Since my last entry, I've played 2 full tournament days (by "full", I mean "very little", because I suck at volume) and a half day on Sunday. The Sunday was a complete bust, but last Wednesday included an FT bubble on UB and tonight had a 9'th place finish in the Cake 30r. That's the good news; the bad is that I think I played the UB tourney mediocre and probably did something wrong in the Cake tourney, too - I had a 270K (1st) to 110K (2nd) CL with 15 left, lost it on a pretty mediocre PF call, got most of it back with 12 left and then proceeded to bluff a good chunk of it off/not win another pot for half an hour. It doesn't help when people decide to defend their blind with 92s and get there, but that wasn't the entire story; once I got that lead, I just should have done more with it than I did.

It's been a long time since I've been final tabling this consistently, but now that I'm doing it, I need to top 3 and/or win these things, and that's just not happening so far. It feels like a combination of being rusty shorthanded and (still) just running bad in critical spots late, but I can't really complain about that tonight. Regardless, losing money ($100, but still) when you FT something is yucky. Ah well - with the low volume I play, 3 FT's and a bubble over a week is a big deal regardless/being up five figures is nice.

I should also say that I've partly dropped down in stakes. I always enjoyed playing well overrolled for almost everything I've ever decided to try and that still holds - theoretically, I have well over what I need - but with an investment I have going and this summer's likely WSOP spending extravaganza, a lot of my money has been transferred offline. Between that and the Intrade account, I don't really have enough online on every site to play $1K a day worth of buyins (BTW, the fact that I say "1K" should tip you off as to how little I actually play, sigh), and the variance in the larger tourney fields also works against that BR requirement. One of the reasons I was getting really sick of tournaments prior to recent events was simply not going deep enough often enough, which is entirely normal when everything you play has 1K people in it. Because of that, rather than spend a bunch of time on tilt from playing $150's I'm kinda shortrolled for (again, I could afford it, but it's hard enough to transfer money between the usual 4-6 sites these days that it's a pain in the ass for a tourney regular), my weekday schedule now has a bunch of $20-30 rebuys and $50-100 FO's with 200-400 people. The BR requirement is theoretically only slightly lower, but with 5-10K for 1'st, the field is much worse and has a lot more really terrible fish instead of mediocre regs. That, in turn, makes it easier to go deep and harder to get frustrated with poker, so except for Sundays, I think I'm gonna be playing that kind of sched a lot from now until at least the end of the summer.

I'll be leaving for Vegas again in about 4 weeks. It's hard to say whether I'm looking forward to it or not; I like the poker boot camp environment, but leaving my wife and comfortable apartment behind every year is hard. With that said, I think I can use the boot camp thing right now, so at worst, it'll be good to be around a bunch of people and thinking about the game again.

Also, I'm rooming with Bond...so the blog updates ought to be interesting :)

After a really frustrating month and a half, I finally have a major FT to show for it, the UB 200K. That tournament's been very good to me over the years, and today was no exception. Unfortunately, I ran just like I've run since March once I actually made the final table and took 6'th for 9K after two back to back unavoidable coolers, but I did play really good poker to get there (answer to how long it takes for enough bad beats to make me a little sloppy: right around a month and a half. In fact, I was starting to worry at how long it was taking to get a tournament worth making a video about this month...)

Now to keep doing that and build on the nice after tax season bounce.

Also, bonus hand for those of you who think I'm nitty (nobody post this on 2+2 for a day or two please):

MaximusBets is at seat 0 with 3010.
lowhanginset is at seat 1 with 7250.
PocketOwnage is at seat 2 with 1810.
-BENTLEY- is at seat 3 with 2660.
jas0042 is at seat 4 with 2600.
Vezina_08 is at seat 5 with 1450.
Adanthar1 is at seat 6 with 3900.
BiggDaddyBink is at seat 7 with 3420.
TheLynx is at seat 8 with 7100.
elveee is at seat 9 with 875.
The button is at seat 9.

MaximusBets posts the small blind of 20.
lowhanginset posts the big blind of 40.

MaximusBets: -- --
lowhanginset: -- --
PocketOwnage: -- --
-BENTLEY-: -- --
jas0042: -- --
Vezina_08: -- --
Adanthar1: 9d Ad
BiggDaddyBink: -- --
TheLynx: -- --
elveee: -- --

Pre-flop:

PocketOwnage folds. -BENTLEY- folds. jas0042 folds.
Vezina_08 folds. Adanthar1 raises to 120.
BiggDaddyBink folds. TheLynx folds. elveee folds.
MaximusBets folds. lowhanginset calls.

Flop (board: 9c Qc 2s):

lowhanginset checks. Adanthar1 bets 160.
lowhanginset calls.

Turn (board: 9c Qc 2s 7h):

lowhanginset checks. Adanthar1 checks.

River (board: 9c Qc 2s 7h 2h):

lowhanginset checks. Adanthar1 bets 350.
lowhanginset raises to 900. Adanthar1 calls.



Showdown:

lowhanginset shows As Jc.
lowhanginset has As Jc Qc 2s 2h: a pair of deuces.
Adanthar1 shows 9d Ad.
Adanthar1 has 9d Ad 9c 2s 2h: two pair, nines and deuces.

Poker content here

The lack of entries in the blog this week is largely because, for the first time all year, I'm playing a ton, including a very belated attempt at learning to 8 table MTT's. It's been a mixed bag - I think I'm still running bad when it comes to important pots - but although I don't have much to show for it, I've gone deep a few times and have a bunch of lost late flips for chipleads to point to, in addition to improved hand reading over more tables. I also have hands worth posting on 2+2 for the first time in a very long time; usually, I put in little enough volume that I very rarely have a hand with more than 1 tough choice in it, but lately, there've been some fun ones.

Actual important stuff here

But hey, none of you guys care. The major thing: 60 Minutes looks like it's happening, pending one or two snags that will likely work themselves out in a day or two (can't really talk about it, but there's nothing unsolvable). With Gary Wise (who originally wrote an unreleased article that started the whole thing) on board as a consultant and an executive producer that understands poker, this is gonna be our best chance to put a positive face on this profession that doesn't involve the usual bedraggled suspects. I have to admit I'm not sure how I got to be one of the impromptu industry spokespeople given the fact that, well, nobody's paying me and I'm not exactly the olivert of poker pros, but given most of the other options have already had gigantic picture-filled threads over on Neverwin's (To my upcoming 60 Minutes audience: Trust me, you don't want to know), I guess I'll take it.

Sooner or later, assuming this piece isn't terrible for poker (if it is, please don't kill me) I'm gonna have to sit down and look at where to go with this from there. We still have a legalization effort to sustain in Congress in '09 (hint: vote "not McCain")(To roughly half of my 60 Minutes audience: Sorry, I'm typically better than that, it's simply that he's anti-gambling)(To the other half: I did vote for Obama in the primary, though!), and at some point, I'm going to have to figure out whether the PPA, which has managed to ignore this entire affair in truly impressive fashion, is worth bothering with. Full disclosure: A few months back, I asked them to hire me and/or somebody else as a PR guy because I hated everything about how they were handling things. Further full disclosure: I wasn't really serious, and/but/because I still hate it. Way to drum up all that extra Ron Paul support, folks! Argh...the poker community badly, *badly* needs a voice that doesn't suck, and to get back to the actual point I was trying to make, if you're wondering why I feel the need to be on 60 Minutes admitting that a site was actually rigged, blame the fact that we've got nobody speaking for us.

Hint to certain quarters: This would be a *really good* time to start.

Sunday:

109r: I didn't have time to rebuy on the first hand, so when I picked up aces, I naturally shoved (I love shoving monsters on the first hand of a rebuy), got called and lost. Later, 2 big suckouts (I admit it!) gave me a top 10 stack with 100 to go...then JJ ran into A9 for half of it. That guy later went on to slowroll someone else with kings and become chip leader. I had JJ run into KK on the exact money bubble with a 1.5x stack in the BB (who folds obv) so I got to be the bubble boy.

240 bounty: QQ ran into AA, sucked out once to get a decent stack again, lost something else, busto. I won a bounty, though!

Bodog 100K: Built up a (very) big stack, took TT vs. 88/AT for the CL with 100 left, and lost half of it. Shoved an 8x stack with 55, got called by A5 for a bunch of it, lost that. Eventually busto 70th (63 paid).

Stars Mil: Built up 35K stack on the best table ever, then lost most of it in 3 consec hands. Not done yet, I built back up to 30K when I shoved over a guy who liked making 4x raises and then folding with AJ for 15x on the bubble. This time, he turbocalled with 53 sooted. Board A2xx4. The good news is, by this point, it was getting so routine that I pretty much shrugged it off.

FTP: Built up a decent stack until running JJ into a bigger pair on a 7 high board that I did actually fold on. That helped get me shortstacked, at which point I shoved 10x with tens. QQ overcalls, and, in turn, is picked off by kings.

This leaves...

200K: Sucked out once (I admit it) to get an 11K stack @ 150/300, pretty big in that tournament. Shoved KT in the SB into SirWatts' 10xBB big blind, he tanked and called with K8; it was good (the call's fine, but it's the principle). With 8K left, I raised QJs in MP and Q4o called in the SB for 1/4 of his chips; the flop was 643 with my FD, he bet/called and won. AK chopped with AQ in here somewhere, too. Eventually, I lost a flip, was at 5 BB during 300/600, (re)stole 80 billion blinds to make the money in decent shape, promptly ran A4 on the button into the 5xBB's A7 to lose a bunch of that, then pushbot the resulting 7-8 bet stack into tens to finish 81'st (extra bonus because 80'th got paid more, obv.)

So yeah, that's what a very bad session looks like. I think I've had about 3 days this bad in the last 3 years. Kinda goes to show poker isn't for people who like breaking things, though.

The good news: some very cool stuff that I can't talk about yet is happening very soon. Keep an eye on this blog closer to the end of the month.

To be honest, there really wasn't even much to say about today. Very early on, I made my once a month customary bluff with total air. Usually, that stuff works. Today, it didn't work, left me with 2K at 200/400 and a shot image. Thanks to the latter, that 2K quickly became 18K, but that turned out to be the high point and I eventually busted an hour or two later. When you don't steal a single blind at a good, aggressive table and improve on the flop once the entire day, that tends to happen. Then I went back to the room, played a $700 EPT Step 5 and promptly ran AK into AA again, followed by a KK < AA in one of the other few tournies I played. I've run really hot this week.

To put that in perspective, though, that's got *nothing* on Shaun today. Shaun busted out of the LAPC with aces when 100 BB worth of chips went in on a Kc9c4x board; he was up against the other aces and got rivered. All right, it's a horrible beat and definitely sucks to take in a 10K event, but, y'know, gotta move on. Shaun therefore goes back to the room, enters the 200r and eventually final tables it. He takes sixth when - you guessed it - KK < KK AI PF for about another 10-15K in equity. That sequence of events managed to untilt me simply by existing, because according to the laws of the space time continuum, it shouldn't really be possible.

And on that note, I'm signing off here and running to the airport to beat the morning rush hour, not really even having seen anything of LA. Perhaps next time, when I final table it because my aces > their aces.