We drove all day Tuesday, I spent the evening catching up with Jared at Roadrunners. He got a fire lit up his ass last month while I was gone and was fixin to get outta Dodge for a bit. A few weeks ago he texted me, “Hey, want to ride pedal bikes across the country?” I responded with, “Lol no ty, I’d rather walk from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail.” I didn’t hear from him for a week, when he calls me up and says he wan’t to do it. He did a bunch of research already, brought up the AT on his own, and asked questions. I can’t do a thru hike this summer due to the WSOP and the simple fact that we wouldn’t be ready by April when we would need to leave. The thing is thought that I do want to do the entire trail, but the WSOP will be every summer for as long as I do this thing I do. But, as much as I am afraid of settling down, it is something I want to do before I get too old.

Speaking of old at Joe Cada’s victory party I met Baby Grand. After meeting me he says, “Dude, so, you’re like a dinosaur and stuff. You’ve been around forever.” Gobbo calls me grandpa all the time. And, in 2003 shortly after moving to Colorado, my boss who was 30 blew his Achilles at an indoor soccer game. The doctor told him that shit starts falling apart at 30.

So I’m 28 now and still feel young but have plenty of reasons to feel old at times, especially when 20% of my opponents in $10k+ buy-in poker tournaments have not heard of Planet Poker and could have dated my sister when she was in Jr. High.

Anyways, I tell Jared that I would be interested in doing something April and May but be back in time to be fresh for the Series. Over Christmas I was having visions of hiking the trail until the WSOP, go to Vegas, return to trail, and haul ass to Canada to complete a thru-hike. Too bad I’m not in 21 year old river guide shape anymore. But, since Jack lost his mind and there won’t be tournaments worth going to in April, I definitely want to use the time to get out and do something.

We kicked around ideas at the bar for a while, he still wants to do something epic and raise money for charity and possibly make a film or something. I kinda just want to go on a bunch of short trips, maybe climaxing on the John Muir trail, a two week long journey over some of the PCT from Whitney Portal to Yosemite. He and I hiked a bit of that trail in high school, just going from Yosemite Valley past Vernal Falls and the big frosty pool to Nevada Falls.

Ting is though, dem women folks don’t likeum boys leaving for long.

Was good to see him though, and I’m sure we’ll have some sort of adventure this spring.

Wednesday I thought was Tuesday. I made it through all day without figuring this out. I played online a bit, putting in 21 sit-n-goes and 4 hours of cash games on Ultimate Bet. I broke about even. I then cracked Mass Effect 2 and finally started playing it. Good game, feels a bit watered down from the first one in the customization department which is my favorite nerdy feature, but the gameplay, storyline, and options are better. I played that til dinner, ate, and then headed to the Venetian to play 5-10 cash. I lost $68 in 5 hours or so.

The next day, which was Wednesday of course, had this plan: Mass Effect til 5pm, then the Wednesday night online tourneys, then meet Gobbo at the ARIA to play in the Wed night $20-40 HORSE game. This plan worked great until 4:50pm when I fired up the computer, it wouldn’t fire cause HP laptops with Vista suck, I finally was able to get online at 5:04 pissed, and the first thing I notice is 52 people in the 100r. I’m like, WTF? Then I look at UB and see the guarantees are smaller and can’t find the $1k. I’m so confused. I then hover my cursor over the clock, and it pops up “Thursday, February 4th.” Still not convinced, I check my phone, and it confirmed that it was in fact Thursday. LOL. Now what? I decided to go to the Venetian because I thought the game was decent and was unsatisfied from the night before.

I was home at 8:30pm after getting two cheeseburgers, no onions or tomatoes, fries well, and a medium Dr. Pepper from In-N-Out. I was $2k poorer. I ran poor, made one questionable shove over Jeff Williams… 7 handed I think, I open in the hijack to $50 with AQo. I’m $1k deep. The player in the cutoff is very loose mid 50’s persian dude, is $250 deep, posted $10 + $5 dead, and calls. Folds to YellowSub in the BB who quickly makes it $230. Pretty gross spot cause it’s such a great spot to iso/squeeze, I decide that Sub’s a sicko enough that shoving is +EV so I say, “All-in,” dude folds, Sub snaps and says, “I have the MTT nuts,” I ship my stack and buy back two stacks of chips for cash. Always humiliating.

About an orbit later I open black queens UTG to $40, the same Persian dude shoves $240, folds back to me he calls, and the board runs out Axx, x, x. I called him, he shrugs, looks like he has KQ and is thinking of mucking it, and takes a good ten seconds before rolling over AQ.

I quit. Went home. Played Mass Effect til 3:30am.

So that makes today Friday, and I’m headed over to Panorama in a lil bit to play Magic and draft the new set Worldwake. Should be fun.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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I’m pretty bummed as we head West through Edwards, CO on our way toward Las Vegas. It’s definitely time for this trip to be over, but I love Colorado so much and it makes me sad every time I leave. I mean, we just drove by a dude and his dog ice fishing on a pond between the highway and a rest area. The people here are more my kind of people, and the pace of life is the kind that makes me happiest.

I find myself rebelling a bit against the normal progression of life. I’m getting older, but I certainly don’t want too. I’ll be 29 this summer. I’ve heard that things start falling apart at 30. Many people my age are married with kids by now, and although that’s a vision of mine down the road I don’t want anything to do with it right now. I want to be able to live in Colorado if I want to, go walk the PCT for a few months if I want to, etc. Those desires don’t mesh with settling down at all and being in the middle leaves me unhappier than if I was on either side.

Anyways. This month sucked ass as far as poker goes. It started off great, my first week of the new year I won like $3k live and $2k online. I hit my “career peak” on Ultimate Bet on Jan 7th, and since then my graph looks like the dow in 2008. My general pattern of punting the big pots was either get it in good and lose or run into aces in sigh spots. My last session twice I flatted AKs on the button, twice one of the blinds squeezed big (one time at 3-6 6max it was $21, I call, bb makes it $170), twice I shove, and twice they have aces. Tourneys haven’t been any better. UBOC I played almost 20 events, cashed in two. In one I was cl at 9, in limit hold’em, busto 8th. Another small cash in the 100r, got unlucky. This Sunday I took 30 somethingth in the Warm-up, and 50th ish in the 150r, all running bad when it mattered.

Strangely though I’m pretty excited to get back and do some grinding. I’m excited to spend time in LA and work, and I do want to start getting stuff out of the garage and storage unit and have a yard sale. So we’re headed home. But I’m missing Colorado already as we cross the western slope of the Rockies, following the Eagle River, 100 miles from Utah. I’ll be back soon.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Tuesday we chilled out around the house and put in a bunch of hours working. I continued running horribly but hey, I’m in Colorado. Billy and I made a video for PokerVT on heads-up PLO. About a year ago he switched from NLHE to PLO and has loved it. He’s super smart and good and I wanted to learn from him. After about an hour of learning, I’m like, we need to put a microphone in front of us. We made 85 mins worth of video, him explaining what he’s doing and why, me asking questions. I think it came out really good. It was a fun video too. After busting one guy we had the video paused waiting for another customer. We got one, made top set on the first hand, got it in vs. middle set, and then we paused the video. They rebought, we played one more hand, stacked them again, and lol’d. Then, the guy we played first was sitting at 10-20, we sat, and won most of his stack on the first hand. Bang, bang, bang. It’s an interesting game that I definitely am weakest at so was stoked for the coaching.

Wednesday we did more work/chill, had happy hour at an Irish bar, and then worked at night. More run like death.

Thursday we hit the slopes in Vail again. Billy’s little brother came out so it was the three of us. We spent a lot of time back in the trees, finding a sweet run that the top half was like a downhill course with lots of speed and fly zones, and the bottom half just the sweetest tree run ever with rocks to jump off at the bottom. Bill was kicking ass all day, we moved to another run, and the second time down he went huge off this cliff/rock thing. Huuuuuge. He hit the ground, bounced forward, planted one ski vertically in the snow, and then blocked the mountain with his face. He bit through his bottom lip in two places, chipped one tooth on the top, and cracked a molar on the bottom. He knocked himself silly too, thank goodness he was wearing a helmet. When he got up he fell over a couple of times, denied having a concussion because he didn’t want to ride in the sled down the hill, but fortunately got his feet under him and was solid all the way down. Which, in Vail, meant down that run, up a lift, down another run, up another lift, then down several different runs to a mile long catwalk.

We headed to a dentist recommended by the “ask me” guy in front of the trail map. They walked him straight in, Johnny, Shelley and I went to get food/beer, but they couldn’t have beer because they both didn’t have ID’s on them. We waited in the office half an hour after lunch, then went to City Market to fill a prescription of Vicodin, and then were on our way back home until I got pulled over in front of the market, across the street from Beaver Liquors.

“You have your license and registration?”
“Yes… what’s up?”
“Did you see me there?”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t use your turn signal.”

FFS c’mon.

“This isn’t my car, he banged up his face (I point at Bill in the front seat who still looks a little bit like a vampire) on the slopes today so we took him to the dentist.”

He let us go with a warning and told me to make it a habit to use my turn signal. I felt served and protected.

Friday was another work day, Bill and I made another PLO video this time covering 6 and 9 max, and I declared it to be party day. The fellas got home from skiing early and we all started drinking. That led to beer pong, which led to pizza, which led to two taxis taking us to Vail Village, which led to the Red Lion, which led to Martin and Ross hitting on the same chick multiple times, and Bill and I bribing Johnny $200 to somehow acquire this dude’s shiny silver shirt and wearing it from point of acquisition until arrival back home in Avon. Turns out the dudes were Canadian, the guy earned the shirt figure skating, and wouldn’t sell it for $500 since it “guarantees that he gets laid”. We took a diesel Excursion “taxi” back to the house and called it a night.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Friday it snowed all day and we hung around the house. I worked in the afternoon and we played a few game of Settlers of Catan. I played the UBOC event, busted quickly, and we just relaxed most of the day.

Saturday there were two morning UBOC events, one of them being the $1k heads-up. I tortured my opponent but he ran hotter than me and I busted in the first round. I busted the other event quickly too, sigh, and we packed up to head to Beaver Creek.

My buddy Billy (cancer survivor, formerly of the money factory in San Diego and now of Chicago, who I stayed with there on the Great Ride) is a helluva skier and is spending a couple of weeks in this awesome house with his bud Martin. This house is ridiculous, three levels, six bedrooms, big deck with a jacuzzi overlooking Beaver Creek.

Sunday I played online all day and ran like Death to a car bombing in Baghdad.

Monday we hit the slopes in Vail, stoked to ride ten fresh inches. We met their buddy Sam and skied hard all day. I’m getting old and they’re young and kicked my butt all over the mountain. Halfway through the day they had me jumping off cliffs, which I’ve never done, but with ten inches of fresh powder I’ll try anything. It was fun, nothing like a constructed hit in a park but just as awesome in it’s own right. We quit sometime around two, I was bushed, and we headed home.

I had a sandwich with a banana, soaked in the hot tub, took a nap, and then woke up for the evening session. I made a deep run in the UBOC 9, $109 LHE, was top ten most of the tourney, chip leader with nine left, and busted eighth. The wheels on the bus just fell off, my better hands never held, and I went to bed frustrated.

One for ten. Not how I envisioned things going. Good thing we’re only halfway through.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Tuesday Shelley, Dave, and myself headed over to the ranch and met Dean, one of Dave’s neighbors (across the street and down two houses, about a mile walk through the woods). Dave taught us how to catch horses so we could take them into the corral and saddle them. I’ve ridden a fair amount, but I’ve never gotten to work directly with the horses. Like a kid in a candy store I gleefully walked into the pasture as forty head of horses looked at me, the bag of grain in my left hand, and a halter in my right hand.

So, wait… I’m supposed to catch a horse. Dave says all you gotta do is get the lead rope from the halter around their neck and you got ‘em. The problem is that horses know what that thing in my right hand is. I was instructed to catch Blaze. But Blaze didn’t want to get caught. Dave was going to catch Mariah, but she wasn’t having none of that gettin’ caught stuff either. It really was quite amusing. Horses that you didn’t want to catch would materialize behind you and be like, “Sup,” while the horse you wanted to catch didn’t want to get caught and would stay just far enough away so that you would continue pursuit.

The weather was gnarly that afternoon. We finally got four horses caught, and I ended up with Rebekkah, the “Caddilac.” She was a big girl who liked to fart in Shelley’s general direction. Off for a walk in the pasture we go, and this one black horse is following my horse around. I find it amusing. It snows good, then it stops, standard Colorado weather, and then Rebekkah jumps. I’m like, “What the?!?” I see the black horse between me and the rest of my party, ears back, and Rebekkah doesn’t like it. She responds to my commands to turn and try and get around this horse, but he won’t let me, and I don’t know horses well enough to know what’s going on. All I know is that I don’t want to get ejected by a pissed off horse. The black horse herds Rebekkah and I back to the central horse hangout. Dave is hollering instructions, but I can’t hear him through the wind and the snow. Things aren’t bad, I just can’t get my horse to go where I want it to go, and there’s a pissed off black horse making sure that I can’t get her to do what I want her to do.

Turns out she’s in heat and he’s in love.

So we take them back into the corral, remove the hackamores, saddles, pads, and halters, the whole time the black horse hanging his head over the fence watching us. It was a good afternoon.

That evening Dave and I headed up to Cripple Creek to play some cards. 30 miles of dirt roads to Canon City, 15 miles along the Arkansas River, and then another 30 some odd miles up the southwestern foothills of Pikes Peak until we reached the mining town revived by gambling in the last fifteen years. Took us two hours each way and it was great. We played a bit, played the tournament, both lost, caught up with several staff members that I worked with when I propped there in 2003, and had a good time.

Wednesday morning we got up early enough to drive out to Monarch Ski Area, hoping that there’d be some fresh snow. It was sunny and beautiful here. We drove through Custer County to Cotapaxi on the Arkansas, northwest to Salida, and then west on the 50 up into Monarch Pass. As we started gaining elevation we also gained clouds and snow on the ground, and by the time we parked, with the forty or so other cars in the empty parking lot, it was snowing. They got three inches overnight and were expecting another three throughout the day. It rarely stopped snowing, except for the occasional two minutes of sunshine that is customary for snowstorms in the high country.

It’s a dang good thing that there was fresh snow because I’ve finally gotten my jumping legs under me in the last couple of weeks. The first kicker I hit was nice and smooth, and I was feeling great about jumping today. Shortly after lunch we hit the big terrain park. I took the first jump perfect, skipped the rails and boxes because I have no clue what to do on or with them since they didn’t exist when I was nuts on skis thirteen years ago, and lined up for the next table top with kicker.

I hit it waaaaay too hard.

When I passed the back edge of the table top, I was still climbing, moving forward, and rotating to my left. Now the ground is falling away from me. This thought went through my head: “Sigh. … I’m glad I bought health insurance.”

I came down landing on my side from at least ten feet in the air. It knocked the wind out of me a bit, I thought I might have cracked a rib or two, but after ten seconds or so I was thankful to realize that there wasn’t anything major wrong. I sidestepped up the hill to retrieve my ski that had fallen off, and finished the run ending at the lodge at the bottom. I’m sure somebody got a good kick out of that show. I really think if I didn’t have that several inches of fresh powder I would have hurt myself good, so I’m very thankful that it decided to snow when it did.

Thursday I woke up, worked in the morning, and then headed to the ranch with Dave to feed some horses. Knock roll of hay onto it’s side, tie rope around roll and attach to hitch, drag into pasture telling horses to git, cut off retaining mesh, roll blue feeding ring around hay roll, repeat. Forty horses eat a lot of hay in the winter.

After that chore was done, Dave and I went for a ride. We spent a few hours wandering around the hills surrounding the ranch. Somewhere toward the end of it all I asked him if I could come work for him for free after the Series, and he said yes. I may just take him up on it.

The Ultimate Bet UBOC is underway, the first three events in the books already. I think I’ve lasted a combined two hours in the three of them. Better than bubbling. I’ll be playing every event, come catch the action it’s a good week for tournaments.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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We decided to stay an additional day in Steamboat because Keller Williams was playing Friday night. That, and it’s just an awesome town. Keller put on a great show as always, this being the third time that I had seen him, and he did the solo act which is always cool. On stage there’s an electric guitar and bass on stands, a keyboard, electric percussion instrument, a mic, and a sound board. Keller comes out with his acoustic guitar to drive most of the songs, goes for a bit, records a loop, and then begins recording loops over the acoustic rhythm until he has quite a groove going. He then jams, and it is seamless. Keller lived in Steamboat for six years, and thus both Keller and the crowd were very much into the show. It was excellent.

Saturday we disappointingly ended up staying at the Antlers Hilton downtown instead of my buddy’s place. Furthermore, another one of my bud’s was having a birthday party that the entire (small) community of people that I lived with here in 2003-05 would be at. Shelley’s Ravens were also playing their playoff game. I was planning on watching that with her, then meeting up with everybody else afterwards. Turns out that even after being invited we weren’t really invited. Pretty brutal honestly. I felt very much unwelcome in a town that I used to live in with a group of people that I used to be very close with. I don’t get it honestly and am quite hurt over it, but we ended up having a great night anyways.

My still good buddy and former roommate Travis came up from Pueblo to watch the game with us, the Ravens sadly lost, and Travo got a call from his buddy up in Denver inviting us up to their home game, 5 cent - 10 cent $10 max NLHE. We made the drive up the 25, had a great night, and they were all very eager to “beat the pro” and then celebrate every pot (which was most) in which they did so. It was a very fun night, and it was good to finally meet that group of Travis’ friends, one of whom he named his son after.

Sunday I played online, ran like a quadriplegic through mud, made a deep run in the FTP million, and busted to Bax. Ugh Sundays.

Monday we had lunch, checked out the Garden of the Gods, and then headed out to Dave and Michelle’s ranch near Westcliffe in Custer County. I worked with Dave and Michelle at Peak 3 in the summer of 03 and have maintained friendships with them. After Peak 3 folded they bought the business end of the ranch, running horseback pack trips in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. This range is fantastic and the most magnificent range of mountains that I have ever experienced. It’s where Peak 3 was based out of, it holds South Colony Basin which is my favorite place in the world, and is simply a wonderful place. The ranch has somewhere between 40 and 45 horses on it and they run all kinds of pack trips out of here. They bought a piece of the ranch and some property to build a house on which we’re staying at this week, and I’m getting a taste of a lifestyle I’ve always wanted to experience. Living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, working with horses, and enjoying life slow. I’m stoked. We’re hitting Monarch on Wednesday, and supposedly there’s supposed to be some snow coming in, which is very much needed.

Stoked.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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After exploring a bit of town Monday night and meeting Jamesifer, we hit the slopes late enough to just pay for a half day. I’m fine with this. I was somewhat envisioning the actual chasing of fresh snow across Colorado, but the entire state’s gotten like six inches since before we left home. Snow conditions have gotten progressively worse since we’ve been here, but it’s been sunny every single day.

Steamboat is a pretty cool mountain, possibly my favorite thus far. They have many open glades of Aspen and Spruce rather than the dense conifer forests found at many other ski areas in the state. There are excellent tree runs all over the mountain, at many different pitches, and some sweet hike-to extreme terrain off the back side of the summit. We headed up there on Tuesday afternoon:

We ski’d down the backside, navigated a cliff, and then cruised through the trees back to the populated side of the mountain. It was super cool, just all the snow was old and tracked up. Let it snow FFS!

That night James and Jen took us to the hot springs in town, where James happens to work, so we got the VIP experience: free entry, no bag check, and the privilege of driving down the hill an additional hundred yards. I really want to check out the place in the daylight and might do that today; it seemed like the perfect blend between keeping it natural and commercializing it a bit. I would prefer it left alone, but I suppose it being so close to a town and so easily accessible would lead to people abusing it eventually. We soaked until about midnight, an incredible moonless and cloudless starry night over our heads.

Wednesday consisted of working/being lazy during the day. I put in about 3 hours and a dozen sit-n-go’s on Ultimate Bet, took care of some other business stuff, Shelley did some laundry, and we poked around downtown a bit. I like the town, not too big, not too small, and there’s an airport nearby, unfortunately it doesn’t fly direct to Vegas. That evening James and Jen picked us up for an evening of goodness. We dropped the girls off downtown who were meeting more girls so they could do whatever it is that girls do when they gaggle, and James took me to the local weekly tournament with cash game after.

We walked into this office building, and in the back room there were three tables set up. I bought in for $24, was handed t100 chips (10 white, 7 red, 3 black (dimes), 1 green). For the first hour I could rebuy for $20 and get t50 chips. No add-ons. Standard goofy home game rules. I busted shortly in the second table, just in time to start the cash game.

Rules: $1 ante per player, dealer’s choice (casino games only), and dealer chooses the limit. Some picked $10 limit (thus it was 1-10 spread). I almost always picked PLO something since it gives the most positional advantage, plus we can make the pot bigger. It turns out that I’m really good at “five card double flop PLO8.” It also turns out that you can make goofy multi-flop/split-pot rules and have it still be a casino game. One of them they played was double flop no-limit hold’em, where “the two best hands split the pot.” I’m still not sure WTF that means, but on one hand I had him crushed, but he had the 2nd best hand so got half the pot. I was 3 Breckenridge Avalanches and 5 Dale’s Pale Ales in at this point so the details are fuzzy.

James warned me that the crowd might be a little bitter. The later the night got, the more the piles of cash in front of us grew, and the more bitter those losing said cash got. We played until it was about time to go find the gaggle, and then in one hand of 5-card double flop PLO8, you can imagine the mess of cards about the table, I returned my hand to the dealer aiming for his muck pile, which was near the stub that was unprotected, and missed. I didn’t miss bad, but it was slightly questionable as to what the top card was, with four burns, two turns, and two rivers to go. The guy dealing lost his mind at me. Berating me like I tried to kill his hand. I can tolerate this for about 90 seconds. In the confusion of trying to decide what to do, I was like sorry, I missed, chill out, somebody sticks the five of spades in my face and asks “Was this one of your cards?” I say no, but wtf, it’s five card double flop pot-limit Omaha eight or better, you really expect me to remember the cards that I just mucked with old man bitter-face berating me because it’s my fault he’s lighting money on fire? Whatever. They get the rest of the cards out, bitter-face’s 267TQ badugi doesn’t make a winner on two boards, what a bad beat, and it’s my fault. 90 seconds had expired, I was about to lose my mind, so I quit. This isn’t fun anymore.

“I quit.”
“Yeah, you do that,” says bitter face.
Good one dude.

James and I found the girls with almost $700 of their money in our pockets.

Thursday we slept in a bit, hit the slopes at noon, and had a good lazy afternoon. There was even more ice than on Tuesday and we’re starting to need snow pretty bad. One bump run we did had sticks sticking up out of every between bump spot. We came back, Shelley napped, and then we headed over to the first show for the Ski-Jam (winter music festival coincidentally here while we are) opening night, and got to see The Wailers (as in Bob Marley and the) in a small venue for $20 each. They were great. The opening band, Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights, was also very strong, southern rock/blues/jam-band ish.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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