Wednesday morning I woke up, frustrated about the fact that I had to spend a good portion of my day going and buying another cell phone to replace my recent aquatic accident. I decided that I would put the phone back together and give it one last ditch effort, and whaddya know, the damn thing worked! How does that happen? Usually if you think about water around a cell phone it stops working. But, this little piece of cellular technology spent 10-15 minutes sitting on the bottom of a lake 10-15 feet under water and ended up working 18 hours later. Wow.

I drove into the strip for a few hours of work before my softball game juvinated for a good session, having the sense that I was finally running good at life once more.

Long story short: the ever-consistent 15-30 game at the Wynn broke at 6pm on a Wednesday night and Devo was left sitting on the table putting 400 $5 chips into racks. Nice.

Thursday I headed into the Bellagio for what was looking to be a very long evening. I was planning on working all day, meeting people for dinner, going to the WPT party at Light, and then trying to find a way to get home after all that fun.

After 90 minutes I finally took a seat in a 15-30 game and basically ran great for 4.5 hours once again winning another two racks. From there I met a large party of people at Olives, some fancy schmancy restaurant at the Bellagio. My advice to y’all: don’t ever eat there. The service was terrible - it literally took me 25 minutes to get a beer in hand. The food was decent, but extremely overpriced and not even close to worth what we paid for it.

Then we all wandered into Light, the nightclub at the Bellagio. Straight through the line and straight into a VIP booth. Oops… FIVE booths! The WPT was throwing this party as a thank you to us poker players with all you can drink booth and bottle service. I bet that bill was expensive! It sure was nice partying good and not having to worry about the tab at all.

The highlight of the evening was when high stakes rock paper scissors broke out. I’m not really sure how it happened, but Jon Friedberg and I decided to play for $100, best of three. Somehow the TV cameraman and reporter got wind of the match and a camera was in our face complete with microphone and really bright light. Poker players are instinctive shameless self promoters, so like moths Rick Fuller, Brandon Cantu, and Jeff Madsen, and Jim Shipley were all vying for camera time in the vicinity. I beat Jon in a good best of 3 battle and before I could even celebrate Rick Fuller wanted a piece in a best of 5 battle. The camera was queued, and Rick says to me, “I’m going to throw paper first throw.”

Rick was drunk, so I actually bought it. I threw scissors, he threw rock, and gave me a huge “I got you” grin as Rick took the first trick. Slimy bastard pulls out trickery in the first set. I got back into the zone and quickly took the second set and we were tied one-one.

At this point I wanted a coach in my corner and put my arm around Madsen and tried to recruit him. Jeff deffered and went to the dark side in Fuller camp, but my good friend Brandon Cantu was there when I needed him most and jumped in my corner. Madsen and Cantu wanted in on the action and quickly had $500 side action betting their respective players.

I ask Brandon what to throw, and he responds “scissors.” We win, up 2-1, celebrate, Fuller and Madsen are interviewed about what level of ro-sham-bo thinking they were stuck on, and Cantu and I return to the tank to figure out how to bring this match home.

“Throw rock every time until we win,” Brandon said to me while the losers were getting their TV time.

I threw rock. Rick threw scissors. Devo and Cantu win! We started celebrating, and then Madsen, Ships, and Fuller killed the buzz by saying that we were only up 2-1. We argued about it for a while, Fuller and Cantu made a $1k bet on whether it was 2-1 or 3-1, and I declined the same bet with Ships cause $1k means a lot to me right now and, well, I was drunk too so maybe it was 2-1. The red flag was thrown.

We were going to video replay.

After about 4-5 minutes of video, the evidence was conclusive that I did in fact win 3-1 and the money was shipped. $100 to me, $1500 to Cantu.

Sometime later Gavin Smith and I had a go at it and I beat him 2-0 for another $100. After that he said to me, “I’d better make the blog for this.”

Really? Gavin reads my blog? I was honestly flattered. I see the traffic that I get but it never really crosses my mind who’s reading these words right here. So, what up Gav! Glad you enjoy the ramblings.

The night pretty much fades into a blur after that. But for now I’m going back to the grind and hopefully I can bang out another win!

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Frustrated. Today was a windy day on the lake. No problem. It was just Danny, Jared, and myself, and we posted up in Hot Coal Cove which is pretty dang sheltered from the wind. We pulled out the chairs, sat on top of one of the jump rocks, and simply chilled, drinking beer, and watching the sunset. The wind was blowing off the lake out of the West, and that was the direction we were facing. A few times one of us would get up and our chair would blow over from the wind to the East, away from the lake. My chair had not fallen over because I had not gotten up. Ever. The one time I decide to stand up, a freak wind blows out of the east, knocking my chair over to the west and directly into the lake. DAMNIT. I empty my pockets, take off my hat and glasses, jump in the lake, and retreive my soaking wet chair. I get back to the top of the rock with my chair dripping water and look for my cell phone because I was expecting two phone calls from beautiful women who wanted to join us on the lake (yes, you Emma…). Phone is not there. Jared and Danny swear that they do not have my phone, and quite frankly I do not beleive them. I remember taking my phone out of my pocket and putting it on the rock.

I was wrong.

Jared points down at the water below and we can see my cell phone on the bottom of the lake about 10 feet below water.

Arrrg. At this point we were down to three beers total, hungry, but really wanted to keep staying out there. The girls were our ticket to those things including the bonus of great company. Instead I am left with a cell phone dripping water.

Anyways, if you want to get a hold of me, the electronic method is going to be the best way for a brief while. Myspace, e-mail, here… BTW… send me your phone number if you do cause I don’t have it any more!

AYA.

Wednesday, 18th of April 2007 01:24 PM

So this morning I woke up and said to myself, “I’ll give the phone one more shot. Whaddya know, it actually works perfect! I must go to work immediately now!

In poker news, I’ve lost the last two sessions I’ve played in typical run bad fashion. Really don’t want to talk about it. My favorite was when I got all-in with K Q on a J T 9 board, and it went K Q runner runner. J 5 beats me.

Virginia Tech. Now thats some bull shit. I run bad, but that’s really running bad. My heart goes out to those kids. Why do some people have to suck so bad?!?

Politically, it’s driving me nuts that this is being turned into a renewal of the push for banning guns. Now, seriously. Is banning guns going to keep guns out of lawbreakers? Mass murders? No. Period. It will take the guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens. It makes no sense. If somebody that messed up is going to do something that messed up, a gun ban law is not going to keep them from getting their hands on a gun. What needs to happen is that our cultural mentality needs to change and it needs to be okay for people to defend themselves. If even ten percent of those students were armed themselves things would have turned out a lot differently. I would rather be tried by twelve than carried by six, and I would rather be armed and not need it than need it and not have it.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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I hate publicity stunts. I am quite the closet MMA fan and thoroughly enjoy watching every UFC fight that I can get my hands on. However, after watching the episode of “Bad Blood: Dana vs. Tito,” I am quite disappointed. The plot line was that after several years of trash talking between Tito Ortiz, champion MMA fighter in the UFC octagon and Dana White, UFC president, as part of Tito’s new contract they were supposed to have a 3 round 3 minute boxing match to settle their bad blood. The episode has been advertised for the past week at if the fight was going to happen, and I was pretty pumped to see it tonight on Spike TV.

Long story short, I wish I had those 90 minutes of my life back. It was basically 90 minutes of the Dana White show documenting how much he trained over the past seven months to fight Tito and then Tito did not show. After some internet digging I learned that Tito was not getting paid for any of the show and that he refused to show up for something that UFC was making money on without being conpensated.

Either way, it’s a super bad play for UFC in my opinion to show this episode. Why do they need to show Dana White to be this good guy that showed up for a fight when one of his top moneymakers did not show up for? What is the point of making Tito Ortiz look bad in a 90 minute episode? Why leave millions of loyal UFC fans disappointed after a show that has received so much hype in the past week?

I’m strongly disappointed in Dana White for his executive decision to do this episode. I understand that he may have been frustrated with Tito for not showing up for a fight that he had trained seven months for, but the UFC is his child, and it is his professional duty to run UFC in a professional manner. This show was not professional and quite honestly a waste of my time and the time of everybody else who is a fan.

For what it is worth.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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A62, K, T, $200 to me? Call. I have QQ. I recently signed a pact with myself that I would no longer bluff while playing NL. The early reason was that I was losing a lot of money on bluffs and I didn’t know why, so I decided to eliminate the big bluff from my arsenal. Obviously I’m still going to c-bet (continuation bet) to pick up un-claimed pots, but the big bluffs have been not working almost every freaking time.

After a short session yesterday though, I have ammended my reasoning. These guys just don’t fold often enough to make pot sized bluffs profitable.

Here’s how this hand played out. I had been at the table for about 90 mins and had been playing ultra tight. Every time it went to showdown I had the nuts or close to it. Every single river bet was a value bet. Now, the words of my friend Travis echo in my mind right now, “Dude, they wouldn’t notice if an elephant walked across the table much less [how you have been playing].” However, I thought my opponent in this hand was slightly more observant.

I raised several limpers and blind+dead posters from the hi-jack (two off the button) to $30 with 7 7 . I was called by the cutoff only, and our effective stacks were about $1k. I said, “You sure are itchin to play a big pot with me, eh?” He was calling me a lot trying to make some sort of cooler hand and bust me as I was one of the few big stacks on the table. The flop came A 6 2 , $81 in the pot. I bet $40, he said, “I raise a little,” and put $60 in the pot. I said, “What’s that?” The dealer then informed him that he had to put $20 more in to complete the raise, and he said that he “thought [invalid card] bet $30.”

At this point I knew without a doubt that he had AJ at best, but I was pretty sure that he was even weaker than that: small chance of a flush draw, but I really had him on a pocket pair bigger than mine. This player was aggressive, and I decided to call the flop with the plan of check-raising all-in on any non diamond turn. The turn came the K , I checked, and he checked behind. I could also tell that he hated that card. The river came the T , I could visibly see that he also did not like that card, so I figured I would take the pot away from him right there. I bet $200. He thought and thought and thought, and I was using all my Jedi mind tricks to get him to fold his AJ which I was convinced that he had at this point, and he finally called. I said, “Good call, pair of sevens.” He showed me Q Q and raked the pot.

Wow. Funny thing is that I play AA, AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KK, TT, 66, 22, K T and Q J the SAME EXACT WAY. If I had K Q/J or J T I don’t bet the river, and there are very few hands that I could show up with at the river that I would be bluffing with here. This of course makes perfect sense to me, but where I failed in my thinking was in getting on the level that my opponent was thinking on. He thought to himself that there was a good chance I was bluffing because of my big river bet and lack of action on other streets.

I was pretty shocked to see him roll over QQ. I came to the conclusion that either I’m a walking tellbox or that he just really sucks at NL, and after some more thought, I have arrived at the latter conclusion. Things I have learned: “Deceptive” play against these types of opponents will result in loose calls on the river. Bluffs against these players are a waste of time and money. And, after talking with Fruitkin about this hand, for some reason my opponents consistenty think I am full of it. For this reason I really need to stop bluffing. AYA…

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Good news: I put in hours and actually made some bucks. I woke up Friday morning planning on going to the lake, however I had a sudden premonition that perhaps I should do some work like normal people. So, in the last five days I worked two eight hour shifts and three six hour shifts. You read about the first one, and here’s how the rest of them have gone:

Saturday I wandered into the Bellagio to experience some of the tournament vibe and really got bummed that I am too broke to play in any of the events. I posted up in a 15-30 limit game and basically felt like I was sitting in a dentist chair for six hours. General torture, you know how that goes. I lost $626 and was never up.

Sunday I went into the Wynn for much of the same, was never up, and lost $639 in six hours.

So much for a great confidence booster on Friday.

I did feel much more comfortable and confident playing limit, but with that confidence and comfortability came the torture of incessant riverings that come with limit.

Mondays and Tuesdays are dedicated to the Palms for the next few months. They are having a $1,000,000 freeroll with the qualification period ending June 30th. Anybody who plays 300+ hours is entered in the tournament.

Yes, you read that right. A cool million. They’re expecting 300 players, but are currently only on pace for 150. Even if they get 300 players, that’s a $3,333 equity per person, and the quality of the field is going to be the worst ever for a million dollar prize pool for obvious reasons. I figure my equity to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $10k. In an effort to qualify more players, the Palms poker room has made Mondays and Tuesdays double hours days, so I only need to play 150 hours in the next 11 mondays and tuesdays.

They spread a 2-5 NL game with a $1k max buy-in, and the quality of the game is all over the place. Sometimes it’s incredible and sometimes it’s a bunch of guys like me there to get more hours for this freeroll.

Monday I played six hours in a game that was very good for a large period of time but I managed only to scrape together $342 in profit.

Tuesday I worked eight hours and won $744. I was pretty happy with my play overall, but I made one mistake with AA out of the SB that cost me a few bucks, and then I made a call on the turn that was questionable that I’ll discuss in a moment.

There was a guy pretty similar to me with a ton of money on the table, and we were both naturally trying to figure out a way to get each other’s stacks. He raised one limper to $20 and I looked down at AA in the SB. I elected to just call which was a pretty poor play. I had re-raised him at one point pretty big out of the SB with JJ and he called earlier, and being out of position I was actually putting myself in a dangerous spot rather than setting a trap for him. Oh well.

Then, I raised one limper from middle position with the KxQ and got three callers with the original limper folding. The flop came K T 6? . Check, check, I bet $60, and the girl to my left made it $120.

Little history here. She’s dating a friend of mine who is also a professional poker player. She has the ability to bluff/overplay hands, as she stacked off to me earlier very light overplaying a hand, and she’s generally straight forward other than that.

She had about $180 more after the $120 raise, so I elected to call and see what developed on the turn. It came the 9 , and she visibly did not like that hand. I checked, and after some genuine hemming and hawing she decided to go all-in.

Ok, first: It’s costing me $186 for a shot at $506, about 2.75-1, pretty decent odds. I knew that she did not have better than two pair based on her tells and speech. How many outs did I have? I had her on this range in this order: KT, AK, KQ, KJ, most likely the first two, but possibly the latter two. Assuming she does not have the A , I have 9 outs, 3 J outs, 3 Q outs, and could possibly even have the best hand or freerolling if she happened to have KJ or KQ. So, I decided to call, and I’m still not sure if I like it or not or if it just doesn’t matter enough to worry about.

Well, she rolled over A A ! Wow. Where did that come from? I found myself having 6 outs instead of the 15 I thought I had. The 2 river sealed my fate and she won the nice pot. Well played, good trap. I never even saw it coming.

But, of all things that happened tonight, my highlight was kicking Jim’s ass at Rock Paper Scissors for $5. He still doesn’t believe that it’s a game of skill…

Just kidding buddy.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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I’m up almost $14k more than last month already!

Yesterday I made the easiest $75 of my life. While playing cards at the Venetian this buddy of one of the guys on the table really wanted more cash to go blow in the pit. He pulled out one purple and one black chip from the Excalibur (500+100) and offered it to the guy sitting next to his buddy for $500. The guy declined, and I quickly said, “Sold!” At that point the guy realized that he sould try to bargain, and he finally got me all the way up to $525. I put the chips in my pocket and said, “Have fun!”

Later that evening when I cashed out, I pulled the chips out of my pocket and asked Brian at the poker cage if he could cash them. Ninety seconds later after a phone call to the Excalibur main cage he handed me six $100 bills. Nice.

That’s kinda how things went for me yesterday. I played my first session for the month of April after some more time off and time thinking about my game. I have been on this no-limit adventure trying to find a way to increase my bottom line but the bottom line is that I am not good enough yet to make the type of money possible in those games. Right now with my bankroll dwindling I need to go back to my bread and butter, limit hold’em, and especially of the whiffle ball variety.

I sat in the 15-30 game at the Wynn yesterday afternoon feeling like I was going to the dentist. I mean c’mon. A couple months ago I was playing the highest regular stakes games in town, and now I’m not even in the top section any more. But, I’d gotten myself to this place, and now I have to get myself out, just like you have to go to the dentist if you break a toof, and my face has been bashed in recently.

Well, the fun didn’t stop as soon as I sat down. I get stuck $350 immediately while not winning a pot in the first hour. I then go on a sick little rush to find myself up $350, and then QQ runs into KK and AA runs into AK and KQ on a K high flop………….. yeah a bunch of money went in the middle of that pot. Running like Sebok I call it.

Anyways, I quit the Wynn up $31 which felt monumental considering recent history. I then heard that the Venetian had a 15-30 game going and I had to go play there. I strongly encourage y’all to support the Venetian poker room as much as possible as they are easily the best room in town. Their customer service is top shelf. The room is beautiful. There is space between the tables! You can have delicious comped food delivered right to your table. Like, actually really good food. I order creme brule there all the time. And, for the 8-16 limit games and up, rake is……. $1. Good luck beating that anywhere in the world.

So, I sat down and immediately lost $160 on my first hand. Arrrrgh. I don’t remember which hand did it, but shortly thereafter something clicked and I could not lose any more. I believe it was my following big blind where we saw a flop three handed (SB, me, Button limper… good game) and I held the Q J . Flop 8 9 x , check, I bet, call, call, turn x, check, bet, raise, fold, 3-bet, call, and called on the x river. So much sweet action! I never looked back from there. I took KK into a 4-way capped (5 bets) flop that came K87 rainbow, get 3 bets in on the flop 3 ways, 3 bets on the turn 2 ways, and paid off on the river by a severely overplayed AK. All this action was against a tight old guy (image… learned later far from reality) too. And I thought I had just gotten lucky against aces LOL.

I think I flopped sets four times in a row holding pocket pairs, and three of them won huge pots, while I made my only mistake of the day on the fourth one. Long story short I held 88 on a Q 8 7 , 7, Q board, and the only possible hands that my opponent could have had to pay off my river bet were JJ, TT, 99, or A8, but my opponent would have 3-bet me pre-flop with the first three, and the fourth is so unlikely that I should have checked behind on the river when the second queen fell. I obviously did not like the card at all, but I never miss a value bet, and as the thought “There’s so many other hands he’ll call you with Devo! Fire!” I kissed six chips goodbye and threw them in the pot. There’s a big difference between betting for value and making bad bets, and this was a case of the latter.

Anyways, I quit after four hours up $1358, plus the free $75, plus $31 from the Wynn, good for my highest winning day since February 23rd. How sick is that?

This has been a super rough month both professionally and personally. I lost almost $12K in 130 hours of work and my personal life has been seeing some struggles as well. I have been forced to miss work on several occasions due to personal issues and I have taken time off due to run bad/confidence issues, and then compound that with the fact that my bankroll is the lowest it has been in a year. This life of a professional gambler is not easy on the soul. It’s quite tough at times, and I totally understand why so many people go broke so frequently. I’ve been greatly tempted to take my entire roll and play 200-400 and see what happens, or put it all on the don’t and figure out now whether I’ll be broke or get a roll going again. It’s hard to revert back to a place that you were a year ago, wondering what the hell you have done with the past year, but then again, I have more cash and money in the bank than I did a year ago, I have more toys than I did a year ago, and I am happier with my life now than I was a year ago.

And then I talked to people with jobs and how hard it was to get one of those jobs, and I thought about how much I make simply playing the 15-30 game ($50/hr), and how much I really don’t want to go broke anymore. I’d much rather play 15-30 for the rest of my life than have ANY career job that I could possibly get right now.

The past week has been dominated by the lake. Every day Sunday through Thursday was spent on the lake. Here are the highlights:

Sunday: Went and checked out the ruins of St. Thomas on the far north end of the Overton Arm. St Thomas was a Mormon settlement from 1867-1938. The town was abandoned as the waters of Lake Mead rose into the streets and forced people from their homes. I’m not sure whether the government paid for those houses and property lost or not, but either way it is a trajedy in my opinion. Let private property be private. The lake could have easily be held at the level it is at today and the town preserved. The lake level is down almost 100 vertical feet from the high water level, and the ruins of the town of St. Thomas are once again above water. It was quite fascinating wandering around the town for the afternoon.

Monday: Went out with Jared intending on fishing for the afternoon. Ran into friends on another boat. Went to beach far away. Drank a bunch of beer, and then after sunset when faced with the prospect of cruising the boat 90 mins back to dock, putting it on a trailer, and then driving 45 mins home did not sound like a wise option when our friend had extra sleeping bags for Jared and I.

Tuesday: I crawl out of my sleeping bag with the morning sun heating my bag to about 700 degrees. I got up, shook off the sleep, jumped in the water, and began cleaning up the beach. At this point I saw a park ranger boat at the mouth of the cove with a guy on the bow looking at us with binoculars. In case you did not know already, I have an aversion to authority, so I’m like, “What the heck do these guys want?!?” Also mind you, we’re ten miles from the nearest marina, 12 miles from another, and 18 miles from the one we launched out of. We’re in the middle of nowhere as far as Lake Mead is concerned.

So, the boat pulls all the way in, I walk out to the point to talk to them, and he asks me if I am with the other boat. We had our pontoon (renamed “Piece of Ship”) boat out and were with Ron’s boat, and the Search and Rescue volunteer was asking about Ron’s boat. Yeah. Those are my friends. Then he said, “Do you know Bryan or Jared?” Wow. You gotta be kidding me. Yep. I got search and rescue called on me. I was supposed to be back Monday night, but never really had an official itinerary, and couldn’t call anybody due to a lack of cell phone service. Of all the things I’ve done in my life, of all the places I’ve guided, of all the missions I have done as a member of Search and Rescue in Colorado, this is what I get search and rescue called on me for: drinking too much and deciding to sleep over instead of driving and boating home in the dark. Life is funny.

Tuesday, part two: On the way back Jared and I come across a 93 Kawasaki stand-up for $300, pay $280 for it, pick up Danny, and head right back to the lake. Nope. Not addicted at all.

Wednesday: We fix said jet-ski, fix another, head to the lake to “test” them, head home, put on softball gear, and head straight to softball game with jet-skis still hanging off the back of my truck.

Thursday: Same procedure. More stand-ups on the lake.

It’s really good for your overall poker game to have a place that you can go and escape the distractions of the world for a little while. The lake is that place for me, and it has been a sanctuary in the past month.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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