Sorry for the lack of updates...Vegas has been tons of fun in every way besides poker-related, and that doesn't lend itself well to frequent blog entries.

So I made day 2 of the Main Event. I play on Day 2b (Wednesday) and will start with just over 42k at blinds of 250/500-50. Follow me on twitter if you want to see my progress through the tourney.

My starting table was about average: 4 donks, 3 solid/aggro younger guys, and one semi-aggro/semi-solid guy. The only person who really gave me trouble though was one of the solid/aggro younger guys named Scott who was sitting 3 to my left. He 3b *tons* both in & OOP, which put lots of pressure on me but IMO isn't a very good strategy when there are tons of donks trying to see flops with hands that are often dominated.

One hand in particular stands out: a spazz-tastic / spewy donk was moved two to my right and opened to 750 from MP at 150/300 blinds. Solid guy to my right called, and I called from the hijack seat with KQo; Scott 3b to 3400 from the SB, the original raiser called, guy to my right folded, and I reluctantly folded my hand too. This is the absolute top of my folding range in position, and had I known that Scott was 3-betting with as wide a range as I later realized there's no chance I'm folding here.

Flop was Q54r, and Scott checked. Spazz donk insta-jams allin for ~12k into this ~8500 chip pot, and Scott tanks, verbally going through his thought process and about how this is such a tough spot but he doesn't think the guy jams a queen here...before finally calling with 77. Donk tables J5ss, and Scott's pair holds. Honestly though, WTF is he doing 3-betting a hand like 77 OOP in a super-deepstacked tourney like the Main Event with solid players in position to him? 3-betting 77 there is flat-out bad IMO.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited to jump back into the fray on Wednesday. My friends & roommates playing yesterday all made it to Day 2 as well, so hopefully we can put up some good results this year.

In other news, my skydiving / wind tunnel suit finally arrived about two weeks back, and I've been itching to test it out ever since. I came really close to wearing it to the Main Event (with the helmet, of course), but decided to go incognito by wearing a real suit instead. It's nice to not get insta-recognized as a standard internet kid...nobody suspects the young guy in a suit!

Credit card roulette is a staple of any poker trip. Here's a simple explanation of the game for those of you unaware of this practice (my parents):

Social lunches and dinners among poker players are very common, but it's always difficult to split up the bill when dining out with a medium to large group. Even with 2-3 people it's always easier to just flip for the bill. So to simplify things when the bill comes (and to add a bit of excitement to the meal's conclusion), everyone gives one credit card to the waiter who is then instructed to shuffle them behind his back. Once shuffled, the waiter is asked to remove one card at a time and place it on the table; the owner of the final card in the waiter's hands pays the full bill.

Like any good game, many variations have surfaced to satisfy our need to randomize the selection of the payee in different ways. Coin flipping tournaments, betting on the number of chips in a selected person's pocket, and drafting numbers 0-9 for the Xth digit of the serial number on a randomly chosen $100 bill have all worked in the past, but something even better has now surfaced: the iPhone Credit Card Roulette app.

My buddy JonnyCosmo introduced me to this magnificent app after a late-night meal last night. You select the number of players, choosing each from your list contacts, and the phone randomly eliminates one person at a time when you place it face-down on the table. The best part about the app, however, is that it keeps track of everyone's winrate at the game. So after a dozen or so trials, you get to see your freeroll equity and luck analysis. How great is that?








Mad props to Cosmo for this great find in the App Store. And, more importantly, good luck to him today playing shortstack ninja at the final table of Event #11 ($2k NL)!

Just finished day one of my first event (#10): the $2500 half PLH, half PLO. The structure is really good but very strange. We switch games every 9 hands which is great, but the blinds are different for holdem and omaha at each level. So for instance, in L8 the omaha blinds were 250/500 while the holdem blinds were 300/600. This is likely compensation for the fact that omaha pots tend to be bigger, but it gets really confusing when you see the blinds go *down* during the same level.

My table was very soft all day long, with only maybe 2 good players making appearances before busting. Fellow CR pro Lefty2506 started at my table before dumping all his chips to donks. Way to go Jim.

All in all, the field is sick soft and nobody seems to have any clue how to play either game. Awesome!

We start back up tomorrow at 2pm, and hopefully I draw an equally soft table. Check out my twitter feed for more hot brystmar action & other regular tourney/cash game updates during the remainder of my summer in Vegas.

Drove from Chicago to Denver yesterday to hang out with my friends Jenn & Clay on my way out to Vegas. Clay and I are booked for an hour of tunnel time tomorrow, and Jenn's gonna try to join us later in the day for our last session. Should be interesting flying in the tunnel again after doing so much actual skydiving last weekend; flying without a large pack on your back requires some adjustment and is much nicer overall.

Clay and I also decided to throw down for some really nice seats to the Nuggets/Lakers' Game 6. Hopefully the Nuggets win tonight so we can see them clinch the series at home on Friday. Not sure if I've discussed this here yet, but I really hate the Lakers. Almost as much as I hate the Yankees. Almost. And since my Spurs lost in the first round this year (wtf!), I've been converted into a Nugs fan for the remainder of these playoffs.

GO NUGGETS!

I've been on a pretty huge (60k) downswing since returning from Europe a month ago, and I think much of it was due to the karma gods punishing me for posting my +$100k screenshot two blog entries ago. Ups...

Most of this was from two really bad sessions of 10/20 -- despite the games being very, very good. I still need tons of work in the self-control department and at adhering to stop-losses, but I'm working on it. Seriously, I am! The good news is that the majority of my losses were due to running pretty far below expectation, and the better news is that I've refined my game even further to plug a few leaks I discovered during the weeks I took off between big losing days.

I returned to playing full-time again on Tuesday with a marathon 20-hour session during which I didn't even stop to eat. Although the results were positive in the end, this is terrible for my body and it's not something I'm particularly proud of. A big part of working on my emotional control at the tables is taking breaks, so by not doing this I've basically already broken my rules (despite showing profit on the session). Results from this week of play are as follows:



I'd be perfectly happy making $10k/week every week, and I think this is a sustainable goal. Especially considering that these results were achieved despite running -$7k in EV. And now the ugly -- since returning to the USA in April:



Again, most of these losses came at 10/20 and are due to running below expectation. I'm not naive enough to believe there wasn't a decent amount of poor play involved as well, but the thorough review sessions of my play helped me discover these mistakes and adapt my game accordingly. I can't figure out how to get HEM to show EV in its graphs, so you'll have to take me at my word that I ran $51k below expectation over this span. Oh variance, how I love and hate you so.

Since my last blog entry, I've also (finally) become a licensed skydiver. I bought a sweet new helmet (mine's black)


and plan to order a custom suit from Vertical in the very near future. Mine will be tunnel-optimized since I expect to fly the tunnel more than skydive, but it'll work just fine for either. More on this stuff in my next update. It's Friday night and time for a Guinness!

On a scale of 1 to awesome, I rate this one "pretty sweet":

Friday, October 13, 1989 (from the NYT)

The British Boxing Board of Control, meeting in London yesterday, ruled that Tony Wilson could keep his victory over Steve McCarthy on his record, even though Wilson's mother landed the winning blows with her high-heeled shoe in a light-heavyweight bout in Southampton, England, Sept. 21.

The board said it would honor the referee's final decision despite ''the unsatisfactory nature of the ending of this contest.'' A rematch will be held at a different site, under tight security at ringside, and without Minna Wilson present.

In the third round of the fight, for a shot at the British light-heavyweight championship, McCarthy punched Wilson to the mat for an 8-count. Wilson's mother climbed into the ring and started beating McCarthy's head with one of her shoes, opening a large wound, which required hospital treatment and forced McCarthy to retire. Under the rules, the referee gave Wilson the victory.

My ~3 week trip through Europe couldn't have come at a better time: I've been at the top of my game lately and was fortunate enough to book some great results so far this year. But as much as I wanted to keep playing, I knew my mind needed some vacation time, and what better way is there to accomplish that than traveling?

After returning on Thursday, the early part of my weekend was mostly spent reading back up on the game to ensure my head was in the right place before resuming my daily grind; full-time play started back up on Sunday. There were a couple of spots yesterday where I played very poorly (mostly due to rust on the gears), but overall I think I played pretty well. On a side note, it's really disheartening how much tougher the 2/4 - 5/10PLO games have gotten in the past ~2 months; some of those games can be quite bad.

Anyway, I'm happy to report good results from yesterday and today:


Thanks to today's session, I've just crossed the $100k mark for the year:

...which puts me 25% of the way to my goal of 400k for this year. The last number in that snippet ($26k) is the amount of rake I've paid so far in 2009, and it makes me very thankful for rakeback & Supernova benefits. Honestly though guys, we're on the wrong side of this business!

So I'm a little behind the pace for 400k right now, but I plan on putting in a bunch of hands this month to make up for not playing hardly at all for the past ~3wks. Some hands from the past few days:

- Here I run into the top of a very aggressive regular's range; I was surprised he was this strong because I'm usually much farther ahead (vs his range) when the money goes in on the turn.

- Not sure about my postflop play here, but maybe I'm just being results-oriented. Preflop is pretty standard as part of a balanced 4-betting range vs solid/aggro villains like this guy. It just really sucks to run into one of the absolute worst hands I could be up against.

- I tilted this fish pretty bad and got him to stick it in really far behind in this hand. Still have no idea wtf he was doing getting it in with me on the turn there, but as always I do accept donations :)

- This guy berated me in chat for awhile after I stacked him in this hand. How dare I flop well when he flops a draw!

On a final note, my buddy Nate was visiting some friends in DC this weekend and ended up partying a little too hard, as can be seen by the text messages he sent prior to crashing:


Nate also makes his CR debut this Thursday in my first PLO video for CR when we review a session of his at $25PL. Until then, I'm gonna grab a beer for myself and toast to the next 100k!

Here's the direct link if this doesn't work (which is extremely likely since our blog & forum software is total ASS).


Prison Economy Spirals As Price Of Pack Of Cigarettes Exceeds Two Hand Jobs

It's hard for me to express how much I hate our blog & forum software. Ugh....

{CRYOUTUBE v=FdAIMCKK_-w}

As I write this blog entry from my hotel room in Munich, it's quite difficult for me to accept that this ~3 week trip is finally ending...time FLEW by faster than ever. I had a blast traveling with my friends Nate and Nick, and I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. There's nothing quite like traveling to different parts of the world in hopes of expanding your horizons; I'll definitely be back overseas again very soon.

Although I returned to the city center this evening to sit down to my final dinner in Europe, my primary objective for the night was to revisit the Augustiner biergarten. Of all the great beers we "sampled" on our trip, we both agreed that the Augustiner weiss was the best. We're both big fans of hefeweissens in general, but this one is special. The Augustiner is by far the most well-balanced weiss I've ever tasted (they can often be overly sweet) and comes with my highest recommendations if you're ever in Munich.

It's truly disappointing that we can't get much (if anything) in America from this ~700-year-old brewery. Anything from Augustiner is hard enough to find >100mi outside of Munich. And even when a store does carry their beer, I've only ever seen the Helles & Edelstoff brews on the shelves...even in stores near the brewery! No more Augustiner weissbier for me when I get back to the USA, so sad :(

The only places I've found that will sell you a bottle of this liquid deliciousness are the Augustiner restaurants, like the one I visited tonight. Can't bring liquids with me on the plane, so I purchased tomorrow's breakfast instead:


I'm pretty excited that I'll get to sleep in my own bed tomorrow night for the first time in weeks. I saved up a bunch of episodes of 24, Scrubs, Lost, and HSP for the long plane ride tomorrow, but this is all contingent on my having a power outlet in my seat on the plane. My ticket home is still economy, however that might get bumped up to first class again if the economy seats don't have power and I'm not tired.

If you don't know by now I'm talkin' bout Chi-town!

The final leg in my Euro-trip has me staying a week in Moscow with my friend Nick, a former student of mine. This place is very different from the rest of Europe. The Russians here don't seem very friendly to visitors, very few people speak English, and the overall mood in Moscow feels much more somber than anywhere else I've been on this trip. Regardless, I'm having an awesome time touring the famous places with a native speaker and hanging out with Nick & his friends.

We're heading to St. Petersburg tonight for two days, then returning to Moscow late Tuesday evening before I fly back to Munich for one final night in Europe on Wednesday. I'm super excited to see SP -- everything I've heard about that city has been extremely positive, so I'm happy we made time to swing by for a few days.

This trip has been pretty exhausting, but I'm having the time of my life and am eternally grateful to poker for allowing me this amount of personal freedom in my 20s. I've played very little poker in the past 3 weeks and I'm dying to jump back in, so expect more poker-related content in the near future. �´�¾ '��²�¸�´�°�½�¸'�!