I’m so glad I don’t have a job. I’m currently sitting in my board shorts with my shirt off on a deck twenty feet from the Colorado River. I just finished playing a short session online. I got it all-in on the flop with AJ on a 742 board vs. 56 and won all the monies with ace high when the board bricked out. There is a cold beer to my left, hot wings on the BBQ behind me, and tan women in bikinis in front of me laying out.

God my life sucks.

And that’s pretty much how it’s been for the last nine days. After my session last Saturday when I won $3k I immediately left to the lake and stayed there til monday evening, went back tuesday evening til wednesday evening, and then left Thrusday as soon as we woke up to come to the river house in Needles, CA.

Memorial weekend has been an annual trip with many of my friends from high school and many friends that we’ve made along the way. Names you’d recognize are the three roomies Jared, Danny, and Gil, Shawn (Danny’s brother), Nick, and about a dozen others from various places.

When we arrived thrusday we had nine 36 packs of Coors Light.

We had to buy more beer on Saturday. Sick.

Most amusing moment thus far: while floating home drunk on the boat Sunday morning we were lighting fireworks off the boat. An errant spark went through Danny’s board shorts and melted directly to his weiner. He seriously has a burn blister on his unit.

It’s been an awesome trip doing some R&R getting ready for the series. I’m pretty fired up to play some cards. I’ve been sneaking off to squeeze in online sessions here and there and playing before going to bed. I haven’t experienced that feeling in quite a long time.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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[Insert Required Intro Text Here] Sorry about going AWOL in the past week, but circumstances have come up in my life that have forced me to take some time off from work. It’s very strange how those crazy moments in life completely unsettle everything and alter your paradigms. But when the dust settles after these seasons in life we always end up more grounded and strong.

So, I spent the last several days on the lake with Jared for a party with his work. We left Saturday night to party on the houseboat that Jared’s work had rented for the few days. Before we knew it the sun was up and everybody was starting to move about. Jared and I decided to motor out toward the beach to get some sleep on. We were waken up by the sun around nine thirty, and all the boats that we were supposed to meet were not there. We then left to find them, and that adventure took us right back to the dock that we had left four hours earlier. Oops. They were getting ready to launch the houseboat, and I saw an opportunity to squeeze in a cat nap. I snuck into the houseboat and crawled into a bed on the lower deck. Devo out.

I regained consciousness when there was a rythymic knocking on the window above my head. I looked up out the window and saw a pontoon boat tied alongside the houseboat and assumed it was Jared. Then I heard the cackle of a radio from within the houseboat, and realized that it was not my pontoon boat outside but a Callville Bay boat. As I emerged from the bedroom I began to see more and more people that I did not recognize, some in uniform, some not. I deduced that the boat had broken down and we were floating outside of the marina, but who were all these people?!? It was a super confusing moment. Finally I recognized the fifteenth person I saw and they filled me in on what was going on. The rest of Sunday and Monday went off without a hitch, and I came home Monday night tired and tanned.

Oh yeah… I did play some poker in the past week. Saturday I woke up with the itch to go play some cards, and I ended up at the Wynn playing 5-10 NL about an hour later. My friend Justin Sellers (dude who won best all around at Canterbury Fall Classic 06) and I were sitting at a table chatting when they called down a new game. Justin and I took the 2 and 3 seats respectively, and the seats slowly filled up. I had a strong feeling that this was going to be a very good game. I did not recognize anybody and they all sat there like tourists fresh off the plane. I was not to be disappointed. I bought in for $2k, about the most on the table.

Within thirty minutes the line-up looked like this:

1 Really bad player, short stack
2 Justin - solid luckbox
3 Me - No-Limit Fish
4 Really bad player, short stack
5 Really bad player, medium stack
6 Decent young player, big stack
7 Really bad young player, big stack
8 Really bad old foreign guy, big stack
9 Solid, tight player I know

This is a great lineup for a 1-2 NL game, but we’re playing 5-10 with no cap on the buy-in. After the first half hour of the game things degenerate very quickly. Seat 8 loses a pot to Justin when his obvious bluff was picked off by the luckbox on the river. For some reason this induces the 8 seat to pull four yellow chips out of his pocket, making his stack about $5500. This then gets the 6 and 7 seat to pull out more money. I pull out my box keys and head to the cage. I return with $10k in cash and one $500 chip and drop it on the table. The 8 seat then removes the $4k that he had put on the table. I ask the floorman to talk to the 8 seat about the money, the 8 seat realizes that I’m talking about him as the floorman talks to him, and he says something in garbled english along the lines of, “You wanna play beeeeg? I sho yoo how play beeeeeg. I either cover you or take off table.” He takes the 4k back out of his pocket and then pulls out a $10k nug and puts it on the table.

OMG I’m buying a new mustang on the way home.

About five hands after all this fun I won a sweet hand off Justin when I turned a flush and got value out of the five seat. The very next hand I was in the SB and limped into a straddle pot with J T . We saw a flop six ways that came down pretty nice in the form of 9 8 7 . I lead for $80, seat 5 called, and seat 7 made it $400. So sweet. Folded around, I say, “How much you got left?” He replies somewhere around $1400. I know the 5 seat is done with the hand. I re-raise the minimum, total of $720. He somewhat quickly goes all-in. I obviously call figuring that we’re chopping or I have to dodge a bunch of outs to full houses. Nope. He had A 9 . WHAT?!? Sweet! Moments like that make me so much happier with no-limit over limit. About twenty minutes after that I won another big pot with JT suited, up almost $3k.

Shortly thereafter though the worst thing ever happened. I got moved to the main game. Arrrrrrggghh! They made me leave the best non-Lamont game ever for the most boring usual game. I can fix this.

Upon arrival I say, “Anybody who leaves this game right now will be paid $50 by me.”

$100 later, two guys had left, and we had imported the 6 and 7 seat, and the game got good again. They weren’t my first choices for imports, but the 3 primary suspects were next up on the list. Within an hour I had won another $2k pot off the former 7 seat, $850 directly from him. Good investment.

The next four hours were pretty boring as the game never got super juicy again. It felt good to book a nice $3k cash though and head out for the weekend.

OK. I’m tired of writing.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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I am taking investors right now The world series is just around the corner and I am pretty excited! I just finalized my intended schedule, and here it is:

Day
Date
Event
Entry Fee
Fri
6/1
#1 Mixed Limit/NLHE Championships
5000
Sat

#3 NLHE
1500
Sun

#4 Pot Limit HE
1500
Mon

#6 Limit HE
1500
Tue

#9 Omaha 8
1500
Wed

#10 NLHE
2000
Fri
6/8
#14 Stud Hi
1500
Sat

#15 NLHE
1500
Sun

#18 Limit HE Championships
5000
Mon

#20 Stud 8
2000
Th
6/14
#24 Stud 8 Championships
3000
Fri

#25 NLHE
2000
Sat

#27 NLHE
1500
Sun

#28 NLHE
3000
Wed
6/20
#34 Limit HE
3000
Th

#35 NLHE
1500
Fri

#37 Pot Limit HE
2000
Sat

#38 NLHE
1500
Sun

#40 Mixed HE
1500
Mon

#42 Omaha 8
1500
Tue

#43 Limit HE
2000
Th
6/28
#46 Stud 8
1000
Fri

#48 Deuce-Seven Limit/Rebuys
1000
Sat

#49 NLHE
1500
Sun
7/1
#51 SHOE
1000
Sat
7/6
#55 NLHE Main Event Day 1B
10000

Total cost of all tournaments is going to be $60k plus any rebuys I may make in event #48.

I am taking investors for all of these events as an entire pool together. Furthermore, since there will be a group of investors, there will be no make up at the end of the WSOP. All profits will only be taken at the end of the series to eliminate any make-up.

For example, say I win event #9 for $200k. Standard arrangements in backing with make-up is to pay back the make-up and then chop up the profits. This would mean that 11k would go back to the backer, and then the player and backer would chop up 189k.

Instead to be fair no profits will be chopped up until the end of the series. Take the above scenario. Win event 9 for a net profit of 189k, bust out of all the other events for a cost of $49k, the total profit would be 140k that would then be chopped up with the original 60k returned to the investors.

I will play for 50% of myself after all-make up. Thus, every $6k of investments is worth 5% of me for the entire series after make-up. In the above scenario a $6k investment would return $13k total.

I am planning on playing all 26 of these events and thus the risk of ruin is decently low. If you are interested, please shoot me an e-mail. Also, if you would like to talk to those currently backing me or those who have backed me in the past, please also feel free to contact me.

Speaking of tournaments I played in the $2500+100 NLHE event at the Mirage today. The good news is that I took 36th. The worst news is that Kenna James busted me. Literally about 15 minutes before I said, “It would really suck if Kevin [invalid card] or Kenna busted me, because I would never hear the end of it.” I was short at this point, lost half my chips in one hand, and then opened with AKo and called Kenna when he shoved all-in. His 55 held up and I was sent trying to get people to go to the lake with me :-).

Today was pretty frustrating in the sense that I once again could not get over the hump. I had a huge stack early on in level three and was chip leader for a while, winning several unnecessairly large pots with one pair. The table was pretty stacked so I was gambling it up a little more than I usually do and things were working out. I then lost a big race with TT vs. AQ and couldn’t ever get anything going again even though I was left with an average stack. I still never saw any big hands (no QQ-AA). I’m starting to get quite curious as to when I’m going to see AA in a tournament again as it’s been 9 of 10 days now. I even played two tourneys online tonight and didn’t see em!

Tomorrow is the $1k Limit event. You bet I’m gonna be in that one!

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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18th is better than 19th! I had a ton of fun tonight considering the circumstances. I came into today feeling very good. I didn’t have anything interesting happen until about 75 minutes in. I had 4600 left when I open-raised to 325 with the blinds 50-100 with 99. I was called by the button and the SB made it 925 to go. I called as did the button. Flop K7x. SB checks, I check, BTN checks. Turn 9. Nice. Board is rainbow. SB bets 1500, I call, BTN folds. River 7, he bets 2k, I go all-in for 2800, he insta-calls and shows AA. Thanks for the freebie buddy.

After that I flopped top two with AK and got some action. Then, with about 16k (good for tournament chip lead at this point) going into the last hand before break, I opened to 350 UTG+1 with J J . The SB called only who had played litereally less than six hands the entire two hours thus far. Flop 2 3 5. He checked, I bet 550, and he made it 1725. He had 4400 left in his stack. My read was that he was strong, but not sure how strong, and he had an ultra-tight image, but he was a young guy with versace sunglasses, whatever that means.

Fold, call, or put him all-in? If I call, what’s my plan then?

I decided to just call because it was a strong enough play and I had position, but I was alson thinking strongly about putting him in. The turn came Q and he put the rest of his 4400 in the pot. At this point it was a pretty easy fold. We talked later and he told me that he had 4×4 . Thoughts on this hand?

I didn’t do much level three playing a bunch of small pots or most of level four. Last hand before the break, blinds 100-200/25, I raised one limper from the cutoff with QQ to 850 and got calls from the BB and the limper. Flop KQx rainbow. BB checked, limper bet 800, I knew BB was folding, and i decided to just call because this player had a tendency to hang himself.

Turn a blank, he checked, and I bet 2200. He called.

River 9, he checked, and I could tell that he wasn’t super excited about that card (ie didn’t have JT). I had him squarely on KJ or KT and wanted to get some value. I bet 3100 and he insta called with K9. Devo chip-leader again.

Come back from break, blinds 200-400/25. First hand a guy raises to 1200, I flat call from the hi-jack with 88, SB (Darrel “Gigabet” Dicken”) calls. Flop A 8 2. Check, check, I bet 2200, both fold. Bummer.

Next hand: Villian from earlier JJ hand opens to 1100, I flat call with 99, SB/shorty goes almost all-in, first raiser folds, and I insta re-raise knowing he’s weak. He had 85o and my nines held up.

Devo huge chip leader with 38k. And I never got past that point. This was level five with about 55 players left. I did not play another interesting hand until there were 20 players left, top 18 getting paid and I had 22k in chips. I went so sickly card dead and was unable to manufacture chips in most ways. Anyways, I opened UTG with JJ, short stack shoved for 10k and I called. He had AQ and I won a race one time. Another player busted at the same time on another table and we were in the money. Sweet! I still had a ton of work to do with 31k in chips and the average at 43k and the leader, some guy named Michael Mizrachi with some stupid number of chips like 150k. He had a hand with 21 left vs the second chip leader, he had 66 vs. AK on a KK6 flop and 7 turn when all the money went in and his hand held up. I cannot remember the last time I had some sweet cooler set-up hand like that. It’s been a LONG time. I have to win my chips with ace high and crap like that.

Speaking of which, I made a sick AK high river call on a JT862 board that was good vs. A9 in the 100-200/25 level.

Meanwhile, we re-draw for seats. First hand, blinds 600-1200/100, I raise to 3500 with QQ UTG. The next player makes it something like 12k. This was the sixth time he had re-raised me in the past 75 minutes. Everybody folded, our stacks were very close, and I said, “All-in.”

“Come again?” he said.

“Sorry, I need a break before I can do that again.”

Laughter.

“You’re all-in?”

“Yes.”

“I call.”

“Really? Whatcha got?”

“Aces.”

Flop A22, turn A, river x.

I get 800 chips in return, it’s my big blind. I win. I get 3k in chips.

I then fold my SB vs. a bunch of action. 2300.

There’s six seconds on the clock before an hour long dinner break, my button. I’m playing almost any hand.

I get 72o.

AYA! At least the buffet is free and tasty!

Return from dinner, blinds 800-1600/200. I have 2200 before the hand. I get to open shove from the cutoff with Q 8 , make a boat, and almost quadruple up to 8400. Next hand, open shove blind, steal the blinds and antes. 12400. Fold the next hand. 4th hand: open shove JTo, get called by the button. He had jacks. AYA.

Flop: KQ first two cards off the deck. Best non TT flop ever! The last three cards came bricks however, and I went home with my $2927 as a consolation prize.

Oh well. Tomorrow: $2500+100 NLHE. I’m really feeling a big hit coming on soon here. I just need to start running good one freaking time rather than having to actually play good to make my chips. It’s impossible to win a tournament through good play alone unfortunately and that’s all I have been able to do lately. I honestly haven’t seen AA in 8 of the last 9 tournament days, and the one time I saw them I lost a huge pot (5k circuit event). Just an indicator, ya know?

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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At least I was out quick enough to go to the lake! Not too much to talk about here.

1st hand: Limp w/22 for 50, next player makes it 325, I folded. 4k in starting stack.
2nd hand: Limp with K Q . Later player raises to 125, we see flop heads up. It comes all rags. I check, he checks, and I decide that I am check-raising any non-threatening turn. It comes 9 putting two spades on board. I check, he bets 200, I raise to 500, he calls. OK fine, he’s on a flush draw. River Jx, I bet 700, he calls with J9. Oops… good read on flop though!

About four hands later UTG raises to 175, Men the Master calls in UTG+1, and I make it 700 with AKo in the next position. The original raiser pondered for a long time, asked me if I was bluffing again, and re-raised the minimum-ish. Men put all his chips in the middle. This was the first hand he was dealt period. I put my last 1500 into the pot and see myself up against AA and JJ. Flop TJQ and it held up :-). Nice. Up to 7100.

Two hands later: Men opens to 175, I re-raise to 575, he goes all-in for 3275, and I call with my kings. He had AK, and an A hit immediately on the flop.

Then, I didn’t do anything for an hour, got short, doubled up with QJ on a J high flop, lost some chips, and went into the first break with 4200.

First 10 minutes back I see a flop from the SB for 500 with A Q . Flop 762 one spade. I check, he bet 700, and I called. I read him for ace high at best. Turn 7 , I bet 1100 (probably should have just went all-in at this spot… I only had 2900 in my stack going into the turn), and my opponent put me all-in. I still really didn’t think he had anything so it was a pretty easy call for me. He had AK! Wow! Not sure if he had a read or was just spewing, but it sure looks like he had a read! River bricked out and I was sent packing. Oh well.

Tomorrow is the $2k+100 NLHE event. Hopefully things will go a little better this time!

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Yep… I took as bad as I possibly could have expected Long story short, I took fiftth.

Good news: We made a percentage adjustment at five handed that gave an extra two percent of the prize pool to firth and fourth, and an extra one percent to second and third while taking six percent off of first. Thus, for the second time in my career, I got the best of a deal/save.

Bad news: I took fifth.

Honestly, not a damn thing I could have done. Here’s the key hand: I open raise from the cutoff six handed with the J T , and get called by the button and BB. Flop K 9 2 . Check, I continue, button raises, BB folds, and I peel a card. At the start of this hand I had about 75k and was right up there in top three and we kept trading off the “chip leader” title.

Turn gin: Q .

Check, he bets 4k, I raise to 8k, he calls.

River: Worst card in the deck. J . I still bet because I had him squarely on a Kx, and so what if he had KT, cause then we chop it up.

He raises.

I say, “Really?” But, I cannot fold at this point. I call, and he show me K T and scoops the 80k pot, the biggest one I saw the entire tournament.

Classic suck/re-suck, but still… No possible way it goes more expensive for me, even if it flops KTT, although I suppose it could have come that flop and turned a J… but… arrgh.

From there I could never recover. I re-built to 60k, and then went downhill from there, losing with an overpair to trip tens on a TT8 flop (I had JJ) and I finally busted with the A 3 when I saw the ATT flop vs. T 8 and got all-in on the turn. Oh well…

Today: 1500+80 NLHE event #4, and I need to go to sleep for that!

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Final Table Time Baby! After a great day on the lake Tuesday I strolled into the Mirage Wednesday to play in the $500+40 limit hold’em event. 199 players entered the event, and after 12.5 hours of play we are down to the final nine. We are playing for a $38k first prize and I like my chances. I have 54.5k in chips good for fourth in chips and the leader has 66k. The structure is very good and there is enough room for play.

Getting there was a ton of fun. I ran very well throughout the day making a ton of hands without having too many big hands pre-flop. I never had aces, KK once and lost, QQ twice both good… but I made a ton of hands with the random hands that I found myself in pots in. In limit tournaments I play a lot of hands and my success often depends on making hands with those random cards.

I did something that I’ve never seen or heard of before. I open-raised with KJ in back to back hands and flopped the nuts both hands and got paid off to the river on both hands. First flop KKJ, turn K, river x, called down the whole way, second hand flop 9TQ, I got check-raised, I 3 bet, and got paid off the whole way by QT. The second was the nuts by the river as well. Ever heard of that?!? Me neither.

So, I need to go to bed as the final table starts in less than 11 hours, but you will get a full report here tomorrow! If you’re around the Mirage tomorrow afternoon, stop by, say hello, and give me some sweat!

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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