Hahaha. I just played this hand on the Gold Mine, aka the Money Factory special, aka the internet poker site that shall remain nameless. 2-4 NL 6-max. Cutoff limps, I make it $20 from the small blind with AJo, heads up flop of AKJ, I bet villain calls, turn Q check-check, river 9 check-check, ship it… over there?!? He has the nuts?!?

People are right that poker isn’t as good as it was in 2005/6. That’s true but it’s still waaaaaay better than it was in 2002. Poker will always be easy enough to make money at with proper game selection and bankroll management.

Anyways, sorry that it’s been moons since I’ve written regularly, but they kicked my ass in Biloxi so bad that I was severely unmotivated to write. If i did blog daily in the past two weeks, here’s how they would have looked:

Wheels on the bus fell off late in day 2, ran into Jason Potter. We took turns shitting on each other (he 3-bet me and showed 43o, T6o, I 4 bet him and showed 57o, etc) until he got the better end of a flip and a cooler and all my chips. Got drunk at bar with Gavin and friends.

Grinded 5-10-25 PLO all day. Lost all my money sans $160. Got drunk with Kevin Saul and friends.

Flew home.

Blew brains online Sundays.

Went to the lake Monday. Spent most of my January 19th with my shirt off. Took first shot at a critter with my bow - Coyote. FYI, they’re open season and there’s a $150 bounty on their pelts. Course, now that I think about it I was on the Arizona side of the lake, not the Nevada side, so it’s prob a damn good thing that I missed. LOL literally just realized that I was in Arizona.

Blew brains online Tuesday. Also played Frisbee golf (aka Frolf) and almost beat Jared.

Kicked ass online Wednesday, made deep run in Wednesday Quarter Mil, ran 99 into the top of Jon Turner’s range, KJ, and he won the flip after some other unfortunateness. Made like $3500 in cash games on the side. Got sick.

Blew brains online Thursday, was sick all day.

Kicked ass online Friday, went to the Wranglers game with Shelley and Seiver. Good times. $38 for seats on the glass center ice. We were ahead 1-0 with 8 in the third, and I say, “I hope they tie and we win in a shootout.” I’ve never seen a shootout live thought it’d be cool. They tie it up 30 seconds later, it goes to shootout, and we lose in like the 11th round of shootout.

Saturday I blow brains online. It was a really annoying session, fluctuating somewhere between down 1k and 2k forever (7 hr session). It never got really bad, but never really had hope. I went on a late night heater, got back to down a couple hundred, both games broke, and I was sitting out working on something on my desk. Then this uber feesh sits back in, I’m like sweet holiday bonus, and proceed to dust off two dimes in half an hour. Sigh fml.

Sunday I have best Sunday ever, but is still super disappointing. I end up taking 7th in the heads up for 2k, getting it in with K7ss on a 7×4s3s board vs. a player who was a loser at $22 buy-ins. He flopped da nuts. Then at some early point in the 2nd chance I get it in with 99 v KK and KK, ezgame flop J99, cruise all the way to 4th place for $23k. Sucked out with 88>JJ on the final table (but the money belonged in the pot aka cooler), and then 4 handed PeachyMer opens the button, I 3-ball the SB for 220k with ThTd and 550k behind, and the BB/CL 4-bets. I’m like, well, ok, it’s going in, I guess, am thrilled when I see his ATo, and hate poker when it comes AhJhXx, Xh, X. At this point I’m barely making the money in the FTP HORSE, end up taking 4th after getting it in vs. the short stack AQ v QT river T, AJ v K8 QQJ flop, river K. GG me nice double-ups sir.

OBV can’t complain about my best Sunday ever and 2nd best online day ever, but FFS, can’t I win something online one time?

Soooo, it’s Monday. They released the WSOP schedule today. For the most part I like it. There are no rebuy events this year. Daniel is on record as saying that you can just “buy a bracelet” in these rebuy events. C’mon that is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. So, instead of these rebuy events that attracted over 1k players and created huge prizepools (and last year were dominated by the players that you routinely see at the PokerStars 100r final tables), they’ve replaced them with many odd mix events (yum-yum!) that will only attract 100-300 players. After a preliminary look at the schedule of 58 events, I want to play about 26 of them, eight of which are NLHE events. Even though the prizepools in these events are going to be smaller, I believe that my edge is way more significant there than in NLHE.

I suppose it’s official enough that I can say that I’m writing for Card Player now. I’m pretty stoked on that… very proud actually. First article should be in issue #4, hitting the casinos around Feb 18th. Basically what I’m doing is a bi-monthly article where I take a hand that brings up some concepts, write about 7-800 words on the hand, and then submit it to about 50 other named pros. I’m including other opinions on the hand with the article. In the first article I have responses from Paul, “uclabruinz” Smith, Dutch Boyd, Jimmy “GobboBoy” Fricke, and Gavin Smith.

Alrighty I’m about done writing, but it’s going to be grind grind grind for most of this month. I’ve spent enough money over the past nine months that I need to start dumping back into the vault. I’m pretty motivated to get out of make-up and kick some ass on the tournament circuit this year. Year of the bracelet? Year of the major win? Year of the awesome 2nd place (50k HORSE, WPT/WSOP Main? I’ll take it.)?

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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I’ve always disliked basketball. However, in the last 24 hours I’ve heart the two best basketball ESPN reports ever and have a little bit of a crush on it now. Last night Coach Knight on ESPN did a commentary why some college stud was the best passer in the game, and his breakdown of why was incredible. Then, right now on SportsCenter, they did a report on the Lakers/Spurs game with how they defended Kobe, and it was fascinating. I think the game is so fast that it appeals to the general American public, but too fast to pick up on the strategy and playmaking easily. Anyways. Was what was on top of my mind.

Last night I wrote a blog about the trip here to Biloxi, but didn’t post it cause I posted that PCA novel last night. So now you get Biloxi day’s 0 and 1 in one blog, right now being day one.

Anyways, I had the best first day in a main of my life, running hot and playing very very very well. So many fun pots to talk about, but basically the cliff notes are this:

I chipped up to 33k or so.
I got 22 and flatted Doug Lee’s raise, flop KQ2 two diamonds, he check calls, turn J, he check/raises, I shove, he calls w/KQ, J on the river I’m up to 69k.
I flopped 2 sets before that, and flop 3 after. No post-flop action. In one of them Vanessa Russo made an excellent laydown to me (QQ on 964 rainbow flop, I had 44 she folded to my flop raise).
I played better than I have played in a long time. Feel super confident, super good, and am looking forward to the rest of this tourney.

After the tourney a bunch of us went to dinner, $1600 bill + we’re tipping $400, gonna be a sick credit card roulette, but a $600 and $400 comp comes in last minute, so it’s only a $1k CCR, and I beat Tiffany Michelle heads up.

She had a rough day. In one of the last hands of the day it folded to Cantu’s button he raise, SB calls, Tiff re-raises to 5k in the BB, Cantu re-raises to 15k, SB folds, Tiff calls. Flop 665 two diamonds, Tiff shoves, Cantu calls, Cantu’s 67o holds over Tiff’s KJdd. You read that right.

Anyways, that’s about all I got for now, gonna be a long day tomorrow. Restart at noon, expected to play til 3:30am. Updates on worldpokertour.com as always.

And here goes the 2nd blog.

Ayaaaaa…. So it’s been a rough start here in Biloxi, but before I get into that, I want to tell you about a prop bet that Scott Seiver and I made back at PCA so I become happier.

It was Saturday afternoon, and I ended up in that same place in the not-so-lazy river that we started in from the last blog that I told you about it in. Scott says we should gamble on a race, I accept, and we establish the rules as “…you can’t cheat or anything. You must stay in your tube at all times.” We establish that you must be in the standard reclined beer-drinking low-ride-lawn chair tube position at all times. So, somebody holds us in the current, lets go and the race is on.

Scott takes of pounding as do I. He gets an early lead, makes it to the first rapid before me, and I decide that I need to focus on my water-reading skills to beat him with efficiency. Coming off the first rapid I give it a half-dozen good strokes to catch the momentum from the faster moving water, and then go back to coasting. Scott continues to charge and is a good ten seconds ahead of me by the second rapid. I repeat the charge at the bottom of the 2nd, and then go into a full recline, kicking my legs out and putting my hands behind my head, grinning at Scott. He says, “Oh, I see your strategy. I can play that game. I have position.”

He takes his 15 seconds of position and floats right downstream from the cove cut-across. At the perfect time, I start charging backwards, fighting against the current out of the cove for a good twenty seconds before I catch the dead water. I charge hard all the way until I catch the swift water when I check back at Scott, and he’s running up the river and across the cove, dragging his tube as it bounced off of innocent’s heads until he finally abandoned it and just went into mad pursuit.

At the conveyor belt there was a backup, and four cute local girls were trying to go up at the same time, and the local lifeguard obliged, and I lost my entire lead. I was first in the queue when Scott charged through the crowd, grabbed a tube off of the pile, dropped it in front of me and headed up the tube standing on the belt with the tube around his feet. He even tried to drop tubes on me but that was crossing the line a bit. When we finally hit water it was an all-out charge. I got hung up in traffic, brought it back close by the time we hit the first rapid, kept in the current perfect, and near the top of the second and final rapid, Scott caught the eddy. Ahh, eddy is my friend. I flew past him in the swift water as Scott was frantically trying to catch up, but it was too late as I made it back to everybody first.

I lost the $100 in one throw of rock paper scissors later that night.

So, anyways… LOL.

We made it to Biloxi without problem and for the first time in my life it was a damn good thing that I had a beer in my hand before getting on the 2nd plane. Andy (BKice) met his buddy Ravi and I wandered off to sneak a quick charge on my laptop. On the way back I ran into my friend Kimberly and from then on I kinda forgot about doing anything productive. Andy and I had gotten a drink at the bar, and then they called us for boarding. I’m like lets sit here and finish, they’re like lets go bring it, so at the gate they tell me I can’t bring it. I ain’t wasting a beer so I ask the lady her name and stand there to drink the beer. She has no interest in talking to me so I decide to be productive and go to the restroom, and on the way out I see my laptop sitting on the window sill across the terminal plugged in.

Yup.

So we get to Gulfport/Biloxi, Kimberly says, “Wanna ride in my car?” At the bottom of the elevator there’s a guy with a suit holding a sign with her last name (must be nice), and they go to get luggage. I didn’t check luggage. Kimberly doesn’t have luggage tonight. So after taking a while to go through the process, the driver asks if she minds waiting for another person coming in shortly, “it won’t be a while.” A couple minutes later he says, “The plane’s ETA is 28 minutes.”

Yeah right you kidding me? C’mon lets get a cab we’ll pay for it. He then calls dispatch and asks if they’ll reimburse us for the cab (his idea tyty), and then they say don’t worry about just bring us. Sweet. So we go out to her stretch limo (must be nice) and get an awesome ride to the Beau Rivage.

After settling in we go to dinner at Waffle House (mmmmmmm… Kevin and I set the line at 3.5 total meals at the Waffle House this trip). Back across the street, and I want to play some PLO. Here’s how that goes.

I get a seat in 5-10-25 PLO. That means 5-10 standard blinds, 25 on the button, action starts in the small blind. I buy in for $1500, get my first hand in the cutoff (no post), and the button puts $50 on the button. Apparently you can make it $50 instead of $25. Nice. I find KKJ4 with J4 hearts, and after two limpers I pot to $225. The button calls, both limpers call. Flop 887 rainbow, check, check, I bet $425, button calls and is obv weak, others fold. Turn a 7h putting 2 hearts out there, I shove my last $800, he calls reluctantly, river a 5h, I table my Jh4h, he tables AdKh6×5h. Sigh. Rebuy please, $2k.

Next hand it’s $25 on the button, after limps I pot to $150, fold the flop.

I fold every single hand for an hour, with $1775 in my stack and in the small blind, $25 on the button, I limp KKTx, limp, best player on table makes it $125, c/o calls, button calls, I call, limper calls. Flop KTx rainbow, I check, check, bet $500, shove for $1700, fold, I obv shove, other player calls slowly, turn A river 9, I lose to KQJ9 and QJ99. Sigh. I’m going upstairs.

And here I am. And I’ll post this later. 10k starts tomorrow, 4 day event, gogogogogogo.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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I’m currently sitting on an airplane headed to Houston, followed by a short hop over to Gulfport for the Beau Rivage 10k WPT main that starts tomorrow. This will be my sixth and seventh takeoff and landing in the past ten days, with another two coming this weekend.

Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. PCA was so awesome that I really never ever had an opportunity to sit and write a blog, and never really wanted to for that matter since I was having so much fun. This’ll be a long update blog, as I’m pretty sure I’m going to write until the battery on this lappy runs out.

Last I wrote to you I said I was going to kick some butt at hearts, but I was wrong. Cantu, Seiver, Fuller, and Bax all won while I lost 6k. That was Monday night, and they just fleeced me. I didn’t want to play hearts anymore and was really somewhat depressed, chalking up the biggest losing day of my life (16k if you count the 10k).

Tuesday was beach day. Shelley and I met Cantu, Fuller, and Angie and headed out to the volleyball courts and the party just grew from there. After the beach we wandered over to the lazy river, and I posted up on an innertube, smoking a (tobacco) pipe, drinking a Kalik in a can, ready to waste the next two hours away. Turns out I can smoke a pipe in the lazy river but not drink a beer. This was disappointing as I had already hid a bucket of 5 beers on ice in the bushes so I could re-fill every lap. Naturally the two women lifeguards told me that I couldn’t drink beer while the four dude lifeguards said, “Hi mon.”

So screw the lazy river, plus it was in the shade, and we headed over to the pool nearby the beach bar. It didn’t take us long at all for Shelley and I to start a game of beer pong on the stone ping-pong tables by the pool. She beat me, then Madsen barely beat her, and just before the beach bar closed at 5pm I went over and bought a trash bag full of beer and ice, carried it like Santa back to the tables, and the party continued. The band was gone but I had my Bose jambox which is loud as hell, and was loud enough to push the party into the dark hours.

Wednesday was lazy river day, but this time we went to the other lazy river on the waterpark side of the joint. This was the coolest water attraction I have ever been on. It’s mostly gravity run. From the point we started at that day, we went down a section of rapids through a tunnel, and it was gnarly enough where many of my not-so-river-savy friends did everything from scraping themselves up decently to losing their bottoms. Then we floated for a bit, another set of rapids, more float through some places to hang out, and my personal favorite part, the whole bottom section driven by this wave thing. The river dumped right in front of this 30-ish foot Mayan style tower that had a wave/water dumper at the top of the 45 degree slope. About every fifteen seconds or so it would release a significant amount of water and created this tidal wave effect that was enough to flip me and wipe out the worker mon quite quickly. That created a series of waves through this windy section, and were strong enough off the walls to surf. Super fun. From there drift down for a while to a conveyer belt that takes us to the top, and then after a float you have two choices. Left, down two rapids and back where we started, or right, into the “Power Tower.” You never have to leave your tube this whole time. The power tower looked like something out of Lord of the Rings and had four separate water slides spitting out of it, two of which were accessible this way, the other two by foot.

We ran into, like, everybody towards the end of the day, they showed us the cool cove spot to hang out at (after the 2nd rapid, before the wave section, there’s a cove that connects both sides of the river, bypassing the entire wave section complete with an excellent lounge area. This will be important later.), and we spent the rest of the day with them. We tried to rally them to all go to the Fish Fry downtown with us, but they all bailed and it turned out to be Shelley, Cantu, Jess, and myself who went. The food was a bit of a disappointment, but Senor Frogs was excellent that evening. We headed back at 1am or so, tired and wanting to get sleep for the $5k in the morning.

Good thing I did that. Nothing could go right for me once again, I felt that I played well, but just, yeah. They happen. Good place to run bad though, and we got the rest of the day to hang out. Fuller was chipleader in the 2k so we kinda hung around, and I got my one and only session of cash in, played for like an hour, played one big LOOOOOL pot.
5-10 PLO, I bought in for 1500, had it up to $1865 when this hand happened. I straddle for $25 (the let us and I love it), bunch of limpers, I pot AKK4 for $165 more. UTG with about $1k calls, fold, guy in the 1 seat with like 6k calls, button calls, SB’s turn. He has like $400 total. I think, “Shove.” He says, “All-in.” $280 more. Perfect I can…

“I’m all in. $1865 total.”

This is were it gets fun, cause obv I’m supposed to be head-up with the SB. UTG shrugs his shoulders, sticks in all his chips, the guy with all the money takes like a minute and puts out $1865, button folds, and we’re off four ways. Board comes Q6x, 3, 6, I table my KK, SB tables 8653 with one suit (lol), and I win the ginormous ridicockulous wtf side-pot, net win of $2k when I leave 15 mins earlier.

So, Fuller pulls a Devo and takes 2nd to Hevad Khan who is way underrated imo, ships over $100k anyways, and we all go to dinner/drink/watch game. It turns into the Layne Flack Show with consistent Bahama-Mama service. Layne went on a streak of stories and they were all honestly top-notch. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with the group and listening to Layne.

The next day Cantu, Layne, and Bobby went to Cuba. Nice. On my list, but I was already here. We invited all the white people I knew for a daylight hour adventure on the island, and Shelley and I had a great time (nobody joined). We started by wandering around downtown, found some food, and then hired a cab to take us to one of the nearby forts, Fort Fincastle. Our driver’s name was Brendalee, completely awesome, and she took care of us for the rest of the day for right around $100 all said and done.

While at the fort hanging out, Shelley spots a group of runners. She says, “Those are hashers!” Hashers are a worldwide loose organization of “Drinking Clubs with Running Problems.” There’s one in most cities, and there’s a chapter in Las Vegas. Shelley has been out with them, and they’re the group that we did the Halloween pub crawl where I had a close encounter of the transvestite kind. Turns out that these hashers are on a hash cruise on one of the boats in port, and are on a run with the Nassau chapter. Turns out Shelley knows two of them, and turns out that I drank with these two on Halloween. Small world. They invite us to the Cricket Club for drinks, and when Brendalee picks us up we head that way.

This place was conveniently located at the foot of the largest fort on the island, between the harbor and the main road. It was one cricket field bordered by a large plantation style house, bar upstairs, and for two hours we enjoyed the sun, small world friends, and a very, very, beautiful place. They all left at 4:30, we walked up the hill, checked out the fort, and were picked up at 5pm.

On the way out we checked out third and final fort on New Providence island, took the bridge back to Paradise (formerly known as Hog) Island and the Atlantis.

That night we were super excited to go to a restaurant named Greycliff. This was hands down the best meal of my life. Not even close.

We get there and are greeted by the Maitre’D. We are escorted to the main room of this old Colonial house dating back to the 1700’s where a woman is playing a beautiful grand piano. We are brought two glasses of excellent Argentinian wine and look over the menu. After we pick out our order, which turns out to be a lobster thingy appetizer, caesar salad, a peppercorn steak, and my “Langoste por deux sauces” or something Froggish like that. We order a bottle of some Pinot, which was perfectly amazing, and are moving on to dessert.

At this point I request a cigar because Nick Binger told me about how they have this Cuban dude that hand rolls cigars during your meal. We are asked how we like them, and the Maitre’d scurries off somewhere into the mansion. Meanwhile, we are brought two glasses of this 1985 port at $36 bucks a whack, and I kinda wish I could have one right now. It was the perfect crecendo to this meal, and complimented our Banana Foster (that they lit on fire) and later cigar perfectly.

When the take away the desert, we are presented with his and her’s cigars, and, LOL. You’ll see the pics later. We take them and our port back into the lounge, enjoy ourselves, and then are asked about the wine cellar tour that I had inquired about. Turns out this place has the third largest wine cellar in the world, as well as the oldest bottle of wine in the world. It’s a 1727 Riesling from Germany, tested back in the 60’s and still good, re-corked, and for sale for a paltry quarter million. Kinda feels cheap to me really, since it will always be the oldest bottle of wine in the world as long as you don’t open it. I have a sweet pic of Shelley holding it.

From there we headed home, ran into some people, and then ended up at the club they have there. After much insanity and what-not, we aparrently made it to bed, with pictures on my camera dating to 3:36 am. That I don’t remember taking. GREAT F’N DAY!

Saturday morning we were hung over. Surprise. We drag ourselves down to the final table by around 2:30, at which time Kevin (Saul) is busto. Bummer. Lets go outside. Run into Wretchy, and we all end up going back to that cove and have a good ol time. We chat and drink and laugh until the sun sets, and then head straight to the sports book to watch the Raven’s game (Go Ravens!). From there to the italian joint Camile’s, awesome dinner outside, back to the sports book to watch the Cardinals kick ass, and end up just hanging out until the night is over.

Next day was travel home day, US Airways can still kiss my ass, in fact I refuse to ever fly them again (and you shouldn’t either). Worst airline experience of my life. The Sir Lynden Pindling International Airport was a joke too. Long line to check in. Long security line. Carry checked luggage through this whole line, clear security, straight to customs. Takes forever. Screaming child. Understaffed, nobody working hard. Hot. Humid. FINALLY clear customs, round the corner, up the escalator, and there’s another f’n line?!? WTF?!??!?!?!? It’s another security checkpoint. One x-ray. One medal detector. Three employees. Off with the shoes, sweater, empty pockets, laptop in separate bin, whole deal. Half of Las Vegas’ resident poker players were going batshit insane. We were at the airport 2.5 hrs early and barely made our flight, literally getting straight onto the plane after all this crap.

That said, battery is dying, Continental airlines kicks ass (and always has imo), and I’ll see y’all later this week from Biloxi!

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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I busted out of the PCA at the end of the third level today.

But first I want to tell you about last night.

Last night, Cantu, Madsen, Matt Woodward (former member of the Dreamclown group that played Daniel heads up back in the day), and myself played Three by Four in the back room of an illegal strip club. This all started after the PokerStars welcome party. Free booze at a place where Bud Lights are seven bucks. Shelley and I were double fisting red wine in 16 oz cups. Both were about a quarter full. We even double toasted. We finally find people we know after about seven minutes and walking around two thirds of the party. I make fun of us for double fisting the wine, Jon Augiar chuckles and grins, and after about five seconds Isaac Haxton says, “I bet you could fit both glasses into one glass.”

OMG we’re retarded. He literally gave us the cups a quarter full. Jon’s like, “Heh, I didn’t notice either.”

After the party broke up, Cantu and Madsen said that they’re taking a cab downtown. I said I’ll go if we can be back by two, they said good idea, and we were off. Spent some amount of time in this club that we could drink as much as we wanted to for $10 called the Liquid Lounge. We then went to what I thought was another bar. Turns out it’s a local strip club. Local dancers (not hot), local patrons, and I honestly can’t picture another white person in the place besides the six of us.

It was AWESOME.

It was the most fun I have ever had playing poker . We only got to play a dozen hands or so because my (female) friend was puking in the trash can inside the Men’s bathroom, plus we needed to be home by two to fulfill our promise of making sure we get enough sleep.

It was the four of us and three of four locals. $2 ante, action starts left of the dealer (no button, deal passes), you get three cards, may use 1-3 of them, and can fold or open the action, $2 minimum no limit. $50 minimum buy-in, they called it “stock”, and we didn’t use chips. We all just had piles of cash in front of us. Our US dollars, their Bahamanian dollars (on par and completely intermingled on the island). There was a “Boss Man” who took a rake and sat there. Who knows what other purposes he served, but he sure watched me closely when we were shuffling. I discovered that “he’s the Boss Man” by calling out a misdeal. I think it was like seven hands in and I noticed that he had a stock of cash and didn’t get dealt cards. “He not get cads mon, he is de Boss Man mon.”

It was fun. I can’t remember much in the details, but I did get in a big pot with Madsen and lost with AAX. He sucked out on me in some fashion I’m sure. I did win a hand pre-flop when I shipped QJT and Woodward folded.. kings I think? So much fun.

And, after the drunken cab ride home, I got to jump on Court “The Hick” Harrington while he was sleeping in bed. I enjoyed that.

So, yeah, today was unfortunate. I grinded my 20k stack up to 25k on a very soft table and got in a bunch of unfortunate spots. First ding came at 50-100, level 1, when I opened on the button to 300 w/K7 clubs. Called by a woman named Megan who went deep in the BCPC in the big blind. Flop KQ3r, she checks, I bet 275, she calls. Turn a ten, she check/calls 550, river a trey, she checks, I bet 1275, and she makes it 3k quickly.

WTF?!?

I end up folding, just assuming that even though it’s such a narrow range (she basically has to have AJ, J9, or TT here, hell maybe even QQ or KK). She’s folding a trey on the turn. About 30 minutes later, she opens UTG+1 to 300, I call from the small blind with JJ, heads-up to the flop of A94cc, quick check/check, turn a 6, I check, she weakly bets 400, I call instantly, river a 5 I check, she thinks, I’m calling any bet, she thinks, now I’m hoping she bets, and she says, “OK I check it.”

Why’d she say ‘it’?

I still turn over my jacks as if they’re the nuts cause they’re supposed to be right now, and she rolls over AA. Top set. LOL. She was afraid of my straight. The flush didn’t get there. Check. I felt much better about my river fold after that hand.

So, anyways, go into level 3, 100-200/25 with 25k, and the wheels fall off. I lose 5k by whiffing like 5 flops, then this hand happens. 7 seat opens to 600, who had 40k, not sure where he got them because he was moved to the table an hour ago. Playing really tight. One caller, I call in the SB with KQo, BB calls, four ways to the flop of KcTxXc. I check, OR (original raiser) bets 2100, I wonder why so much, but I have top pair. I call, we’re heads up. Turn a king of spades. I bet 3375. I’m behind AK, KT, TT, and the bottom set. I’m pretty sure he’s raising me with the KT, TT, and bottom set hands on the turn, and he calls. River a brick, I check, he somewhat quickly bets one 5k chip, I call, lose to AK.

Then, muck-muck-muck-muck-muck times about five, AQhh open to 600, guy who had the most 3 bets of anybody else at the table (possibly combined?) makes it 1400, I shove 8k total, he groans and finally calls with TT, it came tails.

But I’m in the Bahamas. Good place to be out early.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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US Airways can kiss my ass.

Shelley and I caught a cab to McCarran International and saw the only curbside line at USAir. They also claimed the longest check-in line inside. 40 minutes later we were at the check-in desk, and turns out starting July 2008 we have to pay to check bags. $15 for your first, $25 for your second, so we have to pay $55 for our three bags. This takes about three minutes. And we wonder why there’s a line.

Now, on to the scale, we both think we might be heavy, and we’re both at 55 pounds.

“That’ll be $50 each for the heavy bag, or if you want to take five pounds out of each and put them into a different bag and check that then that’ll be $25 instead of $100.”

Now, I understand the whole heavy bag thing, but wtf is this horse shit. I mean seriously. Those baggage handlers that you’re trying to protect from not having to lift too many heavy bags aren’t going to see a cent of that hundred bucks. And seriously, they’d rather have three bags with more bulk and total weight than two 55 pound bags? It just doesn’t make any sense, from an aircraft, logistical, or business perspective.

So, anyways, I’m steaming at this point. I hate lines. All other airlines don’t have huge lines. Now I discover that it’s to fuck me out of $155, each way by the way. I ask the cute but annoying blonde for a way to contact somebody about this policy, because “honestly it will keep me from ever flying with y’all again.” She disappears, comes back with a supervisor, and I’m like, hi. What? This is the contact that she came up with. I was think an address to write a letter to, but whatever. I wasn’t rude or a dick or anything, I was definitely upset, and the lady didn’t give a damn about what I was saying. Like, visibly obviously was ignoring me. Like, after I was done talking she gave me a look of, “Are you done yet?” and left after about three seconds of silence.

Whatever happened to the day when a manager cared that they were losing a customer?

Anyways, we check in for our first leg to Phoenix, their hub, where we’re going to catch a flight to Orlando. We can only be checked into the first flight, we have to check into the next one when we get there. An hour later we’re there, in line at the gate, and turns out they overbooked the flight by 17 people. OK… how do you screw up a flight from Phoenix to Orlando that bad? I understand overbooking a Sunday night Vegas to LA flight, but Orlando?!? And when they ask for volunteers and do that whole dealio, they say their next flight is tomorrow night. It’s noon in Phoenix on Saturday and they’re asking for volunteers to arrive in Orlando Monday morning at 1:30am.

Anyways, we finally get our boarding passes. Shelley is in 5E. I’m in 24E. WTF. They put is in middle seats 19 rows apart from each other? Several families were scattered, the entire plane was having a crappy experience. Everybody had a crappy service story.

So I bribe the girl next to me to trade seats with Shelley for $50. She’s in the aisle seat, and her mom, dad, and sister are in 24 A-C. Dad leans over, points to his wife, and says, “You can have her for five bucks.” Hahaha.

Other funness… Bud Light $7, I had zero. All flight attendants rude. Passed out credit card applications in-flight.

There were so many poor customer service and management screw-ups that I will never fly with them again. Almost everything an airline can do poorly was their policy. Oh man I forgot about that one too. We sat in Phoenix for 20 minutes waiting for a guy from “maintenance to return from the hangar with a part.” That’s what the captain said. Delays + connecting flights = stressful.

We made it to our BahamasAir flight and were immediately greeted with a smile at the gate counter. Ahhhhhhhh. These guys were the polar opposite of USAir, completely awesome, and if I ever come back to the Bahamas I will make sure that I do fly them!
So anyways, Orlando to Atlantis was awesome. Flight was great, airport was great, Thomas the cabbie was great, check in was immediate, and the view we were greeted with was awesome. As far as mega-resorts go, I’ve never experienced anything similar outside of Vegas really, and this place is huge. Just beautiful everywhere inside and out. We unpacked, watched the rest of the Charger game, and headed downstairs to do some drinking. Jon/Sketchy popped into the room right after the game, and I had him do a breathlyzer, which I decided to video, and then had him set a line (he slurrishly picked 0.13 and I took the over for $20). He then blew a 0.28. It’s a great 53 second video that I might get around to posting.

From there we wandered around, drank at the bar, check out aquariums, and then went to make gambool. We walked down one row of tables and back on the other side, and didn’t see a table with a minimum under $100. Ok, seriously? I found like one $25 blackjack table, and ended up on the $10 dice table. I say to the guy on the right if it’s okay for Shelley and I to squeeze in and play. He looks at me and smiles real big and starts laughing real hard. I don’t really get it. Him and Shelley start talking and smiling and laughing, and it takes me about nine seconds of staring at him going, huhhhhhhh???… before saying, “Phil!”

While in the customs line I hear, “Devonshire.”

I look up, it’s a dude that I recognize, think from Canada, he confirms that quickly, and reminds me that I was drunk. Well duh I was in Vancouver. Anyways, his name is Phil. I like him quickly. We share a cab to the hotel, and Thomas the cabbie tells us about the game they play on the island called “three by four”. It’s basically holdem with 3 hole cards and 4 community cards. I’m not sure if they’re 3 or 4 betting rounds, it kinda sounded like there were two post-flop streets with two cards each, but he also could have just meant that they got it in on the turn if you will. Flop’s two cards, and Thomas tells us about this hand where he had 5h6h9h. He then says, “If yoo flop dem strait flush, do yoo bet dem or check dem?” Phil and I kinda laugh in stereo and then both say, “bet hahahaha.” Thomas doesn’t get why this is funny to us, says, “Yoo don’t try to suck dem in? Me neider mon I bet fohty dollas, dey all call, and da guy on da buton raises me. Dat’s when I just call dem mon!”

He then goes on to describe the hand, “Yah, so first too kards mon de six and de seben of hahts.” He then invites us to the game, turns out it’s at a bar, he says it’s with “Hundred dollar stocks.” I’m assuming this means it’s a $100 max buy-in style thing? I decided at that point that I pretty much must have a drunken poker night at one of these games, and since Thomas drives a huge van with a bunch of seats, I bet we can have a good ol time and rally some troops from here.

A big piece of me is pretty uncomfortable here though. It’s way too nice, expensive, resorty, etc. I mean, I had a jamba juice this morning. There’s a Starbucks here. I can spend USD no problem. My “Kalik” beer was $7. Two eggs in the room: $18. I mean FFS. I’ve been comparing much of my experience here with St. Maarten this summer, unfortunately, and I need to stop. I totally need to get into a different paradigm otherwise I’ll be way too critical of the white-ness of this place. I’ll need to get out and explore the island a bit else I go insane.

Anyways, we lost four points in a row after walking up to the dice table, but stuck around and had a good time. Almost left, but we were on deck to shoot, and good thing we did cause Phil went on a decent roll and I got unstuck from 500 to up 300. Three winning days this year, the first two coming in online cash games. Batting 1.000 in 2009 :).

We’re watching the Ravens kick butt right now, and then the PokerStars welcome party is sometime tonight. I’m playing tomorrow day 1A so will be taking it easy tonight, plus I have enough some extra hangover right now so beer does not sound delicious as usual.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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