Edit: Somethings wrong w the blog software and it wont allow me to make paragraph breaks. I'm gonna try to sort this out.

Man, I'm such a bad blogger :(

I've been on the road pretty much nonstop lately. From the end of November until early Dec, I stayed with my girlfriend in Philadelphia. I hadn't seen a ton of her lately, and she's been going through some tough times, so it was nice to spend 5 days or so with her and just hang out and talk a lot. While in Philly, we went out to my favorite restaurant in the world, called Buddakhan which is just so freakin good it blows my mind. If you're ever there, try the Edamame Ravioli and the Wasabi Mashed Potatoes. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm :)

After Philly, I took the train over to Atlantic City for a couple of days. I have no clue really why I wanted to go to AC....there was a $500 buyin 6max tourney at the Taj Mahal that I kinda wanted to play. I came in 2nd in it last year and kinda wanted to win. All was going well until the following hand.

I had been on a short stack and gone allin 3 straight hands. The third hand I shoved KJ and got called by 55 and won so i had about 7500 chips. So, the very next hand at 150/300/50 blinds, it folded to the button who raised to 800 chips. My read on him was that his small raises often meant big hands. But in a 6max tourney, that can mean a lot of things. This player was probably the most competent player at the table, but was still pretty bad overall. I re-raised Queens in the small blind to 2700, leaving myself 4800 back. The BB thought for prob 2 minutes, before shoving his full 5500 in the middle. I put him on TT or 99. Came back to the button who said "so sick, so sick...", asked me how much I had, then said "let's do this" before shoving his full stack into the middle. I wasn't really sure what to do in this spot. We were still 13 people away from the money and I was def one of the shorter stacks. I find it really hard to fold in this spot, so I called off. It might be a fold in theory as I think the BB shows me KK+ like 80% here. But there's so much in the middle, I suck out 20%, and he shows me AK or QQ some % of the time. I dunno, maybe a tourney player can tell me if it's a fold.

Anyways, there wasn't a whole lot else to do in AC so I found a juice 5/10nl $3000 buyin game. I played in it and was pretty quickly stuck like $2500 before this hand. I have a pretty wretched image, I think, because everyone else at the table is mega weak/passive and I've the only one who's been raising and bluffing. Anyways, UTG+1 limps, MP limps (who is horrible. He earlier sucked out on me when it limped around, I raised KK from the SB to $100, he called in position. Flop came J35, I bet, he shoved for 1k, I snap called, he showed 24o and got there.) ANYWAYS, onto this hand...

Two limps, I bump Jh9h to $65 on the button. Both limpers call. Flop is AT8 with a backdoor heart draw. Both check to me and even with a bad image, this is a good flop to c-bet. I bet $120, and the BB pretty quickly checkraises to $320. The BB I think is a live pro and realizes that my range is wide, so I know he doesn't necessarily need a set/2pr here. I think he can have as little as AJ, or also maybe something QJ/KQ. I decide to peel one because we're about $2500 deep. The turn is a very interesting 5h, adding a flush draw to my hand. The UTG+1 limper fires out $600. I'm really torn between calling and raising here. But ultimately it came down to that his hand was too random, his bet too small (2/3 pot), and the fact that my image was poor. if I had a squeaky clean I would've raised here as I could prob get him to fold A8, but I didn't think this guy would fold T8 to me. So I called and the river was a very interesting Ace of Hearts, pairing the ace. He immediately goes allin for $1500 or so. I mean he didn't even think about it. It was just a shitty spot, but the pot was huge, I was getting better than 2:1. I also thought that if he had 88 or TT, the ace would've actually made him think because his boat was sort of a counterfeited boat and live pros are super weak. So, I figured his most likely hand was AK and called (not that his hand mattered, I pretty much have to call here.) He had AQ and I dragged the almost 5k pot.

The next day I flew to Chicago. We're having some meetings out here which is tight and then on Tuesday the whole CR team flies to Vegas for more meetings and the Bellagio 5 Diamond. I'm definitely looking forward to that and I bet it's going to be a great time.

Welll, Taylor and I are about to eat some lunch and watch some Lamont Jordan. Later yalls.

Oh, and ps, I never bet sports but the line on today's Steelers/Pats game was too good to pass up. Tay and I bet $400 on the Steelers at 5:1. Here's hoping for the best! Should be fun to watch the game.

Ezra