I'm in Shanghai, and what a cool city it is! Despite it being blistering hot every day, the city is always bustling and its cleaner and more beautiful than ever. I got to see my Grandfather, who was very sick at one point but now he has recovered pretty well. He had bad vision before and has now completely lost it, but everything else is OK, my grandmother is doing well, and their maid seems like a nice and responsible lady so I'm very relieved. One thing I can't STAND about this city, or about China in general is the internet! One of the first things I noticed when I logged onto Chinese internet was that Pokerstars.com and the Pokerstars software is completely blocked in all the hotels I've been in so far. I get this message: Unable to get the latest software version from the server, Error code -2/-83

This is actually okay because as a Full Tilt Pro I believe Pokerstars sucks anyways (well, not really X_X) but when I play on FTP, it lags literally EVERY MINUTE. For those who have been watching me play, you will have noticed me timing out again and again, including 2 notable reraised pots HU vs mastrblastr --;. BLAH, can't wait until I have reliable US broadband again.

On the opposite spectrum of things, one of the best things about traveling all over China is the FOOD. Two in a half weeks ago we were in Zhuhai, and in one of the seafood resteraunts we stumbled upon this little guy:

He was cute until I touched his tail and he snapped at me (fortunately his mouth was bound), so we turned him into this:

Some other delicacies I've tried are snake, bullfrog, numerous different shellfish, wild mushrooms, and tons of weird body parts of animals (pig's ears, pig's tongue, cow's neck, etc.). These were varying in deliciousness, but at least I can say I gave them all a try. The more traditional stuff is great too, my favorites being the correctly made chinese version of sweet and sour fish, and lamb kabob (spiced with Guiyang spices to perfection!). They also tried to make me eat dog meat, but I'd rather jump off a bridge.

In other news, I'm going to Beijing tomorrow! We're leaving by train, and I'm going to go see a volleyball match (I don't yet know who's playing or anything, but it should be fun anyways). I'm going to take tons of pictures of the Olympic village to post here, I can't wait.

I'm also running better at shortstacking 200/400 PLO. Its a pretty wild variance fest, and I caught some lucky breaks recently:

Gussing Gus: www.liquidpoker.net/h/501574

3 way flip: www.liquidpoker.net/h/501573

BEIJING SOON WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

www.liquidpoker.net/hand/hand.php

By charm I really don't mean charm...I hate PLO!

LOL check out this sweet comic of Bruce Lee posted on liquidpoker:

IN OTHER NEWS:

I'm in China right now, not for APPT Macau as most keep assuming, but on a family vacation. We landed in Hong Kong and stayed there for about 3 days. I didn't really get to explore the night life there as it IS a family vacation but I still got to explore the city's sights and foods which was definitely very cool. There are electric trams in the middle of all the roads there--reminds me of San Francisco!

From there we went to Zhuhai, which is a city right next to Macau. Chilled a bit there and got tons of massages and generally just relaxed. My parents' friend is some sort of high ranking government official there, so we got to experience some pretty high quality food and treatment that only a high ranking government official can provide :). We also spent a day in Macau, which ended up not being a good idea when you are traveling with a mother and a younger brother. My dad and I played blackjack for about 4 hours--I blew $11,000 Hong Kong dollars, which, fortunately only translates to under $2000 US. My mom and brother were pretty pissed off at us littered us w/ comments such as, "you go halfway around the world to gamble when you can just do that in Atlantic City or Las Vegas you jackasses!" etc standard, sorry Mom!

The city itself was pretty cool though, with a Wynn, Venetian, MGM, and a bunch of other cool looking Chinese casinos. Since it was a former Portuguese colony, there were 3 languages that were used everywhere: Portuguese, Chinese, and English. This gave me a unique opportunity to learn Chinese and Portuguese at once, but unfortunately I couldnt pronounce most of the Portuguese :(.

Right now we're in Guiyang chilling with my mom's side of the family. We've done a ton of stuff so far including fishing, going to a tea house, and generally just having a good time with relatives we haven't seen in a while. Tomorrow I'm flying off to Shanghai, where its 90 degrees...argh. Hope I can stay indoors!

Every hand I play is like this:

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/493840

or like this:

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/493842

I wanna say I don't mean to bitch, but that would be a straight up lie.

I'm trying to enjoy my trip but all I can do is hold back my urges to throw the TV out the window. FML.

Look at this turtle! I've never met anyone or seen anything as happy as this turtle, yet all he has is his little fresh strawberry. A lot can be learned from this I feel, I'm not sure what though, still working on that part.

Props to Evan McNiff AKA FrinkX for showing me this pic! If everyone were as happy as this turtle the world would be a better place. That's it. That's what we can learn!

So I played a session today:

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/489207

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/489286

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/489317

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/489339

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/489342

Some were pretty standard spots where I ran bad, others where simply LOL. The weird thing is despite running really bad I still feel good about my game as I'm down only 25k today. I think I'm playing well...possibly the best I've played in a while.

As for WSOP updates, I played a total of about 10 events, and cashed in 2. I went really deep in a 3k event, but busted out when someone decided to limp/shove me allin for 40bbs from the small blind into my big blind. The sickest thing is I had made him fold the best hand 3 times before this hand, and he was SO noticeably frustrated when he limped into my BB. When I looked down at AKo i chuckled to myself a bit and made it 4.5x to go. In the blink of an eye he had shoved his stack in w/ J9hh and I followed immediately after shoving in my chips and tabling my AK. The board ran out QJ-x-9-x, with the turn adding insult to injury. A few hands later I reshipped on him with 55 into his 88, and despite hitting a 5 on the turn it was already too late because the flop had come J-8-6 :/.

My Main Event bustout hand was 100% due to my inexperience with live poker. Maya Antonius (Patrik's Soon-to-be Wife) was at my table playing a good TAG game opening a lot in late position into my BB and SB. People behind her were fighting back by calling a lot and I was fighting back by squeezing a lot ^^. So with this dynamic, one of the older/tighter gentlemen who had been doing a lot of random spastic moves such as opening 5x quickly limped UTG. I looked down at QQ and knew immediately it was the nuts based on how I was playing and popped it up 4x. Somehow it folds around to him and he instantly calls. Flop comes out 2-7-7r and I fire quickly once he checks to me. The guy INSTA check-raises me, and I make the call after thinking "If he fires turn, I'm folding."

On an 8 turn he fires huge leaving himself with a little more than half his remaining stack. I looked down at my hand to look at the beautiful ladies one last time before I fold, but as I did so I thought about it a little more. I had been playing very aggressively, and this guy had been doing a lot of weird stuff. I thought maybe he could overplay 99-JJ like this, or perhaps he could've been just flat out bluffing. So vs a range of 99-JJ/air/AA/KK/7x, I decided to try and make a live read to sway my judgement. I glanced at my hand and play with my cards a little and make mucking motions, clearly indicating that I didn't like the spot I was in. Then I asked him, "Will you show if I fold?" to which he replied "Sure...I'll show you either way" and ended it with a nervous chuckle. This swayed my judgement, and I shoved in my whole stack only to get instacalled by J7hh. GG ME.

After talking to one of my horses Corwin Cole about this situation for a while, I realized my read on his mannerisms wasn't accurate enough to sway my judgement--I should've just folded. Oh well...you live and you learn. I' get'em next time!

---------------------------------------------------

On Friday, I'm flying back to the motherland (AKA China) with my parents and brother. We're making stops in Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, Beijing, and Guiyang both for vacation and to visit family. Hopefully we'll be able to get tickets for some Olympic events, but I highly doubt it as we tried to get tickets for the opening ceremonies and couldn't. Before we leave I'm probably going to do one more blog post, and until then hopefully I'll run better!

I haven't updated for a while because I've been crazy busy with WSOP. There were mixed results with a great deal of potential huge cashes as two of my guys (Lyric and Corwin Cole) managed to make final tables. However, they ran slightly bad at their respective final tables, and as tournaments will be tournaments, I ended the series down about 200k in staking. All in all not a terrible experience, but it definitely could have been better ;). In other news, I hit a slight dent in my quest to own $25/50, so I decided to play a lot of $10/20. There are a ton of good players at $10/20, some better than $25/50 I'd say, but also many more TERRIBLE ones I managed to make a lot of money at $10/20 and I really enjoyed it because it was nearly stress free.

Anyways, I don't really want to post a full update now because its 7:31 AM and I'm about to go to bed, but I started a pretty amusing short session just now. I started playing "AlexandraPaul" on FTP and as he was playing hyper-aggressively I thought this would be a good move:

www.liquidpoker.net/hand/hand.php

As you can tell from the chat I posted in the "Comments", I decided to take a stab w/ some conversation. Turns out it didn't go too well!:

Eric Liu: i wasnt really tilted it was a joke
AlexandraPaul: ur halarious
Eric Liu: hilarious*
Eric Liu: ty!
AlexandraPaul: go eat a rice ball
Eric Liu: sorry those are japanese snacks
Eric Liu: you mean to tell me
Eric Liu: to go eat some dogs
AlexandraPaul: you look more like a riceball
AlexandraPaul: in this picture
AlexandraPaul: a fat little asian
AlexandraPaul: is that u?
AlexandraPaul: or someone else
Eric Liu: no thats me :)
AlexandraPaul: oh
AlexandraPaul: man your good looking
Eric Liu: but now my feelings are so hurt
Dealer: Hand #7245046111
Dealer: 40putts has 5 seconds left to act
Dealer: 40putts has timed out
Dealer: Hand #7245046111 has been canceled
Eric Liu: im crying
Eric Liu: seriously

To be fair, I do look pretty terrible in my main picture on the FTP site--need to get that fixed! SOOO after crying in my corner for several minutes, I realized there was a spider so i decided to uncorner myself.

Whilst recovering from momentary arachnephobia, I came back to this:

Eric Liu: throw some more insults my way buddy
Eric Liu: make me laugh!
AlexandraPaul: its not an insult when its the truth
Dealer: Eric Liu wins the pot ($125)
Dealer: Hand #7245057063
AlexandraPaul: you have to pay for white women
Eric Liu: sweet

Oh boy. To the railbird who said "out of line" and got angry at me when I disagreed (guy claimed I was turning on him after he defended me), I'm sorry--guess it really was out of line. Anyways, I thought I'd share this even tho its not that interesting but since I haven't had any good stories to share lately. I hope it was at least a good read. More updates soon, I promise!

So far a lot of my horses have cashed in events, although one ran into some unfortunate hands to knock him out in 25th when he had a very good chance of making the final table in the 1.5k event. However, I have a horse in the 1k rebuy, a well respected pro for a very long time named Lyric. If you guys are around cheer him on :). I also made day 2 in the 2k event so stop by and say hi! I'll give more updates as time goes on.

So after my downswing I grinded a lot of 25/50 online. In about a week and a half I've managed to make 200k. At the peak of my downswing, I was at -1.3 million, so I'm on the slow road to recovery. For those of you who have been asking if I'm ok mentally--I'm fine! I knew what I was getting myself into by playing 200/400 PLO, and now I no longer have the roll to play it. The games were good, I was +EV, thats it. Now I'm on the road to recovery and feeling very confident in my game.

As far as WSOP goes, I will not be accepting any more horses--I have 9 and a half right now, and I hope to play a lot of tournaments myself...going for the bracelet. I know that makes me sound like a fish, but I have dreams too :). If you see me out here, gimme a holla--seriously.

PS A lot of you asked me about the porsche incident. Well, Goncalo being the amazing person he is just brushed it off like it was nothing. So thats fine too.

So lately I've been playing a lot of PLO, mainly in good games with lady marmelade. Unfortunately I've been running bad...today I just dropped 370k as nothing seems to be going right. This brings my downswing to $1 million, and my FTP roll near busto. GG.