Poker Blog

Hey, I haven't written an update in a while though I figure my tweets should be doing a good enough job keeping you up to date. Obviously the series isn't quite going as well as I had hoped for the third straight year. I've played 17 events and cashed only 2, the $3K HORSE and $5K PLO. The PLO was my best shot by far but alas it wasn't meant to be. I'm planning to play basically everything from here on out except the $50K HORSE.

I played about two hours of 10-25 NL at the Rio yesterday. The table wasn't full of spewmonkeys but I wasn't anticipating a lot of tough decisions. Mostly it was just a boring game. I say that, but I did actually bluff my entire $5K stack on my first hand.

Let me tell you another story first though. There was this wealthy Texan at the table who, when I first sat down, was on the phone placing sports bets. That's always a good sign. I later changed seats and ended up with him on my immediate left, meaning I was privy to the next two phone calls he made.

We're about 3.5 hours into a 1K multi-table satellite for the WSOP main event. Blinds are 300/600/75. Short stack moves all in for 3600. Button doesn't realize there's someone all in ahead of him and says "call", planning to call just the blinds. I have 99 in the BB and a little under 10K in chips. I shoved, Button called with JQ. Short stack has 66 and Button ends up busting us both with a hand he didn't even mean to play.

Ub loves me. I finally snapped out of my rut the last two days with a final table of the Stars $150 where I got 6th and a win in an Aruba sat on UB. These were just the appetizers though as I took down the UB 1k for the 2nd time since April for about $40k. Nice to get out of this downswing before the main event. I might have been pressing a bit lately and played more patiently the last few days, and ran well when it counted. In fact, I ran white hot for a small portion of the UB 1k and played extremely disciplined at the FT.

As some of you know, I've been working for the past few months on a PLO theory book and accompanying coaching packages. The book should be done in a month or two, and I recently set up a website with all of the info and several samples. The book and coaching is expensive - book costs $2500, hourly rate is $250-$300, and the main combo package costs $5k, but regardless of whether you can spend that much I recommend checking it out if you're interested in PLO. I've posted 15-20 pages of sample material from a few different chapters so there's plenty of free stuff to look at.

It was down to the wire whether I was going to play this, but I managed to cash my check about 10 minutes before the start of the tournament. I ran down to the registration and found a line out the door. It was moving quickly, though, and I managed to register and get to the table at 12:04. The tournament was actually late getting started, so I hadn't missed anything. In fact, I was the first one there. Apparently we were in an overflow room they'd just opened up.

June 7th, Los Angeles: I wake up around 10am in the hotel bed next to Andrew. I wasn’t even close to drunk last night but I still feel less than stellar. I lie in bed for a moment and try to collect myself for a moment; I need to get out of this city.

I take a shower and get dressed. I am wearing the same suit and shirt as last night, but I have lost the tie. Andrew wakes up and goes into the bathroom to do the same. I tell him I’m going to go down to the lobby and book and flight.

June 6th, Las Vegas: I wake up in the Vegas house and immediately feel like I ate too much Korean food last night. I’m going to Los Angeles today for the Playboy mansion party, and I am told we should be dressing in all black. Apparently the kid coming with me, Andrew, has booked a hotel room with two beds and since I plan on leaving the next day I don’t even bother packing anything besides my laptop. I throw on my dark grey suit, my black shirt with French cuffs, then eat breakfast and call a cab.

June 5th, Las Vegas: I wake up in the upstairs room of the Vegas house. I take shower, eat breakfast, and then set up my laptop on the table in the living room. I hook in my monitor as well but after doing so I realize it alters the resolution on the laptop and makes things more uncomfortable then it does convenient so I just go back to the single screen.

So I am about a week and a half into my Vegas journey this summer and am somehow up money so far. I have 2 cashes so far in the series, 39th in the $1000 and 44th in the $2500. I will go over some hands later on as I just typed one out and hit the wrong button here. As you've noticed I havent been making videos while I've been here and will likely not be able to make much while in Vegas but I will try to get something out. I might play this Saturday but plan on going out in Vegas a few nights this weekend, however, next week should be fun with two $2000s.