Meh. Things just didn’t go my way today.

Sat down at the certain death table, with 9/9 being professional players. Brad Booth wins quote of the day with this one before the cards go in the air. “So, what do you all do for work?” LOL.

I opened the only two pots I played, lost em both, and dropped to 360k at the end of 16.

Level 17 was nothing interesting either, I basically grinded my short stack, squeezing a good spot, restealing other spots, and then when we busted the 19th player, the floor said, “Hold up…” We had riffled like 3 seconds (literally) before, and I’m in the SB. Proper. Elky opens UTG (which is like top 40%), Mike Mietz re-raises next to go (which also can be anything and is def calling me with worse), and I find JJ, jam 350k, and run into Mike’s QQ. GG me 18th place. Sigh.

Caesars 10k starts Tuesday I believe. See y’all soon.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Wheeeeeeewwww.

I busted Doyle Brunson today. Career highlight eh? I’ll get to that in a bit.

So, I start with about 100k, in a great seat on a table that I really like. In the first level I play two pots, win them both, am chilling at about 110k when this hand happens by the end of the level. I open AxQs UTG at 1200-2400 to 6600. Both blinds call, Nicholas Sliwinski in the small and Doug Lee in the big. Flop 789 all spades we check through. Turn Ks, they both check, I check behind, fully expecting one of them to bluff the river. River pairs the board, Nick checks, Doug bets 17k, I call, and he has the ace of spades. I mean seriously, I win that pot like 90% of the time. LOL.

Things continued going bad in level 12, but I probably should have lost all of my chips in this level, but somebody with AK didn’t get me in before spiking his pair on the river to win. I ended with 56k, 14 bigs, and was pretty disappointed.

Then in level 13, I shipped the button and they folded, I shipped QQ on Kasey Nam’s open and he folded, and then I doubled through Kasey’s 88 with AA, eventually ending the level with 158k.

Level 14 I lost almost 40% of my stack pre-flop in a really retarded spot. First hand, folds to my SB, I limp KTo, William Mietz raises, I re-raise to 55k, he ships it, and I fold. Pretty lame imo, but I hated limp folding, I hated raise folding, I hated raise shoving, I hated raise/calling, I hated giving a walk…

Anyways, I chilled around 130k for a while, then we re-drew with 54 left, money at 50. A few hands later, 52 left, I find two black kings UTG + 1, open to 20k at 3-6k/500, David Chiu makes it 70k, I ship, and hold over his AxKd on the Jdxdx, xd board, dodging all 12 outs on the river. I probably woulda quit poker for about six weeks if that got there.

We hold, make a set vs. Michael DeMichele but he had nothing, and end level 14 with 366k.

One bit of Bellagio nonsense happened on the bubble that I have no clue how is going to be resolved. With 52 left, two players bust on the same hand. Daniel Negreanu and Ted Lawson maybe? Anyways, after the two of them bust, they tell every table to hold up until all the hands are done. They announce over the loudspeaker, “You’re all in the money.” There’s a hand at my table and the one next to us, and on the other one Jennifer Tilley busts. They say that all three players are going to chop 50th place. Now, wtf imo, they were not hand for hand. They were not redrawing at 50. They announced over the PA that everybody’s in the money. But, since Tilley busted on the “same hand”, they said that the prize should be chopped. BS IMO. We were not hand for hand. There is no such thing as “same hand” when you’re not playing hand for hand. OK, so they were watching the hands, but that’s like watching the cards hit the muck and then getting them out. I make those points and then shut up about it, figuring between those three somebody will hear about something and things will get resolved LOL.

Anyways, start level 15, and early into it I bust Doyle. He opens UTG+1, I find a couple of queens in the hijack and say, “How much ya got Doyle?” He has about 200k and had opened to 22k at 4k-8k/1k. I just call since there’s some squeeze suspects behind me, and they all turbo muck.

Flop 9d3d2h, and Doyle bets 100k, I instantly ship, he instantly calls, and I hold over his 9h8h. Cool.

After that I re-raise ZJ with JJ, fold to Nam Le’s push from the blinds getting 1.8-1 and he shows me KK. We re-draw at 36, DeMichele with about 200k opens, I flat 88, Matt Stout pushes 120k in the blind, Michael re-pushes, and I reluctantly fold (was snapping Matt, was def calling TT+, prob 99). They have AJ and AQ and make no pair, and I end the day with 485k, 15/34 remaining, and 2k below average. I’m going to be in the top 5 of the 18 I think we play to today.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Man, my head hurts, but I played a ton of crazy poker today. Ready for a totally poker blog? Really? K here goes.

2nd hand today. 1st hand was a walk to Ryan Young. 2nd hand I find black kings UTG+1, and open to 2100. The button, John Roveto flats with 49k, both blinds fold. Flop 987, two hearts, I bet 3400, he makes it 8200.

History: we played a ton during the 25k, most of days 4 and 5, he ended up taking 3rd. He was mostly tight, but was usually short. Now he had 60+ bb’s and I’ve never seen him play with more than 35 really.

I ended up at the end of the level with like 75k, feeling good, and played one interesting hand in level 7.

IWEARGOGGLES had been involved lets say. This hand comes up, Ryan opens, Goggles flats the button, which I found wierd since he had 3 bet Ryan 3 times in level 6 but only flatted him once tops. I find 77 in the small, think about squeezing, but realize that’s retarded and just call. BB folds. Flop K87 two spades, I check, Ryan bets 4200ish, Luke ships it for almost 37k, I re-shove after like 45 seconds, Ryan folds an open-ender, and I turn quads.

I end the level around 93k, feeling reaaaalllly good. I made a somewhat marginal bluff vs. Mike Glaser, however I was on the draw, I knew he read me for the draw, and the other (more obvious) draw hit. He just happened to have that one and played it well by value checking the river, letting me bluff my pair of sixes.

I ended level 8 with like 96k, pretty slow after the exciting level 7. On that, other things that happened in level 7. Dude ships UTG for 10 bb’s, I call UTG+1 with AKo, Joylene Thompson ships for like 3 bb’s more, she has AA I lose. Half a level later she opens on my small, I 3 bet to about 55% of her stack total, she calls and folds after the flop to my dark shove. Somewhere in there I opened with 33, got called by Michael Kulinski, check/check the T94hhd flop, bet 1/3 his stack on the 3h turn he check/called, river Qd, he checks, I snap stuff he snap calls with KhJx. Nh.

N*E*Ways… chipped up in 9, nothing exciting, kinda got passed by the escalating blinds, but people were dropping way faster than they should have. I chipped up every level (except the last), but never enough to keep up with the average. Nothing I could have done really. I’m very happy with where I’m at, and there’s a ton of chips at my table tomorrow.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

I feel like I really had to earn my chips today. I did, ending two spots above the average stack, something like 105/260 remaining.

I started out blasting in level one. I was a bit steamed as I woke up in the morning with my mustang trashed in the driveway. Basically my roommate drove the car home the night before, had a blowout, and drove the car the rest of the way home. It was bad. Like, really bad. Like I blew a gasket bad. I can’t remember the last time I had been that angry. Probably summer of 07? Anyways, so like 15 minutes in I find myself in this spot.

4 limpers at 50-100, starting stacks 45k. I have KQo and bump it to 725 on the button, get called in three spots. Flop AQ6, checks to me, I bet 2200 or so, get called twice. Turn a brick, checks to me, and I semi bet to protect/semi turn my hand into a bluff and bet 5425, and both opponents quickly fold. After that I made a set vs. Tom West, got one more bet of action, and ended level one with 52k.

I went pretty card dead/got ran over by this kid named Evan in levels two and three. I bled down to 36k, then my friend told me to stop sucking, and I stopped sucking. In level 4 I chipped up to 43k without seeing a flop (not bad for 300-600/75 for 90 minutes). Level 5 things started clicking, and I chipped up to my ending stack of 65k.

I felt really good about my play today. I had to be very flexible and really find some spots to pick up chips. The entire table was tough. My stack is 2nd highest of my table, just getting inched by Nam Le. Nobody busted, and Alex Jacobs ended with the short stack of 15k. Really really tough table.

After I bagged and tagged I met my friend at the Venetian to see Jersey Boys. Her roommate works for somebody and aparrently gets them or something, and anyways, we had free seats. On the way in she says, “If these seats suck it’s not my fault.” When we sit in the third row I say, “Is it also not your fault that these are AWESOME?!?”

The show was really really cool. I didn’t know anything about the story and thoroughly enjoyed the entire production.

Monday Funday started with a spontaneous trip with Jared to the lake. We took our skis out with one tank of gas, and ended up charging from Hemmingway to the dam to Kingman to Bocce Beach to Jump Rock Cove to Guy in the Cove to Sentinel Island, around Shipwreck Island, and back to the launch ramp. On our way up the ramp, Jared gets a call from his boss Trev, who says he’s going the lake.

Five minutes later we’re walking onto the dock to Trev’s slip, and end up on the lake until at 5:36 we’re driving up the ramp again, and I listen to my voice mail.

“Dude, Devo. Our games start at six. Not eight.”

We made it at 6:05. Not bad considering we didn’t have any of our stuff with us.

Turns out we’re playing the last place team, who has won zero games all season. We’d won one. They beat us the first game. We woulda won if Jared caught a fly ball. But, to clinch 2nd (to last) place, we won in the bottom of the 5th in game two, with not one, but two infield errors in a row to win the game with two outs.

Alright. I’m going to finish this glass of wine, think about three betting Goggles tomorrow, and get
some rest.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tonight I somehow weaseled my way into a 2nd place in the Poker Stars $200+15 weekly HORSEament. I was in a battle for the chip lead for the ENTIRE tournament went card dead at the last two tables, played a couple of interesting hands but mostly remained stagnant. Then at 5 handed I end up getting scooped in stud 8 with (a3)552 by some stupid piece of cheese that I end up folding on the river to his KJ88 or whatever standard hand. This is how I felt at the moment:

badbeatninja: ffs
Dealer: badbeatninja, it’s your turn. You have 15 seconds to act
badbeatninja: a3552?
badbeatninja: wtf
badbeatninja: 9q
badbeatninja: ****
Dealer: Game #21340671390: CPL Guru wins pot (90000)
Dealer: The break will start when the current hand finishes
Dealer: Game #21340686674: CPL Guru wins pot (6000)
badbeatninja: wtf
badbeatninja: fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkk
badbeatninja: arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg
EvitaPeron: 15 minutes?

So I end up being left with like 1.5 big bets (20k). I peak at 60k, and end up getting heads up with 50k. Lose with (75)67 v. K3TQ, but ship the $7400 cash or whatever it is. It had been a pretty rough Sunday up to that point, with nothing going well anywhere and many, many… um, painful ones.

Anyways, I’m also 10/14 in the FTP Horseament right now and we just came off break so I’m going to go look at that some more.

I spewed half my stack the immediate hand after that sentence. Player with 3 bb’s opens the c/o, I iso QJo < KJ.

Have bet and raise and bet and bet until they've folded, climbing to 6/14 w/o showdown. <3 LHE.

Just ran TT on button into AA in SB. Pretty much out.

So, anyways. The poker has been pretty bad lately. I suppose I should feel fortunate for sneaking into 2nd today, but I am a sneaky bastard and played it very well IMO. I could just win the damn pots that I'm supposed to win to have chips instead of not having to play sneaky ICM bastard.

The $5k on Saturday was pretty bunk. The table I was at was ridic. I played decently imo. I busted Bax with AA>AK, and I saw him play the sickest hand I’ve ever seen in my life in my opinion.

Infinity limpers, Scott Montgomery of the November 9 makes it 400 at 25-50 in the cutoff. I call in the SB, Bax calls in EP, Kevin Saul laughs, almost folds, giggles, shrugs, and calls 350 more in middle position. Flop 447. Check, check, check, Scott bets 700, I fold, Bax calls, Kevin makes it 2100, Scott calls, Kevin calls. Stacks are about 15k effective. Kevin says, after Bax’s overcall and before the turn, “You flopped quads Bax.” Not a question. A statement. Turn 7. Bax says, “There’s somebody else in the hand,” and bets 1500. I stand up and start laughing. Kevin looks like he just saw his grandmother naked, and reluctantly calls, and Scott calls. River is another 7, I really LOL, Bax bets 1500, Kevin ships like 10k total, Scott tanks, finally calls, and Bax *snap* mucks 44 face up. I bet that in the history in NLHE tournament poker nobody has ever flopped quads and then bet/folded the river.

So, Scott calls it off on the river vs. two sets of quads, and now has to go and get noodles for the biggest Noodles Last Shorter bet ever, a full dozen of the motliest crew ever. Best. Bet. Ever.

I end up getting it in for a 1.8x avg stack with AKhh v. TheCronic420’s AQdd, flop Qdd, gg me. Turns out Dan Shak and somebody else had my two K outs. Dan told me about this tonight in the horseament, and my instant reaction was, “THANK YOU for not telling me!” Man, I hate it when they deny the guy behind a full sweat.

Fortunately, I was out in time to go catch Keller Williams at the Canyon Club inside the Four Queens downtown. Cool place. “Where music meets the soul” was written above the stage, and the atmosphere was ridiculously intimate. I had an incredible time, definitely top 3 shows of the year for me. The guy is solo on stage, and plays mostly acoustic driven hippie rock. After he gets going in a song though he records a loop with his guitar, then plays it on repeat through a sound board. Then he’ll record a loop and repeat on bass, electric guitar, drum machine, and/or synth. Then he’ll play more guitar and sing over the combined loops, sometimes looping in harmonies, and eventually ending up at this climactic finish of hippieness.

Amazing show. Guy did two 90 minute sets. Just totally had a blast doing what he was doing.

Anyways, my head is going to asplode after today. Shower, beer, Monday funday, peace, good, luck.

Devo

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

“This is one of those places like in Beaches.”

“You know, the Leonardo DiCaprio movie where they’re at this place that’s so fabulous that they want to tell everybody about it but if they tell people about it then it won’t be fabulous anymore.”

This was after something like ten minutes of silence as Poff and I soaked in these hot springs we visited today.

This summer I went on a hike up to Mt. Charleston, and in my searches for hikes I discovered this awesome website about Hiking Around Las Vegas. I spent several hours on this site the first day I discovered it, and this place was high on my list of random afternoon trips that I would take as soon as the weather dropped below an average high of 90 here in Vegas.

Sunday morning I went on a motorcycle ride to get breakfast before Sunday, ****ing Sunday and wore gloves and a full coat. Then on the news that night I heard somebody say, “Bundle up again tomorrow Las Vegas as we are only going to reach a high of seventy.”

LOL. You can have bet the farm that every one of us would complain about it being cold that night at softball, and we did.

So, queue the cold weather, and Tuesday morning I wake up and have 5 hours before the Stars $1k. Jared walks into the room, and I say, “Wanna go to some hot springs?” He says yes, and then goes downstairs to drink a glass of salt water. Danny, Jared, Nick, and Jake are all doing the Master Cleanse, and this is day two for them. You should have seen the bartender last night at one of their local bars. One by one they each order a bottle of water, and the cute blonde bartender that knows them well is in a state of utter shock. Her face was priceless.

About 30 minutes later, two of the bathrooms were occupied by Jared and Danny. If you know anything about the Cleanse then you understand. They abandoned hope of a 2+ mile hike with scrambling involved, and I went back to my desk trying to decide if I really wanted to work on my taxes.

Then Poff walked into the room. “Wanna go to some hot springs?”

She said yes, and we actually left quite soon. Dropped the top, picked up some Capriotti’s, and we were on our way. We made it to the trailhead, and spent the next couple miles following the directions of “hike down the canyon until you find water.” We down climbed some stairs carved into rock, used a rope to rappel down a chute, and eventually ended up at the top of the hot springs.

Man this place was cool. It was a spring that came out of the walls, and the creek ran hot into the pool that we spent most of our time in. The pool below us was like swimming pool temperature and was mostly runoff from our pool. Apparently for the next 30-45 minutes of hiking down the canyon there are pools and waterfalls and all sorts of cool hot springs things going on. We plopped into the pool, soaked for a good 45 minutes in the water that was about 100 degrees, and solved all the problems of the world. We had a really good talk about where the water came from. It comes from the ground. But it’s in the middle of the desert. The only runoff through Vegas is the Las Vegas wash which basically takes everything from Henderson to Red Rocks to North Town to a wash through Lake Las Vegas, down to Lake Mead, and eventually down the Colorado River. Poff then told me about caves she went to in Indiana that were hundreds of feet below the surface but there was enough water for boat rides. Fascinating stuff.

Then we got to talking about how many people had actually been to that place, how they decided to dam the pools that they did, and what not. On the way down the only real sign of human we saw was when to the left side of the trail there was an arrow pointed away from the trail spray painted on the rock. I didn’t believe, said, “The trail is that way, unless the spray painter knows something we don’t.”

About a hundred feet further down the trail we were standing atop a 30 foot drop. Turned around, went back to the arrow, and found a faint trail scrambling over the rocks, and eventually took us on an easy path over an otherwise impossible rock pile. Thank you Spraycan Prophet.

This was obviously a very special place. We had to earn our way down there, and the people that built the pools had to go through a bunch of work to make that happen. There’s very little evidence of humans and it was an amazingly beautiful place.

We started walking back, climbed some stairs, made some new friends, and headed home.

Yesterday was MondayFunday. With softball games going Monday night, I’ve started taking Mondays off and boy is it nice after Sundays. This day called for a game of Frolf, aka Frisbee Golf at Sunset Park. We played 18 holes, three teams of two, best ball competition. There was a bet of course. The two losing teams were to be required to sing “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” to a woman/group of women at the bar chosen by the winning team. Buck, Jared, Loren and myself will be in concert sometime this week at a local bar in Henderson if you’re in town.

We actually won a softball game that night and we had quite a blast doing so.

I haven’t been able to fly in two weeks. I was grounded today and 8 days ago due to weather/wind, and Thurs/Fri my flight instructor was out with the flu. I really want to finish that by the end of the year, but I’m getting the itch for some road trips and think i’ll be out and aboot for some of November.

Stoked that I’ve been able to get outside and be active much more lately. This stuff just makes my soul happy.

Now I need to start winning again. Have a couple of 5k’s and then the WPT main 15k starts on Monday. I think I’m gonna win.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Today Adam Kats, Brett Hanks, Jon Little, Jon Aguiar, Matt Graham, USCPhildo, Hunter, Ben “ShankingYou”, and myself made a last shorter bet at the beginning of the $3k at the Bellagio, which drew a whopping 70+ runners today. The terms of the bet were this: the first person to bust had to go to Noodles, buy everybody food, and deliver it. It was the most ridiculous fun bet ever. The “Noodle Bubble” was burst by Adam, and I enjoyed my Chicken Chow Mein almost as much as FatalError enjoyed his Mongorian Beef.

Unfortunately, I still cannot win at poker, busting in a 20k pot with TT<88.

Yesterday I played cash games at the Bellagio. I've been saying for about six months now that I really wished that I had stuck with cash games rather than switching to tournaments. I would love to play 200-400 mix every day or something like that. I think that would be sweet, and I feel like the fluctuation and normality could be much more regulated.

After playing all day yesterday, I am pretty sure that if I was a cash game pro I would be wishing that I had switched to tournaments.

When I saw Mark Gregorich in a 30-60 O8 game that I had already left because it was bad, and he looked at me, giggled, and shrugged his shoulders, I realized that the economy is directly affecting poker. Things are returning to the way they were before poker on TV. Things are still way better/more +ev now than they were then, but the gap is narrowing rapidly. I made it then and I will make it now, but I fear that many will be going broke over the next year or so.

So, I started 30-60 O8, lost a dime, and left the game for a new 10-20 NL game. There were some good spots in that game, then I got rivered by one for a $1600 pot and he promptly stacked off to a rock. A couple others left, and all of a sudden we were in a crappy game again.

I moved down to 5-10. Seriously. That game wasn't good either, but it was better than the other two.

An interesting spot came up that kinda fired me up. Two Euro's made it to the river. I'm pretty sure that they knew each other, but were obviously playing each other hard and having a good time doing it. Check, dude bets like $300, other guy tanks, he says, "Show me one?"

The dealer about jumps out of her chair. "No! Do NOT show any cards!" The guy folds, and then she says, "This is your warning. Do not show any cards." I kinda giggle, and ask for a floorman. He relays the same information, do not show your hole cards while the hand is in play period.

"Or else what?"

"First time it's a warning, second time your hand is dead. I don't care if you have quad aces, your hand is dead."

"Seriously? What is the reasoning for this rule?"

"We don't want any players to intimidate other players."

I laugh. "Okay, seriously, that's a pretty silly reason don't you think?"

He then basically berates me, saying that I'm the only one complaining, I say that I bet infinity dollars that more than 2/3 of the players in the room would agree that it's a silly rule, he asks the table something along the lines of "does anybody besides this guy have a problem with this rule? No? See? You're the only one complaining. Everybody else is happy."

Such customer service.

So, don't show your cards otherwise your hand might be dead, and if you shove your stack but don't cross the betting line, it doesn't mean anything. Bellagio: taking away angles since 1998 or whenever they opened.

I played a pretty interesting hand toward the end of my session. I open 77 from the button to $40, both blinds call. Flop QTTr, check, check, I bet $100, fold, call. Turn 9, check, check, river 7, BB bets $200 into $320 with $800 behind. My first instinct is to call and I think is standard online, but I'm really only afraid of QT or the occasional 99. I also think he'll pay off with KJ, some T's, and the occasional light call. Important note is that three hands earlier I raised TT UTG to $40, got 2 callers, checked around a Qxx fop, bet a 9 turn, and bet a brick river for value (and got called). So he knows I can value bet light.

Do I raise/fold or just ship it? I think it's close between min-ish raising/folding to a shove and just plain shoving. I decided to shove, he had QT, and I head off to dinner stuck $2k for the day's work.

Arrgh. This after a 12th in the 100r on Tuesday, losing a flip for the chip lead in a pretty silly spot where the villain was so far behind my range and just happened to be flipping and won.

Monday I decided that I was going to invest in silver. Here’s some fun facts for you: 95% of all silver ever mined has been consumed industrially. There is a present day deficit in silver use to production. 4 billion dollars could buy all of the silver in existence on the planet at today’s rates. There is almost 100x more gold in the world than silver. Silver is traditionally about 20-1 less than gold, today it’s more than 60-1.

So, I did my research, and decided that I wanted to buy 5-10 100oz bars of silver bullion. I call everybody in town and find two bars. I go to get one of them before softball, pay $2.50 over spot + tax (stupid Nevada charging sales tax on bullion sales… one of the few states that do). They then pull out some rough bullion bars from the private stock, and they look like they were poured during the Nevada silver rush in the late 1800’s. I pass since I don’t know much about them, and go about my business for the evening.

The next day I call the other place with a 100 oz bar. Sold. Call everybody else, nobody has anything. Somebody recommends out of state so I don’t have to pay sales tax. Call St. George, Barstow, Victorville, nothing. So cal everywhere, San Diego, San Francisco, nothing. Then I start calling the major distributors. Nobody is selling anything. They straight up tell me that they’re not taking orders because they cannot replace their stock. I call the place with the rough bullion, and they’re sold. “How much?”

“$100 more per bar than what we offered you yesterday.”

Wow. It’s impossible to buy silver.

So, if you have any for sale, I’ll take it. If you can find some, buy it imo!

Peace and good luck,

Devo

Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »