And Devo is 25k deeper into makeup. Here’s the recap:

$10k HORSE: An event that I was super psyched about turned into a disaster. One of the most annoying tournaments I’ve ever played. I think my best LHE hand was AT or 66, and I didn’t win one pot where a bet went in post flop. O8 sucked, Razz was my keeper aliver, Stud was slow, and I never scooped in Stud8. Rough tourney.

$5k NLHE: Kinda a silly busto hand. 1st hand back from break after level 6, 250-500/50, folds to my cutoff, I have As9s and 10250. Oh yeah, and it’s Chainsaw’s blind, and he has like 5k. This means that I can profitably open any two cards here. DPeters, an online sicko is on the button, has a zillion chips, knows this, and makes it 3300. Fold, fold, I ship for value, run into the top of his range (QQ) and lose.

$10k Main: Man, we only get a few of these a year, and I have never made a day 2 of a huge 10k (PCA, LAPC, WSOP ME). 15 and 25k’s are no problem, but I just suck in these big soft 10k fields. I played one sick hand vs. Matusow, I posted it in the Red Forum here:

http://pokerroad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4808

I get the hell out of Los Angeles around midnight and drive across the desert disappointed about the trip. Sunday online, two small disappointing cashes, and then met the fellas at the bar. Here’s where this night went:

Danny the Degenerate F*** was wasted. Pretty hilarious. He says to me, “Devo, you got a package at the house, and it’s from spudgun.com.” I tell him that I know and told Gil to open it. When Danny pointed out the package to Gil, he said, “Dude, that’s Devo’s, wait til he gets back from LA.” I’m not sure if the Native American Asshole was screwing with the Degen, but apparently it’s been torture for Danny daily. His rant was hilarious. “Dude, every damn day I walk past that thing, and want to open it sooooooooo bad, and I say, naw, that’s Devo’s, but man, I want to open it so bad! I’ve never been this tortured in anticipation in my life, even on Christmas!”

Jared meanwhile is ranting, “How could you not open it? It says ’spudgun’ on it. It has your address on it. That thing would have been opened at my house by the person that received the package first.”

We close our tab, go to Vons and buy this:

2 bags of potatoes
1 can Aqua Net
20 Bud Light bottles

Danny ends up not coming after meeting Captain Cougar, so Shelley, Jared and myself go home and assemble a spudgun.

If somehow you have no clue what a spudgun is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spudgun

Score the first potato, load it in the chamber… “How much hair spray, Jared?”

“Lots.”

Psssssssttttttttttt……. “Now!” Slam the lid closed on the chamber, screw it in, and click the barbecue ignitor.

click… click… click… ***thhhhhhhhhhhhwwooooooooomp*** Potato lands less than 20 feet away.

Hmm. Too little potato. Muzzleloader style this time. We grab the pirate flag off of the Piece of Ship, score the potato, and ram it into the breech with the pirate flag pole.

“How much hairspray?”

“Moar.”

I’m not even going to type sound effects, but it was good, our abdomens all hurt, and 30% of the neighbors were probably waken up.

The third one sent us scurrying into the house and had a cop driving down our street. Oops. It was so ridiculously loud, and that potato had to clear 200 yards.

“Lets go to the desert.”

Alright. We all pile into my truck, load the gear (spudgun, hairspray, potatoes, knife, and beer), and head out to the desert about six minutes from my house. We’re on the rim of the valley in the south east side of town and from where we were we had a great view of the city lights below. And it helped light up the trashcan that we brought to shoot potatoes at.

But, we had a malfunction after the first one. I think we flooded the thing, using too much Aqua Net. I’ll let you know how that progresses.

Anyways, I drug myself out of bed at 11am this morning and headed to the Venetian for their $2500 main event. This is a part of their deep stack series, which for the record, is a complete joke because the structure gets so ****ed deep in exchange for starting 400bb’s deep.

I managed to get all 400 of those bb’s in during the first level in this hilarious hand. The actor who was the teacher’s assistant in Road Trip limps for 50, I make it 200, SB throws out a 1k chip, actor folds, and I’m just chilling out. I’m hungover, but I just finished a breakfast sandwich, orange juice, and two bananas. I’m listening to something groovy like Greg Grant, nobody’s looking at me, they’re all looking at the 1k chip, so I assume that they need change. I grab one purple and five blacks and put them out toward the 1k chip. Dealer says, “Re-raise. 1200 now.” I pull out my earbud and say, “What in the hell?!?” I genuinely don’t know what’s going on, turns out the guy made it 600, I say oh my bad and go to just call. The dealer tells me that it needs to stay in, I say, “Call a floor.” I know it’s going to have to stay in, but I just can’t help myself. It’s like free marketing. Floor tells me it has to stay in, I say fine no problem.

The dude makes it 3600. I take the right amount of time and stuff arr-in. He has like 17k and I cover. That is 340 big blinds each. He beats me to the ****ing pot with AQ all pissed off like, and my AKo holds. LOL.

Ended the day with 52k or so, blinds at 600-1200/100 for another half an hour. Plenty of room, 90 minute levels, and a very weak field. I feel very confident and think I will be able to take advantage of the big jumps in the structure as we get down there better than most in the field.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Hi kids. Nothing too exciting has happened this week, but I’ve played a ton of poker and have a few fun things to get out of the way.

First off, as a curiosity thing I ran the numbers for KK vs. a range of AA, KK, and AK. Check this out:

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

154,107,360 games 0.005 secs 30,821,472,000 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 47.293% 43.79% 03.51% 67479612 5402286.00 { KK }
Hand 1: 52.707% 49.20% 03.51% 75823176 5402286.00 { KK+, AKs, AKo }

KK, even though it’s running into AK more than half the time, is a dog vs. that range. Crazy eh?

Secondly, it was Raymond Davis that paid in all $20’s. He ended up final tabling and getting the 2nd biggest share of the last longer to Miami John. I believe they chopped the 4k four ways with variable payouts.

That’s a much better result than first out.

Thursday I played in the $1k. Got sucked out on twice, sucked out twice, and then spewed 40 bb’s in one hand in very un-glorious fashion. At 300-600/75, I have 24k, there’s about 50 left and the money is at 36. Folds to my small blind, I make it 1800 with 66, get snap called by a gentleman over 50 who I’ve never seen before or played any hands with. I’ve been at the table for like ten hands so have literally zero information beyond stereotypes.

The flop comes J44r. I check, thinking that he’s betting any hand better than 66 and checking any other hand behind. By that logic I should have bet the flop because he’s not going to do anything creative on the flop. Dumbass. Check-check.

Turn a jack, great card for my hand, and I bet 2625. He snap makes it 6k. Now, since he’s 50+, he’s prob not calling me pre with a 4 other than A4 or perhaps 45/46 sooted. I decide that I have the best hand and don’t want to give him a free draw, since there’s like 17k in the pot if I call and I have about the same behind. I grab my chips to stuff, start to move them forward, and before I’ve committed myself he basically beats me to the pot. I stuff anyways. Dumbass. He snaps and I lose to 43o. I was pretty pissed at how poorly I played that hand. And the curse of four-three off continues.

Move on to Friday, Shelley gets into town, and I play the $1500. This time I double early, build steadily, get sucked out on, and then play this silly hand, this time at 100-200/25. I’m kicking back in the full relax in the six seat. Folds to the small blind who looks at his cards. I see a black king. Nice. He makes it 700, I’m like 9k deep he covers, he’s also a young, good, thinking player. I find AQo in the BB. If I re-raise, I’m getting stuffed on by AK, KK, and perhaps KQ, and he’s folding everything worse. May as well play a flop, I call.

Flop Q73. He bets 900, for the same reasons as above, I just call.

Turn 3. He checks, I bet 1600, he stuffs, I think for much longer than necessary because I’ve seen one of his f-ing cards. Whatever if he has KK nh, I call, he has K3ss. Sigh.

Anyways, I go meet Shelley and Angie, we get some apps at the sports bar, and eventually head back to my buddies house. We had been invited to a wine and cheese party hosted by a 21 year old kid who was in my first class as a youth minister. I’ve stayed in touch with him and several other kids from those first two classes over the years. We went and had a really good time.

I received this comment last week:

Devo,

Went back and read some of your old blogs from 04. Totally different tone to your blogs then. You talked about being a youth pastor, and having great times with your students. Now all you talk about is getting drunk, with a few tidbits of poker thrown in. Times have changed huh. One of the things I respect most about Doyle, is he manages to somehow balance his poker life, with his faith. I’m not judging you man, I can just tell from your blogs that your priorities are in a totally different place than they were a few years ago. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.

It’s been on my mind since I first read it. Couple of things come to mind - first, it’s a totally different audience that I’m writing too now than it was then. I first started my blog as a way to be open and transparent to the kids that I was working with. I was working part time at a church in Colorado Springs, being paid $900/month for “20″ hours of work per week. Party Poker pretty much took care of the rest of the bills. Because of the crappy stigma that many in the church have on gambling, I never really talked about it. From there I left to Minnesota to get married after a final summer on the river.

I went to Minnesota , married a youth pastor, and we planned on moving to Colorado after the summer of 2006. Meanwhile I gave poker a full time effort for the first legitimate time, playing online and live limit, stakes usually in the 15-30 range. When my ex was looking for positions in Colorado, preparing for our move, to make a really long story short they rejected her because of my occupation.

Since then I haven’t known how to blend a Christian life with a poker life. Not because poker players are anti-Christian, in fact the best feedback I ever get is on any of my blogs that talk about faith. I think it’s unfair that you insinuate that I’ve lost my faith, because that’s far from true. But the fact of the matter is that, even though things have changed for the better in the last few years regarding the church’s opinion on poker/gambling, and even though I have many Christian friends who are strong supporters of me, I don’t know how to blend the two: because the church has never accepted me as a poker player. I didn’t decide to drop out of college to play poker. I dropped out to be a missionary, that road took me to Minnesota where I played full time, and that took me to the 2006 WSOP. Then I took 2nd in the first ever WSOP event I play, and can you really blame me for pursuing this poker career? Every year has been better than the last, I’ve succeeded on and off the felt, and I feel like I am a very positive influence on a lonely poker community.

I know that it is going to take effort from me to get back involved. I’ve been talked to by several people about churches in town that sound very good, but frankly I’m really quite scared. I’m afraid of being rejected by the church, judged for my occupation. I still have dreams of starting a camp, and poker truly is the only reasonable manner in which I can make enough money (besides fundraising/support obv) to pay for such an endeavor.

/ramble. Saturday was Valentines Day. Shelley and I slept in left around two, and met Fuller and Angie on the Venice boardwalk. Always an entertaining day there :). We had dinner at El Cholo after C&O Trattoria was full and the hostess declined $100 to get us sat. Went and saw the Independent or whatever that Clive Owen is named. It was fun, nothing special, but had one of the sickest shootouts I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Took Shelley to the airport this morning, played online all day, pretty meh - had several runs that all fell short, think like 2 small cashes. I’m still in the Full Tilt HORSE, 4/153 remaining, so this should be a good practice for tomorrow’s $10k HORSE at the LAPC that starts at 3pm PST.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Today I walked into the Commerce and immediately ran into His Dudeness, Jimmy the “GobboBoy” Fricke. He was with BrandiFan who I met, we walked up the stairs, decided to do a last longer bet for $100, and go register for today’s $1k HORSE. In line we run into Scott Clements who wants in, and from there it goes bat****. I love the Commerce casino. Everybody here is so awesomely ****ing degenerate. Here is the list of 40 people that handed me $100 trusting that this last longer would happen fair.

In order of entry with errors for writing in corners:

SCOTT CLEMENTS
JIMMY FRICKE
BRYAN DEVONSHIRE
TIM VANCE
CARDSHARPS
BRANDIFAN
JASON NEWITT
CHRIS SOMEBODY who’s still in I think
BOBBY DEPPE
KEVIN SONG
STUMAN
TYSON MARKS
JOHN CERNUTO
JACK WARD
DAVID LEVY
MARK GREGORICH
RAYMOND DAVIS
CHAD BROWN
ERIC PRATT

At this point see Jerry Buss. I say, “Jerry! How are ya!”

“Bryan! How are ya?”
“Good! Ship me $100.”
“Ok! What for?”
“Last longer. Everybody’s in it.” I show him the page, he says, “Raymond Davis is in? Oh I’m in for sure then.”

JERRY BUSS

Then I see FatalError, invite him in, and HisNittiness says, “I don’t know, err, who’s in… let me see the list… oh Tim Vance is in? You should write his name like four times bigger and you’ll get way more entries.”

JON AGUIAR
TIM FU
DAN O’BRIEN
TERRY CROWE
ANDY ZOLO
ALAN BERRY
ALI PRESCOTT
MARIA HO
ROCKY ENCISO
WILL THE THRILL
KEITH BUDNER
CHRIS AMARAL
ROBERT GOLDFARB
E TAY
CHRIS RESLOCK
CRAIG CHAIT
JEREMY CLLAUGHLIN
JEFF BARTLET
ROY WINSTON
JEFF MADSEN
JASON MERCER

Phew. Is that not the most ridiculous list for a last longer ever?

I busted first.

39 players paid with a c-note, one paid with 5 $20’s, it’s a name you know. Any guesses?

Has anybody ever seen a last longer this, … whatever?

So, as I was saying, I busted first. As I was headed out the door two people were like, “HEY! WTF! WHERE YOU GOING!” Will the Thrill and David Levy :). Love you guys! Wouldn’t that be the silliest story ever of the disappearance of Devo? Hustles 40 suckers for a $100 last longer to blow a $1k tourney so he can head to Mexico with his glorious three dime profit. I went downstairs to go gambool.

Since games are getting tougher these days and my bankroll is to the point where I really shouldn’t be playing 10-20, I decide to go play 5-10 which turns out to be whiffle ball. $5-1500 buy-in, average stacks were about $1k. They were baaaaaaad. Like real bad. Like I saw this hand. Limped pot. Flop. Woman bets $40. Dude calls, everybody else folds. Woman turns cards face up on the felt for a good 4 seconds. It’s top pair, top kicker. She says whoops, retrieves her hand. Turn. She bets. River. SHE BETS. Like, how in the hell can you decide that it’s a good idea to put one hundred American dollars into a pot, with no more cards to come, when the guy KNOWS WHAT YOU HAVE.

So anyways I beat up on that game for about a dime when INS shows up or something and everybody turns white, young, in hoodie, headphones, and huge stacks. I ask for a table change to the one with the most setup requests, warnings, seat changes, and “make scrambool”s. I get moved to a table that is at least as diverse as Las Vegas, but unfortunately nobody at this table sucks really. I have a Russian to my left and my right, and I’ve played on this secret internet site that Russians like so I know that there is some EV nearby at least.

After about an hour we play this silly hand. Right hand Russian limps, I make it $60, bad player calls, good player calls, 2 folds, good player with $4k stack makes it $300 fairly quickly. I have $2350 to start the hand. I make it $1k, everybody folds, kid tanks, I’m calling if he shoves, and after about 2 minutes he folds kings face-up. Wow I’ve never seen anybody muck kings to me before. Everybody says show, I say, “I’ll let him and only him see only if he wants to and only if y’all agree not to force him to show.” They agree, and he looks at my AKo.

I learned something in that spot. People don’t screw around in big pots in cash games as much as I think they do. AK, while it is the nuts and should never be folded in a tournament ever, is definitely the anti-nuts in cash-games, unless you somehow effectively turn ace-king into a bluff pre-flop.

I can also totally understand why the kid made the decision that he made, and while I think he’s ahead of my range enough that he should stuff, I think the overall equity is pretty close. He knows that I’m a tourney donk. He knows that I’m playing like one due to this earlier hand where I got $900 in on the flop which contained $250 in the pot four ways with AQo on a Q97dd board. Turn 7, river Q, I honestly think “Sheesh overkill” as I table my hand, and then realize that I pulled off the ol’ 4% when I see his set of nines. So, the kid’s gotta assume that AK is in my range, but he also knows that I might just muck AK. He’s assuming that QQ is not in my range, and knows that KK and AA are in my range. However, due to him having kings, there are 6 combinations of aces, one combination of kings, and eight combinations of AK. Since I’m assuming he’s a young professional, he probably realized that it is close and didn’t want to risk $2400 on the hand. Cut his losses for $300, he was already up a ton on the session.

On the first table I was wondering where all the ass-kicking internet college kids were in these 5-10 games. They’re super juicy. I found them later in the evening, guys like the ones mentioned above. Man it woulda been nice to have that kind of income potential back in college when I was grinding 9-18 in the Terrace.

So anyways, it was like midnight and I wanted to get this $4k in last longer money out of my pocket and get home. There was still twelve or thirteen left when got up there, so I just handed the list and money to Matt Savage. Bet he wants to go to Mexico right about now. Matt has done a hell of a job here at the Commerce. Cheri did a great job, but Matt has somehow found a way to fill big shoes and make improvements in ways that I’ve never even heard of before. Super impressed with everything.

I got to experience the structure all the way to my 13th place finish in my first event, a $1k NLHE. Basically I went 5k - 20k - 30k - 50k by about the fifth hour. Top 5 in chips easy. Then I went card dead like nobody’s business with about 140 players left. My stack never got below $23k or above $67k, and I finally busted at the 1500-3k/500 level when I shipped 48k in a spot where it was literally profitable to shove any two cards, and this was the first time that it was good timing to do so. I looked, was happy to see Kc5c, shoved, and ran into QQ gg me.

Bunch of this nonsense for the next couple of weeks. Poker poker poker…

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Saturday afternoon Jared and I were standing on the porch watching the rain, talking about what we were going to do. He said, “I just can’t stop thinking about that bar in the bowling alley in Laughlin.” I say, “Let’s go.” He says, “Let’s go.” I walk to my truck, he follows, I get in, he does too, I start the truck, he laughs, and I say, “Wait, money.” I run up to my room, raid the safe for something like a dime (Biloxi has my cash roll), find $740 Canadian, shrug, grab that and run back downstairs. We’ve all walked out of casinos drunk with that slot ticket that we somehow forgot to lose or redeem for dollars. Who the hell leaves a country drunk with a pocket full of money that has no value where I am going. Anyways.

On our way out the door, Casey (who we know because he’s the graveyard bartender at Buffalo Wild Wings by our house) says, “What are y’all doin?” We don’t break stride and he’s on his way out the door with us.

We get there, go bowling for 3 games and 6 beers each, and then drive up to the sushi joint. Come back, straight into Loser’s Lounge, perhaps the most consistently ridiculous bar/club on the planet. You honestly feel like you are getting drunk in the middle of a Saturday Night Live sketch. Anyways, we stumble out of there for a little break and wander to the poker room. Turns out that they have a nightly tournament, $15 buyin, multiple rebuys for the first half hour. I honestly don’t know how many I went through, but it was a lot. $15 got you 2500, and a $15 add-on got you 2500. Going in to level three, thirty minutes in and the end of the rebuy period I have $5k. Blinds are 500-1k. LOL. I ship the button 1st hand with like JT or something, the BB tank-calls 4k more with AQo, that’s not going to be good. I go on to win the thing, I think they had like 24 runners or something, and it pays 2 spots. Maybe only 20. Who knows I was on another planet. 4 handed I have all the chips, and they say, 5 more hands! Then what? Game over count the chips award money. I fold my way to the victory, putting $220 into my pocket. That means I made somewhere between $50 and $150.

Anyways, back to Loser’s Lounge, and this place is just a mess. A very entertaining mess. Jared finds some strange and vanishes, Casey passes out, and I go on a drunken solo adventure til about 7am. I donated some on the 1-2 NL table, then beat Don Laughlin’s ass out of a nickel on the dice table, and then went and passed out in my comped $49 room.

I was not happy the next morning, and since it was my truck I had to drive home in the wind and rain. Sucked. Got home at 3pm, fired up the onlineaments, meh day cashed in the stars HORSE 18th and that’s it. I’ve been planning on getting down to LA and have been wanting to ride my motorcycle, but weather has been too crappy. I drove through rain, mostly, a ton of snow (almost whiteout + stick for about 10 miles in that pass between Primm and Baker). Made it to my buddy’s house in the South Bay, and have fired up the FTOPS #12 $1k 2nd chance. That means that if u bust then you can rebuy, one time, first two hours. 1.6 mil and growing right now, 25 mins in. One time?

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Today I walked into PETCO to buy a feeder mouse for Irwin.

After waiting about ten minutes for somebody to become available, the cashier paged somebody to come help me get a mouse, and I’m like wtf there’s nobody on the floor wearing a blue shirt except that lady who has been talking to the biker dude about cat food for as long as I have been here. I’ve looked. Who exactly was she paging? So the manager materializes and presents me with this form, PK 250, “PETCO Companion Animal Purchase Card.”

It reads: “By signing, I commit to being a responsible pet owner by providing a safe and appropriate environment for my companion animal. I have received a PETCO care sheet for my companion animal, and am aware of what is necessary to keep my pet happy and healthy.”

I tell him that I’m not signing it, this is ****ing ridiculous I’m going to feed this thing to a snake. He explains to me that it’s a release and talks about all the diseases I could get from mice and that PETCO is not liable if the mouse kills my snake (he said that), blah blah blah. I’m fine with that, a release, but I’m not going to sign a paper that says I’m going to provide a loving home for this ****ing white mouse that is destined for a 5 mile ride home in a saddlebag, 12 inches from straight pipe exhaust, and then being dropped from 4 feet into a cardboard box where a 30 inch long, hungry Ball Python is lounging.

He gives me the number to corporate. I call it in front of him. Wrong number.

3 minutes later: “Try this one.” Nope.

LOL. I mean seriously, if I even call this number are they going to listen to a damn thing I say anyways? Who do you call that is your boss? What’s his number?

This is all because of Petland closing. Petland was the little small pet store with the cute puppies in the window, smiley friendly staff that was awesome and helpful. $2.09 a mouse. I even had a mouse card where I got one free mouse every ten. But, I guess they went busto, and I had to go back to PETCO because there is literally nobody else on this side of the valley that sells feeder mice.

Take that PETCO.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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Apparently if you complain about not being able to win something on Sundays, then you win something the next Sunday.

Shipped the HORSE on Stars. I came into the final table 7/8, got doubled up in LHE with 44 where I raised pre, bet flop, bet turn, and bet all-in on the river, board something like Q85, 2, 7. K9o high paid me off. Never re-raised me or anything, just, called. I scrapped all the way until the 15 minute break, not sure why Stars thought it necessary to have a 15 minute break 3 handed on the final table, but anyways. I had like 160k vs. 235k and 150k (ish). They started talking deals, but I had already basically decided that I wasn’t taking a deal unless it was ridiculous. I looked up stats on my two opponents, and both were losers at abi’s (average buy-in) less than $30 with low volume. I basically said that I wanted 11k (payouts were 12,700, 8700, and 5400). They said no. I then proceeded to crush 3 handed, and when I had 230k and the chip lead I said, “I’ll still settle for 11k.” We chopped, I was kinda meh about it, but looking at the numbers and thinking about variance I got way the best of it. I got 11k and they both took 8163. I tried to take them to value town at the end and get their $163 each (like the great Canadian drunken dealmaking), but one guy threatened to play it out, and the other guy told me to keep my word, and I didn’t really feel like being an asshole so I took the deal and then won the thing about half an hour later.

Good warmup for LA and the $10k HORSE there. Back to back Sunday final tables, 4th and 1st. I <3 HORSE. I mean seriously, there is such a great skill gap between players in the mix games than there is in Hold'em. Everybody is pretty decent at NLHE these days. There's so much information available that people are actually using. Yeah there's still an edge, but it's grown much smaller in the past three years. But, add some cards, split some pots, and you have the inner donkey just begging to come out in many players. There's so much more information to process in the mix games and most people simply cannot do it. More cards + chop pots = greater complexity/skill gap.

Anyways, so yeah. I've been up to mostly the same. Online grind Sun-Wed, playing live/online cash Thurs-Sat ish. Took last Sat off, spent it tour guiding around town for the San Diego kids and their girlfriends who were in town. Took em to Circus Circus and let em go bananas in the Midway with bananas and they loved it. Dave and Jay kinda got into a pissing contest seeing who could win their girl the biggest stuffed animal, and they basically won them all. The girls carried them out of the joint lol.

That evening we saw Vinny Favorito. I met him through Gavin who met him on the Real Deal set. He personally met me out front of his showroom 45 minutes before the show to get me 8 tickets on a sold out show, putting us in his booth. Kick ass. It was a helluva show, with an excellent Saturday night crowd. If you've never seen him before do yourself a favor and go see the show. However, if you are offended by non-PC racial humor, don't.

Headed off to LA sometime this week, might leave early and do San Diego up a little bit. First event is Feb 9th, some 1-2k NLHE on Monday. I play those all week, Shelley comes into town Friday, Valentines Saturday, online Sunday, the 10k HORSE on Monday, and then the $10k main on Saturday the 23rd. I'm staying at my buddy Doug's house on the beach which I'm super stoked about since I don't have to stay at the Commerce (or any other fine hotel on the East side) nor my mother's couch/air mattress. I'm fixin to ride my bike down, but it's kinda lookin like some weather. I'm supposed to get my mustang back this week too.

I'm not sure if I ever told that story or not. This is what I wrote in my Oct 22nd blog:

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?

Here’s the whole story. My roommate Danny is one of my best friends. He also makes some of the dumbest decisions of anybody I have ever met. He also is one of the biggest degenerates I know. He once took out $3k worth of markers to play video poker at his bar after work. So, one night after softball we go to the Copper Keg, the same bar that I met Shelley at the week before. We go across the street at midnight when Shelley got off, she came with, so I had my mustang, Shelley’s Mercedez, and a $15k tourney in twelve hours. Plus a cute girl that I wanted to go watch movies with. Danny and the boys are partying it up good, so I make this offer to Danny. “I have to go, but I can get a ride from Shelley. If you want, drive my car home tonight, but only if you stop drinking. If you drink, crash at Jared’s place and come back in the morning.”

Around 3:30-4am, I hear my car pull into the driveway. It doesn’t sound right. It stalls 3 times coming up the driveway (standard driveway). I’m like whatever, check it in the morning. I wake up at 10:30, and have 3 missed calls from Jared (a lot) and a text asking, “Do you know where Danny is?”

I peek in Danny’s room, he’s here, I call Jared and start walking out side. Jared tells me that Danny crashed at his house but disappeared in the middle of the night and a fifty (small dirt bike, 50cc motor) is missing. Then I see the car. The grill is upside down. I don’t know how. Both front tires are shredded, and most of the entire front end trashed. The top’s down and there’s a small dirt bike sticking out of the back seat. Turns out Danny rode the 50 from Jared’s house to the Kopper Keg, put the top down, threw the bike in the back (no big deal leather seats), drove it to my house, wiped out on the interchange, and drove the thing 3 miles more to the house cause he didn’t want to get caught.

I wake him up, say, “WTF?!?” He responds with, “Whaaaaaat?”

The good news is that State Farm covers anybody driving your car. The bad news is that my insurance is getting dinged for it (rates increase). So, car goes to the shop, and after literally 3 weeks they finally decide that they’re going to total it. In Canada I get an offer of $25,400. Now, the car’s worth $30k, plus they pick up the tax and what not, so I know that I can take them to value town for a couple dimes. But, I was kinda sick of the issue and the car anyways, and I only paid $25,900 for it, so, I mean, ship it, but, I never miss a value bet. I ask them to re-evaluate the value and call local dealers in the valley. They call back several days later and say that I’m right, it is worth more, so they’re not gonna total it. They’re gonna fix it. No I cannot have the $25,400. I get pretty pissed, because by this point it’s literally like December 10th. If they had a fair damn value in the first place then my car would have been fixed by Christmas, instead it didn’t get started until the week before Christmas. I also feel a little raped considering that they offered me that number saying this is what was fair value, when obviously it wasn’t, and because I catch them lowballing me I get screwed. It just felt really shady ethics wise, I mean I understand that they’re a business, but they didn’t do much to help me through this process as a customer.

I’m gonna drive her hard when I get her back. Mmm maybe I’ll wait for her and take her to LA.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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