Well we went to the Rio and got the dvd player all set up. The booth is looking pretty sharp, I believe Ezra or Trevrob have pics in their blog. Ran into basspoet on the way back to the booth from lunch and we talked for a minute. His face was about chest level for me. Later on we got a massive pile of boxes filled with fortune cookies delivered to the booth. The cookies are actually pretty decent.....but there are 25,000 of them (with that many more on the way). Here's abut 1/4 of the cookies in the front entry way of the house:

Not much else happened, we've been trying to get a video working on the TVs with better quality for the picture. We cam home later and Fishingmonk made some really good hamburgers and brats on the grill. We were all somewhat tired and played sme Cake poker. Ezra busted someone's BR playing HU at 5/10 while we watched.

I played some Wii and did pretty well on Mario Kart, but not so great on Smash Brothers (Andrew beat my ass).

Updates to come later...

Vide Of The Day:

The Fugees - Ready Or Not

Well I touched down in vegas around 4:30pm local time yesterday and was picked up by Mike (Fishingmonk on CR), Mike (cecil on CR) , and Ezra (Ezra on CR). We proceeded to go do a little shopping at Target for a router and some other basic stuff. We then wen't to a grocery store, now I wouldn't normally talk about grocery shopping, because it's usually pretty boring. This time was different.

We did our normal shopping and when we were waiting in line all of a sudden the overwhelming smell of urine (or just a port-a-potty if that helps) swept over us. We all looked around and couldn't figure out what it was, fishingmonk spotted the source. A younger looking woman (late 20's probably) with tatterred clothes (about 3-4 layers from the looks of it) had just walked by. I felt bad for her (and for my nose) because she seriously had a stink radius of about 10-15 feet in any direction. She went off somewhere and we got into a line that had just been opened.

So we're putting the groceries on the conveyor belt and just when we are about through emptying the cart.....the smell returns. Luckily for myself and Mike (cecil) we could move to the end of the line where Mike (fishingmonk) was already bagging the groceries. We could still smell her, but just enough to make you want to dry heave.

Ezra, however, was not as fortunate. He had to stay back and pay for the groceries directly in the eye of the stink storm, luckily fishingmonk is a pretty fast grocery bagger and we were out of there before any permanent damage was done.

Later we went to Outback Steakhouse and the only really interesting thing(s) were that when the waiter first came to our table he was going in and out of a fake Australian accent (which was pretty bad). Then later after he dropped it, Ezra had to return some soup because it had bacon (pork) on the top. When the waiter returned with the new soup Ezra said "This looks yummy" and the waiter instantly giggled to himself (not a good sign in my book). Other than that the meal was fine and we had a good time.

The CR house is nice it's called "The Vintage Village" and has lots of pictures the Rat Pack etc. Definitely will be solid for the summer. The guys here are pretty cool and I think we'll have a good time this summer. Trevrob and Andrew (xthenutsx on CR) showed up later and we hung out for a while (Trevrob is awesome by the way). We have a good house of people in a weird city so far.

P.S. Vegas drivers are terrible, they drive like they're on meth.

Welcome to Vegas.

I leave for vegas today and will be there until the end of the WSOP. It's my first time there, so it should be a lot of fun. I will update my blog throughout the trip.

Sorry for such a small entry, I'll make a decent one when I get there.

Later.

It's weird, I've always done pretty well at sngs and never really done that great at cash. Now I know they are completely different games (sngs are way easier), but I feel like I have a good grasp on both of them. I just never really seem to run all that great at cash. For example I won a couple sngs today, I felt totally in control, and it really wasn't hard at all (not that it should be). The hands I got it in with were usually ahead and all but one held (JJ

One thing about sngs is that you don't really play much postflop, a lot of decisions are really simple push/folds preflop. I think that's the main difference, I think I'm pretty solid HU in sngs playing postflop, but I definitely need to work on my cash postflop play. I don't think I get enough value out of my winning hands.

Anyway this blog is kind of boring, I'll try to keep the poker talk down as much as possible.

Video Of The Day:

Damian Marley - Welcome To Jamrock

I sucked, ran bad and played bad. Kind of glad it's over, too bad we both had to take a loss on it. Gotta grind up the rest of my roll, I think I'll try some FR and play more sngs. Don't really want to go into more details about the stake or what happened, basically I sucked.

Sevendusts new album is awesome. They've been my favorite band since probably Jr. High and untill the last album they were starting to lose me, but now they've had two great releases in a row.

Later.

Song of The Day:

Sevendust - The Past

Not a whole lot to talk about I've had an annoying cold for most of this week and it's really been draining my energy. I haven't gotten in too many hands due to just feeling really tired a lot and I've also been running pretty cold at the tables. I can't seem to hit flops....ever. So it basically comes down to playing board texture and double barrelling against certain players, I haven't really had much to show down so I've had to win most of my money w/o showdown.

Had one day early in the week where I just ran pretty gross having hands where I have a straight and the villain hits his flush, or I'll flop top two with AQs on a AQ5 board and villain has 55. Nothin too fancy, hopefully I'll get over this cold soon and be able to grind more. I had a lesson with Ray and I think it went well, we're just working on playing a pretty solid style and taking advantage of the bad play at 100nl.

Later.

Video Of The Day:

Filter - Hey Man, Nice Shot

That's the main thing I've taken away from the recent bad run. I went down to 50nl and played a game that I was comfortable with, when you play a style you are comfortable and familiar with your senses are sharper. Your reads are more accurrate and hands start to play themselves.

Now I don't think it was a mistake to start trying a different style, I just think my execution of it was off. You see I hadn't played that many hands of 100nl before the stake, I had played some, but not really enough to feel totally in my element (stacks, bet sizing, styles of play). I hadn't gotten used to the small nuances that make 100nl different from 50nl or 25nl. So when I totally changed my play style and tried to learn it as well as learn the differences in 100nl, I was putting too much on my plate.

I should have gotten "used to the water" if you will, at 100nl and then slowly changed my style to be more optimal. I did run badly, but I was also setting myself up for failure by introducing so many new things at once. What I'm doing now is playing 2 tables at a time at 100nl and just playing solid poker. I'm not trying to hit any specific numbers VPIP/PFR wise, I'm working on adapting to the table dynamics and playing the style I think is most profitable for that table. Also I'm taking a lot more notes than I had been, it's much easier to make decisions when you can take some solid notes, and really observe how people are playing at the level (its much easier with less tables to take good notes).

I put off the lesson this week, I just decided it would be good for this week to kind of get used to 100nl at my own pace and really work on finding the pulse of the limit and see how I fit into it.

I'll keep this more updated.

Later.

Video Of The Day:

Beastie Boys - Intergalactic

Had some issues with my computer yesterday and had to run a lot of scans and check a lot of crap to make sure it wasn't a virus. Due to being paranoid about it, I only got in 800 hands or so at the end of the day. I think I played pretty damn well actually, but ended up down $80. Mostly had situations where really loose bad players were outflopping me pretty hard, lot's of spots where I had to lay down KK and QQ. Another spot where I knew exactly where I was in a hand and had position, I flopped top pair and proceeded to value bet the flop and turn. The flush hit the river, so I checked and he was obviously chasing with Q4 of the suit the whole way down (no pairs or any other draws).

Not much you can do about those spots, I gave him the wrong odds, bet when I had equity, and didn't bet when I had no equity. I feel good about my play lately, just waiting for a breakout session where things go well. Looking to get in a lot of hands in the next few days to make up for some computer issues I've been having.

Video Of The Day:

Every Time I Die - The New Black

Well, the downswing wasn't as much bad luck as I thought (it was still unlucky with the 3BI worth of KKvsAA and the KK<99) Ray was talking to me about me thinking too much, and it made me go back over all of my hands from the past few days.

After reviewing them I found I was taking lines that made play on later streets tougher. I was getting too into the moment and making things a lot tougher on me. So when I stepped back and looked at the hands I found a lot of mistakes and spots where I could have taken lines that play themselves.

So I played about 1k hands after my review, I ran pretty good, but I also played solid. I played my hands for value and didn't try to get too fancy. I found some pretty bad players and was lucky enough to have some good hands against them. I made about 3BI in the 1k hands and I feel like my game is back on track. I'm definitely glad that Ray was tough on me and made me take a hard look at the hands and my play, rather than allowing me to blame everything on running bad.

I won't be posting anymore about badluck etc, sure there are times when you run bad, but I shouldn't care about things that are beyond my control. If I played well and just came up short, then so be it, my goal is to play the best I can at all times.

Ray said a simple thing that is really key to doing well at poker "I play to make my life easier" and that's going to be my mindset at the tables. I'm going to play in a way that makes it so I have as few tough decisions as possible, easy decisions make for more consistent profit.

Take it easy, bitches.

Music Video Of The Day:

Where Da G's - Dizzee Rascal feat Bun B

EDIT: Not gonna turn this into a spot for me to cry. Swings happen. The End

Music Video Of The Day

Everytime I Die - We'rewolf