Party Poker locked me into their cruise today. I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with Party Poker and Moneybookers support and am happy to say both were quite useful and accommodating. My next move will be to book plane tickets and hotel for the trip. I also found out my friends Timex and Pacman are locked in as well, so I’ll have two really good targets to make fun of in my writing. I also found a place and am filling out the reservation papers for our stay in Las Vegas, the pictures can be found here: http://pacificinter.com/realestate/l...cationhome.htm

I made a deep run in the Full Tilt $150 today and came painstakingly close to a 5 figure score, but fell short and finished 3rd for about $7,500. My last hand seems like a questionable spot that I’ll likely go post in HSMTT. Speaking of, I’ve been pulling some weird and somewhat experimental type of plays recently. I’m writing the next portion of the ‘things it took me a while to learn’ series with NoahSD about ‘putting the pieces together in a hand’ and the process that goes into that. That aside, I thought I’d put a couple of the more weird hands I’ve played recently here and see what people thought. The first came from Full Tilt’s $33 rebuys today which I got 14th in:
Villain is an unknown player. I've been somewhat quiet lately, though with some LP raising but not a ton since it's often opened in front of me. I haven't played in big pots in quite some time.

I wrote recently that when people bet like 40% pot it's often a sort of blocking/value bet that we shouldn't be calling down as often as we do. Obviously we're never calling here, but what about taking that read and turning it into a bluff. Even though I don't think i'm necessarily representing much, I don't really think rando tournament players will sit there, put all the pieces together, then make a hero call.

FWIW I think this is absolutely horrible vs a thinking villain. Also as you can tell from some recent posts I'm trying some new stuff and might be doing it real wrong, but we'll see what you think.

Full Tilt Poker $22,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t120/t240 Blinds + t25 - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG: t14411
UTG+1: t5570
UTG+2: t4720
MP1: t14625
MP2: t15696
CO: t21890
Hero (BTN): t11060
SB: t26860
BB: t7324

Pre Flop: Hero is BTN with 9d Th
6 folds, Hero raises to t625, 1 fold, BB calls t385

Flop: (t1595) 7h 2h 3h (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (t1595) 4d (2 players)
BB bets t600, Hero calls t600

River: (t2795) 3s (2 players)
BB bets t1200, Hero raises to t9810 all in

It’s quite rare for me to pull big and creative bluffs, so I thought it would be a good spot to post. The second hand is a hand Noah and I will be analyzing in the article, the thread of which got very interesting as several posters I respect argued back and forth over the merits of the call, it’s from the Full Tilt $109 6 max tournament:
Alright so villain seems a bit loose as many unknowns are in the late tournaments, defending the BB too wide. That said I don' think there's a ton of hands with a 4 in his range. On the river a number of draws have whiffed and I highly doubt he's good enough to value bet A high. Therefore I get to click my favorite button, right?

Full Tilt Poker $30,000 Guarantee No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t50/t100 Blinds - 6 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

SB: t11170
BB: t8702
UTG: t7025
MP: t4110
Hero (CO): t4990
BTN: t3660

Pre Flop: Hero is CO with Qc Kc
2 folds, Hero raises to t300, 2 folds, BB calls t200

Flop: (t650) 7c 4d 7d (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t400, BB calls t400

Turn: (t1450) 3h (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: (t1450) 7s (2 players)
BB bets t1200, Hero calls t1200

Any strong opinions or thoughts on these hands guys?

I just having a talk with my friend Corey-Ann online and she did one of those things mid conversation where whoever you’re talking to says ‘how are you anyways’ despite your already been several minutes into the conversation and talking being fairly regular. I knew I was running good lately, but how am I? I’m fucking awesome, that’s how, why you could even say, I’m high as a kite!

Over the last three months I’ve seen my bankroll go on a constant soar, getting higher and higher. It has increased nearly 1.5X fold, reaching an all time high, which for those of you who don’t know was also the title of one of the Bond theme songs sung by some broad whose name I have totally forgotten. Not only that, but I think through talking and picking the brains of the excellent group of poker minds around me I’ve taken my game to it’s highest level. With my upcoming trip and my teaming up with Full Tilt, my writing is set to reach its highest number of audience members ever. It’s the kind of thing you just want to high-five your friend about and then say “BOO-YAH!” as I so often do at my highest moments. I’m not especially looking to those plane rides, sitting around bored for hours in a flying tin can so high in the sky, but I think the purchase of an Ipod movie-playing-so-futuristic-it-kind-of-freaks-you-out-device will ease my 35,000 foot burdens. I’ll just lean back in my airplane seat and slid it to its highest degree of decline, and zone out for hours to the little screen in front of me.

I think when I finally get a chance to play on the live felt again I’m really going to start accumulating some massive stacks, stacks that will tower in an enormous pile, highest of the table and whole room. Hell, I’m so high on myself right now I’m willing to say you can 100% bet on me making a final table in one of those high buy in events. Go find whatever friend will take your action on that and bet as high as you can. I’m going into this with high expectations and I don’t intend to let myself off the metaphorical hook. If everything goes according to plans then my ‘Around the world in 90 days story’ won’t end with two Italians with a wad of Timex money in their pocket throwing higher and heavier amounts of dirty on my poorly covered body that is still barely alive despite the vicious bat beating it just took a la Joe Pesci in Casino. And when it’s all over and done with I’ll be back in Melbourne free of make up and living the high life.

Also, for those of you who are a fucking moron, I’m rather high on marijuana right now.

Spend enough time blogging about your own life and even you get sick of you. I’ve decided to write an entry about those I know in the poker world around me, and take a break from the self indulgent monotony that is talking about myself.

Luckychewy: Over the last six months Chewy is the person I’ve spent the most time discussing poker strategy with. He’s an easy going kid with strong patience and discipline. Chewy plays a pretty TAG game, and his background in cash games makes him a very good hand reader post flop in deep stack situations. I think given his age, quality of game, and determination, Chewy is the player I know with the most potential, that is, if you could buy stock in poker players, he’s blue chip. I’ve also never met him in person. Chewy also has the benefit of playing entirely on his own roll online outside a few shots at higher NL cash games, and when he finally hit his big score, a 3rd place finish in a 1k FTOPS event worth $107,000, the only person who got a piece of that was me, a 10% swap that Chewy of course paid immediately. At this point, Chewy has lost over $12,000 in swaps to me, though considering the scores they’ve originated from, I hardly doubt he minds. In the majority of tournaments it’d likely be profitable for me to swap 100% with him.

Randallin: Randall is the best tournament poker player I know plain and simple. Randall, Chewy, and I all play a somewhat similar TAG game, but Randall sees and feels things neither of us does. When you talk to Randall you don’t necessary get the sense that he has such an enormously talented poker mind because he’s joking all the time and often high but every now and then he’ll suddenly get on topic about a poker concept and bring up angles I never thought about before. Randall is the perfect tournament poker playing robot, he makes close to zero mistakes, creates mistakes in his opposition, doesn’t spew, doesn’t tilt, and doesn’t seem to feel the pressure in high money and high variance situations. He also does the best impressions ever.

Gobboboy: Gobboboy is the most misunderstood man in online poker. Ever since he did his interviews while going deep in the 2007 Aussie Millions event and had the audacity to be honest and talk about how bad everyone plays people have framed him as an arrogant jackass. He isn’t though, and he wasn’t lying, the majority of live tournament players are so atrociously awful they wouldn’t be profitable in a $50 tournament online despite playing for 100 times the stakes in the live arena. Gobbo used to be one of the more creative LAG players online, but that was around 2006 when players were still easily pushed around. These days Gobbo borders on being a nit, a condition caused by him running horribly lately. Gobbo’s greatest weakness as a player is his own self doubt. He’s been honest lately about his net worth dropping from $400,000 to $100,000 in the past year, and that kind of losing would crush most peoples spirit. Still, I’ve told him that he should look at the bright side, he’s a 20 year old with a net worth over $100,000 whose highly recognizable and still has the ability to crush tournaments if he applies himself. He’ll be playing in the WSOP for the first time this year, and I hope for his sake he crushes it.

Ajunglen: Adam fucking Junglen is the sickest problem solver I’ve ever seen, that is, he adds up the pieces in a poker hand better than anyone I know. He’s famous for numerous hands in which he made an enormous soul read in a key situation, the greatest of which involved calling Patrick Antonius’s shove for 1.5 X the pot with AJ on a Q24 flop. It’s no secret that Adam was my original tournament poker coach who took me from an average grinder to someone who actually had the right ideas and understanding about the game, and if forced to pick one person who was most influential in my development it would certainly be him. It’s hard to classify his game as either TAG or LAG or whatever, he mostly believes in adjusting to the table and players. Adam’s only real flaw as a poker player is his lack of motivation. He puts in fairly slight volume online despite absolutely crushing when he makes the effort, and he has enough money at this point that he could sit back and do nothing for a long time without any consequence. As a result I’m pretty much always amazed if I run into Adam on the table online.

Sirwatts: Sirwatts is perhaps the most mellow man I’ve ever met, bordering on comatose. I’m fairly sure if I greeted him with a “Hey Watts!” then punched him as hard as I could in the face he’d compose himself, then look at me confused and say calmly “Whoa, what was that all about?” I don’t think he’s ever lodged a complaint in his life, even after the night where he got second in the $5,000 winner take all event on Pokerstars we didn’t hear a word about it at 2+2 or on AIM. The only thing I’ve ever seen him excited about is the prospect of Timex failing at something. Watts plays what is pretty much a perfect TAG game, much like Randall in that he basically never makes mistakes, never spews, and picks his spots to get out of line very well. I’ll be getting a house with him in Vegas this summer, as well as Pacman, Stevejpa, and Grafyx.

MikeJ: MikeJ is a complete math genius. Any time I have any question about my equity in a situation, I bring it to him. Mike barely plays since he’s actually motivated to do well in school, which is quite the rarity in my group of friends. He’s naturally getting a degree in mathematics from one of those prestigious ‘everyone here is smarter and better than you’ universities. Mike has excellent results when he does fit in the time to play, though occasionally makes pre flop pot odds calls I don’t agree with. When I or Chewy bring this up with him it results in Mike sending us a series of 27 IM messages containing enormous math equations that make as much sense as Japanese but prove without a doubt that his call was correct. I like talking poker with Mike because he brings up math related issues I never thought about before, and is a creative enough player that he brings up ideas and concepts I never thought about exploiting before. I’m not sure if poker is something Mike ever intends to pursue as a profession, but I hope he never loses time to play and think about the game entirely since his brain is so valuable to pick.

Timex: I honestly think Timex has the most interesting story of any person I know. He was a self made millionaire before he turned 18, and now only a half year into that age he’s got somewhere in the area of three million. He got his start by asking Stevejpa if he could come to his house and watch him play, and soon started crushing tournaments himself online. He managed to win his way into the Paradise Poker one million dollar sit-n-go promotion and wound up running good and making a deal three handed for around $350,000. After that he kept playing, started backing other players, and the rest is history. Timex is the kind of person who simply has a natural talent for making money and profitable investments. If you could bet on the first three words coming out of Timex’s mouth to start any sentence, you should bet the house on “What’s my equity…” Timex has been as good a backer as I could have asked for. He has pretty much given me free reign on what I want to play as long as I run it by him before hand, and has only turned down an event once before, which considering the buy in and field quality I can honestly say was likely the right decision. Most importantly though, Timex has a great and easy going sense of humor and when I crack wise with something like “I can’t wait to wipe my ass with more of your money” he'dd rather sarcastically shoot back with “You’re the worst decision I ever made” than get his panties in a knot. On top of all this Timex is actually one of the best all around poker players I know. He dominates in live tournaments, online tournaments, and online cash and is of course best known for his win at EPT Dortmund worth $1.4 million US. He’s also leading the Cardplayer player of the year rankings four months into the year and unable to play in the US.

ShaunfuckingDeeb: If pot smokers had a hall of fame, Deeb deserves his own floor in it. Catching Deeb on the level is rarer than finding a sober Irishman. Despite his prolific smoking Deeb somehow manages to put up an absurd amount of online tournament scores. Deeb plays a pretty LAG style which has moments of hilarious spew, but he also creates profitable spots players like me would never get in. What I respect most about Deeb though, is his willingness to stick his neck out and be a pillar of integrity in the online community. Although he’s often been criticized for this I think it’s important that someone out there is willing to take the time and effort to see there are real consequences for those who break the laws of online poker. Deeb also takes the time to respond to a ton of strategy posts on 2+2, though his writing is so fucking awful I sometimes wonder why he bothers since nobody can understand it. Random Shundeeb fact: Deeb plays his millions of tables on a single laptop with a broken backspace key and no mouse. Don’t ask me how.

Charder30: A lot of us like to joke around and call Charder ‘the great spewzilla’. That used to be true, but these days I think Charder has tightened up and found a good balance to become a really good player. Of all the players I know, I would say Charder has improved the most over the last 6 months. He also has the skills to final table two straight EPT events in a row, including the enormous and tough field at the PCA. Unfortunately for me, these days I’m the one spewing to him.

StevoL: Stevo is the man I enjoy trash talking the most in the world. That’s because Stevo gives as good as he gets, and our race in the rankings (which only has symbolic value and is mostly entirely pointless) has drawn closer and closer over the last few weeks. Stevo plays a really solid TAG game, again the kind of player who makes very mistakes and doesn’t get out of line often. Stevo also has a background in cash games which gives him an edge against most tournament players in deep stacked spots. He somehow has the discipline to be up and functioning around 6am every morning to play all the major European tournaments since there’s more often overlay and even worse players. Stevo survives on a diet solely made up of coca-cola, redbull, and cigarettes. He has not eaten or slept in several months.

That’s all for now, though I may do more in the future since I certainly didn’t cover everyone. I still need to write a clever entry about Adanthar, and his love of saying “obv” at the end of every sentence.