Stars finally gives it up. Almost. Fuckers.

How good is it going?

My first cash on a Stars deep field MTT. Thanks fer tha girly chat Matt. Always makes it easier to stay patient.

Why was this a typical Stars experience? I bust jamming KK into A7 and QTo. QT was a shorty I coulda survived. A7 was making an isolation raise so was priced into call me looking for an A. Yeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeeesh. Knew I was dead as soon as I saw two in action before me. Win there and I am top 15 with 40ish left. I have only myself to blame of course.

Anyhooo. Just loving the groove. The beats are back to not bothering me in the least. Not a bad tournament btw. 10k guaranteed at noon. 21k in final pool. 3k chips to go and 15 min levels. Not sure if this is new or Stars' answer to the 5050, but I like it a lot. All that play for only 22 bucks. Except it's on FuckYouStars. So there is that one mitigating factor.

Hope the weekend treats you boyz and girlz well. Gotta go join my EP boards study group. Just like any good KOD apprentice, I gotta go do my homework!

Laytah.

Donkaments and the Donkeys Who Love Them.

Had the best night of poker I've ever played. Better than winning 12k that one time way back when. This was just good ole fashioned fun. Sucked out. CrackedAces like the master, sucked out seemingly at will and ran the table like the cardrack I get to be every once in a while.

Didn't play horribly either.

Best part?

Not this, actually.



Because as much fun as that 1071 bucks was to win, it ended like this!



No, this, which followed about 3 hours later was better.



Much much better. Why? It was two tables open and the IM working as me and mah boy climbed the ladder. That dude got nothing to work with because I was channelling all the blogger good karma big time. I will take little credit for the second run. I played a few good hands and stole like the monkey I am, but was also a major cardrack and delivered some sickening illness to otherwise innocent mouth breathers. Fuck, the two of us almost final tabled this bitch. Try doing that with someone you hang with regularly. No mean feat.

Anyway 1500 bucks later I have to say it. The MWGB does it again. Now do you believe?

As always a sincere thanks to all who railed. By the end I was having more fun chatting that second push than actually playing it. And look how it ends! If not for that little "Fuck you, you greedy twat!" it woulda been back-to-back final tables in one night!

Next time?

Laytah.

In View but not In Hand.

Congrats to mah roomie! What can you say about a guy who successfully satellites to the WSOP ME in back to back years. That amazing feat speaks for itself. Kuh-huDoze 55, kudos.

Wish I was joining you down there, no doubt. Came close too; playing the FT 100 seat guarantee (139 actually). Climbed the ladder in my standard way middle to below middle of the pack the whole way, restealing a couple of times, connecting with the flop a few and getting a very fair (but by no means generous) smattering of premiums through 5 hours of play. I made two mistakes (originally I thought three, but I have run over the hands and really would say that folding to the reraise late with a small PP was right given the raiser). I tilt-called a shorty push with 33 to run into 99 and cost me a third of my stack way too late to be doing things like that when I didnt need the fight. Had been blown off two hands for 4k just prior and didnt want to see another 2k raise go bye-bye. Yeesh.

The conditions I was playing under had something to do with it: no air-conditioning and all three kids in the room at the time making a SHITload of noise. It is what it was; a very costly decision made in haste and stress. An orbit later I picked up AA and doubled with it. Had I not squandered those chips I would've been in excellent shape for the final run. Out in the three hundreds I think out of 3338 original donkeys. My high water mark was T20k for 190th/400, so it's not that I ever cracked the promised land, but still a very solid run in yet another deep field, big buyin MTT. I think I outlasted all the brethren, but in the end for naught. Ran J7o on the button into AA in the BB on my fourth position steal in 5 orbits. GG me. Really. Pretty damn good game.

But not without room for improvement.

Of course I can't get it out of my head. I was in such a positive frame of mind for most of that MTT; didnt bug me in the least that I ran the whole time in the middle to just below middle of the pack - that is my style. Patient, stealy, occasionally restealy, and willing to shove the draw. I am getting in the habit now of early trying to limp almost anything in position to look for a miracle flop. It's pretty fun and has been working well. I credit Chad for the inspiration but of course I don't pretend to do it nearly as well.

Downside: heartbreakingly close to an ME seat but for naught.
Upside: my MTT game is heating up again. I will go out on a limb and request the MWGB send me a decent Jordanesque style score. I'm due. And *cough, cough* I save lives for a living. If I don't deserve good treatment from the FT servers, which of you degenerates do?

Laytah.

Edit: 66th of 1400 and change in the 19k tonight. Yeah yeah donked the 50-50 and MATH...no multi-tabling from here on in for a week or two until I get used to playing period. Still, MWGB is clearly on the case. Top ten soooooooooooooon.

[Vague and Troubled] Remembrances of Things Past

I want to begin by thanking Falstaff for caring enough about the group to keep the fire burning. I sincerely mean that. Although I thought the Orleans was a hole, and the MTT structure the worst I can recall ever playing (live or online), a fact is a fact: our grinning cherub is a hell of a guy. And here is an undeniable fact: I had a shitload more fun this year than last. In fact, I had a blast. It was all-round even better than anticipated. It was a little less formal, a little smaller and more knowable [although WTF do I know, I've only been to two of these things]. I spent more time with guys I specifically went to meet and hang with, and the previously unknown to me proved just as interesting as I'd hoped. Vegas disappointed only in monetary returns with me down about 600 (including my 550 Venetian buyin). Considering I played primarily 2/5 for the first time in my life, I am not heart-broken over this. I also discovered a creative accounting method in which my online has been restocked to let me play without BR pressure again. Win/Win. [Ahem...cough, cough...gentlemen, if you haven't yet transferred, you should be aware that almost all others have...cough, cough].

Taking a step back I want to point out that my first observation is no slag on the truly miraculous organizational job April did the year before because that remains a tour de force for all of us to marvel at. I would know; I can't organize shit. Hell it amazes me I'm able to dress myself and get to work on time on any given day. [In point of fact I have more stained black CK boxer briefs and wrinkled Brooks Bros. dress shirts sitting around this would-be bachellor pad than I know what to do with [what do you mean use the laundramat twenty feet from my door?]. Also, in a spirit of frankness, I'll allow I am ALWAYS late for work - the only consolation being that I am now The Man and the clock don't start till I hit the deck. So anyway, I don't think I even thought to say it last year, but April if you read this, just know that I appreciate your efforts for the first bloggah gettogethah I ever went to.

Now the return engagement was a mirror up to myself both as a person and a player that I could not get anywhere else.

I played a better, deeper game than a year ago and tried out new styles at the cash tables [with variable degrees of success of course]. I lost a huge pot to Penner; a guy I don't know well, but who seems very cool. I lost this hand by deciding to make a big move and put him to decisions every stage of the way. These were big bets relative to our 1/2 table with the final pot ending up around 700 bucks. I agree totally with Hoy and Don that I didn't have to play that hand and had two opps to chuck cheaply. I had just decided that I wanted to try a move with a big but vulnerable hand [top two on an all club A 2 3 flop]. I was trying to fold out the better hands. Unfortunately he was sitting on 45d in position and made a great call (actually an overpush on my big reraise, but small enough that I called 150 to win 700ish - may have number slightly wrong, but the concept is right). I think the only two hands I don't fold out with my reraise are the flopped flush and flopped straight and maybe top set, and in each of those cases I still have small outs to take it down. That hand was actually a great experience, despite being a fight I didn't have to fight. I've taken a bunch of perspectives away from it and turned over a bunch of times. What I really like is that I am the kind of guy who is capable of making a move like that, whether or not it worked out. And I also like that I didnt spew like a tiltowheel afterwards. Next hand Chad's 9To outdraws my TT once I failed to fire him out on the turn. Burned but still no tilt. I walked, smoked, chatted and laughed with Fuel, who told a hilarious story of donk on donk violence at his 5/10 table and by the time I came back I was ready to grind. I finished with 500+ [for a net 1 and change]. And that is definite progress in both play and the metagame for a tight/weaky from a year ago. Cliche, but I am definitely from the "defeat is a better instructor" school, and so it was.

On the personal front, I've realized that I flat out enjoy hanging with our crew. Whether it's observing each others annoying habits [ie. Fuel nearly killing me and an entire 5/10 table with a mustard gas anal expulsion that was rivaled only by my nuking of our Bellagio room when I forgot to close the door on exit], hanging for hours in between the games to eat, shoot the shit or shop for purses [yeah, yeah for our girls of course. they didn't have my colors] it's become a totally dependable expectation that you go to Vegoose and you will have fun. Especially if you get to stack those bastardos (I'm thinking of you smokkee and blinders: that was quite the war of attrition you two had going).

I've also realized I'm getting too fucking fat. You guys were sweet about it, but it's your friends who don't see for you a while who really tell it like it is. When Waffles thinks you're a fat bastard, you are. If only there were some way to reverse this!

Yeah I mean a way which didnt involve not eating breakfast twice a day or relocating the gym.

Whadddevah.

So much more to say, but it's 1 am and I have a long, long day tomorrow. Raveen, brotha, shoulda been there pussy. I went to a Caribbean med school. It's all about the honeys!

Laytah [In which episode I will reveal the details of how to bitchslap a poker room TD, explain why Fuel hates my mancare products with such a passion, and reveal at long last the secret to Chad's success at the cash table - hint: unsuited disconnectors]

Bloggah nails WSOP Part 1 (Hopefully)...aka Venus plays hard to get, but I will pin her down...aka I get a Lovable Newfie Roomate

Highlight of the trip? Hoy made the money in the WSOP 6-max. I talked to him on the phone on as he prepared to leave and I was totally struck by the confidence in his voice. He knew he was going to do it. Amazing stuff.

And me? Having a lot of fun fucking around but so far I’m down $400 on Roulette. I think my brief tenure as a semi-pro wheel spinner has reached its end.

On the harrowing plane ride into LV/NE these two crazed and talkative ovarian fossils I was wedged between convinced me I would definitely win at slots if I played Megabucks or Wheel of Fortune three times.

God I hate old people.

Anyhoo.

Out my buy-in from the Venetian $550. Took a trip to Tiltsville way early when a calling station tried to donate half his stack in a hunt for a spade. Sadly the universe rewarded this poor grasp on math and circumstance. I then tilt-called Fuel’s nut flush river re-raise with the third nut flush and short. It was interesting: I took a look a him and thought, “Fuck, he’s holding the nuts.” Regrettably that insight was followed by, “I call”. Mmmph. Pretty poor play after that: T/W.

Fuel, Chad, Don and Weak all demonstrated far madder skillz than I, but I will make up for that tomorrow. First day jitters I guess, but it ain’t all bad news.

Up my buy-in playing 2-5 at the Mirage with a table full of live maniacs playing 7-To like it was the stone cole nubs. Would have stacked a shorty to add to it, but QQ on an all low flop will invariably weep in the face of A8c.

The most interesting thing about this trip is rooming with Fuel. XTna: Not too worry, I have everything under control. Despite his chemical weapon (gas bomb) assault on the Venetian 5-10 table we were observing, and his total mockery of my newfound chubbiness [and his total mockery of my beloved men’s facial care products], it turns out he’s good company. Within our larger community some of us end up knowing each other better than others, and this maniac certainly falls within that ring of guys I look to waste my time with online. It is a little amazing how spot on blogging seems to be about predicting whether you will get along with someone. On the face of it, many of us don’t seem to have a lot in common, but every time I meet the lot of you, I come away thinking the experience was well worth the trip.

Nonetheless, in the immortal words of Chad:

Give me money Bitch!

Time to go lay waste to something myself.

Laytah.

Westbound and down. Eighteen Wheels A Rollin...

Cya boyz & girls in 24 hours.

Vegas Redux. Comin in with a big chunk of change. Come by and outwit me for it.

And for fucks sake, think good thoughts for me.

Hasta luego fuckers, and for those of you not coming; SHAME!

Next stop, final table?