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Life in an underworld    Friends

Secret update

Date: Mon, Feb 1, 2010 Professional Internet Live

I figure no one is really reading this anymore, so this is just for me really (But obvious shameless plug for anyone that is reading). I shall forever cherish the day I re-learned that there *might* be a god:

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3726/100ccccc.png


Some really sick swings recently, and an insane amount of deep runs and final table appearances, but this was definitely a great way to end a weekend. Hopefully it shall continue, and if it doesn't...well, I'm still ready to grind for it.

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WSOP rules

Date: Sat, May 9, 2009 Professional Internet Live

Things have been ok recently. The city is finally getting nicer for spring, just in time for me to ship off to the desert for the summer. Unfortunately (or, fortunately...) I'm trying to put a ton of hours in this month, both coaching and playing, so I may not see the sunlight enough, but vegas should bring plenty of both, I think.

The houses of the last couple of years have trickled apart, so hopefully I'll get to see all those guys while I'm out there. This year, the new crew will have a house in the same area. Greg (Gramps), Scotty, and Samer (braminc) are staying with me in the house for the entirety of the 6 weeks. John (aka bjorn, aka kleath) will be with us for a month, and Chipchucker keeps mentioning coming out for a week or so. Should be a pretty sweet time.

In non job related news, I joined a DC kickball team with a bunch of people that I grew up with/went to high school with. Our first game got rained out, but we got to meet a bunch of the other teammates at a bar in Adams Morgan, and I'll get a few games in before Western work season. Really looking forward to it, as I'm finding that working 'full time' at home puts a strain on getting out of the house enough.

That's about all in the way of life-lights for now. See you on the flip side.


-Alex

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Moroccan food rules....probably

Date: Sun, Mar 22, 2009 Professional Internet Live

Sophie's (brother's girlfriend) birthday dinner last night was pretty interesting. We went to "Marakesh", a Moroccan place in Chinatown (Yeah, I thought that was pretty sweet too...Moroccan in Chinatown....) I wandered around for a while trying to find the place, but eventually caught up with some of the older bro's old gang and we found the crew.

A belly dancing show, 3.5 hours, and 7 courses later, only one of which required or came with eating utensils, we were all pretty stuffed. I have to say, the meats were some of the best that I've had out in D.C. The tea was a perfect, warm ending to a huge dine-out experience. I guess another warm hand towel at the end would've been nice, but a great time nonetheless. If you're in Chinatown in D.C and want a unique restaurant that may provide you with some new cultural experiences, I say go for it.

Nothing else terribly interesting. Going to be trying to crank out the work load as best as I can with trying to dodge life logistics and holidays until I ship off to the desert for a good part of the summer. Holla.


A

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Sigh

Date: Fri, Mar 6, 2009 Professional Internet Live

Casey (Bones) and I did a review of my play at a 1-table shorthanded high buy in sng on Deucescracked. I won't go into the same length of a rant I went on on the forums there (here), but my philosophy on videos, why I make them or what I do in them really doesn't have to do with my actual decisions so much as the analysis behind why it's good or bad.

In fact, sometimes I make the mistakes on purpose because I believe it to be a more effective way of providing the viewers with the quality content, both on an introductory and a more advanced level. And in most cases, elaborating on these decisions (and the unintentional or more debatable plays, of course) in the threads after the videos are posted so members have a chance to speak to the coaches about it on a more interactive scale (sometimes, as in this thread actually, this is where some talk of the more advanced concepts come out moreso that just don't come up in any type of game-play video or in-game type of analysis setting or context).

Anyways, apparently a lot of the viewers do not share any aspect of this sentiment, because the small-sample (aka meaningless?) star rating seems to be average at best, where the analysis we put into the video + thread seems to be pretty thorough and reasonable especially given the context of the video and its relative boringness (to some of the awesome non sng content, or non live play content of SNGs, what have you) of content I've gotten good feedback on or think another coach did well in the past etc.

I guess the reason why I have such a hard time with it is their actual presentation of evidence (hell, the one guy said it was the worst video he'd seen)- they use the mistakes I make in a video to exemplify why it's a bad video, when, combining the video with the thread, I think it makes for the most effective learning tool, assuming their goal is to watch it and think about the spots, similar spots, how things connect and the nuances to the plays (and mistakes) made or when it might become the right play. It's just really tough to combat that when it takes me fighting against a 'you're terrible' with nothing constructive added, or when the 'something constructive' is what you fundamentally believe is constructively the argument for the opposite. Or something like that. And even moreso upsetting because I don't feel that this person intended to 'troll' or be an idiot with his comments (who knows though, so many of them, right?), but rather to try and say that I did something bad and analyzed it badly, the bad analysis part due to bad mouse-clicking on mine/Bones' end of this instance being something I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. Since when has anything in this world been 'black and white', especially as it relates to poker, and even *more* specifically, short stack poker where your edges (and mistakes) come in decimal increments under 1% a lot of the time? The irony of it all being that, with the aforementioned revelations on my philosophies here, plenty of my videos where people find and discuss mistakes made for reasons unbeknown st to them, people have reviewed as 'very good' or 'really valuable' in various ways.

Will someone just tell me I'm a bad speaker or writer already? In my entire life, I've felt that there are 3(ish) teachers that I've respected in terms of their profession and how they treat it on every level basically. But I can't count the number of times I've received a "B" on a paper that says "Great job!" with no other comments or criticisms, leaving me only to ask one question: "Where's the A, bitch?" Or when a criticism makes no sense, some unwillingness to change the grade because they already gave it and it seems subjective to them and you're the student and they're the teacher.

I'm honestly not real sure what the motive is and I guess I'm trying to figure it out now because I'm in this 'teacher role', and have been in videos for many months now, and among a lot of positive, constructive feedback, I s'pose one can't help but realize that they can't be perfect at what they do, and perhaps someone telling me something I should do differently that made sense would go a long way (and for me, admittedly 'stop caring' should be the answer it seems, especially in my profession). Perhaps I can't figure out their angle because I was never allowed to tell a teacher in school that they sucked, and why I thought so.

I guess this rant is done. As always, thanks for reading.


-A

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[Re] Learning PLO

Date: Sun, Feb 22, 2009 Professional Internet Live

With an effort to stay true to my love for cash games, I figured I'd stick in a brief update in an additional effort to not suck at updating my blog quite as much. So yeah, I've decided to get seriously back into Pot Limit Omaha and make that one of my primary game-focuses for this year in addition to a few other games.
I will be continuing tournament work for www.deucescracked.com, as well as my coaching in SNGs and MTTs, and only plan to become more active with the team over there as time goes on and as my multi-game understanding and volume increases.

Hopefully if I don't forget there'll be some more interesting blog posts in the future. For now, here is a report of the superbowl party that I attended in Vegas a few weeks ago. Definitely worth checking out:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/36/stt-strategy/trip-report-second-annual-sttf-superbowl-sng-party-nsfw-405979/

(scroll past the poker part at the beginning if you only want to get to the rated "R" section)

I also paid for that trip in a single 5 hour Bellagio cash session playing only nl500, going to show down exactly 1 time in 5 hours. So that was cool. Think that's all I got for now, stay good everyone.



A

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"It cannot be sustained; in a rational society"

Date: Mon, Feb 9, 2009 Professional Internet Live

Main site: http://theunionmovie.com/TheUnionWeb.html

Actual documentary: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1657827965975839596&ei=VCt-SaWoAYrSjgKkiIHNDw&q=union+business&dur=3


When you think about the reason that people dying from use of this plant/paying for fighting against it comes from its status as illegal only and directly, it's sort of depressing. But I found this incredibly informative and of great academic interest from economic, political and medical standpoints. I did completely lose faith in our government and society because of it, though.


-A

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job in trouble again

Date: Tue, Nov 11, 2008 Professional Internet Live

The infamous UIGEA is back to bite us poker pro's in the ass.

http://theleachlist.blogspot.com/2008/11/fed.html


Help us out guys! Good luck everyone.


-Alex

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Greetings from Glasgow

Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2008 Professional Internet Live

So I arrived in Glasgow yesterday and was greeted by Dale (daleroxxu) at George square, in the center of the city. We spent some of the day walking around and checking out the main part of town, but I was (and am still) pretty out of it, and had to come back here to sleep it off a bit. I skipped a night of sleep getting here, and probably spent 13 hours sleeping yesterday, and still feel pretty tired after more bus-touring of the city today. Hopefully I can shake the jet lag by the time I get to Amsterdam on Sunday. For now, I'll just try and relax and enjoy Glasgow. There are some museums, distilleries, and a bit more touring to do around here, not to mention Edinburgh which is only a 45 minute train ride from here. We'll see what happens, but I'm enjoying myself thus far and hopefully will continue to do so for the duration of my time here. For now, we've just heard of a spearmint rhino that opened about 5 minutes from Dale's flat.....gogogo? That's about it for now, thanks for reading.


Alex

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PEACE America

Date: Tue, Sep 2, 2008 Professional Internet Live

Booked my ticket out of here for my 2nd trip since the drop-out heard round the world. We're headed to Europe ladies and gentleman, first stop: Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. Dale (Daleroxxu) lives in Glasgow so I plan on crashing at his place for a week or so, leaving on the 21st. Around the beginning of October, if all goes according to plan, at that point I'll head to Amsterdam for a while and see what's going on there.
Other than that, today was a cool day. I didn't put in nearly as much volume as I would have liked to, but I coached for 3 hours today, and played for an hour for a really nice 2k hour ($2500 day total). A high buy in MTT student of mine and I were playing the same satellite to the FTP 1k monday event. In one particular satellite tournament, 2 seats paid to the event, and we took down both seats, all while his student was sweating him live through the tournament. Pretty cool to see the ownage tree trickle down, and to have good days. Until next time.......thanks for reading.


Alex

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A couple of seconds of ESPN time

Date: Thu, Aug 28, 2008 Professional Internet Live

Well, ESPN never aired my world series final table (they said they may the night before it took place but wasn't hopeful from that point on really), but I did get a piece of time on the tube sweating Peter (Apathy).


http://www.pokertube.com/Movies.aspx?movie=7355&KeyID=1&title=WSOP_2008_Ep11_4_4

About 3:50 in, on the right side when they flash to Peter's section. It'll suffice until another run next year, IMO.

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Weird week....

Date: Tue, Aug 26, 2008 Professional Internet Live

We went up to Philly for the livestrong weekend. It was a really nice experience and a powerful time for everyone I think, with my brother having survived TC in a relatively lucky-manner thus far with minimal changing in his daily life.

My brother Matt and I drove up to meet our parents at the hotel there on Saturday. On the way up, he got a very unfortunate phone call about a sudden death of someone in a social circle close to him. As soon as I heard the term "best friend" and "sudden death", something that comes up for me more frequently than I've ever admitted over the past 17 years, came up again. The memory of my best friend, Josh.

When I was around 5 years old, Josh died suddenly of meningococcus bacteria, that eventually caused meningococcemia/meningitis. He was dead 48 hours after the bacteria entered his system.

Memories are hazy from back then, but I have a very vivid photographic memory, and I've never forgotten a lot of my childhood with him and with other close friends growing up at home. Especially now with all of this crazy traveling and random last minute stuff happening in my life, I spend a lot of time on the road reflecting, and his memory is coming up in a way that it never has before.

For so long I've just kind of remembered him as my close friend of the past, the one that I could never get back but that died in a tragic happening like anyone else might have in the past or will in the future, for any number of reasons....but I realized something. This week, for the first time ever, I realized that I never truly mourned his death. Being so young, I never fully processed it at the time. After that, over the years, the memory never came up in any other way than is mentioned above; I just successfully avoided it, basically.

Anyways, that all changed, and a lot of emotion has been happening recently as what seems to be a 17 year delay in mourning occurring over my best friend and my memories of him. Today I visited his grave for the first time ever and it was....emotional, to say the least. It felt good though, and it had to be done, and it certainly won't be the last time I visit him. Something that needed to be done before travels to Europe, IMO.

I'm doing ok with it now, but it'll be a slow week trying to get back on track. I have coaching, playing and social obligations that I'd like to fulfill, among continuing to crank out travel plans, as I might be leaving within the next 2-3 weeks! I hope all goes well, we'll see what comes of it. Thanks for reading.

-Alex

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Whats upppppp

Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008 Professional Internet Live

Heyoooooo!

So I'm sitting around Georgetown in D.C and realized I haven't updated this in a couple of months, since midway through the Vegas trip probably. Since I'm not doing much at the moment, figured I'd pop in for an update. I am way too lazy to give you a full update to cover all of that which has happened since the last update in its entirety, but we'll see if we can't capture the rest:

I ended up playing the main event of the world series, $10,000 No Limit, at the last minute, when my friend Max bought up all my action and sold some of it off to the other guys living at the ranch.

The short of it is that the main event was wild. A long day one left me sitting at a pretty 71k up from the 20k starting stack, and finishing in the top 100 of day 1C. Day 2, I ended the day with 73k on what was literally the most insane single day of live tournament poker that I've ever witnessed or played. 71k to 110k, down to 20k down to 10k, up to 25k up to 60k, down to 30k, up to 80k down to 40k up to 70k and I ended just above 70 ending off the day squeezing JohnnyBax for my last few K in my stack.

Day 3 was horrible. I was playing well and owning the table, but made a bit too trigger happy of a move and ended up costing myself the tournament a couple hundred from the money, finishing a very disappointing day 3 exit of 950/6000. Busting out of the main event hurt more than my final table exit, so needless to say it wasn't a good day all in all after the bust out. I'll go into details another time, but it was a great experience and I did learn a ton this summer. Vegas was fantastic. A lot different than last summer but still as usual a valuable and fun experience. Can't wait for next WSOP.

So, since the middle of July, I've been back in Washington, D.C with nowhere to live. I was essentially forced to move out of my apartment with Aaron (manchild) and Steve (tubasteve) because the commons people are a bunch of morons and drive everyone who comes into contact with them insane. My parents are having our kitchen redone at their place, so I decided all in all, crashing at my brothers place for a while was a good idea. He said he was fine with it, I have the couch and essentially my own room, and living in Georgetown is great. I walk everywhere so get plenty of exercise, and it's just a beautiful area in the city, and I do enjoy city living.

Since being here, I really haven't done a whole lot other than hang out with some friends, go to the gym, and try to play a shitton of poker. I really am aiming to make a ton of money this month and next month to set me up for easy living in europe and during my travels. I will of course try my best to keep up with the volume while abroad, but I figure may as well do it when I know I can instead of whatever the unknowns of traveling might bring, if I end up not being able to play for any amount of time, etc...

Most of my volume, I've decided to make in big tournaments recently. I don't suffer from the "big score" mentality, though I do enjoy it thoroughly, and I am also playing some small field MTTs, and STTs (and cash games).... it's moreso that I feel well versed in STTs and never put in the same study or volume in MTTs, so while I feel confident in my MTT game, I felt this was the time to get in the volume and the study with it to balance out my tournament game.
Additionally, I've been trying to watch the deucescracked cash game videos, namely krantz's heads up videos and any other ones that I have time for. When I do put in cash time, I'm trying to make it at heads up. I feel heads up still has plenty of weak opposition, and will give me an opportunity to ensure that I'm not mega tabling, truly am focusing on my reads, hand reading, deeper stack play, etc... I feel the overall balance for myself of single table and multi table tournaments, in addition to cash games of all types, even if its weighted in one direction, is crucial to my development and thought process as a player, and eventually I'd like to work more time into the games that I haven't spent a ton of time working on recently, even though I do consider myself to put in time at all games still and will continue to do so.

In other related news, this week episode 8 of Last Man Standing, the final episode in my 'introduction to SNGs' series, aired and I'm happy to say that the series, in my opinion, was a success overall. I really felt lost in coming up with content for a lot of the episodes, simply because no one has ever put together any similar material as this in the past, but I felt I came up with the bare essentials, and a thorough explanation of the basics for any n00b with a basic poker foundation to get started playing STTs at the low buy ins. Some jackass trolls me on the forums everywhere, and goes into all of my videos and rates me a 1/5 on the star scale under each video without even watching it in order to bring down my ratings, but other than that, the comments are very positive and I'm glad that this was my first series produced. There are certain aspects of this series that became somewhat stressful and overbearing for me, and as a result I'd like to take a short break from video making, but when I return, I'm probably going to cover some MTT content due to high demand, and we'll see what happens from there. I haven't planned anything overly specific yet and don't want to say anything/get anyone's hopes up too early.

So other than the basic hanging out, I plan on continuing my regiment of gym/people/poker until my exit to Europe, probably coming in September, or as late as sometime in october, depending on what tournaments, various poker classic series, EPTs, etc... I end up playing, and when I decide on Amsterdam. As of right now, I plan on extended stays (at LEAST 1 month) in both Amsterdam and Israel. Other than that, tentative stops in the UK, spain, Czech republic, Greece, or anywhere else I deem appropriate are possible while abroad. Don't know how long I'm gonna be away, but likely to be several months.

I think that's about it. I'm heading up to Philly this weekend for a Livestrong 5k walk. I probably won't update this much while home, but will definitely aim to get back into regularly updating (as long as internet allows for it- and it better!!!) when I take off on travels. Thanks for reading.


-Alex

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Caesar's shananigans, The Last Man Standing, and some visitors from my hood (short update)

Date: Sat, Jun 21, 2008 Professional Internet Live

So, I've been pretty busy recently even though I haven't done anything. Isn't that so ironic? I don't get it either. I decided to play the caesar's $330 deep stack event with Travis (costanza_g). Despite a great structure, the tournament was completely rigged. The field was fantasticly soft, softer than any $1500 event at the WSOP (for those that don't know, this is saying a lot). I don't feel like recapping too many hands as there weren't a ton of interesting ones, but I flopped the nuts a lot early and that got me a lot of chips; and I cruised through the day despite having to make some tough (but correct) laydowns. We all got pretty short as 6/1200/300 came and went, and by the time 800/1600 level rolled around, I was shoving any profitable spot I could find to pick up pots, which no one else was doing, it being a live tournament. I pretended to look at my cards when it folded around to me once in the SB, and when the BB folded to my shove, I peeked at TT. Rigged. A few orbits later, it folded around to me again in the SB and I again pretended to look at my cards before sticking it all in. The big blind woke up with AJ, and after tanking, called the shove. I squeezed and tabled 93o and he bad beat me for the win! wtf? how is 93o no good there? Anyways, it wasn't, and I was out of the tournament in roughly 50th/375 after 10.5 hours of tournament play. blech.

Beyond that, I haven't put a ton of time in at the cash tables, but I am planning on putting in a session tomorrow and a marathon session in the coming week. We'll see about other tournaments, as I have to plan around my ongoing deucescracked project, "Last Man Standing" which will be my first formal video series (3rd-10th videos done for the site, though) for the site. It will cover the basics of online SNG play, and will hopefully be one of many series and other standalone videos to come. I'll be working on seeing the peoples, putting in some cash time, and putting this series into the final stages of compilation, creation and production, among some of my one on one coaching obligations. Should be fun and busy.

Today held a nice afternoon, with a few good friends of mine from home coming into Vegas for the weekend. They played the $2,000 pot limit hold em WSOP event, and after they busted, we went back to their very nice suite at the venetian to relax and hang out with the girls and his dog who he brings everywhere. When we went to Amsterdam, Baxter came. When he went to europe another time, Baxter came. When he comes to the desert of Sin City, Baxter came. Quite the world traveler, that dog. Anyways, nice to see some of the hometown crew, and I'm sure I'll see them once more before they skip town. Looking forward to a good weekend. Thanks for reading.


-Alex

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A shootout, a stripping chef, and Love.

Date: Mon, Jun 16, 2008 Professional Internet Live

My apologies for the lack of updates; I'm lazy, and am also trying to do a lot of stuff out here that is off-PC, so haven't dedicated much time to sitting and writing. Anyways, I know everyone has mentioned the shootout and recent Vegas happenings, so I figured a trip report was in order of the recent sin city highlights. Let's see...

Early last week, I decided to play the $1,500 No limit hold em shootout, event #17 of the world series of poker. My housemates didn't tell me that they were going to register for the event the night before, so, I rushed to the registration desk at 11:30am for the noon start time for the event that was capped at 1,000 entrees. I registered and the lady said that there were 10 spots left in the tournament. Phew.

For those of you that do not know how a shootout works, unlike a standard no limit freezeout, where players get eliminated and tables merge together as the field shrinks, you have to win your table to advance to the next round of this tournament. Effectively, it's a series of winner-take-all sit and gos.

My first table was super soft. Two to my right was Lee Markholt, recent WPT champion, but beyond that I recognized no one and the play was extremely weak. I knew that I had to take all the chips at the table, so I started out with a very aggressive gameplan to capitalize on the tight, weak play. I think I ran a 35% VPIP (voluntarily put money in the pot; essentially, played really lose) with a 30% preflop raise % 10-7 handed. I simply did not let up on my table, hitting hands and keeping the pressure on when I didn't hit with bluff raising, squeezes, etc... no one was playing back at me so I had no reason to slow down. Finally, the really enjoyable part of the table was getting involved with Lee Markholt for stacks. After a recent squeeze where he flat called a raise and folded to my 3-bet-squeeze behind, he made a comment along the lines of, "It must be sooooo easy for you. Just raise raise raise. Some people's ranges are like this (showing narrowly spaced-apart hand motions). YOUR range, is like THIS (Spreading his arms out wide). I merely smiled and raked in another pot before he soon open completed his small blind, and I checked with T3o in the BB. On a flop of Q32r, he check/called 125 at blinds 50/100. The turn was the king of spades, putting out draws with the Queen of spades, and Lee donked 300 something at me. I called the bet expecting him to donk at me with a pretty wide range of hands that connected with the turn, or air cause he was pissed off at me. The river was a ten. Shipit. He led 600, and, without realizing it, I muttered "this would be the nittiest call" under my breath, only for Lee to hear the comment unintentionally. Debating between calling and raising, I opted to set Lee all in, and I jammed (by the way, I would've opted to call because I didn't expect lee to call with worse too often, but in the end figured that he could donk it up and that there was thin value in the move if nothing else given the structure and dynamic thus far). He turns to me, and repeats what I said. Crap, he heard me. He tanks and tanks, and says "this would be an interesting spot to bluff. only way you could have me though is if you rivered that ten". He decides after a few minutes to call all in anyways with K5o, for top pair no kicker, despite having assessed the situation perfectly after his expert flop float. Way to go. He wouldn't sign my copy of the cardplayer magazine with his picture on the cover, either. So lame.

I cruised through this table, stacking at least half of the 10 players, and got heads up after about 3.5 hours with a big nit that outlasted the rest of the table with his nitness and well timed picking up of aa/kk. I made a biggish call against this player heads up when I had all of the chips anyways. He commented about knowing how he'd have to make a move to get some chips for the uphill battle, so that made it easier for me to pick him off. I checked the bb with J6o after his SB complete, and we checked a flop of A94. On a turn 6, I led and he called. On a queen river, I checked and he bet roughly around pot, which was probably 1500ish. I tanked and decided that this guy basically never had an ace or a queen, so unless he decided to turn a random 9 into a bluff/thin bet, that no made hand really made sense, so, sticking with my "when in doubt, call" philosophy, I called the river bet, and he wrapped the table, said "nice call", and mucked 87o faceup, and my 4th pair is good for most of the rest of his stack, and the match was over on the next hand.

Round 2:

It was a solid 5 hours until the start of round two, because we had to wait for all 100 tables of the 1st round to finish in order to advance. Finally, a 9pm start kicked off round 2 of the shootout. This table was definitely not as good as the first table, with Noah Boeken and Keith Sexton to my left in addition to an aggressive swedish player also having position on me, and a Canadian pro a few seats to my right that I knew because he was friends with the canadian shipitholla balla's (inyaface, apathy, bigt).

Early in the match, there were fireworks. With 30k stacks and blinds 3/600 with an ante, mark, the canadian pro, had been splashing around a bit early after we had talked post-1st round about how I had been running over my 1st table. He opened to 1800 and was called by an older man directly to his left. With 99 on the button, I popped it to 8,000 cold. I think I should have flat called in retrospect. Anyways, pretty quickly, Mark shipped in his slightly below 30k starting stack, and the older man folded, when it was back to me. It sucked to be in the spot but given the structure I didn't see how I could fold with 20k in the pot with the slight dynamic going on between us. He knew who I was, and even though I wasn't at all 100% sure that he was responding to that, he had been splashing around a bit and I expected him to flat call/think for at least a few seconds with his big pairs some % of the time. All things considered, I decided to make the call and was up against Mark's AK with tons of overlay; the situation that I was hoping for. No A/K and I doubled early, sending Mark to the rail (sorry pal). I tried to use this double up to my advantage to run over the table a bit, but with tricky players behind me, I didn't find much help with that, having Noah Boeken flat all of my pf raises and multi way pots frequently. In light of this, I decided to do it the old fashioned way: coolering everyone of course! And so it began. I stacked Keith Sexton when we both flopped overpairs, AA>JJ. He wouldn't shake my hand :( I busted another random player when I flopped middle pair and the nut flush draw with A7ss and turned the nuts, when he open jammed his stack into me. Yay. Soon thereafter, I busted Noah Boeken with KK beating AQ on a Q high flop. Basically, it all fell my way at the table, coolering the tougher competition and getting shorthanded with nits. I got three handed with a cute blonde and a chatty southerner. The blonde was a big nit that pretty much telegraphed her hands constantly until we got heads up, and the southerner talked and talked and talked about everything, and when he didn't have something to say, he'd stare you down when in a pot with you. I used his nitness to my advantage when I chose this shorthanded situation to turn up the heat. One funny hand we played:

He completed his sb and I checked 93o in the bb. The flop was 6 2 2 and he check/called my flop bet. The turn was a ten and he check/called again. The river was an ace, and he checked, I thought for a second and bet about 2/3 pot, which for some reason, he viewed as a huge overbet, and he went into the tank. I tried to stay still and stare at the board while he hmmmd and hawed over his big river decision. He said something like "I don't think you've put me on a hand, I think you're just throwing chips into the pot". He was partially right, I simply didn't feel he called down 3 streets with like any hand he had there, and he would've likely check/raised the turn or led the river if he had a deuce from the way he was playing, and he certainly didn't have any pocket pair or ace in his hand, so I basically was very confident that I could get him off of virtually any of his holdings. I'm not sure how right I was, or how truthful he was, because he said "I have king high; I feel it in my bones that I'm good here". And, after much thought and more chit chat about what I could have, he threw his hand away and I took in a nice sized pot with my 9 high. Yay.

I chipped away at them before Michelle limped the button and the chatty southerner shipped in 25 or 30 big blinds with A2o out of the small blind, to be called by the buttons A4o. He flopped a deuce, but she rivered a wheel, and that was that; me and my cute older blonde opponent were heads up for the final table spot, me with about a 2:1 chip lead and what I felt to be the clear skill advantage.

I'm not sure if this was done on purpose or not, but Michelle John actually played a very good style against me heads up. Out of the blue, she went wild. On a checked down board of 6789T, she fired 50k into a 7k pot. I was shocked, she hadn't done anything like that. A couple of flop stabs that were 4x the pot, and soon I realized; she wasn't overplaying big hands, she was bluffing big and forcing me to have a hand to put money in. This is of course a very high variance style, but while the player with the skill edge is trying to play small ball, this is a very effective style to play with and reduce my edge. I had to pick up a hand against her, but not before I confirmed what she was up to. With blinds at 1500/3k with an ante, she opened to 9,000 and I reraised the bb with 92o to 26,000. She called fairly quickly. At this point, I knew michelle pretty well and knew that she'd auto ship any hand that she felt was strong enough to get it in with preflop, and would pretty quickly fold anything that was in her garbage range, so she had to have a hand somewhere in the middle, though I wasn't entirely sure what that was. I saw her make a big call to an all in against a somewhat erratic player with AK high on a low flop, but much earlier in the round and with much less at stake. On a 5 3 3 flop, I open shipped my chips in, setting Michelle all in after he call of my preflop 3-bet. She laid back in her chair and said, "are you pulling my own move on me?" Yes Michelle, I realize what you are now doing, and yes, I'm pulling your own move on you. After anothr minute or so, she mucked her cards, saying she folded a small pair, which had to be 44 or 22. ship the big pot. At this point, I had her a bit better than 2:1 again, and picked up T9o and checked the BB after her SB complete. On a flop of Q T 4, I check/raised michelle all in and she made the call with Q6o. Damn it, she overbets these spots with a confirmed nothing, and now coolered me...crap. "9 ball!" I cried out, and sure enough, I binked a 9 on the turn and locked up the 10 seat at a World series of poker Final table. Ship. it.

By this time, I was way over tired, and at 4am, after a long day of matches, I went home to try and rest up. I barely slept 3 hours that night, and spent equally as long staring at the mirror. A bit after noon, Rob (Bobbofitos) and I drove down to the Rio to have lunch with 2+2 mod TT pre-FT. I had gotten a lot of texts from the Deucescracked team saying that they would be there to sweat, and was feeling good about my edge at a table that now played more like what was effectively a $330,000 sit and go. I ate what I could, said my goodbyes after what was a very pleasant lunch with the two of them, and took off on the long walk from the grille to the poker room. I put on my head phones and blasted Nelly's "On the grind" all the way down. I was more nervous that basically any other poker situation I'd been in in recent memory. This bracelet was mine.

I got to the table and found out that the final table was being covered in the main observer area where everyone could kind of walk by and see the action. The table was tougher than the first two, but still with some very weak play going on. Matt Gianetti (hazards21, a good 10/20 regular on stars), and sbrounder, a solid mtt pro, were at the table, along with another known but slightly donkish online mtter and a russian cash game professional. Gianetti was clearly the best overall at the table, but given the tournament structure, probably didn't have too much of an edge on me given my sit and go experience. Krevchenko, the russian, came after everyone early and went pretty crazy, bet/calling a preflop raised with 86cc and sub-50bbish stacks, and floating a King high flop out of position with a flopped gutterball straight draw. He of course rivered it and amassed a lot of chips just with bullying and taking down the blinds and antes, which were worth a lot from the get-go. I tried one unsuccessful squeeze on him, but other than that, really tried to stay tight early given the payout adjustments that now had to be factored in for the final table.

A bit into the table, I picked up AQ against Krevchenko and flat called one of his frequent preflop raises, with the big blind coming along. The flop came AKx, and I flat called Krevchenko's flop bet. On a blank turn, krevchenko led for about 110,000 and I jammed for about 400,000 more. He counted out the chips and didn't take long to call, flipping up ATo. The river bricked and I was up to about 1.7 million in chips from our million-chip starting stacks. I tried to find profitable spots to open pots but still had to stay pretty tight throughout the early part of the tournament. I was 2nd in chips after the first break, and feeling good.

After we sat back down, the first hand brought my rise and fall. A kid that was not particularly good at all, playing scared money, opened the small blind at 15k/30k/ante3000 to 90k, and I made it 310,000 to go with AKo. He INSTANTLY shipped it in for roughly 700,000 more, and, after counting out my chips, and realizing that, with this pot I'd have roughly 1/4 of the chips in play 9 handed, made the call happily. I was shown his AJ. Nice insta shove, kid. He bricked the flop, but an ugly looking jack on the turn, and another on the river, was like a huge blow to my stomach. I turned around, barely able to look at the table anymore, and realizing that my run at a WSOP win was quickly slipping from my clutches. I was down to 600k and a lot of work to do. After the new york kid went apeshit on his turn spike, I regained composure and sat back down to the grind. I finally picked up beautiful looking JJ under the gun, and made it 100k, already knowing I'd be going with this hand for what remained of my tournament life. I was reraised to 300k by a young kid in middle position, and shipped the rest in. I was up against QQ and got up ready to head for the rail. "Where's the jack this time?" I asked sarcastically, and when none showed up, I was sent packing in 9th place/1000 for a very disappointing, but still very cool $10,000 cash. I was consoled by friends and the Deucescracked executive team, and headed out of the rio as soon as possible to unwind from a very stressful couple of tournament days. On the bright side, I was the first deucescracked coach to ship a final table, and second 2+2 moderator to do so ever, so those were some cool highlights to be a part of. Below is some of the press I got during the tournament, so if you want to read a couple of random updates/see a couple of pictures, here it is: http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2008-world-series-of-poker/event-17-1500-nlhe-shootout/id54585.htm


I didn't play poker for the next several days, and really just needed to unwind after the way the final table played out. It was very tilting, but keeping my composure about it now is very gratifying, officially being a professional at this point, and knowing I have to get over stuff like that to succeed long term in this game.

The next day, I woke up to some news that we had a personal chef coming over to ask us about what food we like, and to prepare a few meals for us. Apparently, some of the boys in the house met our lovely chef at her 2nd job as a Rhino dancer while indulging in some of her lap-artistry (yeah, she's a stripper), and found out about her cooking experience. The first meal was salmon, rice pilaf, caesar salad and spinach was was very very good, and it was followed by spicy meatloaf, also a very good dish. I think we have a winner of a chef. And it would only be proper of us to go visit her at work and show our support.

The other night I got a phone call from Todd (bigt/snoop Todd) who mentioned that there was an extra ticket to the Cirque de Solel show "Love" at the Mirage that night, and invited me to go with him, Alan "The usher" Sass and his girlfriend, and Lefort. The show was fabulous. I've heard not quite as good as some of the other Cirque shows, but given that it was my first one, I very much enjoyed the artistry and the whole thing was really well done in my opinion. It was a very enjoyable experience. We went over to Social House at Treasure Island right after, which is a late night sushi/sake place. We got to go over some higher stakes cash game hands that todd and lefort had played, and hearing and indulging with everyone at the table on poker strategy was a rare treat for me. I do spend a lot of time with them but being able to discuss and immerse in strategy with them always keeps me thinking on a higher level. They really break down hands incredibly well and are very comfortable thinking through the necessary thought processes to succeed in tough no limit hold em cash games. Todd being a top nl cash player really puts the game into perspective well, and keeping up with them in strat discussion is a very cool experience, and keeps me at what I feel is an emerging world class thought process and approach to the game as I continue my development as a player, teacher, and student of the game.

After dropping a cool $550 on a late night sushi meal for the 5 of us, we headed back to the ranch (their mansion) and hung out for a bit, relaxed post-outing, and a bit after 330am, I decided to head home.


With many ups, downs and fun experiences, it was certainly a fun week overall. Hopefully, I'll be back to claim my world series bracelet, and check out the rest of those awesome cirque shows while I'm at it. That's about it for now, thanks for reading.


-Alex


Oh, and I played some random tournaments online today for about an hour and a half session... +1500

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