My maxim is as follows:

We all suck at poker.

Ok, maybe not all, but almost all, even good winning players with access to all the poker information now available, are no where near maximum potential. If we continue to learn and get better, maybe one day we won't suck so bad.

But, there will always be people who suck worse than us, and we can still make a decent profit off of those people until then.

Agree/disagree?

I'm sitting on my back porch eating yet another can of progresso chicken gumbo I heated up on the grill. This is the exciting life of someone in a town thrown out of whack by a little storm named Ike. If not for my blackberry I would have gone crazy a while ago. At least I have some communication with the outside world, even if it is just on a 2" x 2" screen.

The night of the hurricane was, well I have no idea because I slept straight through it. My girlfriend says it was bad, that she never wants to go through it again and that next time we are leaving town regardless of what the authorities say. To that I say, "meh, how bad can it be if I slept through it." All I know is I woke up to a leaking roof and a backyard that looked like this:

Since then the neighbors and I worked to fix the broken fence and kinda sorta hopefully fixed the roof. We still have no electricity but it's feelin pretty good to have running water again. I think of it as a sort of camping vacation, but in your own house.

Anyway, everyone I know made out ok from the storm with very minimal damage. The biggest complaints are from people being bored. I have to admit I kinda like the quiet and I'm not really bored at all, but I do miss my internet pokers.

talk to ya'll again when I am back up and running.

The GF and I went on a trip to Northen California last week. I really wanted to stop by Club One in Fresno but I just didn't have time to make it down there with other obligations. We did make a quick run through Yosmite National Park and I was very impressed once we got away from the crowds. A few highlights:

Yosemite:





Travertine Hot Springs in Bridgeport, CA:


Bodie, CA, a ghost town:




So, on to Harvey's Lake Tahoe. Harrahs' comped 2 nights but Saturday night was $400 because there was a KISS concert that night. I only go to play 4 donkaments because Harvey's only has 2 a day. On Thursday night the $80+15 field was all locals who seemed to know each other. I ended up shoving KJ into 66 and flop comes 66X. GG me. On Friday morning I won their turbo-esque $30+10 for $250 over a super weak field. On Friday night I chopped the $100+$20 for $600 in a 5-way even chop. The final table included two members of the rock band ZO2, who were opening for KISS on Saturday. I busted one of them 6 handed when he limped QQ on my 3 5 BB and the flop came 5 2 6 with two diamonds. He shoved his remaining 6 BB and I call and hit a 3 on the river to bust him, immediately after which we chop the remaining $3k prizepool. On Saturday morning I played another $30+$10 turbo with no success. Still pretty solid results for my small amount of playing time.

Harvey's seems to be full of hand-me-down Harrah's equipment. We had an "updated" upgrade room and it still had out of date furniture and even had a scary tube TV in the bathroom that was no less than 12" deep for a 10" screen. The room was still nice and I have no real complaints. The poker room is pretty standard and only the cash tables had auto shufflers. There are no poker comps of any kind and time is not tracked.

We walked across the street to the Mont Bleu on our last day, and it is by far the nicest/newest casino on the small Tahoe strip. The poker room is right at the entrance and seems to offer an identical tournament schedule/structure as Harvey's. If I return I'll play there as play is probably softer and Harvey's doesn't offer any poker comps.

Today I took second out of around 5900 runners in the stars $10 30k guaranteed tournament for my biggest online score ever, $5k. First paid $7300, so I can now say the most I ever lost on a coin flip is $2300.

PokerStars Game #18800361103: Tournament #94712572, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level XXXII (60000/120000) - 2025/07/13 - 19:48:08 (ET)
Table '94712572 485' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 3: brad2002tj (3388172 in chips)
Seat 5: MilanRabsz (8383828 in chips)
brad2002tj: posts the ante 12000
MilanRabsz: posts the ante 12000
brad2002tj: posts small blind 60000
MilanRabsz: posts big blind 120000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to brad2002tj [Qh Ah]
brad2002tj: raises 240000 to 360000
MilanRabsz: raises 720000 to 1080000
brad2002tj: raises 2296172 to 3376172 and is all-in
MilanRabsz: calls 2296172
limbi8888 [observer] said, "NO DEAL ??"
*** FLOP *** [6c Ad 3d]
Dantes_11 [observer] said, "AAAAAA"
*** TURN *** [6c Ad 3d] [7h]
*** RIVER *** [6c Ad 3d 7h] [5h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
MilanRabsz: shows [4h 4c] (a straight, Three to Seven)
brad2002tj: shows [Qh Ah] (a pair of Aces)
Floppus [observer] said, "haha"
Floppus [observer] said, "lol"
MilanRabsz collected 6776344 from pot
limbi8888 [observer] said, "WTF"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 6776344 | Rake 0
Board [6c Ad 3d 7h 5h]
Seat 3: brad2002tj (button) (small blind) showed [Qh Ah] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 5: MilanRabsz (big blind) showed [4h 4c] and won (6776344) with a straight, Three to Seven

It was my girlfriend and my third anniversary so we spent last weekend at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, MS. We flew into New Orleans and drove a rental car (~1.5 hour drive) to Biloxi. Checking in was a bit of a mess. At the front desk the clerk said they don't have any ocean view rooms (even though we booked one) and verified we want a non-smoking room. We make the trek up to the room and walk into what is clearly a smoking room. We go back down to the front desk and the manager gets us into a non-smoking room, and guess what now there is an ocean view available. So they set us up again and we go up to a really nice non-smoking ocean view room on the 15th floor. As I am going through the check-in documents I notice they have someone else's name on it. Back to the front desk for them to straighten it out, which only takes a few minutes.

The hotel and casino design seems to have borrowed from many of the Vegas casinos, and a lot of the design was similar to the Bellagio, albeit a slightly cheaper and more brightly colored version. One interesting tidbit of note, as we were walking by the front desk a security guy with earpiece in ear grabs me by the shoulder and says "you can't wear your hat backwards while on the property." Uh, OK. Never seen or heard of that in a Vegas casino, but whatever.

They only had one donkament going for the weekend, a $200 + 25 + $10 add on Saturday. The field of 125 was quite weak. I had 3 people totally hand me their stack, one when I had a set of 10's vs top pair no kicker and once with aces against AJ and another with AK v. A6 sooted AIPF. With the tables break down to 50 players the following hand takes place (cross posted from 2+2):

Hero has about 21k at 200/400 a50 and is probably around top 10/50 in chips and 2nd in chips at the table. Tables just consolidated and both villians in hand are new and unknown. Villian 1 is utg+1 and is CL at the table and covers by a few k. He opens to 1200 and hijack, a middle aged woman with a "WSOP Academy" visor on, shoves her 4k stack. Folds to Hero in the big blind who peels back AKo. Nothing else to do here but isolate, right?

Anyhow I don't see what else I can do but isolate the short stack so I shove and am suprised and a bit scared when the original raiser calls. Original raiser has QQ short stack has JJ and we are off to the races. The board completely blanks and I am out once again with AK vs. QQ. The almost same exact scenario happened 2 weeks ago at the Caesar's Megastack in Vegas - AK has not been good to me lately. Back to the online grind for a few months.