpps online and if I manage to make the money I get a $12k PCA package. That's a huge incentive because I've missed out on PCA for a while and I've wanted to play in it. That's about it. GL to me T minus 9 hours.

-Jason

Event #45 $1500 nl Day 1 and Day 2

2010-06-28T03:59:00.005-04:00

By far the most frusterating tournament of the series. My initial table in this tournament was a dream. Actually, I couldn't even dream up a table this good. It was like no one at my table understood any concepts of poker at all and I felt like they were playing for play money. Where do these people get $1500 from?!?!? Actually I'm sure I'll be asking the same question in the $10,000 main event next week. It just baffles me. I had a woman in her 40s that was probably the next best player at the table but was really easy to play against. She would call my raises and always call the flop and folded the turn so I probably won 1/4 of her stack just by barrelling away in the first two orbits. Then I guess everyone figured I was just some aggressive kid pushing everyone around so when I raised my 4th straight hand as I picked up AA I got 3 bet huge by a guy to my left. I called and the flop came out T 4 2 rainbow. Check Check, turn 8 and I checked shoved on his 800 chip bet for about 3k more and he called soooooo fast. I quickly flipped up my AA and he just hung his head. As I expected him to flip JJ-KK he mutterered "Do I have to show since I'm drawing dead?" LOL. AK. He says "man I would have bet my life we had the same hand!" I felt like I was in the twilight zone.

I chipped up to about 15k and as all great things come to an end my table broke and I got moved from the best table of my life to one not so much. This new table had a bunch of solid online players and John Juanda. Bleeeeehhhh. Luckily I ran decent and made a few successful 3-bets and before I knew it my table broke again raight before dinner break and I had about 29k going into dinner. Sweet.

After dinner it was rollercoaster time as usual. I get back and open KK on the cutoff and get shoved on by the button for about 7k. I call and lose to AJ and get down to about 22-23k. Okay no sweat blinds were still 300/600 plenty of time left to play. Then I open KQdd early and the BB calls. K Q 2 rainbow and I get checkraised for most of his stack. I shrug and happily announce all in only to get shown 2-2. WTF.... Down to 12k really fast. OKAY still have a good reshove stack lets find a good spot and double up. 400/800 - the cutoff opens for 2k and I happily shove AJdd and he snaps with AQ! What's going on here?!?!?! AK2 flop and the dumb fish at the table says hey you're fine I folded J3! Jh on the turn BINK! That one felt good back to 25k.

After all that I got back to about 30k 3 betting a couple times and just stayed there the rest of the night. I moved tables with 15 minutes left in the night only to be samwhiched between Livb (Highstakes online player - really agressive and won Borgata main event 6 months back that I played) and John Phan (agressive live pro - asian) Yeah that's right - there's not many bad asian poker players. So this only lasted about 15 minutes and I got through the night thinking sweet 24 from the money. Ease into my 5th cash tomorrow and make some noise! WRONG.

I show up for day 2 and scoped out my table. All young players with 60-130k stacks at 600/1200. The kid to my left I've played with a ton. He had 130k which was probably close to chipleader at the time and he had a huge mountain and I know him to be an aggressive player to begin with. So here's how my 1 hand of the day went: I start the day in the SB and it folds to me and I look down at AK. I raise it up to 3200 and aggressive Euro chipleader starts counting out a reraise. wowoweeewow. I'm thinking this could be so awesome I am so excited to ship this first hand and chip up since I know he's doing this with a wide range. So wide infact that he makes it 7500 and I snap shove my stack in and he calls instantly with red AA. I am stunned. Before I flip my hand up he says to me "If you show AK or better here you deserve a hug." I flip my hand over and the table oooooooohs and ahhhhhhs and in one hand exactly I am busto about 20 out of the money and wasted an entire day and a good nights sleep. Puuuke.

Nothing I could do just the biggest dissapointment ever and all the day 1 hype for nothing. What can you do? Time to wake up tomorrow and start allll over again. I went and registered tonight for the $1500nl at noon and going to give it another shot. Tomorrow is the last $1500 of the series, Friday is a $2500nl and Monday is Day1a of the MAIN EVENT WOOOOOT. I haven't registered yet for the ME but I will do it this week and decide which Day 1 I will be playing. Lots of excitement in the next two weeks to come so stay tuned!

-Jason

Event #42 $1500nl

2010-06-25T03:49:00.002-04:00

Busto after dinner break.

I woke up before the tourney and out of nowhere I felt really sick. My throat was killing me, couldn't stop sneezing and I really wasn't sure if I was going to play this one. So logically I went out to wal mart and bought $40 worth of medicine and some breakfast at dunkin doughnuts and comepletely drugged myself up to see if that would help lol. Well my head felt like it was in a bubble but despite my nose running a little I figured I could get through the day and play the tourney since I was already registered and didn't feel like going through the process of unregistering.

Aside from my physical state I was actually playing pretty good poker. I chipped up to around 10k pretty early from the 4500 we started with without doubling up or playing any big pots. Loraine's theory was that no one wanted my chips because I was sick so they just conceded the pot when I entered...lol. Even if that was the case I was playing well and seemed to be getting through everything fine.

Then dinner break happened and when I came back I lasted about 3 hands exactly if I remember correctly. It folded to my button with about 8k to start the hand and I had
5-5 at 200/400 50. Sooo, I shipped it, small blind reshoved and I lose to AK - As right in the window. GG. No regrets at all and I'm glad I was able to play the event. I came home and took a ton of nighttime medicine and passed out and woke up today about 15 hours later feeling 85% better. I'm still a little stuffed up but I have no feeling of being sick at all anymore so that's a huge relief.

Tomorrow is another $1500nl event so time to get some rest for that. Loraine is finally in town too so I have something to look foward to when I'm not playing tournaments instead of just looking for more poker to play!

-Jason

Event #36 $1000nl Day 2

2010-06-22T20:38:00.002-04:00

ARGHHHHHH!!!

Busto - 142nd place for $2,903.

All tournament long I had atleast 45bbs+ and felt like it was impossible to bust. At the start of the day I was raising a bunch and chipping up very nicely on the bubble. Neil Channing moved to my table again towards the money and he was cipleader to start the day and lost more than half his stack by the money so that was nice. He was pretty easy to play against though, he never 3 bet and two times he just called my raises and he played pretty weak after the flop. Finally I stacked a pretty aggressive player in the money where I raised JJ pre, Neil called on the button and the kid from the bb called. 8 5 2 rainbow and I bet, Neil called and the kid check shoved for about 20k. I reshoved and Neil showed an 8 when he folded, the guy to my left also said he had an 8 before the kid flipped up his hand - J8 drawing dead lol.

The hand before dinner break I also made a pretty good call where I called a raise from the BB with QQ from a decent player who raised early. The board ran out K 6 2 6 7 and I check-called the flop and turn and the guy bet about 14k on the river which seemed a little odd because my stack was about the size of the pot. So I just made a few assumptions based on his bet sizing that he was bluffing a decent amount of the time and when I called the river he just tapped the table and said NH. Whew!! That put me at about 80k instead of down to like 15k if I was wrong and went to dinner break feeling pretty good.

When we got back the next half hour was so bad. This aggressive Russian guy moved to my table and I had opened twice since we got back in good spots and both times he reraised me pre and I folded. Not too worried I just figured he was getting hands. Then I opened AK utg to 4k and got two callers, then it gets to the Russian guy who squeezes to 16k. Now I had enough info based on our history and the stack sizes of the other guys that called that the Russian guy had a wider range than AA and KK so I decided to 4 bet but not all in. I made it 18k more and it folded to him and he thought FOREVER. Literally like 7 minutes the guy looked like he was pained by his decision he had. I'm glad I didn't just shove because he would probably have had an easier decision because I would do that with AK alot. Finally after looking like he was about to fold like 6 times he said all in and I called and lost a flip to his JJ for 150k pot which would have put me near the chiplead at the time. ARGGGGGGG.

Next event is on Wednesday another $1500nl and then another one on Friday. 4 cashes so far for $21,595 and 7 events left to go!!!!

Event #36 $1000nl Day 1

2010-06-21T08:40:00.005-04:00

I hope every event I play the rest of the summer starts out like this one. Tournements would be so easy. We start with 3k in chips in these $1k events and by level 3 I reached 27k. I knocked out all of the original players at my table and I legitimately have never seen anyone run so hot in my life. By the dinner break I had well over 30k and peaked at about 42k. Then towards the end of the night I dobuled up like every shortstack as usual and bagged about 28k to end the night. I was really trying to chip up huge and have over 100bbs going into day two so I could really take advantage of the bubble but unfortunaly it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be to win every pot.

Back to the beginning... I started off the tourney when I had 88 on a 956T7 board and overbet shoved the river and some fish called with JJ and angrily threw his cards. That was pretty funny. Then I somehow had AK a few hands later and I raised, someone 3 bet, then someone cold called, then I just shoved and got called by 66....bink A in the window. Soon after I reraise pre with KK and fish calls and check raises 80% of his stack on a 952 flop and I put him in thinking he can't fold and after 3 minutes he folds leaving himself with about 400 chips. I have officially seen it all...lol.

Level 3 75/150 - Two people limp, button then shoves for about 1400. I have AA in the BB and call as does one of the limpers who has about 10k to start and I have about 17k. Flop comes T34 rainbow and I bet about 1700 and he shoves. I SNAP and flip my hand immediately and he shows...67s for a gutterball and brick brick I have 27k. RIDICULOUS. I double up a shortstack and lose a couple pots to get down to about 23k then this happens: UTG raises I reraise to 1100ish UTG+1 with AA obv and he calls pretty quickly. QT7 rainbow I bet about 1300 and he check shoves another 10k. I'm like wtf is going on, roll my eyes call pretty quickly and he shows up with...89s openended. Brick Brick and I'm over 33k and average was about 5k at the time. I was in complete awe at the gifts I was getting finally, unfortunately it had to be in the $1k and not a bigger event even though this is the tourney for that stuff to happen since the field is soooo weak. Oh well today is day two so I will try to make something happen as usual and hopefully it won't end short as most of the day two's have been in these $1k's. If I do cash it will be my fourth of the series in 10 events so that is a pretty cool thing, atleast I'm making some runs.

My stack by level 3. There's also 4 stacks of blacks in front you can't see. Run good much? lol

Event #32 $5000nl

2010-06-18T08:23:00.002-04:00

B U S T O .

Blahhhhh. I guess this is what I get for having such high expetations from this event. Both $5k events I was super excited for and ready to play good poker and I don't feel like I played poorly but just didn't run good in the right spots I guess. Right off the bat at the beginning of the tourney I had the most annoying thing happen. Uscphildo was to my left and in level 1 he lost a pot where him and another guy 5 bet all in on a 3c4c5c flop with only 400 in the middle pre. Phil had A2o no club and the other guy had 67o no club. Everyone was kind of shocked from the hand and Phil was tilted. So he decided to just put his remaining 2500 in the middle all in blind UTG which seemed fine I guess. It folded to my BB and I had TT and obviously called and he flipped 34o and the board ran out Q8342. Awesome. So I basically started the tourney with like 12.5k.

Later on I moved to Justin Bonomo's left which sucked but not for obvious reasons. He actually played pretty nitty and I got away with a 3-bet once against him when I just moved to the table. I just really couldn't get much going the whole time. I lost a flip blind vs blind against a 5k stack where I had TT against AJ which I think his shove with AJ over my 3 bet was horrible as I wasn't folding anything. And finally I was down to 7.5k at 150/300 and shoved AQ from a button raise and lost another flip agaisnt JJ and that was it. Very uneventful and dissapointing. It just sucks becuase there was only two $5k events I planned on playing and those two events I failed to win races and chip up and had super high expactations. Oh well moving on to the next tourney...

There is a $1k event on saturday I'm sure I will be playing and if that doesn't go well I have a feeling I'm going to play the $2500 razz on Monday. I will keep this updated!

-Jason

Event #24 $1000nl Day2 and more...

2010-06-16T08:04:00.003-04:00

I've been slacking a tad because it's been a somewhat slow week for tourney's compared to the first two weeks or so I'll put in a decent update. Let's get the $1k event out of the way first. I ended up getting 155th place for like $2600 which is okay I guess. Another dissapointment in my book as far as making a final table this summer but I've cashed 3 times so far in 7 events so maybe if I keep cashing I can atleast break some kind of record for most cashes in a WSOP! lol. I got all in before we reached the money AK > AQ and held somehow so I got what I wanted and had some chips going into the money. Then I went on a streaky little run going from 20k to 40k and back a bunch of times until I busted. I had about 42k at 1k/2k 300a and this guy who appeared to be aggressive but was just getting a bunch of hands I think opened early and I shoved 5s on him and he tanked for a good minute or so and called. I just felt that he was winning alot of pots and started to use that image to his advantage so I found something to shove on him, however he woke up with AQ - Q on the river I lose flip gg no biggie.

Next thing, we moved into our house this week and it's pretty awesome. It's me, Josh, Derrick, Marc and a bunch of our friends from LA. Everyone is awesome and we have a pretty good time playing and discussing poker and just hanging out. We have our own "war room" downstairs where we all play online together and it's really nice grinding with a bunch of other online players. There's 8 of us total staying in the house and it's huge with a nice pool, huge kitchen, poker table (where we play $100 sngs every night when there's no action online) and tonight we went out and bought a ping pong table for some added action. I went to wal mart and bought a big monitor to play online that I plan on returning before we leave too... lol wal mart. There's also a maid that comes everyday and cleans up after everyone so that's a huge plus. I did like staying at the Rio for the first couple of weeks only because of the convenience of being at the WSOP and when I woke up I could go right downstairs and play my events. Other than that the Rio sucked pretty badly as a hotel - Food was terrible, it was off the strip so I had to drive everywhere and it's just overall not a very nice quality hotel. I rented a pretty nice car though. It's just a new Nissan Altima but it's much better than the giant tank of a Dodge that I had last year.

I'm probably about halfway through the series and I'm pretty happy with where I am at the moment. I've played about $12k worth of buyins and I've cashed for almost $19k so far and I'm also up another $10k or so playing cash between live and online so even though I haven't done anything major yet, I'm not losing my ass so I have no complaints. I planned on playing the $1500 event later today but I'm going to skip it because I've missed both 6 max events so far this series because of being in day 2 of $1k events but I'm NOT missing the $5k 6 max event on Thursday. I am well aware that this tournament is probably the hardest field of the series but I'm super excited for that. It's a really deep structure and there is alot of poker to be played so I'm pumped about that. After that I have about 7 more $1000-$2500nl events left and probably the razz and then July 5th is the main event. Tons more good poker to come and lots to look foward too when the series is over. Loraine and I are in the process of moving into a condo in Aventura and I'm super excited about getting settled down there. Also live poker comes to Florida July 1st, so when I get back it's time for the live grind! The games are expected to be amazing and I expect to be playing live a whole lot.

I just realized I could post pictures so here's a few I've taken from the series with my phone for fun:

Looking into the new giant Pavillion room which is the main room being used for the series. So many tables...

Durrrr heads up in the $1500 event for his first bracelet and ~$10 million dollars in prop bets! Aaaaannd he gets 2nd.

My 12.3k stack going into day 2 of the $1k event #24 yesterday before I turned it into 40k and gave it away. :-/

Event #24 $1000nl Day 1

2010-06-14T01:13:00.003-04:00

Yay made another day 2. Unfortunatly I don't have as many chips as I want since I'm missing the $2500 6max today, but I will try to make something happen early on. Unlike most of the other events I got to be at the same table for most of the day which was pretty nice. I moved really early in the tournament to and was at that table the rest of the day. I played a little more aggressive than I normally would one I doubled up but that just caused a more swingy day. I chipped up to about 18k before dinner but I had a pretty good table so I wanted to keep the pressure on and open alot of pots, but it didn't work so well. I ended up doubling up a few shortstacks and playing some weird pots and ended the day with 12.3k. Could be worse, hopefully I can make a run at this one and make it worth missing the $2500!!

-Jason

June 10th - Day off!

2010-06-11T01:30:00.003-04:00

I think I've decided that I'm going to play Saturday's $1k event even though it overlaps day 1 of the $2500 6max on Monday if I make day 2. I really like the $1k events because the players suck so bad so if I can build a nice stack going into Monday it will be worth missing.

Had a nice couple days off the last two days from grinding tournies 24/7, atleast it seems. Me and Josh decided to check out the poker room at Aria yesterday and started up a 5/10nl game in the back. Nice room but very small, however the players were awfull! I was stuck like $1500 in the game early which was frusterating because everyone was playing so bad, then I started winning a ton of small pots to get even. Finally I had like $3k in front of me and on a 265T board I had a fish check raise me all in when I had a set of 6s. I took like 30 seconds to call and Josh claims it was a huge slowroll I was just somewhat caught off gaurd when I got overshoved so big by this guy who was a pretty big station for the most part. Oh well I call and he doesnt even show his hand on the river and mucks when the Jh falls that completed a flush draw and I ship a $6k pot - biggest of the trip so far and me and Josh beat the game for almost $7000 combined. Good session.

Other than that I've just been dicking around watching sports and gambling a little to pass time. I played a little online the other night but action was pretty slow, probably because it was like 7am EST. I still managed to get a little action though and that went well. We went out the Craftsteak for dinner tonight at MGM and took Josh's dad who was up here for a couple days for his birthday and that was awesome. Second time we've eaten there this week and I think I've gotten my steak fix for atleast another....week. lol. We move into our house tomorrow with most of the guys from last year so I've got to get packed up tonight and rent a car tomorrow morning. Goodbye to the shitty rooms at the Rio!

-Jason

Event #17 $5000 nl

2010-06-09T07:15:00.004-04:00

Bustooo...

Pretty dissapointing day overall. I had huge expectations for this one since it was the first tournament we actually got to play poker for a while and not shove 20bbs right away. Unfortunately I tried everything I could in early levels and I couldn't chip up to save my life. The sick part is I really liked my table. I looked around and I barely saw an easy fishy tables. The only "known" players at my table were Scott Fischman (who SUCKS) and James Mackey (mig.com) who busted pretty early and I was happy about that part.

Fischman played absolutely horrendous and built a mountain of like 60k in chips fairly early in the day. I didn't get it at all. I ISO'd him like 3 times with big hands when he limped (which he did pretty much every hand) and he just crushed every flop it was sickening. There was one hand where UTG opened, Fischman 3 bet in 2nd pos, guy to my left 4 bets to like 4500 with 6k behind. Fischman CALLS the cold 4 bet and the flops 55Q and what does he show up with when the guy jams? None other than 5-3os. I kinda felt bad for the guy because the hand didn't even make sense to bust like that. Honestly, some of the worst poker I've ever seen and in a 5k event but whatever he has chips gl to him.

At dinner break I was down to 5600 from the 15k we started with and when we came back from dinner I blinded down to about 3200 with absolutely nothing I could do. Then my rush started. I'm UTG with 8bb at 200/400 50a and I look down at AA. Bingo. I put it in and make a joke about stealing the blinds and a guy picks up 99 and doubles me up, back to about 7k. Then I go somewhat on a rush and shove a bunch of times over Fischman's limps and super light opens and weeeee I'm back to about 13k. Not much of a stack by any means but for the first time today I had some serious hope. Then out of nowhere the grim reaper himself sits to my left - Brandon Adams. I really have nothing bad to say about the guy seems very cool and quiet and his second hand at the table we're in the blinds and it folds to us. I have KQ in the sb with about 11k at 400/800 75a and I ship ofcourse and Brandon throws in his chips and looks at me with a huge smile....lol He flips AK and its gg $5k.

My next scheduled event is on saturday it's a $1k event but I'm not 100% sure I'm going to play it. Monday is the $2500 6 max event which I really really really don't want to miss because I missed the last 6 max event and if I make day 2 of the $1k that's also on Monday. So we'll see about those and tomorrow is a $1500 event at Venetian that Josh and Marc and everyone are going to play so I'm slightly tempted to wake up early and play it but we'll see how I'm feeling when I wake up. It's all about feelin' it!

Event #13 $1000nl Day 2

2010-06-08T02:57:00.002-04:00

Bustoooo.
131st place for $2,847.

Could be worse I guess atleast I'm making semi-deep runs in these things. I hear all these stories from all the big stacks like "Yah had this fish just open shove like 50bbs into my AA, etc etc." I'm still waiting for those kind of gifts!!

I built up nicely to about 56k at 800/1600 and then lost a medium sized flip to put me back to 40k. By the time we reached 1k/2k 300 I had about 35k and my bustout hand was as follows: Hijack opened to 4800, I ship AQ in the SB, BB insta puts in a stack of yellows and says CALL. woops. He had QQ and held and that was the end of today. I really felt like I was gonna bink an Ace there too for a nice stack. Oh well GG.

Next event is tomorrow already and it's the first event over $1500. It's event #17 $5k nl. Expect there to be big names and a much tougher field tomorrow but I'm pretty much pumped about it. We finally get to play some deeper poker which is what I do best. GL to us updates tomorrow night as usual.

-Jason

Event #11 $1500nl and #13 $1000nl Day 1

2010-06-06T04:27:00.005-04:00

Okay I'm going to update both of these together because I was busy playing cash yesterday and quite frankly there really wasn't much to say about event #11...

Event #11:

Had a TERRIBLE fish at my table who I promise did not fold 1 hand from the start of the tournament until I moved tables and had a giant stack. He kept insisting on how you have to see every flop even with 7-2 (especially the worst hands) it was sooo awesome and he kept stacking people and everyone was getting pissed. I was dying to get a good spot against him but nothing happened and I moved tables which sucked big time. My final hand was at 50/100 I had about 3800 to start the hand. Raiser utg and 4 people called. I look down at AKss in the sb and make it 1500 planning on shoving any flop if someone was bad enough to just flat 1500 with my stack (which happens alot more than you think in these tournaments). The first 4 people fold and the guy last to call the raise on the button puts me all in... Obviously I call and he has 88 and when I show my hand he says wow I was hoping you had that. lol. Pretty aweful, however he held and that's all she wrote for this one!

Event #13:

What a rollercoaster day this was. We started with 3k in chips and right away I stacked someone when I turned a boat with TT and they had a straight - EZ game. I built up to 8k and then I lost a pot with AK to QQ for 15k. Normally I wouldn't get it in this deep flipping for so much but the hand was against a really good player I've played with before and the way he played it was extremely tricky. He ended up calling a raise and I 3 bet on the button with AK and both of us had been very active running over our table and made a weird 4 bet after calling the fishes raise. It was super small and really confusing but I just felt like I couldn't fold because he just took a weird line and I looked like I was stealing. So I lose this flip and get back to 1k...great.

I then move tables which I wasn't happy about because my table was awesome. However, in the first two rounds I managed to chip up from 1k to 15k!! Sickest heater ever. My big double was when I got back to 6k a guy 3 bet me pre and I flatted with AA, he shoved a 9 9 2 flop and I beat him into the pot he had 33 and I held. Was really really sick. I had Jared Hamby (TheWacoKid) at my table too and he had a ton of chips but I just kinda stayed out of his way. Super nice guy btw.

I ended up moving tables a total of 6 times today which was absured. I pretty much stayed between 10-15k all day long really trying to find good spots to chip up. It sucked having to ajust to players when I only played 1.5 levels on avg with them. Finally my last table had Shaun Deeb and Andrew Youngblood both with a ton of chips. In the last orbit of the night I was in the BB with about 10k and blinds were 300/600 75. It folded to Shaun who shoved the button and the SB tanked for a good 2 minutes and finally called. I looked at AQ and couldn't put my chips in the pot fast enough Phil Hellmeuth style. Shaun flipped up A4, the sb flipped A6 and the board ran out 5 6 7 T....Q! Queen on the river to pretty much triple me up to 29.5k and then the night ended. We started with 1922 and ended with about 280 people for day 1a and tomorrow is day 1b. Monday we combine both days for day 2 and we will know how many people there are total and how many cash and prizes etc.

More updates will come late Monday night and hopefully I can beat my last run.

-Jason

Event #8 $1500nl Part 2

2010-06-04T07:15:00.003-04:00

Busto - 36th place for $13,241

Looooong day. We reached the money 40 minutes into play which was alot sooner than I expected. That included hand for hand which went on for about 15 minutes so we only got maybe 20 hands in before we cashed. My table was pretty good, no one opening a ton or 3 betting alot - everyone played pretty fit or fold for the most part.

My first double up came where I opened AK and this kid who just moved to my table 3bet and called my shove with KJ. Rewind back 1 year ago - I lost AK to A6 all in preflop with 86th left in a $2knl WSOP event. The kid that held KJ today was that guy...revenge! lol. That put me over 50k. I grinded for a while then went on a super sick roller coaster for like 20 minutes. This girl who shortstacked the whole day shoved about 17k on the button and I took a minute and called with A8 from the bb and held against her K2. I got up to about 90k then won a huge flip TT > AK to get up to like 140k. THREE HANDS LATER I get it in AK to TT this time and the guy holds and puts me back to 90k instead of 200k - blah. This was at 1k/2k or 1200/2400 don't remember but I would have been in amazing shape.

I kinda just grinded and hung in there for a while with no great spots and the 2k/4k and 3k/6k levels were a nightmare!!! I just went not only card dead but just couldn't even find spots to shove any two with good equity or anything just brutal. I managed to get as short as 40k then went on another heater. I shoved KJ in the sb and the bb snapped with KQ and the board cam Q98T4. Bink! Then I moved tables. First I doubled when I shoved AK and got called by 55 and the board ran something like J23K8. This put me around 170k. Then I built up to 210k opening a few times and finally my bustout hand....

I had about 150k to start the hand. The chipleader at my table had over 1 million and had been opening ALOT. Finally I got a spot where he opened the hijack and I looked down at KJss and shipped it. He tanked for a good 1-2 minutes and tried getting some info out of me before he finally called with A4. Meh - I really don't like this call. He seemed like a good player and was doing a good job of running the table over on top of running super hot, but he just wasn't getting a good price here and 100% should have mucked as he was rarely going to be better than a 30% dog in this spot but oh well gg sir!

This was a great start to the WSOP and I've been doing great at accumulating and grinding in these fields so, even though I got so close today I'm pretty excited there's still 16 or 17 more events to go including the main event! Next event is in seven hours so I'm going to get some rest now and update at the end of the night tomorrow when I build up and do it all over again!

-Jason

Event #8 $1500nl Part 1

2010-06-03T05:51:00.002-04:00

So, this is part 1 because I made it past the first day! I finished today with 23,600 and we start up tomorrow at 2:30PST at 600/1200 100. There are 270 players left and 243 make the money. Cashing the first event of the summer will be a confidence booster but I'm going to do everything I can to get chips early tomorrow. I feel like I am playing really well right now so I will be disappointed if I don't get to the money without looking for some good spots to get chips.

Overview of today:

My first table was pretty tough - I had Jordan Morgan and like 3 online players at my table and there was way too aggressive play for a $1500 event starting table. There was a 5 bet bluff all in pre for like 80bbs in level 1 and the kid showed KT after the other kid snap folded after 4 betting and right away I knew I drew an awful table. Not only was my table kind of annoying, but for some reason we were located directly under an air vent and JUST our table was freeezing. Blah. Anyways I managed to hold AK > AQ to get me to about 6500 and then I moved tables which I was super happy.

Next table I only played about 1 orbit before they broke the table but there was one hand that I thought was funny. 100/200 25 I raised UTG+1 with 5h-3h and an older man from the big blind called. Flop came 5-3-2 and after I c-bet the old man started ranting "You young agressive kids, I don't know what you have. You prolly have 3-5 or something!" before folding and I ended up not showing because I didn't realize we were breaking but that would have been pretty funny.

Next table was pretty good and it's where I spent the majority of the day. I picked up AA > TT and held to get to over 12.5k and then I just kinda hung between 12k-18k the whole day. I opened alot of pots but there were spots where I opened and got called like 4 ways and had to check/fold a bunch of pots. Finally in the last level I shoved 7-7 for about 12k and got snapped by the bb who luckily flipped up AKss and I somehow won a flip. After that I picked up some small pots and had around 30k for maybe 3 hands when it folded to my SB and I put the BB all in for about 7k with A6 and he couldn't call faster with AT. Just unlucky and a great automatic spot for him and I finished out with 23.6k.

Still lots of people left so tomorrow there's lots of work to be done. I think Phil Hellmeuth is still in so I can only pray that I draw his table for some added comedy and free chips.

For all chip updates check http://forum.parttimepoker.com/nb_wsopsms.php
I text my stack size to PTP and it auto updates instantly on there so whatever it says on there is accurate and I update it whenever anything significant happens.

-Jason

Event #5 $1500nl

2010-06-01T21:24:00.002-04:00

BUSTO

Really couldn't get much going in this one. Early on i had a hand where I raised AQss in mp and got called by the bb. Flop - Ad 3s 7s... Old man c/c the flop - turn 3he c/c and river 5. He checks fairly quick and I value bet close to pot knowing hes calling with any Ace and I obv value town myself when he calls pretty quickly with AK. Other than that this tournement was very uneventful and we'll just have to wait for tomorrow to win an event I guess.

The night prior to this event I played 5/10nl at the Venetian and I was about to leave early when Jaime Gold sat in the game and then it was just impossible. It's not the first time I've played with him but it's great when he sits because his value for money and poker skill level are pretty comparable. Overall he's fun to play with and a decent guy especially since he split his $60 bowl of blueberries and strawberries with me...lol

Next event #8 (I think) tomorrow - $1500nl again. Updates with be on PTP so look for them!

-Jason

Event #3 $1000nl

2010-05-30T16:54:00.002-04:00

BUSTO

The tournament started at noon and I lasted until about 11:30pm. We started with 3k in chips and I peeked around 17k at 100/200 25 which was nice but I lost a ton of all ins against short-medium stacks which just couldn't have been avoided to get me over the hump. One key hand at 150/300 25 a medium stack shoved over an aggressive raise player and I flatted with TT. The raiser folded and he flipped AT and flopped KQJ for broadway which stung a little but I hung in. Last hand of the event I opened AQ at 300/600 75 and an old man from the BB calls. Flop QT4 and he leads 5k into a ~3k or so pot and when I shoved he went into the tank for a good 30 seconds giving me some false hope before calling and flipping up KK. GG

Next event is tomorrow Event #5 $1500 nl. I linked my phone to send updates to ptp with chipcounts and stuff so go here http://forum.parttimepoker.com/nb_wsopsms.php during the event and you should be able to get updated chipcounts from me.

-Jason

WSOP IS HERE!!!!

2010-05-27T19:05:00.002-04:00

We arrived last night in Vegas and it's about time! This week has been non stop lifting boxes and moving out of Orlando and I could not be happier to be done with all of that. My birthday was fun even though the braves lost - the seats were amazing row 1 box seats behind the batters box. The Magic are coming back from down 3-0 and they are about to win that series, so that's that. Anyways, Vegas time.

The first event starts Saturday. It's the $1k nl event and I heard they are capping it around 7600 players and they expect it to fill! That's kinda nuts. They got rid of the brazilian room from last year and the opened up the big pavilion where the poker expo normally is and that's the main room they are using this year along with the amazon room. So there is a TON of room for players. I will be updating this during all of the events and anyone who wants chipcounts and stuff during breaks or what not send me a message via text/facebook/ptp/2+2 and I would be more than happy send out mass text updates. Going to watch the Suns/Lakers game soon then off to play cash games at the Venetian tonight then preparing for the grind, yay.

-Jason

Tourney madness

2010-05-09T04:10:00.003-04:00

Not too many updates of late so I obviously haven't won an FTOPS or SCOOP event. There's a week left until both series are over and me and Josh leave May 26th for Vegas. I am really excited for WSOP mainly because I'm really antsy to play live again. Not sure if this has been mentioned much on here, but as of July 1st Florida poker will be completely uncapped as far as limits and buyins go. No more $100 max 5/10 games. That is REALLY exciting. Since we are moving down south I plan on playing atleast a few days a week at the Hardrock and as long as the games are as good as expected I plan on making atleast 2 billion dollars this year. No joke, live Florida poker players are awful.

Anyways, back to WSOP. We were supposed to head out to Vegas on the 28th, but flights were like 1/3 the price on the 26th and the Rio decided to just comp us for free the extra two days so it was a no brainer to leave early. I have first row box seats to the Braves Marlins game the day before on the 25th (my birthday) so hopefully the Braves will set the mood for the rest of the summer. And go Magic!!!!! Hopefully I will be able to watch them own the Cavs again next round before Vegas.

That is all.

-Jason

Too much to do

2010-04-13T17:17:00.002-04:00

So let's see what we have... FTOPS and SCOOP are coming up in the next few weeks and I plan on playing a ton of events in both online to get into the brutal tourney mindset for the summer. Then shortly after on May 28th I leave for Vegas for the whole WSOP. The next few months could be pretty amazing or a total bummer that's soon to be seen. On that note I will probably be updating this very often starting atleast when I get to vegas.

Otherwise, life has been a GRIND the past few months. I've been grinding mostly low-mid stakes cash from 1/2 - 3/6nl just to build up nicely before the summer and overall that's been going well. Loraine and I are in the midst of planning for the wedding in december and looking for a place in Miami to live once we get back from Vegas. Plus, baseball season started...and I have to get MLB 2K10 today for xbox, jeeezz so much to do! Go Braves!!!!! Time for bowling...

-Jason

3 more months

2010-02-25T10:06:00.002-05:00

First off, there was a glimmering hope of the prospect of Loraine and I moving to Vegas later on in the year but I don't think it's going to happen. Most likely we are going to end up in Miami or somewhere in South Florida which will be okay I guess. I will still be taking tons of trips to Vegas and elsewhere on the west coast for poker. Which brings me to this summer...

I am so pumped for the World Series already. It's going to be insane. It honestly feels like yesterday when I had just turned 21 and took my first trip to Vegas during the 2006 WSOP. I chopped 3 ways in a $200 2nd Chance WSOP tourney for $5k and that was it, I officially dedicated myself to poker. It's funny to think how poker has shaped my whole life since that summer. Every year prior to this that I've went out for the WSOP, I've mostly grinded cash, played a few events and twice the main event, so this year I decided to go all out. This summer I decided to make a full schedule and I'm planning on playing all the NLH events from $1000 - $5000, the main event and possibly the razz event. I sold a small percent of my action since the buy ins all together are well over $40k. Here is what the schedule of the NLH events looks like:

Sat, May 29th
12:00 PM
4-Day Event Event #3: No-Limit Hold'em $1,000

Mon, May 31st
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #5: No-Limit Hold'em $1,500

Wed, Jun 2nd
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #8: No-Limit Hold’em $1,500

Fri, Jun 4th
12:00 PM
Event #11: No-Limit Hold'em $1,500

Sat, Jun 5th
12:00 PM
4-Day Event Event #13: No-Limit Hold’em $1,000

Mon, Jun 7th
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #16: No-Limit Hold’em / Six Handed
$1,500

Tue, Jun 8th
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #17: No-Limit Hold'em $5,000

Sat, Jun 12th
12:00 PM
4-Day Event Event #24: No-Limit Hold’em $1,000

Mon, Jun 14th
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #26: No-Limit Hold'em / Six Handed $2,500

Wed, Jun 16th
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #30: No-Limit Hold’em $1,500

Thu, Jun 17th
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #32: No-Limit Hold'em / Six Handed
$5,000

Sat, Jun 19th
12:00 PM
4-Day Event Event #36: No-Limit Hold’em $1,000

Wed, Jun 23rd
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #42: No-Limit Hold’em $1,500

Fri, Jun 25th
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #45: No-Limit Hold’em $1,500

Sat, Jun 26th
12:00 PM
4-Day Event Event #47: No-Limit Hold’em $1,000

Mon, Jun 28th
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #49: No-Limit Hold'em $1,500

Thu, Jul 1st
12:00 PM
4-Day Event Event #54: No-Limit Hold’em $1,000

Fri, Jul 2nd
5:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #56: No-Limit Hold’em $2,500

Mon, Jul 5th
12:00 PM
13-Day Event Event #57: No-Limit Hold'em Championship $10,000

Borgata

2010-02-08T03:03:00.003-05:00

Bah I haven't posted in a month. I just got back from another short trip to Atlantic City. I went to the borgata for the main event of the Winter Open with Josh and Marc and met up with lots of online players. Was a pretty fun trip, however, busted on day 2 of the tourney. They claim that the seating is completely random but I had Josh three seats to my left on day 1 and on day 2 I got a crappy table draw with Marc on my right. After we all busted the tourney we drove to New York with the Roothluses to fly back home from there. Fun trip, good food (Bobby Flay's steakhouse - awesome) and met lots of people.

Looks like I may be going to Vegas in the near future and possibly LA? More on that when I figure out all these plans. For now I am grinding heads up cash and playing a few more tournaments online than I usually do. January was a pretty good month, gotta keep it rollin....

2010 - post #1

2010-01-09T04:58:00.003-05:00

Wooooo i'ts 2010! I'm about ready for a new century. I decided to start the year off with a - $8k run the first couple days but I quickly recovered from that. I put in some serious thought about going for supernova elite this year and looked at the numbers on how much I would have to play/how much I would make. It looks as if I could be a 2bb/100 winner at 2/4nl full ring and could play 20 tables for ~5 hours a day I could make $200k this year with ease, which would be aweomse, HOWEVER... I tried that for two days this week and literally wanted to kill myself. Grinding 20 tables 5 hours a day for a whole year sounded easy since I play so many hours normally a night, but it's not. Right now I play exclusively heads up NL which I thoroughly enjoy and it's mentally stimulating. Plus I could make just as much if not more doing what I do now if I focus and put in the time. 20 tabling full ring gave me a headache and I just stared at the clock waiting for it to end each session as if I had a real job. That is why I play poker for a living to avoid that afterall....

Looking foward to going to Colorado next month with the Davis family and taking some trips to Vegas next month and LA after that. That's it for now.

Happy New Year!

2009-12-28T00:52:00.000-05:00

It's almost New Years again and I've been trying to think of a resolution for this year but I can't really come up with anything. It's not like I have any bad habits to kick like smoking or being a sex addict like Chazz Michael Michaels or Tiger Woods. Speaking of Tiger, what golf game is going to come out in 2010 if there is no more Tiger golf games?! What a let down. Anyways, I don't want to set goals for making money either because who know's what doors can open money wise throughout the year. I'll just keep it simple to keep playing good poker and have an even better WSOP this year than last. Our house is all booked and ready for us 5-6 months from now. Woooot.

So many huge things to look foward to this year. I will be getting married towards the end of the year (date to come). Also Loraine and I have some important decisions to make regarding where we are going to settle down whether it be in Orlando or somewhere else in Florida, or the least likely, some other place (cough cough Vegas). I would really like to own a house by the end of the year somewhere and possibly get a new car sooner than later since I kinda have my eye on something. It should be interesting to look back on this post at the end of the year hopefully and see how much things progress.

Happy New Year to anyone reading this and best of luck 2010!

Life update

2009-12-14T16:45:00.000-05:00

What's new...hmmmm. It's been a while since my last post which seems to be the theme of my blog, but I've had some fun experiences since. I ended up going to Atlantic City for almost about 2-3 weeks with Josh, Marc and Justin for the WPT and ended up cashing in the main event. The Borgata was really nice and we had a good time but we literally did not leave the hotel. I've been to AC in the past and wasn't a huge fan of the city so we were pretty contempt just hanging out there and playing online in the lobby almost every night.

Last month decided to take a sporadic trip to Vegas for a week to play a few deepstack events at the Venetian with the same group from AC. In the one event I played it had about 400 players and with 100 left me Josh and Marc got moved to the same table! It was pretty amusing for a while until I got out, then Josh took Marc out, then none of us even cashed....lol. After that I decided to play live cash games the rest of the trip and even took a sucessful 10/20nl shot on the last day. Good food, good trip, standard Vegas.

Derrick and I found a nice house to book for the World Series this summer with most of the same group as last year and it's gonna be pretty awesome. Last year our house was okay, nothing really special just a 5 bedroom place with a pool. The place we are booking this year is a much nicer 8 bedroom place with a pool table, ping pong table, trampoline and a pool with diving board in the back. I think it pretty much means theres alot more oppurtunities for prop betting. Should be a fun summer.

I don't want to keep rambling on so I'll make a note to post more often to keep up with everything. Off to the Magic game!

Gaining momentum

2009-08-05T03:40:00.000-04:00

So WSOP has been over for a few weeks now. I obviously am not at the final table of the main event right now but I did cash for 21k or so and I really can't complain about anything this summer. I played about as many events as I expected, cashed twice, ran great online and in live cash and netted over $35k for the summer. I had an awesome time and made some new buddies that I lived with for the month of June.

So now I am trying to plan atleast the near future as far as poker goes and I want play a live and travel a bit more. I'm still going to be doing the same online grind as always, but there are just alot of places that I would love to travel to and play some tournements series. I guess now that I am back home in Orlando I just realized how much more exciting WSOP was this summer than being home with nothing going on, so I would like to get out a bit. I'm planning a trip in September to Atlantic City to the Borgata for the WPT. They lowered the main event buyin this year to 3.5k because the economy sucks and no one wants to play 10k events anymore. They also have a $1600 Heads up tourney which should both be pretty fun plus its during WCOOP so I can do all of that at the same time. Once we see how that goes then I will decide on Aruba classic, PCA in the bahamas, Aussie millions and LAPT in LA all which are between now and february. Tons of options and places I want to go and hopefully I can drag Loraine around with me if she doesn't get a job teaching! Also gotta plan the wedding soon. Busy Busy Busy.....

Heading to Day 4...

2009-07-11T05:49:00.001-04:00

Seriously way too tired to write too much right now these 13 hour days are destroying me. I finished today with 147.5k going into 2k/4k/500 tomorrow. I had an unbeleiveable table today everyone was so bad I can't even get into it right now but I will in the next few days. I peaked at 260k or so then lost a modest pot where I bricked a J9xxdd board all in with QTdd agaisnt AJ. Meh, woulda put me around 350k. Still can't complain too too much as I'm still alive with 800 left. 648 make the money and it is $21,000 or so to cash so I'm lookin foward to some serious grinding tomorrow to make it there. I'm gonna flip my shit if I go this far without cashing but it's all about shipping the main event back to Orlando! Time to get some rest.

WSOP Main Event: Heading to Day 3

2009-07-09T20:29:00.000-04:00

Wow alright haven't updated as much as I should but, the title say's it all. I finished day 1 of the tournament with 15,700 chips and had a terrible day. My table had Alex Jacob and another kid who was super aggressive and I couldn't win any pots all day long. I got to 39k or so once then just dwindled down being super frusterated and doubling up Alex all in pre AQ to 55. On top of that I felt super sick and couldn't stop sneezing.

So then day 2 came along. After finishing day 1 I really didn't think things could get worse then I looked at my table draw which included: Joe Hachem (Wsop 2005 ME winner, fish), Brian Lemke (won a bracelet few weeks ago, super solid had tons of chips), and online players Rizen (Eric Lynch) and JohnnyBelow. On top of that there were two other decent players at the table so I figured there was gonna be a ton of luck involved.

I got blinded down to about 11-12k pretty quick because I was card dead and short then found a few good spots where I shoved KQs to a raise, I 4 bet KK to Joe Hachem preflop and he folded, and then I won all in preflop with AKs to Joe Hachem's QQ and out of no where I boosted up to 54k. After that I ran pretty hot and rivered a set on some guy, then won all in pre with AK to AJ to get to dinner break with 90k.....WOW what a rush. After dinner I moved to a great table where everyone was HORRIBLE. For the first time in the tournament I was in control of the table and raised like every other hand and went from about 90k all the way to end the day with 121k almost without ever going to showdown. My table was letting me steal alot and folding the flop all the time it was a dream.
Tomorrow is day 3 and my table and chip counts are as follows:

Longobardi, Alessandro 79,700
Magill, John 106,100
Viglizzo 64,500
Sebok, Joe 122,800
Dodge, Robert 98,500
Foreman, Gerald 131,300
Brown, Randel 78,700
Gersel, Anders 42,800
Sackler, Jason 121,400

Joe Sebok is Barry Greenstiens son and from what I've seen is pretty weak and a big nit. John Magill I looked up and he got like 12th in the main event in 2006 but hasn't done anything else and looks like a fish. So I'm pumped as usual. Tonight is the Pokerstars party at club Rain at the Palms and Nelly is performing but I think I'm going to rest for tomorrow. I will post updates on how tomorrow ends up. 2044 people left and 648 make the money. ONE TIME!

First WSOP Cash!!!!!

2009-06-22T11:44:00.001-04:00

Woooot, cashed in event 36 $2000 nl event. Had 1695 people to start and I bustoed in 89th place for like $5600ish. Only cashing for that much is kinda depressing but I have mixed feelings because I was short on chips going into day two when we were 40 from the money or so and ran kinda good/got it in bad a couple times to stay alive....hah! One hand we were 15 people from the money and I shoved 6-6 from cutoff and the big blind was this old man who tanked for like 2 minutes and kept looking at the screen to see how close we were to the money. He eventually folded T-T face up and said "I think I have you" then got a penalty for exposing his cards. So once we got into the money I never got higher than 45k or so in chips between the 1k/2k and 1.5/3k levels and finally with 89 left I shoved from the cutoff for 40k with AK and the big blind who was new to the table called more than half his stack with A6 and the door card on the flopp.......6 ball. Oh well gg it was a fun run.

Today is the razz event, I have mixed feelings on if I want to play it or not. I think I have some edge in the field but I need to get a good table draw. If I get a table with 7 other live pro nits then it's going to be impossible to get chips. Part of me feels like taking a shot at like 10/20nl with $2500 is a better investment than the tourney but we'll see I have until 5pm to decide. There is also a $2100 venetian deepstack event on friday and I kinda want to play that since the structures there are great. And ofcourse the main event which I need to register for soon is coming up in 10 days or so. Aight, I'll update later in the week on how it all unfolds.

Expect some awesomeness in the next two weeks.

4 days down

2009-06-05T06:50:00.001-04:00

Aight it took me a little bit to get settled but it's 4 days into the WSOP for me. The first two days were kinda rough. I'm super dissapointed in the Rio's cash games because they are flooded with young online players and it's like impossible to play these games. The 5/10 is like sitting at an aggressive 5/10 game online with no fish and everyone is constantly 3-betting preflop and gambling a ton. Obviously there are the selective good games but overall I've been somewhat dissapointed in that aspect. The Venetian as I predicted has the best games filled with half decent players and half rediculous fish. So far it seems for cash this is where I will be playing the most.

On the tournament side, I've only played one event which was the $1500 6-max event yesterday and meh, went busto right before dinner. I actually got moved 5 times in this tournement wtf...? That's rediculous sounding even for an online tournament in 5 levels, but whatever I experienced 5 pretty interesting tables. Definitly no big names at any of my tables or anyone in particular to even note, but all of my tables were two extremes: Either really stationy horrible old people like my first table, or 5 other solid 6 max internet players with headphones that played pretty solid. As for other events it's kind of in the air to what I'm going to play. The $550 tomorrow is a good possibility though.

Other than having a good time, met up with some old friends and met some new cool guys too. An old buddy of mine from when I was like 14 years old met up with me here and I hung with him and some of his friends tonight which were really cool. Jeff Garza (Actionjeff) was one of them, real cool kid and hopefully we'll all meet up and do something sometime throughout the series. We talked about getting a home game sometime this month with everyone from their house and ours which would be pretty hilarious.

That's all for now. One time.....

gg college

2009-05-11T04:57:00.000-04:00

I graduated!!!! Hellz yeah, never thought that was gonna happen. Basically it's time to just play a ton of poker and grind away. Got my birthday in a couple of weeks and then leaving for vegas a week later so lots coming up. Nothing too exciting today atleast - another Sunday down the drain. I blew through about 800 in tournements which nothing seemed to go right in. I built a stack up in the million, blew it 500 from the money. Played two FTOPS events today and built a nice stack in the $330, blew through that one. I need to do some work on maintaining my chips when I get them. I seem to get chips easily now then enjoy dropkicking my stack when it becomes important. Oh well.

Trying to update this more often often, especially when Vegas rolls around. Hopefully there will be alot of good things to talk about next month. I'll finish up here with a lesson on running good:

Dealt to Fisheye25 [Th 9h]
ashlee319: raises $4 to $6
Fisheye25: calls $4
*** FLOP *** [8h Jh 2d]
Fisheye25: checks
ashlee319: bets $6
Fisheye25: raises $16 to $22
ashlee319: calls $16
*** TURN *** [8h Jh 2d] [Qh]
Fisheye25: checks
ashlee319: bets $36
Fisheye25: raises $220.70 to $256.70 and is all-in
ashlee319: calls $67.70 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($153) returned to Fisheye25
*** RIVER *** [8h Jh 2d Qh] [8c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Fisheye25: shows [Th 9h] (a straight flush, Eight to Queen)
ashlee319: shows [5h Ah] (a flush, Ace high)
Fisheye25 collected $262.90 from pot

Time to get OPRAH RICH!

2009-04-29T07:49:00.000-04:00

Wow so it's been a rediculously long time since I've updated last. I skimmed over this blog from my last bunch of post and holy shit so much has changed. As far as my life aside from poker, I got engaged to Loraine finally, I SHOULD be graduating college this week (pending if my witch of a teacher curves enough) and we moved into a new place in Avalon in Marc's (People Mover) neighborhood. Pokerwise, I guess you can say I've progressed and matured lightyears since I started this blog. Before the last 8 months or so, I was grinding low limits playing approximately 20 tables of full ring cash games or playing mid (sometimes high, usually way too high) stakes razz making a steady $6k+ a month between playing and Pokerstars VIP bonuses. For a while I was very happy with that especially being young and in college it was way more than I could have asked for at the time. However, last year I decided to be a little more ambitious and take my knowledge of the game to a higher level and see what I could accomplish.

The most important upgrade to my game was completely mental. I learned a lot about dealing with losses and the swings that come along with poker and I feel like I got a complete new attitude makeover. I think a big part of why I used to take losing so bad was that I have always been extremely conservative and nitty when it comes to bankroll management. Ever since I started playing poker I always felt like I was gaining a ton of knowledge every day and had the mind for poker, but I always had a fear of progressing higher in limits and building a bankroll. Well the biggest thing I've learned or atleast come to realize since moving up through the middle limits is that I am a winning player and I have poker is one giant session in the long run. It sounds so simple and retarded but I've gained so much confidence in the past year and expanded my comfort level to where I am now consitently beating the middle limits all the way up through 5/10nl.

Mechanically I have played a ton of heads up poker in the past 6 months or so that has improved my game astronomically. I played a ton of hands at 1/2nl heads up and in the last couple of months finally gained the confidence to move up through the limits. I also have a cardrunners and deucescracked membership which has also been a pretty helpful tool in improving my play. All in all I feel like I am a different person as far as poker from 1 year ago and I have a ton of confidence and momentum right now. It's almsot WSOP time again and I am so unbelievably excited about it. Not excited as in past years when I looked at the WSOP to be extremely fun and hope I broke even between taking shots at tournements and grinding cash games, but I have some goals set in mind this year and I really want to accomplish something this time. I rented a huge house in Summerlin with a bunch of really great friends and poker players for the summer starting June 1st and I'm shipping my car up there too so I don't have to rent a POS and waste money. Also, I won a seat to the WSOP Main Event this past Sunday so I am STOKED to say the least. I looked over the structure for the tournement - 30k starting chips with a few added levels from last year should make for a ton of play.

That's all for now, I will update more as the series gets closer. W00T!!!

Black 8?

2008-06-22T12:18:00.000-04:00

It's 8:50 am and so far today I've woken up on a full nights rest, showered and went downstairs to eat a full breakfast at the cafe downstairs (cinnamon french toast, eggs, sausage, bacon, strawberries and extra powedered sugar ftw....), then made a stop at the roulette table because Loraine mentioned something about Red 7. Turns out it was Black 8, but we always bet that hard, so now I'm back in the room plus $200 on a full stomach and ready for a good Sunday!

I don't really want to go deep into depressing details about live tournies this week, but I'll share a few. Long stories short, $540 Horse sucked. I chipped up nice in the first 3 levels then ran into rolled up tens to my rolled up sevens in Stud8 of all games. The way this guy played was if it looks like your on a low draw then he went nuts with very light high hands. Ex. guy who had a board of 3 4 7 8 got RAISED by the guy who pwned me on 7th with two pair, Ks and 9s. For those of you who dont know h/l games, it's retarded to be the agressor with no low when it's aparent that your opponent has a low because they are usually freerolling on you to scoop the entire pot. So back to my hand.... I make 77722 on 5th street with Monkey Mcgee going NUTS on me with a board of T76. He can't say "RAISE!!!!!!" fast enough everytime I bet. I'm thinking obv that he has like, a big pair in the hole, maybe somehow has 8-9 for a straight. But whatever the case, I had him board locked on 5th and he was raising the roof on me like it was a 70's disco party. So now 6th street falls and he pairs his 6, while I hit an 4, making my board look like so, 7224 and the old man won't stop raising me. Now if this was regular stud, I would probably take a second out of my life to think of the .00000000003% chance this guy really has me out-boated, but the way he's been playing the game up to this point and the way my board looks, I'm not stopping for a second. So yada yada yada, we cap it to the death of me and he has TTT66 for tens full and obviously, I run good....

One more notable bubble for the trip was the $330 deepstack at Venetian yesterday. I like Venetians tournies 20 times better than Caesars now I think because Venetian has automatic shufflers. High five to Venetian for giving me like 30 more hands per level because of that. Good structure, good tourney. I call a shove from the BB on THE BUBBLE with A7 from the chip leader who had 5-Tos and flopped KTT. I gotta stop playing to win, fuck me.

I have three more full days left here in Vegas and I plan on making the best of it. Right now the schedule looks like I'm gonna win a major online today then tomorrow I'm gonna take down the $540 nl deepstack at Venetian and come back home with 100 X my bankroll. Let's get PUMPED!

Peace.

It's Time.

2008-06-14T09:24:00.000-04:00

Alright so where were we.... Tourney galore, that's what I'm here for. Just been putting more live tourney volume in than ever. I realized one thing for sure while I've been here, I like tournament poker alot. I've been playing cash games live and online like 40 hours a week minimum for the past couple of years and that's basically been my source of income and it's nice but man it sucks. Day after day it's the same grind and yeah you get the on and off brief excitement from scooping a monster pot where you can enjoy a quick high five with your monitor, but let's face it, Cash games are booooooring. I've been going fairly far in a bunch of tournements this week and having lots of chips in the late stages of tournements is just plain exciting. Just the fact that you can turn your investment into a years (or many years) salary with one good run of cards its just plain exciting.

Unfortunately for me I've been atleast one race away from a big score this week. One in particular was the $350 deep stack at Caesars earlier in the week. I probably played the first half of this tournament better than I've ever played poker before. I was bluff raising and making great reads in the early stages to build my stack very nicely by the time we got to the dinner break. I came back with about 65k at 600/1200 which was above average for this tourney but I had so much confidence. It also helped a little bit that I had a hand in the big blind at 1k/2k where 3 people limped and i was in the BB with Q-2os. The flop came 2-2-2 and when a 5 turned the guy that limped utg open ships it for fuckin 60k with like 10k in the pot and I made the tough call with just four dueces...lol. After that I continued to play solid and then low and behold I lose a race for like 5 billion chips when the sb gets it in with me to my JJ with AQ after we reached the money. It was kind of a let down because I started to feel like I had a real shot at the 50k first place, but I was super happy with my play.

Let's see some more dissapointments. I played a $200 Triple shootout at binions downtown last week. It wasnt a full triple shootout because they didnt have close to enough players, but they structured it as if you won your first table, then the two remaining tables would play down to 5 and then combine for the final table, somewhat interesting. I destroyed my first table until I got heads up. I was raising alot and picking up monsters at perfect times when people got tired of it. Finally I get heads up with a 4-1 chiplead against this super weak tight guy. I raised possibly 15-20 hands where her just folded his blind to me until he finally took a stand with 4-7os to my 3-3 and flopped 4-4-6. Then I ran into his KK with my TT and it was gg. Not that this was a super big prizepool but it's at the point where finishing out a tourney will do more for my confidence than the money alone.

There's been other instances as well this week where I had decent shots and fell through but same old story applies. I took 12th in the nightly Venetian $200 mtt that had 130 players the other night where I lost AK to Q2 preflop which was depressing. And then tonight I lost a big mtt at the Orleans that I played with Tony and a few other friends fairly close to the money. I lost a 70k pot which would have been for the chiplead inching fairly close to the money. I shoved 9-9 to a cutoff raise which was standard, only that this old woman in the sb picked up Q-Q and the the cutoff over called with A-J. Again, no complaints at all.

Anyways, I don't want this to sound as negative as it has been. I'm actually pretty stoked that I've been continually building up chips early in tournements and playing as solid as I have been. I'm going to take a nap now because I have to be up in 5 hours for the $540 HORSE deep stack Venetian tourney. I'm pretty excited for it especially because I missed the $1500 WSOP razz event tonight. I know I know razz is my thing and I should have played it, but I feel like tournement razz is such a gamble. Last year when I played the event I went card dead in two key levels after dinner and was unable to play a hand. It totally killed me and there was nothing I could do about it at all. Bluffing in tournament razz is just suicide so there was really no way for me to possibly chip up. After I finish off day one of this tourney today I will report back with details. Let's dooooooooo thissssss!!!!

Life of a Degen. Part 1

2008-06-12T08:54:00.000-04:00

Okay so I know I'm terrible at updating this shit but I've wanted to for days, where do I start. Well I know the one thing that I truly dislike about Vegas. Everytime I open a door, get into a cab or walk into a hotel, somehow or another I manage to shock the shit out of myself. What the shit is up with that? I feel like everyone around me thinks I'm some sort of a retard when I walk into a casino. I takes me literally like two minutes of perfect finesse to grasp the handle of the door without getting shocked and get in home free. Uh, yeah that's about the only thing I dislike about this town.

I don't know what it is but I play poker way better in this town than I ever do at home. I've been here over a week now and I've had one break even session in cash games, and that so far was my worst session to date. Cash games and just plain and simple a million times easier here than any home game around. For example, take like the worst player at a home game in orlando, for random purposes lets just call him like, Josh. That player would definitly be able to rip apart cash games out here...(lol sorry Josh couldn't resist). I can't remember how many times I've overbet shoved pots that had like $100 in them and shoved for like $300-500 and got called on the river by dumb tourist that just constantly think I'm bluffing because I look like a snarky young college internet player with headphones on and all we like to do is bluff at them with nothing cause we are crazy and immature....uhhh gg.

These headphones btw are like the sickest investement ever. I bought a pair of bose headphones before I left for the trip and I don't really understand how I've ever played poker without them. They are ultra insanely comfortable for one, it's like my ears are laying down on giant round leather chairs. You don't have to listen to people bitch and complain about things at the table. For example, there was a guy complaining that he thought people with Iphones and headphones on were cheating with other people in the game. So he called the floor and asked if I could not use my headphones while I played and he got the expected laughing response from the floor. Uhhh, lol....I put my headphones on and solved that problem. Also they just eliminate alot of the noise and ambiance around you and help me focus on peoples actions and expressions better. So summing it up, Bose headphones > + + EV

Now where to begin about my tournament game. I've played a bunch of tournies thus far and my results haven't been outstanding, but I'm cashing consistently and playing on a whole new level then I ever have I feel. The biggest dissapoint so far for the trip was the $1500 6 max nlhe event last week. I sat down and had Bill Edler at my table which I must say was like the coolest pro I've ever played with. Right away when he sat down he introduced himself, was super friendly to everyone and just chatted away alot (becomming ultra friendly with the weaker players to take advantage of them). I played a tricky hand with him in the first level where I opend with QQ in level 1 utg and he called in second position. The flop came something like 2-7-8 rainbow and I made my standard c-bet which I was making alot because I was opening alot of hands preflop and keeping my c-bet consistent. He called and the turn was a blank 3 and I decided to check. I knew he didn't think I had much and was calling my flop with a fairly wide range and was going to bet the turn if I checked to take it away which he did and I opt to just call to get more value on the river. The river then came a Q which gave me the nuts actually with top set and with my initial read there was more value in letting him try to bet me off the river instead of leading so I checked to him and as planned he bet the pot and I check raised and he inst-mucked. I was analyzing these situations really well all tourney when some new guy moved to my table and my standard luck came into play. New guy comes in utg and opens for $325 at $50/100 and I look down at AA in the bb. I go to $1175 and new guy looks at me and promptly asks "Do you want action?" Obv the correct response should have been FUCK NO if I knew he was going to call with 5-6os and flop T-5-6 to knock me out, but thats standard in a WSOP event I guess. On to Caesars....

Caesars Palace has their Megastack tourney series going on which I have enjoyed very much so far. The first tourney I played there was a $220 buyin or so and it played very well up to a certain level and then it got to a point where there just wasn't enough chips in play for it to not turn into a total crapshoot. I made it to the dinner break, about 15 away from the money, the only problem was after my one hour dinner break I had to come back into the big blind with $9000 in chips at $1000/2000 300 ante. Yah I was kinda fucked to say the least and I busted out in 2 hands. Not too upset about that though as there really wasnt much I could do and I played very well I thought.....

I'm getting kinda tired and this is getting long so I will continue this schenanagens (sp?) tomorrow and continue on with my vegas life story. This was like the first three days of the trip so I have lots more to share. ....

T MINUS 5 HOURS...

2008-06-03T03:30:00.000-04:00

Weeeeeeeeeeee. Five hours until our flight leaves for Vegas. Can't even begin to express how I pumped and focused I am to tear it up for the next three weeks. I honestly feel that I'm at about the top of my game and I'm ready for this summer. Exactly one year ago I was in a very similar spot that I'm in right now, bankroll wise and confidence wise, but nothing seemed to go right at the right times. Don't get me wrong, I've been a consistent winner at poker for the past two years and am very greatful for my lifestyle as a college kid (no intentional brag there whatsoever), but with literally putting in over 1 million hands per year I feel that I learn more and more every day. Not to mention I've made some truly amazing poker friends along the way in the past two years that have untimately helped me to progress throughout it all.

I'm not too sure how many events or what I will be playing while I'm up there. Aside from the WSOP which I only have 2 event's 100% confirmed, Caesars, Venetian and Binions all have their poker series going on which I plan on playing all of throughout the month. Thursday is my first actual event at the Rio, the $1500 nl 6 max. The other is the Razz event which I'm actually somewhat pumped for. I wasn't 100% sure I was going to play it this year after not playing a single hand of razz in months, but I played the FTOPS Razz event and was very satisfied with my play. I ended up busting out 11th which was depressing to say the least when I had a huge chiplead with 20 left. No regrets in that though, I was playing to win and Marco Traniello and the guy to my right were playing to take me out. I swear they were getting so deep in pots that I should have won early on 3rd street.

ANYWAYS, I'm obv just babbling to occupy the next few hours. I'm actually kinda stoked to update this blog much more frequently this month for anyone who is interested to see how things happen. That's all for now. BINK!

Skillz

2008-05-02T03:48:00.000-04:00

I played the $1k buyin at Tampa last week. All in all I thought I played well, got knocked out by a guy that I had a history with from the Tunica circuit event I went fairly deep in. Not too terrible of a structure, good dealers and a collaboration of some of the worst players to date. Scooped a 17k pot in level 1 by getting CALLED on the river by Q high. Turns out the woman thought we were playing "QJos is the nuts on any street no matter what the board is" and called my all in on a Ac Tc 7c 5h 6c without a club. That's unfortunate.

I got a chance to meet lots of P5'ers though and had a good time. Florida houses lots of real good tournement players. If they decide to have these 500+ player big buyin tourneys in the future I would definitly play again. For now, it's grind grind grind until vegas. I had a rough week a couple weeks back online and had a few leaks in my cash game which I fixed and now I'm back to my steady profit. That's about it for now, ftops starts this week and I'm still undecided on what, if anything I'm going to play. I hear theres a 6-max $240 knock out event which I'm all about so, expect atleast that.

Peace.

Too much work

2008-04-11T03:38:00.000-04:00

Grind grind grind... that's about all I've been up to. Been playing a massive amount of nl cash games on stars and saving up for Vegas. I take my shots here and there at mtt's, but I dunno what it is, I can't win one. I have to check, but I think I have more 10th place finishes than non-cashes.... it's pretty gross. And there's nothing I could physically do to get past 10th. I'f I'm chip leader with 10 left and I have chris money maker and jamie gold to my left, I still lose. But whatever I'll keep telling myself a win is comin up...

Me and Matt leave June 3rd for Vegas and I'm fucking stoked. There's nothing I could possibly want more than to leave for that trip, I need a break badly. Anyways nothing too exciting going on right now for another month or so I guess. I'll leave you with a fun beat I just put on some guy screwing around in a wsop step 3. Fun game.

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Fisheye25 [4h 4c]
Matia_10: folds
iskreem23: raises 40 to 60
Fisheye25: calls 60
LuckyLegend: folds
phil65: folds
Bdk685: folds
cmuta521: folds
SaulGoodBaby: folds
Byron1110: calls 40
*** FLOP *** [Qd 4s Ah]
Byron1110: checks
skreem23: checks
Fisheye25: bets 80
Byron1110: folds
iskreem23: calls 80
*** TURN *** [Qd 4s Ah] [4d]
iskreem23: checks
Fisheye25: bets 100
iskreem23: raises 280 to 380
Fisheye25: calls 280
*** RIVER *** [Qd 4s Ah 4d] [Qs]
iskreem23: bets 420
Fisheye25: raises 420 to 840
iskreem23: calls 300 and is all-in
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Fisheye25: shows [4h 4c] (four of a kind, Fours)
iskreem23: shows [Qh Ad] (a full house, Queens full of Aces)
Fisheye25 collected 2550 from pot

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

peace.

Chocolate Skittles??? WTF?!?!

2008-03-21T00:23:00.000-04:00

Alright, good news and bad news....

Bad News: towards the end of last month I decided to take a few shots at 30/60 - 50/100 razz for a while. Ooops.
It's okay though, after the damage was done I still had $63 left in my FTP account! (Gulp....)

Good News: I haven't played one razz hand in the past 3 weeks or so and it feels FUCKING WONDERFUL.
More good news: I only have $63 in my Full Tilt account so I'm never playing at that god-awful miserable fucking zoo of a poker room again.

I am back to being strictly a Holdem player for now. Razz was great for me for a long time but nothing good has come out of the game for me in months and this shitty downfall has made me realize how much of an edge I still have in holdem online over the sea of shitty internet junkies. I've been 12 tabling nl cash games on Stars and it's nice to rake in a consistent profit again. I've been playing full ring as well and I'm taking minimal swings and it feels awesome. As far as never playing on FTP again, it probably wont last forever, as I'm getting back in to tournements...but my opinion still stands that frogs and cats don't belong at a poker table and i hate their software with a passion. Oh, and Huck Seed cheats at razz, somehow.

Anyways, now that I've officially figured out how to consistently beat this game again, lots of exciting things are coming. I've moved in with the Schwarmann's which is great for me being surrounded by poker all the time (Although somehow I feel like I'm going to lose alot living at this place because I can't seem to beat anyone in this house in anything, ESPECIALLY Pool, which I'm supposed to be good at.). Also a possible online tourney stake is in the works, which would really boost me up to a new level. I really feel i'm at the top of my game now and I'm about to take something disgustingly sick down soon....so watch out.

75 days till vegas for WSOP. I'm tired as shit. Peace.

And the winner IS....n't......

2008-02-07T00:02:00.000-05:00

OOk...... so FTOPS 1 can go fuck itself. I feel like I just got owned by a bunch of play money players. First of all, full tilt tourney structures in general move slooooooooooooooow. So there wasn't any need to get impatient and retarded early, which was good because the first 3 levels I probably had 2 hands which were actually playable. Ran very dry the first couple hours, which like i said was fine because I could pick a good spot later on with the idiots at my table. I had a hand where there was 4 to a straight to the K on the board and I raised the river and got called by mid pair AND an underpair on the river. I will post it after because it's got to be the funniest hand of all time. So anyways, it completely explains why after i 5x it with AK in EP this dumb piece of shit decides to go 4.5k deep into this pot and put me all in with 4-4 and hold. I guarentee when I wake up I will see he took this down! SHIP!

I also had a big stack in the $55 6max on stars, obv just to blow it final two tables again. Not too upset about it though, I made a pretty big call to be first in chips with TT preflop where this guys over shove just smelled like AK, but i figured his range was AQ+, 88+ and since i felt confident about that i made the big call just to go busto to JJ. Atleast I was right, JJ was in his range..............lol........ Can't be mad there though.

Let's see how tomorrow goes. Tomorrow is a $500 horse event I believe so I may or may not take a shot there. I may try to satty in which I did today. I planned on buying in even if I didn't satty but I saw a turbo running right before it started and took it down quickly. Aight, time to go 10 table 1/2nl or something...

HAND OF THE DAY

Full Tilt Poker Game #5152599039: FTOPS Event #1 (35825338), Table 219 - 100/200 - No Limit Hold'em - 23:05:00 ET - 2008/02/06
Seat 1: Jackarse (10,732)
Seat 2: NoSkill_NoLuck (11,121)
Seat 3: PumpkinEye25 (2,060)
Seat 4: J - Jo 2003 (2,499)
Seat 5: dapalma150 (6,841)
Seat 6: FOUR ASES (3,985)
Seat 7: Donwaldorf (16,120)
Seat 8: Caro99 (10,940)
Seat 9: khdmb9 (6,276)
NoSkill_NoLuck posts the small blind of 100
PumpkinEye25 posts the big blind of 200
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to PumpkinEye25 [9s Jh]
J - Jo 2003 folds
dapalma150 has 15 seconds left to act
dapalma150 folds
FOUR ASES has 15 seconds left to act
FOUR ASES folds
Donwaldorf calls 200
Caro99 folds
khdmb9 folds
Jackarse folds
NoSkill_NoLuck calls 100
PumpkinEye25 checks
*** FLOP *** [Th 9d Qs]
NoSkill_NoLuck checks
PumpkinEye25 checks
Donwaldorf checks
*** TURN *** [Th 9d Qs] [Ks]
NoSkill_NoLuck checks
PumpkinEye25 checks
Donwaldorf checks
*** RIVER *** [Th 9d Qs Ks] [9h]
NoSkill_NoLuck bets 200
PumpkinEye25 raises to 600
Donwaldorf has 15 seconds left to act
Donwaldorf calls 600
NoSkill_NoLuck calls 400
*** SHOW DOWN ***
PumpkinEye25 shows [9s Jh] a straight, King high
Donwaldorf mucks
NoSkill_NoLuck mucks
PumpkinEye25 wins the pot (2,400) with a straight, King high
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2,400 Rake 0
Board: [Th 9d Qs Ks 9h]
Seat 1: Jackarse (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: NoSkill_NoLuck (small blind) mucked [Qc 8c] - two pair, Queens and Nines
Seat 3: PumpkinEye25 (big blind) showed [9s Jh] and won (2,400) with a straight, King high
Seat 4: J - Jo 2003 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 5: dapalma150 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 6: FOUR ASES didn't bet (folded)
Seat 7: Donwaldorf mucked [4c 4d] - two pair, Nines and Fours
Seat 8: Caro99 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 9: khdmb9 didn't bet (folded)

lolololoololololololololol

Peace,
me

Time to STEP IT UP!!!!!

2008-02-06T02:48:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'll start off by saying, another Sunday down the drain. But I'm optimistic! It's been a while since I played a regular tourney schedule and played alot of mtt's for a decent streak of time. I figured I'd kick off a new era this past Sunday by playing a few majors and getting back into the tourney scene. I went over to the Roothlus's place and played a bunch with Justin and the Jew. I can't complain about my game at all, I feel like I'm right where I should be, just a few races away from a big win. I've been playing alot of stt and mtt sngs as well to tune up my tournament game a bit. I play so much god damn razz that I'm starting to go crazy. There's a saying that you have to be nuts to play that game and with the volume I put into it I really feel like I'm going nuts. It's definitly a +ev game for me and I've made a ton from it, but the swings I take from time to time are somewhat unnecessary. I feel like I have 20k+ hand periods from time to time where I'm not profiting and breaking even and I think it's time to focus a little more on my holdem game where the bigger money is as well.

On that note, FTOPS starts today. WOOT. I'm still building my roll for the summer and grinding so I'm probably not gonna play too too many events unless I get some sort of backing deal which.... I'm looking for. I've been contating some bigger names in the online community that would possibly help me out in this department but, no luck yet.

Anyways, my night was filled with a bunch of mediocre cashes where I had a million oppurtunities for decent cashes. Like I said before it's coming. This week.... tonight... I'll post back later on tonight after I FT FTOPS 1.

BTW... me and FG rented the poker movie "All In" from blockbuster on our way to pick up food. It fit somewhere in the top 5 worst movies of all time. Prolly right above Balls of Fury. We put in Detroit Rock City when the madness was over just to regain our sanity. KISS ftw...

Welcome Me.

2008-01-22T06:10:00.000-05:00

So, I always thought blogs were lame and never wanted to have one but, I'm bored what can I say. I'm not creating this for the purpose of a million people to read and give me attention, Icould care less if no one ever sees it. I just figured it's a cool place to vent about stupid shit like poker and how I go far in every tournament I play but I can't win anything, or how I play for hours a day and should be up thousands a day, but some dipshit 2-outs me like 90% of the time. Boom, there I started my blog.

I dunno how much I'm going to use this, but we'll see. I figured since I play a ton of poker and some wild shit happens everyday it would be fun to jot it down here and talk about it with myself, or whoever decides to read this. I figured since I'll be going up to Vegas again for the summer for WSOP I should have some interesting things happen to me poker wise. Like I just went up to Tunica MS for a bunch of WSOP circuit events and it would have been fun to log what happened everyday. It would have been kinda repetitive like "Woke up, ate this sick buffet, played an event and had a million chips but bubbled the money, ate the buffet again, bed...." or "Woke up, ate this sick buffet, played an event and had a million chips but bubbled the final table, ate the buffet again, bed...."

Anyways, thats all for now.