Its official....

I am the worst friend/person ever. Landon has been looking forward to me playing in his member/guest golf tournament for about 3 years now I believe. I used to never be able to play in it because it corresponded with the Evansville City Golf tournament. Landon was secretly (not very secretively I might add) happy that I got disqualified from the City tourney last year because that meant I would be able to play with him in his member/guest golf tourney. In order to play in it you have to have a GHIN handicap card and it is apparently a pretty big deal with all of the extra stuff that goes along with the tournament such as a calcutta and banquet. There is also a really long waiting list to get into the tournament. After quite a bit of trouble I finally got my GHIN handicap card in working order and we were one of the last teams to get into the field. Once we found out we were in I booked my flight. Finally, all of the pieces were in place for Landon and I to play in his Member/Guest tourney.....

I played online all day and left my phone in my bedroom. When I finally looked at my phone I had 3 missed calls and a text message from Jeff saying that he needed a caddie for this week in Reno! The last time Jeff called me at the last second to have me caddy for him Derek and Joey were in town and I decided to be a good friend and turned Jeff down. I instantly regretted it and while I had a great time with Derek and Joey it is a sickening feeling to pass up such a great opportunity. Before I called Jeff I called Landon to tell him the position I was in. He was very understanding and said something like very fatherly like "I won't be mad at you if you choose to caddy for Jeff...I know it is a good opportunity for you...I'll just be dissapointed". Thats my favorite quality of Landon as a friend is that is totally honest with you and is probably the most rational person I know.

So, its official, I am the worst friend ever and I let Landon down by telling him that I couldn't play in his tournament that we had been planning on on playing in for so long. I know he was looking forward to this tournament a lot and I feel like the biggest jerk ever for backing out. I feel like one of my best qualities as a friend is that I'll never let you down under any circumstances. As my buddy Clint likes to say..."If I say I am gonna go fishing with you, you might as well start the grease". Well, I this time I left Landon stranded with a pan full of hot grease. I feel like I have a pretty good reason and I think he understands.

I'm sorry Landon :(

The good news...I'll be caddying for Jeff in the Reno/Tahoe Open July 31- August 3rd when he wins his first PGA Tour Event!

Update from last week and start of a new one.....

Well, I had a very crazy 7th day of my one week challenge on Tuesday. I started the day up $1,136 and even though things hadn't gone exactly as I had planned throughout the week I still felt really good about how I was playing and I was all geared up to have a big day. I played a few tables of 5/10 along with my normal 2/4 and 3/6 tables. Absolutely everything that could go wrong did go wrong and before I knew it I was down over $2800 on the day and now I was stuck around $1,700 for the week now and I was only 3 hours into my session. I was already thinking about what the title of my blog was going to be..."D-MORE-UH-LIES-DUH" was what I was leaning towards using (say it out loud if you don't get it). I could feel my face getting hot and I wasn't thinking very clearly. I certainly wasn't in the mood to be making any big folds and I knew I wasn't going to be able to play my best if I kept playing.

I felt like my cards were face up just like I always do when I try to move up in limits. I remember when I felt like that about playing 2/4 NL and thought I would never be able to beat that limit. Simply put the players are better at 5/10 than they are at 2/4 and I either don't play well enough to beat it or I just haven't gotten comfortable enough with the higher stakes to be able to play well enough to beat it. It is a pretty horrible feeling when you feel like you can't pull the trigger when you want to make a play just because the money means more or you feel like the players know exactly what you are up to. Also, It is really amazing how being tentative or playing with scared money in poker can lead to you not playing your normal style that you know is a proven winner.

Anyway, I quit all of my tables and went to find something to eat and drink to see if I could regroup enough to be able to play any more poker for the day. I did a good job of settling down and decided that I would try to play some more poker, but I was only going to let myself play 2/4 NL. It wasn't easy to play smaller after getting stuck so much earlier in the day. Its not fun when you realize that no matter how hot you run you pretty much can't get even for the day since you are playing so much smaller. Well, I am glad I decided to play more, because I ran super hot and ended up almost getting all the way back to even playing only 2/4...I ended up playing great and only losing $122 on the day. That may be the best $122 I have ever lost.

I ended up having way worse results than I wanted to for the week, but I still ended up winning $1,014 and I did reach my goal of playing 35 hours (almost 36). I feel bad complaining about a $1,000 week, but it really is way below expectation. It makes it not so bad considering I was stuck $1,700 with 2 hours left to go in my week though :)

Well, even though I just took a vacation to regroup with poker playing 35 hours in a week and having sub par results I felt like I needed a small break from playing for a day or two. It just so happened to be perfect timing that Nick and his boss, Patrik Antonius, had a golf match with two of Patrik's friends that they had been planning for about a year. When they made the bet, Patrik's friend, Jani, was the best golfer of the four and Patrik, Nick, and Mikko were just starting to take golf seriously. If they would have played the match a year ago Jani and Mikko would have been the clear favorite, but Nick and Patrik have worked super hard on their games since then and it was a totally different story a year later.

The bet was a 36 hole match and they just added up the total strokes for both teams to determine the winner. They are all pretty good friends so the decided to keep the wager friendly and settled on a reasonable $200,000 to be paid by the losing team!! Nick and Patrik have a friend, Jimmy, that usually caddies and coaches them when they are playing in matches or just practicing. Jimmy is usually responsible for reading both of their putts, helping them both with club selection, cleaning both of their clubs and balls, and keeping both of their heads on straight in general. Since this match was going to be for so much money Nick decided to take me along as his coach/caddie so that Jimmy could focus on Patrik since he needs the most attention. It was pretty cool to be caddying in a match for $200,000, but not nearly as exciting as you might think. The reason it wasn't so exciting is because the match wasn't any near being a close match. The first day Nick shot 78, Patrick shot 82, Jani shot 86, and Mikko shot 88. Nick and Patrik had basically an insurmountable lead of 14 hots going into the second round. After 9 holes on the second day they were up 22 shots total and Jani and Mikko conceded the match and the $200,000. Nick gave me a generous $1,000 for helping out and it was a nice change of pace from poker. They were playing again today and Nick offered to have me help again, but I don't think I could have handled another day of it. Today they were planning on playing 36 holes and saying that these guy play slow is the biggest understatement of the year! The first day took us about 7.5 hours to play 18 holes and Nick and I got there about 3 hours before the match to practice. The second day took us about 3.5 hours to play only 9 holes. I guess I can't blame them for taking their time since they are playing for $200,000, but you have never seen 3 slower golfers than Patrik, Mikko, and Jani. I would have definitely gone again today if I thought I would improve their chances of winning, but I am positive that Mikko and Jani are drawing dead again today....which will cost them another $100,000. They are playing a best ball match for $50,000 and a scramble for $50,000.

I know this blog is really long already so I will just do a quick summary of my day of poker today... I played for about 5 hours and I was around even about 4.5 hours into my day. I finally ran good in a big pot where a guy turned a straight vs. my top set. We got it in on the turn and the board paired on the river and I won about a $2,000 pot. Ahhhh, it feels good to suck out once in a while :) Then I won a buy-in at 2/4 NL with JJ all-in preflop against 99. With my nice rush to end the day I ended up winning $1,496 and am off to a great start for the week.

This is too long and I am too hungry to proofread...deal with it.

Sigh.....

Just sigh....I played for almost exactly 5 hours today and lost $802. I mean $800 isn't the end of the world, but it just sucks when you lose $2,300 in the last 500 hands to end up losing $800. So after starting off great the first two days of the week I am down about $2,000 during the next 4 days and 10,000 hands. 10K hand losing stretches are certainly no fun and pretty demoralizing when you feel like you have played well during it.

I was just sitting here pouting and thinking about what to write when I started questioning whether I really did play well during these last 10K hands or if I was just telling myself that I did...Here is what I came up with:

It is crazy to think that even over stretches of 10K hands your results really have very little to do with how well you actually played. I mean sure I could have lost a lot more than I did had I played really terrible, but I can say that I honestly tried to make the best decisions every single time I was faced with one. I did make one crying call today for an extra $400 on the river when I was sure that I was beat. Other than that hand I can't think of much I would have done different if I had the same situations over again and all of the same information was available to me.

In 10,000 hands there are ton of marginal situations that either go your way or they don't. If you run hot in those situations you are going to end up doing really well. If you run poorly you are going to lose no matter how well you played. In theory, if you run neutral in those spots and you are a winning player you will end up winning an amount that is equal to the edge you have over your competition. I obviously can't think of all the marginal situations that happened during that 10,000 hand stretch so I can't be sure if I ran good or bad in them, but I feel pretty confident that I ran below expectation. In fact, just that one huge $3K pot that I lost a few days ago was enough to make me a winner over those 10K hands. So, assuming that I ran neutral in all other marginal situations, I could say that I ran $2,400 below expectation since I had 85% equity in a $3,000 pot that I lost. Just using that one hand as my only variable over those hands you could say that 85% of the time I should have won around $1,000 and I should have lost the $2,000 that I actually lost only 15% of the time.

I guess what I am trying to say is....ITS NOT MY FAULT! haha. Noone ever thinks it is their fault when they lose, but I really do try to take responsibility for my losses when they happen. I can say that I played really close to my A-game throughout most of this stretch so there really isn't much responsibility to be taken here....unless my A-game weren't good enough to be beating the limits I am playing, but I know that is not the case.

I'll have better luck tomorrow. One more 5 hour day of playing will get me to my 35 hour goal and that is a solid week of playing.

After 6 days:
35 hours
+$1,136
15,383 hands
super duper crappy hourly rate of $37.27 and a win rate of 1.31 BB/100

I played in the British Open today....

....of Frisbee Golf. Kevin and I went to play frisbee golf when we woke up this morning around 10:00. Well, the conditions were about like the British Open conditions with winds blowing about 40 MPH. I pulled a Greg Norman and got off to a hot start but couldn't finish down the stretch. In fact the last hole was maybe the worst throw of the day. 18 is along the road and is a dog leg right. The wind was blowing into our face and a little to the right (about the 5 o'clock position if 12 o'clock was straight down the fairway). I tried to throw a low hard shot that banked to the right. Well, it banked to the right alright, but didn't stay low in the least little bit. The wind caught it and blew it super high in the air and about 100 yards right of the fairway and landed 3 lanes over in the street! So there I was performing the shuttle run in the middle of busy traffic. I had to sprint to the frisbee to beat the traffic from the right, pick up the frisbee and sprint back to beat the traffic from the left. Of course I made it safely or you wouldn't be reading about it in my blog. Anyway, Kevin ended up beating me by one hole at $5 per hole. Somehow I got stuck with the entire bill at In-and-out burger to cover my $5 wager...what an angle shooter!

Today was another struggle with poker. I was never winning for one second in my session today. I lost a full buy-in almost immediately when I guy flopped a set of 4's against my AA and I never managed to get back in the positive. At one point I was down almost $1800, but I made a nice steady comeback to end the day at -$856. A couple of days ago I mentioned how few times I had gotten aces and how that was unlucky. Well, equally as unluckily today I had them 5 more times that I should have, but I ended up losing $538 with them. Once again...its gonna be tough to have a good day when it doesn't go your way with Aces. I feel like I played pretty well again today, but I think I have discovered another leak in my game. I really have to stop using instant messenger when I am playing. It definitely takes away some of my focus on poker and that can never be a good thing. What if it results in my running 1BB/100 lower than I should be? That is about $40/hour and over $40,ooo per year! Wow, it won't be very hard for me to quit using IM now that I just thought about that little stat. Bye bye instant messenger :( I'm still playing great poker and I look forward to busting some heads tomorrow.

After my little set back today this is how my week looks after 5 days:
26 hours played
+$1,939
Running at a sad 1.56 BB/100
played 12,889 hands.

Only two more days to get to my goal of 35 hours and $4,000 in profit. The hours will probably happen, but I will have to run pretty well to make it to the $4K...it is certainly possible though.

Well....that is just not how it was supposed to go down :(

I had a really frustrating day of poker today. I started off great and I was up about $1,000 in the first 30 minutes. Then before I knew it I was stuck about $300 somehow, but I felt like I was still playing great. Since I felt good I decided to mix in one table of 5/10 and see how comfortable I felt there. I lost some smallish pots there and was only down about half a buy-in, but it just seems so much worse because it is more money than you are used to losing. I ended up making a few hands there and won about $400 in the 5/10. I am going to try to continue to add in 1 or 2 tables of the 5/10 when the games look good. Anyway, everything started turning around and all of the sudden I was up over $1800 when the following hand took place:

First of all, I know this player is a huge fish, because earlier I called her raise preflop with 44 and the flop came 224, she (her name was every1luvsjeni) bet the flop and I called, the turn was a 9 and she went all-in with 55 and I of course called and won. Then in the chat she says "nice suckout" as if it were some horrible bad beat I put on her since she had the best hand preflop and proceeded to put the rest of her money in when she was way behind. Anyway, I had position on her and somehow she had built her stack up to $1400 and I had her covered. She raised and I called with TT, the flop came AT7 with two hearts. She bet $57 and I min-raised her to 114. She thought for a second and just called. At this point I am fairly certain she has a big ace and I am going to win a huge pot as long as a heart doesn't hit the turn and kill my action. The turn is the Ace of diamonds and she checks to me. Since I already know she is a bad player I know there is no way she is ever folding if she has a a big Ace like I thought. We were both really deep so I wanted to try to get as much money in now as I could so I could make another big bet on the river. I decided to overbet the pot and made it $320 when the pot was only $285. She instantly went all-in for $1300! If she has 4 aces or aces full of tens she is just gonna have to bust me I suppose. I snap called and the river was the unfortunate 7 of clubs giving her Aces full of 7's. Its always tough losing a $2900 pot, but especially when it was about $1700 bigger than any other pot I played today and I was an 85% favorite when all the money went in.

That hand REALLY took the wind out of my sails and it immediately made me a little gun shy and fearful of going on tilt. I tried playing for a little longer since I had only been playing about 4 hours, but I just didn't feel like I could play my best right then since I didn't feel like being aggressive at all. I lost a few more pots and just decided that I would cut my session short before I let that one hand affect my play anymore. I also thought about how it could even affect my play tomorrow if I kept playing and ended up losing a bunch at the end of my session today. So I quit early and ended up winning $90 in almost 4.5 hours. That one hand could have really been a huge boost to an already successful week, but thats just the way it goes.

I have been playing my A-game all week and I look forward to doing it again tomorrow.

So far this is how my week looks:
18 hours
+$2794

I am off to the store to buy some ant killer. Since I got back from Cabo there have been a few random ants around the house. Today must be their party day though. There are a ton of them in the pantry feasting on some stray reese's peanut butter puffs on the floor. The worst part is that somehow a few ants have made it all the way back to my desk in my office. When I look at my desk I never see any ants, but then all of the sudden I will feel one crawling up my arm while I am playing! I kill it and go on since there aren't any more on my desk anywhere that I can see. An hour later another friend finds his way to arm again! Still none on my desk though. Anyway, I had about 4 ants appear out of nowhere and crawl up my arm today so I think it is time this gets taken care of.

Those ants are supposed to be crawling, but I can't get it to work right. They craw right when the page loads up, but they don't keep crawling. If you want to see them crawl, click refesh and scroll down really quick.

British Open coincidence.....

I just wanted to point out that Nick and I are probably the first two roommates in the history of the world that have two really good college buddies that are on the PGA tour and happen to be paired together in the 3rd round of the British Open. Nick was college roommates with Kevin Stadler at USC. They are both +8 and tied for 38th. Good luck to both of them...especially Jeff.

Day 3 of 1-Week Challenge = Yay swings!

Well, today started pretty crappy and got worse until at one point I was down about $2,000. I made a really good comeback and at one point I was up around $700 until I finally ended the day -$519. I believe I played pretty well today and did a really good job of staying aggressive and picking up small pots when no one showed much interest. To say the deck was stacked against me today would be a very accurate statement. I only got aces 5 times out of 2,458 hands and the most I ever won with them was $55. It will always be hard to have a winning day when things go like that for you with Aces, but to make up for my lack of aces though I got Kings 25 times and Queens 18 times. I should have had each of those pairs around 11 times. While it seems like a great thing that I got KK and QQ so much 3 of the times I had KK someone had AA and I lost over $1,000 with QQ today. All total I ended up losing $713 with AA, KK, and QQ today. That kind of makes me feel good though, because that means I was a winner today with all other hands combined.

One funny hand today that ended up going my way with KK when the other guy had AA:

This one guy seemed to have my number in every pot we played against each other. He had already stacked me for a full buy-in at $600 NL with his AA vs. my KK once about an hour ago before this hand came up. I raised in the cutoff with KK, he 3 bet me from the button, and I four bet to $160. He thought for a while and eventually went all-in and I was instantly sick to my stomach. I just knew he had Aces again, but I can never really fold here. Anyway, it was $240 more for me to call and I typed in the chat box "Well, Smurf (his name was Smurf fitt) if you are going to have AA everytime I get KK today you are just gonna have to get my money" and I called. He obviously had Aces, but I ended up making quad kings! It was just one of those days where people kept holding overpairs that were bigger than my overpairs. It was a pretty bad beat for him, but it actually seemed really fair to me, haha.

So now my week looks like this:
16.37 hours played
8,236 hands played
+$2,704
Running @ 4.00 BB/100

So even though I ended up losing a little bit today I think it was a productive day of poker considering the cards I was dealt. I'd prefer not to have the big swings that I had today as they can wear on your confidence a lot.

For your viewing pleasure....here is a picture math equation summing up my day of poker, enjoy:

YAY SWINGS!

Super nerdy stats stuff (this will bore most of you to tears so skip it)....

After I wrote my last blog I was looking at my win rates and thinking about what I would have to do to raise them over long periods of time.

Here is what I came up with:

After 286,831 total hands in my database I am running at 2.44 BB/100 hands.
After 107,611 hands of 2/4 full ring NL I am running at 3.27 BB/100 hands.

If I want to be running at 4 BB/100 hands at 2/4 full ring NL after 200,000 hands I will have to run at 4.79BB/100 hands over my next 93,389 hands. If I am able to do this it would raise my hourly rate for playing $400 NL full ring from $100.59/hour to $137.73/hour. During those next 93,389 hands I would be making approximately $194.81/hour.

If I want to raise my total win rate to 3 BB/100 hands after 400,000 total hands I will have to run at 4.9 BB/100 hands over the next 113,169 hands. This is not an exact figure because of different limits being played, but if 2/4 NL is close to my average game it should be pretty close and I have no idea how to figure it exactly.

These are very lofty improvements, but they at least give me something to shoot for. It would probably take about 2.5 months with some pretty steady playing from me to get to these hand benchmarks. We'll see how it goes.

I'm sorry if you read all of this, because I know most of you have no idea what any of that crap means.

Day 2 of 1-week challenge.

Today was a successful day of poker for me. I played 5.87 hours and won $909 which is about what I can expect to make playing 6-7 tables of full ring 2/4 NL (with a little bit of 3/6 mixed in). I am happy with the length of the sessions I have put in this week, but I am more happy that I think I might have found a leak in my game. I felt myself not playing as well at the end of my session as I was earlier in the day so I decided to quit playing. I have always been really good about quitting when I notice my focus or play starting to slip. I was up about $1600 and ended up losing about $700 in the last hour or so. When I quit playing I was disappointed that I had given some back from my peak because of poor play. Then I remembered that the exact same thing happened to me yesterday around the same point of my session when I went from $2900 winner to only $2300 winner within the last half hour of my session. This got me thinking so I went back and looked at the graphs from a bunch of sessions that I had that were 5 hours+. It didn't happen in all of them, but more often than not at the end of all of my long sessions I finished with a decent size downswing. There could be several causes for that too though. Maybe I am just more likely to quit during a losing stretch than I am a winning stretch, but I think it has more to do with me losing focus and playing poorly which causes me to quit. Sometimes I can still win money while lacking focus and playing poorly, but most of the time it will result in a downswing. So my conclusion is that somewhere around 5 hours is my threshold for playing my 100% A-Game totally focused poker when I am multi-tabling online. This has a strange correlation to the approximate amount of time that my adderall continues to work (its actually not strange at all and it probably the exact reason I only play well for 5 hours at a time).

Therefore, I am going to try something new where I set some type of timer to remind myself when 5 hours have elapsed and if I don't choose to quit right then I will at least be able to make a conscious effort to stay focused for a little while longer. If I continue to have poor results on days when I play longer than 5 hours I will start making myself quit once the 5 hours are up. I have often wondered if I would even be a winning player and/or play for a living without taking adderall. I probably COULD do it, but I think I would be pretty miserable and I would certainly be much less successful at it.

So far after two days of grinding it out towards a 35 hour week I have played 11.23 hours and I have made $3,224. If only I would have had my revelation before these last two days I would have played about an hour and a half less and be up about $1300 more! That is silly to think like that, but I suppose it is possible that I am costing myself that much money by playing sessions that are longer than I can stay focused. Right now, I am way ahead of my 35 hour/$4K week goals. I am actually on pace to play 39 hours and win $11,284. That is VERY unlikely, but don't be surprised if it happens...I feel like I am playing some really good NL right now by choosing better spots to put added pressure on the passive players.

Also, I am trying to decide what I will do with my $36,000 when Jeff wins the British Open this week. He is tied for 15th and only 3 shots back after the first day of play. Even though I had already made the bet without thinking about this....Eric reminded me how Jeff should certainly be used to playing in terrible weather. This is so true...Big 10 golfers are at a huge disadvantage because of the crappy weather they have to practice in during the fall, winter, and spring months....that is until you are playing in the British Open and everyone has to play in crappy weather :) 1 X Jeff...do it for me :)

Day 1 of 1-week challenge.....

I got off to a great start of my 1-week challenge today. I ended up winning $2,315 and played a little over 5 hours. It is going to be really tough for me to play 35 hours in a week, but I am really going to try and make a run at it. I am sure I will already fall behind pace tomorrow, because Eric is in town for one day and we are playing golf tomorrow morning. I always have a hard time playing too many hours on days that I play golf too. 5 or 6 hours is about the most I can play in one day which means I have to play close to my max hours every day of the week to get to 35 hours. I was looking at my poker tracker for 2008 and figured out that I have averaged about 15 hours per week of playing hold'em online. That is totally disgusting. I know that doesn't include any live poker, online tournaments, or any time I have spent playing PLO, but I should still have more hours than that logged playing hold'em online. It is 2 am and we are leaving at 7:30 am for golf tomorrow so I have to get some shut eye.

In some other exciting stuff to keep an eye on....I bet $180 on Jeff to win the British Open at 200:1 in hopes of winning $36,000! I also bet $40 on J.B. Holmes, because I thought he was a good bet at 150:1. Maybe I should call Jeff and tell him he could win me $36K if he wins so he would try extra hard to win this time....as if he won't be trying to win the $2 million or whatever you get for himself, haha. (please don't call or text me to tell me how he is doing, because I will be watching it on tivo when I get home from playing tomorrow).

Back to business....

I will write up a trip report soon, but for now I just want to get some goals written down. I can't make any goals that are too long term because I have some scheduled trips coming up so I will start with one for the up coming week.

Starting on 7/16 and ending on 7/22 I will play 35 hours and make $4,000. The hours played is more important to me than the money being made, but only because I know if I put in the hours the money will follow. Time to get to work!

I think my little vacation is serving its purpose....

I usually take vacations when I get bored with poker and/or feel like I am not playing my best in hopes of regaining some motivation to play better and more poker while also enjoying it. It is really tough to win at poker when it feels like a grind or you are playing only because there is nothing else exciting to be done instead. As much as I love poker it does get a little boring if you don't take some breaks to keep yourself fresh. I have done plenty of lounging by the pool and just relaxing in general that I am starting to get back the itch to play some poker.

I have two scheduled trips coming up but besides those I hope to get in a lot of hours playing while I am in Vegas. My two upcoming trips are to Louisville in early August and to Evansville in early September. I am going to Louisville to play in Landon's member guest tournament if we get my GHIN handicap card situation squared away (it has been a pretty big hassle so far). My trip back to Evansville is for my 10 year high school reunion, which I am really looking forward to since I helped set it up and it will be full of my friends. I may stay a little longer in Louisville and take a trip to Landon's lake house. Hopefully we can arrange that Jon meet us down there for that. Who knows how long I will stay in Evansville...it could be just for 3 or 4 days or it could be for 2 or 3 weeks. A lot of that depends on the softball and PLO at aztar situations. I would love to fill in on some old pals softball teams while I am home since that is one the things I miss most about living in Vegas. If the PLO action is good it is always a great time and I like playing with that crowd.

I am typing this blog while laying out by the pool and some sweat is starting to run down my side. I think I will end this now, hop in the pool, and swim over to the swim up bar for a virgin Miami Vice.....half Strawberry Daquiri and half Pina Colada without the alcohol of course.

Sun Vs. Me and Sun Vs. Lotion....

Well, the sun beat stubborn ole' me.....again, but the lotion might still have a shot at not losing to the sun. I tried to buy some sunscreen, but they didn't have the aerosol kind that I like so I decided that I would just try to stay in the shade as much as I could and not stay out very long.....bad idea. Of course I got burnt, but no so bad (I don't think so anyway) that I won't be able to keep from peeling if I keep putting lotion on regularly (not likely). So for now the sun is winning and looks like the clear favorite to sweep both matches. If you bet on the sun in the burn and peel two team parlay your ticket looks pretty good and could probably be sold for a 2:1 profit right now. If you want an inside tip I will tell you to hold on to your parlay ticket and go for the 13:5 payday, because I have a poor history when it comes to keeping up with the necessary application of lotion when trying to prevent peeling. Also, it is possible iI am past the point of no return and I will peel regardless of how much lotion I apply.

Time to go apply some more lotion for the second time in 30 minutes....I have no shot at keeping up with this pace.

Edit: Only because I don't mind being the butt of a good joke and I want to give my readers what they want here is the damage....

Going to Cabo.....

I decided at the last minute to take a trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.... I wasn't really in the mood to play any poker so I figured the best thing for me was a break....again. I don't think I will have any kind of cell phone service while I am there so if you want to reach me hopefully I will have internet access while I am there. My travel partner this time is Robin and we should have a good time. I'll post some pictures when she takes some....

Almost time to board....

Sigh.....

Well, my day two of the main event didn't last too long. I was all-in on my very first hand. The big blind had not showed up to the table yet and it folded around to me on the button. I looked down at 33 and decided just to move in for 11K, because the small blind was the only person I had to worry about and he was pretty short as well. He thought for a while before folding and showing Ace Ten off suit. I had to remember not to make too many moves on him if he thought that long with that hand. Oh well, it was a decent start.

Then I did my standard go card dead late in tourneys move. Our table broke really quickly and I got moved to a table with some much bigger stacks and no one that was very close to being as short as I was. I won the blinds once there, but had blinded down to $8400 about an hour and a half into the day. Another short stack (around 11K) raised in late position to 1700 and I looked down at AK of hearts. I instantly knew I was moving in, but I waiting for a little bit to make him think I had a marginal decision. I moved in for 8400 total and he thought for a bit before calling with AJ off suit which made 18K exactly in the pot. The flop was Q98 the turn was a Q and the river was a T. He made a straight and I was out. If you are going to do well in tourneys you are going to have to win some races at some point. I only got in two the whole time my AK vs. K3s and my AKs vs. AJo. I had them dominated both times and only won one of them. Oh well, that is what happens in tournaments and is also the reason I don't like them. Although, I can't really complain, because the structure in the main event is amazing and plays much more like a cash game than any other tournament you are ever going to play in. Eventually, the blinds will have to play a factor, but you certainly get plenty of play in it.

I took all 3 days off from poker in between playing so I feel pretty fresh and it is time to get back on the grind and win some money.

My table draw.....

Someone on twoplustwo.com posted a list of all of the seating assignments for day 2a and 2b of the main event. Here is my table draw:

Charalampos Tsaoussis 12,900 B63 01
Wade Woelfel 42,600 B63 02
Bart Wetsteijn 47,375 B63 03
Timothy Miles 33,075 B63 04
Jason Eriquez 46,575 B63 05
Jason Brice 40,400 B63 06
Jan Maskell 31,925 B63 07
Kelly Samson 16,350 B63 08
Patrick Cruse 11,050 B63 09

I like that the person on my immediate left and right are both short stacks as well. I googled all of the players at my table and I somehow ended up with 3 of the same players that I ended day one with.

Here is what I know about each player (this is more for my own preparation than it is to inform anyone else reading this):

1 seat - Charalampos Tsaoussis (13K in chips)- Relatively inexperienced player with only two live and two online cashes listed for him as far as I could tell from searching online. He is from Greece.

2 seat - Wade Woelfel (42K in chips)- Going to be a really good player. Has had lots of success online and is a pocketfives.com avid poster. Will have very solid tourney skills and experience.

3 seat - Bart Wetsteijn (47K in chips)- He played at my table for a couple of hours at the end of Day 1. He is from the Netherlands and seemed to be playing very aggressive and opening lots of pots. Seems to be willing to gamble. Mostly a live player now from what his online poker profile says.

4 seat - Timothy Miles (33K in chips)- He was also at my table ending day 1. He opened a TON of pots for pretty small raises, but played really passively when he was re-raised and/or someone had raised in front of him. Has had a lot of success in live tournaments and almost 500K in cashes.

5 seat - Jason Eriquez (46K in chips) - No info on him online so I am sure he is a satellite winner and prone to making some mistakes somewhere along the line.

6 seat - Jason Brice (40K in chips) - Has cashes dating back to 2002, but only 8 cashes total listed. I will assume he doesn't play for a living since he would probably have had more than 8 cashes in 6 years if he was playing full time.

7 seat - Jan Maskell (32K in chips) - Nothing really listed about him online.

8 seat - Kelly Samson (16K in chips) - A professional player from Canada that lives in Vegas now. He is a regular 5/10 and higher NL player at the Wynn. I have played a bit with him and he plays pretty well. He has one really big cash recently in one of the Caesars circuit events for 128K. I also know that he can go on tilt in a tournament pretty quickly. I played with him in a $500 tourney at the venetian and he blew up and busted in about 45 minutes by making some overly terrible plays. I am sure he will be much more patient and playing his A game since this is the main event. I also think that he knows I am a tight player and will be aggressive in attempting to steal my blinds.....I doubt it sucker!

9 seat - Patrick Cruse (11K in chips) - Best player at the table, imo. Will most likely pwn the whole table's face. He is also a nice guy and I hope he makes a come back and wins the whole thing.

Thats all for now.

Ugh....such a grind.

Well, it could be worse....I made it through day 1 of the Main Event, but I only have $11,050 left of the $20,000 starting chips. I got up near $30,000 pretty early on, but lost some medium sized pots along the way and ended up being fairly short stacked from about the 5th hour all the way until the end of the day. Going into the last level of the night I only had $7600 in chips with the blinds at 200/400 w/ 50 ante. That is borderline all-in poker and you really can't afford to be raising and folding at the point with such a short stack.

I thought I got a decent table draw when the day first started, but as it turned out I had one of the worst tables possible. There were two pretty terrible players at the table that liked to limp into lots of pots and played pretty poorly after the flop. One of those guys reraised a bet of 900 all-in for $25K when the blinds were at 150/300 w/ 50 ante. It is pretty safe to say that when you see someone do something like this they aren't a very good player. Anyway, both of the fish got a few chips early and never seemed to get into any serious trouble for the entire day. After 4 levels and 8 hours of playing our starting table still had not had one person eliminated. That really limits the chances for anyone at our starting table to make it very deep in the tournament since we never had more than $180,000 chips in play and no one could build a big stack. Finally, our table broke and I got moved to a table where two guys had over 100K and there were several 50-60K stacks. I got to that table with around 7500 in chips. Within the first round I open pushed for 7500 with two tens and everyone folded. About one round later it folded to be on the button and I picked up Ace King. I thought maybe I would get a loose call out of one of the blinds if I just open shoved again, but I just assumed I would have to to win a coinflip if I did get called. Well, I moved in for $7400 and the big blind barely gave it any thought and called $7,000 more with the super strong holding of K3 of hearts! Don't worry though....the door card and the second card on the flop were both hearts and the third one was red also, but a diamond. The turn card...the super scary looking queen of diamonds. River...brick! Now that is what I call a courtesy double up....even though I couldn't get it without a huge sweat.

Well, I don't play again until Wednesday at noon and I will be pretty short-stacked when re resume, but at least I will get a fresh start. I will need to win the first hand that I play and if can do that I will have a little bit of breathing room again. I did a really good job of staying patient today and I think I will be able to do it again on Wednesday. Hopefully, I will pick up some hands this time though.

I am super tired right now. I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night because I was so anxious to play today. I got in bed around 1:30 am and didn't completely fall asleep until about 9 am! I should sleep like a baby tonight though (there will be no proofreading done on this tonight, sorry).

Ok, its been a few days and my fans want more....

It is always rewarding when people that read my blog get mad at me for not updating it often enough. This time it happened to be my roommate, Channing, that was tired of looking at my mspaint skills and needed some more info. on thakilla to feed her addiction. Nick (Channing's boyfriend and also a roommate) wanted it to be known to all of my readers (a total of six if you count both of them) that she is not only my biggest fan, but also my best looking fan. I argued that my mom, dad, and grandma might want to disagree about Channing being my biggest fan, but I'll go ahead and give her the best looking award (really she is second place behind you mom, but don't tell her I said that...shhh). However, if you are some super hot chick that anonymously reads my blog and wants to compete for the hottest fan award don't be shy about sending me your picture. (Note to my friends: Don't even try it, because I won't believe that the picture you send me of a super hot chick from an email address you made up is the real deal).

Nothing has really been going on lately. I have still been doing well at PLO since my last blog and I haven't been swimming in the mornings like I want to. I lost a little bit yesterday and won about that much back today. So technically, the doctor could have come to see me each of the last two days, but he didn't really need to. Yesterday I played well, but ended up losing because I followed a fish to a little bit bigger game and ran poorly in that game. Today, I started off down almost $2,000, but remained focused and made a roaring comeback to end up winning just over $600. There was a super duper fish in one of my games and kept beating me pot after pot in hands that I was getting in with the best of it. I looked at poker tracker and at one point he himself was up over $1100 vs. me in pots we had played against each other. When he finally went broke he ended up only winning about $300 from me. There is nothing more frustrating when a horrible player beats you out of money and you have to watch him donate it to the other decent players in the game. It was a little bit satisfying to make a small comeback against him, but still frustrating to end up down to such a bad player.

So, tomorrow I am going to play in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. I wanted to play on Sunday, but they have closed registration for Sunday for now and are forcing people to sign up earlier. I had to settle for Saturday, but that won't be so bad. Now I will be able to watch my buddy, Jeff Overton, win his first PGA tournament on Sunday afternoon. He is currently tied for 1st place at 9 under par with one other player after the first two rounds. I ended up selling $5,200 of myself in the tourney tomorrow, but I will be playing for 54.5% of the total profits.

I have a good feeling about the tournament. I might try to see if I can figure out someway to send updates from my cellphone to my blog to update people that want to know how I am doing (I tried for about 45 minutes and couldn't figure it out so you'll have to wait until I'm done to get updated....I have a buddy working for pokernews so I'll try to get him to include my name in the chipcount updates). You can find those at:
http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2008-world-series-of-poker/main-event/

Click on day 1c and select chip counts....hopefully you'll be able to find me somewhere near the top.