I've been hitting the tables hard this last week and can't seem to get over the hump. Even though my green line is above zero, I'm not entirely satisfied with the way I'm playing and I am going to do some heavy hand review to plug some leaks and find some places to amp up my aggression, etc.

It's been pretty fun. I haven't grinded poker hardcore in a long time and putting in 10k hands in a little under a week has been quite an accomplishment, especially considering that I haven't played more than 9 tables simultaneously. That's a lot of hours!

Anyways, I feel pretty good about my PLO game even though my results aren't favorable. 99% of hands are at 100PLO


This week wraps up one of my most favorite times of year, Masters week. Any real golfer can appreciate the skills and the difficulty of Augusta National and probably has the same infatuation with this week as I do. There really is nothing in sports that can match the Sunday roars and drama of Augusta on the Back 9.

Unfortunately I was stuck in traffic traveling back from Ohio and I missed the first half of coverage. While the entire day shaped up to be pretty amazing, I wish I would have gotten to see Tiger's charge live. Despite my disdain for his coldness towards announcers and his demeanor when he isn't playing well, very few athletes can replicate the energy and charge of Tiger. The only other athletes in modern-day that create the same feeling is probably Michael Jordan and sometimes Lebron James. They just take over and you expect something magical to happen.

I was cheering for KJ Choi and Rory entering the day and was pretty disappointed to see a no-name win. He certainly deserved the title and earned every square inch of fabric on that Green Jacket, but I would have preferred to see one of the others win.

I can't remember the last time I saw golf where so many players were playing at such an elite level with their A-game. Adam Scott proved that the long putter was a great decision for him as he sank several clutch putts down the stretch, Jason Day stepped up and birdied 17 and 18 when he needed to, Luke Donald overcame the bad luck of his ball ricocheting off the flag and chipped in to get in the clubhouse lead (at the time), and Geoff Ogilvy shot 31 on the Back 9. Despite leaving a few shots on the course (short putt on 15 and the 3 putt on 12), Tiger still shot a hell of a number and applied the pressure. Unbelievable theater and a Masters that will likely be reflected on as one of the most riveting episodes ever displayed.

Anyways, I hope poker turns around a bit but I'm going to keep hitting the tables and videos hard. I hope everyone else is having a good April thus far. Keep an eye out for some more exciting videos coming soon!

For those of you who don't follow the CR Twitter -- shame on you! You really should follow it as we try very hard to deliver the latest and hottest news as soon as we can. Follow it http://twitter.com/#!/CardRunners

Anyways, we just moved offices and are a little closer to downtown. Suffice to say that our surroundings have been upgraded from the shithole above a McDonalds to a newly-carpeted office with new desks, tons of space, and a break room (hopefully soon).

While this office change may seem a little trivial or meaningless, it really has complimented some other exciting things going on with me that have given me a feeling of a "Fresh Start." The weather seems to finally be turning a corner and with that comes golf and more activities outdoors. I'm contemplating rejoining my Country Club back in Ohio and have my sights set on their club championship. I've finished my taxes for 2010, changed my parking for my car in my building, and just feel motivated and energized and plan to maybe refocus on some poker with some seriousness and discipline.

I know it's dumb for me to set volume goals or to make any solid plans, but I may be increasing/forcing myself to play some more MTTs to improve my results and afford myself more opportunities when the summer rolls around in Vegas. I'd like to pop my WSOP cherry by playing an event or two, ideally doing well enough in those to get some stakers and sell pieces in the Main Event.

This week is also one of my favorite times of year, The Masters. That place is so magical and looks so pretty on TV. They announced that they'll be selling some badges online for next year's tournament and I think I'm going to bite and try to win some tickets in their lottery. I can't really think of another sporting event or destination that I would label as a "see before I die" type place other than Augusta National.

Picks for the tourney:
Nick Watney
KJ Choi
Ian Poulter

Also, I'm on a 3-game win streak in sports betting to wrap up the Final 4. Just enough to keep me wagering :P

I capped off my little Spring Break with a trip down to South Carolina last weekend with two of my good friends to visit another good friend who goes to the Univ of South Carolina. The plan was to play five rounds of golf over the course of the 3 days and escape the blustery chilly weather of Ohio and Chicago.

After a 9 hour drive through Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina we arrived in SC ready to hit the links the following morning. Much to our surprise, the weather was uncooperative and the mercury never spiked over 55ish degrees. To make matters worse, there was precipitation which really adds to both the headaches, anger, and frustrations in golf.

I will save the boredom of my rounds of golf. We played at three collegiate-level courses and two other public tracks. The collegiate courses were pretty awesome. USC's golf course was jaw-droppingly impressive and Clemson's was a real treat as well. The third was Furman which we played in 40 degrees and 20 MPH winds. Not exactly my idea of a great way to spend my Sunday mornings!

Anyways, here's a few snapshots of the trip.

This is my personal favorite. It's my good friend Joe on the first hole of our trip hitting out of the creek! More impressive is that he got the ball in for par

This next picture is Clemson University's 17th hole, designed in the shape of their university's Tiger Paw logo:
Me on the hole:


A neat picture since you can see the ball in mid-air. This is #11 at USC's golf course:

My friend hit his ball in the trees and somehow his ball ended up resting on this branch a few inches off the ground:

Last one of me, only because I piped this drive:
Anyways, I didn't play very well at golf which was a product of winter rust as well as the cold weather. What many non-golfers fail to realize is that when a day is cold and wet, the moisture and temperature impact the distance you can fly a golf ball. This plays a really big role in impacting your golf. If your golf ball is carrying 15% less due to the elements, you're losing anywhere from 20-25 yards off your tee shot and likely another 15-20 yards on your approach shots. Giving up 40 yards in this game is HUGE. In the end, we're all playing the same course and in the same conditions, but it was a mental grind and surpisingly fatiguing to play 90 holes in those conditions in about 60 hours.

Poker this month was a wash. I didn't put in any volume and really lacked any motivation. I'll lose my Supernova status on PokerStars and really dont' care, tbh. It's kinda sad considering that I took a great sense of pride in earning SN but I just haven't been in the mood to play poker and the status just doesn't seem to matter as much to me any more.

I have a few other stories that I'd like to blog about but I'll do those in the next few days. One is related to an incredible observation of human behavior and psychology while the other is related to us moving to a new office earlier today.

Thanks for reading guys!

I'm packing up and gearing up for the second leg of my spring break but I wanted to write a trip report on my journey to the Smoky Mountains last weekend.

A group of my friends and I rented a five bedroom log cabin up in the mountains in Tennessee. The cabin was equipped with some nice TVs, private bathrooms for each bedroom, a pool table, hot tub, and a two-tiered deck that looked over the mountains. Needless to say it was a wonderful getaway from the persistent winds and chilling temperatures of Chicago-land.

After a five hour drive we were given directions to our cabin. We literally drove up a mountain and winded and swerved our way through a few streets to get to our building. We must have been five to seven thousand feet up (though that's pure estimation) and the drive made me both rather dizzy and fairly motion-sick. It took us about 20 minutes to climb from street level up to our cabin and the roads were unpainted and without guardrails. Definitely some fist-clenching moments of apprehension and nerves.



View off our back deck

After settling in the first evening we went out for pizza and had some drinks. Apparently Yeungling is a beer that is not sold in Ohio, so it quickly became the favorite brew of the house. We went to the Mellow Mushroom for dining which unfortunately did not satisfy this spoiled Chicagoan who is accustomed to Lou Malnati's. We ended the night with drinks and billiards/hot-tubbing before tackling the next day.

All the guys except the one who showed up late.

I ended up getting pretty sick during the second day there. I did a pretty intense workout with some housemates and didn't sleep/eat well prior to it. We walked around downtown Galtinburg, TN which is filled with various museums, tourist traps, and rides. Exhaustion and dehydration probably lead me to feel under the weather and it culminated with a nice glutton-filled ice cream binge by me after spending a day in the sun. Empty stomach + 20 oz Coke + ice cream = disaster. I ended up celebrating my St Patty's day with zero alcohol and puking in the toilet. I called it a short night, watched some bball, and went to bed while the rest of our gang battled it out on some Xbox Kinect.

I woke up well-rested Day 3 and realized my NCAA Bracket had gone to shit. Our last trooper of the group had arrived late and we all settled up and went out to breakfast. We then headed to Cave's Cove which is a national park/preserve area that is notorious for its wildlife and preserved buildings/churches. The track is around eleven miles long and it's not uncommon to see dozens of deer, various species of birds and foxes, and the occasional encounter with a bear. Unfortunately 1pm is not the primetime to see anything and we drove through this place and only saw one deer. The deer looked wounded and limping too so if it weren't for its handicap, we probably see nothing but the horses grazing some of the land.

Night 3 was the highlight of the trip - Go Kart Racing! Now I should say that the five guys on this trip with me are all very heavy video gamers. We've stayed friends over the years through Xbox Live and we all have a knack for competition. This made for some great races (and wrecks) on the slick tracks. We have video footage of some of the races which I'll link once the video is produced and uploaded to YouTube, but the highlight is definitely of this one doucher who was throttle boosting his kart. For those unfamiliar, there is a mechanism on a go-kart designed to restrict (or govern) the amount that you can push down on the throttle. If this mechanism is compromised or removed, it can lead to your kart being significantly faster than those who still have the mechanism working. Well, doucher white-trash was all about cheating and made it a point to fist-pump and lift his hands in triumph in the races which he illegally won. Fast forward to the last race of the night and we all had placed a target on his back. We were fortunate that the two kids running the tracks were loving the intensity and they'd give us extra time on the track and also pour extra water on tight turns to encourage and increase the number of spin outs/wrecks/chaos. We collectively wrecked this guy a half dozen times in the final race and completely ignored trying to beat one another.

We spent our fourth and final day there shopping and playing some putt putt. We went to this place called "Hillbilly Golf" which apparently means playing putt putt on the side of a mountain while putting through farm equipment. Pretty cool course that starts with a ride up a hydraulic lift to 300 ft above street level. I ended up winning a little bit of money which negated the money I lost playing pool and made for a fun sweat near the end.

Hillbilly Golfin

Anyways, I'm off to South Carolina for a golf trip with some friends. 5 rounds in 3 days will be pretty brutal but I've been itching to play and the weather in Ohio and Chicago hasn't cooperated. Lots of betting and fun dealer's-choice poker games are sure to be played. Trip report will come as well!

I did a pretty awful job of updating this blog over the last few weeks -- apologies to my readers.

To follow-up on my last blog entry, I finished 18th in the 6-max NLHE event. Unfortunately, the blind structure got a bit ridiculous and we went from 2k/4k/500 blinds up to 5k/10k/1k in the matter of a few levels. This means that chip stacks were nearly cut in half after 2 hours of play which brought a huge element of luck into the outcome. It was pretty disappointing since we had played a great structure up to that point and it was frustrating that variance and Lady Luck played a bigger role as the money became more significant.

I wanted to discuss two specific hands in the late-stages of the tournament that I played that highlights the importance of Villain-Specific Lines:

The first hand was played about ten players short of the bubble. I had played at this table for a good 3-4 hours and the Button on my Big Blind was a young kid who was competent, aggressive, and solid. I had won a huge pot off of him in a three way AK v QQ v AQ hand when I spiked a King and he had chipped back up nicely to the point that he now had me covered. I had bled some chips and whiddled down to around 20 BBs.

We had been joking around about how my big blind was just there for the taking. He called me a nit and I called it the "Alex Soup Kitchen" whenever I posted the BB. TBH I was being dealt absolute garbage in the BB and it just so happened that this kid was an aggressive button.

So fast forward to this hand and I am dealt JJ. He BTN opens and my standard move here is to just reraise. Lots of merits to 3b, I don't need to go over the 3b for value. In this situation, I felt that flatting my BB was best. There were a few elements here that swayed my decision:

a.) He had stolen my BB so my defend range is wider. Also 3b wasn't that common so the fact I flatted shouldn't have raised alarm bells.
b.) His range is wide from button

So I flatted with JJ with the intention of DL/3b-shoving pretty much any flop. The merits behind the donk-lead is that he was clearly an online guy and it would be the first time I took this line. Most online players react with a raise to a DL and it would be a great way to pick up chips if I was careful and smart with my sizing. Fortunately the flop cooperated as well and it came down 9-hi (though irrelevant in this hand IMO). I lead min-bet and he nearly instant-raises me to a pot-sized bet. I tank-shove and he instantly folds face-up with a small suited gapper. A nice non-SD pot to chip-up during a crucial time in the tourney.

The second hand I played was in Day 2. The Chipleader was an older guy who had 750k chips when everyone else in field had fewer than 250k. Blinds were ridic and he was very obviously catching cards.

I got dealt AA and it was his Big Blind. Rather than shove my 7 BB stack, I opted to min-raise. Ordinarily this just looks SUPER strong in a situation where I should clearly be committing my chips or folding, however this guy had so many chips and clearly bought into the whole 'BB discount' mentality. The guy wasn't a competent player and so I could take a fishier line against him. I would not have done this against pretty much any other player in the field. I expected him to defend with ATC and he didn't disappoint. I was able to bet small on flop and then shove turn and pick up a nice pot. He folded J3o on the turn and commented that he was committed due to my min-raise pre.

...for those wondering, these are the type of guys that do (and did) win tournaments.

Played my first live six-max event yesterday and we played down to 36 people and were able to move past the bubble.

$30k to first and I've got about 20bbs. Not the "average" stack but probably the median stack which means I'm in fine shape.

I'm a little sad that I won't be able to play the monstrous Sunday Milly on Stars, which I had planned to do, but I can think of 30k reasons to skip it. Sweat me on Twitter this afternoon if you want to!

http://twitter.com/#!/alexjhuang

I've been pretty horrible about updating my blog but it is fortunately due to being busy with a lot of projects rather than me being tremendously lazy -- so I don't feel as guilty.

Anyways, I found time this past weekend to play the $350 buy-in Chicago Poker Classic event. The event drew 940 runners with a $65k first-prize. An impressive number for a relatively small event.

I hung tough and actually met some CR'ers. Highlight of the tournament was when I had 73cc in the second hand we played. Multi-ways and we see a flop of 4c5cTx. Old woman leads and I flat; we get heads-up. Turn is a 4x and it goes check-check. River is another Ten and she shakes her head and instant-checks. I fire out about 2/3 pot and she beats me into the pot. I show my hand and she tables J8cc to scoop the pot.

I kept my head above water and my stack above average for most the night until an ill-timed 3-bet with 46s against an aggro opener. He lead an A77 flop and I had to fold.

I busted out later with AT when I squeezed 17 BBs from the big blind after a MP open and BTN flat. MP iso-shoves and tables AK and I'm out in 200th ish place.

The next day I grinded some Sunday events and I got fairly deep in the Daily Ninety Grand $55 MTT on Stars. Ironically I busted out in an identical fashion except this time I had AT vs AQ.

I have a few other things I'd like to write about but I don't have the time at the moment.

GL at the tables!

Felt like playing poker today... oops


Atleast I had the discipline to quit...

I apologize if this is a repost, but I've had some requests for this story and I wasn't able to find the detailed write-up that I had published a while ago... so without further adieu, here is how I got tarped as a Division 1 collegiate golfer.

I was entering my 3rd year of my five year program at the Univ of Cincinnati and decided to dedicate myself to walking on to the men's golf team. Collegiate golf had always been a dream and aspiration of mine, but it wasn't a critical element to my college decision. I had earned my way to UC via an academic scholarship in a pretty competitive business program, and I had decided that getting a good degree was more critical than teeing it up with a C-Paw on my bag.

Nonetheless I was constantly monitoring the progress of the team and I utilized some networks to communicate and become friendly with the coach. Unfortunately for me, the program was going through some major turnover and there were several interim coaches. By the time that my third year rolled around and my schedule allowed me to make tryouts, there was a new face at the helm.

There wasn't much time to develop any type of rapport with him and I collected all the information for walk-on tryouts, fees, and assuring that I covered every necessary step to give myself the best shot at making the team. I had worked very hard at my game and had some decent success in summer tournaments and I was looking forward to pitting my game against everyone and seeing if I could compete with D-1 golfers.

Tryouts began with a brief introduction and overview of the rules and expectations of the competitors. There would be 3 rounds played with the possibility of a fourth round, if necessary. The play was stroke play and we were playing on a Greg Norman design layout just outside of Cincinnati, one of the tougher tracks in the Greater Cincinnati area.

Prior to the beginning of the tournament, I had asked the Coach directly what my status would be. I realized that my age/eligibility (entering 3 of 5 years of NCAA eligibility) was not insignificant and that it could play a role in my selection. I needed to know whether I was up against the field or against Old Man Par. For those golfers reading this, you know there is a drastic difference in strategy between the two. One is to beat my peers while the other was to go flag hunting and try to post low scores - hardly the same task.

Coach emphasized that selection would be made based off performance among peers and to not worry about my age.

I proceed to go out for three days and shoot a cumulative score of about 5-over par. By the end of the third round I had amassed a 10-stroke lead over the next closest competitor and even bested some of the team's varsity players who had played behind us each day in the same conditions, etc.

We huddled around and were informed that there would be no need for a fourth day of tryouts - I was in. . . or so I thought. He then proceeded to welcome the 2nd place (sophomore) and third place (freshman) finishers on the team and asked to talk to me separately.

Completely stunned by these developments, I remember standing stiffly in-front of him like a statue. He proceeds to tell me that I needed to do something to establish myself from the rest of the field given my age. I needed to prove that I can compete with some of the standing members of the team. Every little word and accent in his speech was like a needle on my skin. This couldn't be happening.

This was single-handedly the most emotional roller coaster I've experienced. After my round I felt all but assured that I had achieved my goals of making it on the team and it was swiftly taken away in a manner that I felt was unjust. Before I knew it, I had broken down in tears of frustration, anger, and confusion as he continued to feed the load of horses--- that he was spouting. I had poured my heart into the last three days and putted out on my 54th green with an immense sense of pride and accomplishment and suddenly found myself in a situation that was impossible to win. This guy was single-handedly smothering my dream.

Ultimately I decided to contact the athletic director at UC with the intention of raising awareness of the shenanigans going on. Academically, I couldn't have been happier with my situation, and I eventually accepted that I just wasn't meant to play college golf. Recreational golf with my close friends was for more appealing than wasting my energy on a bench under a Coach who I didn't respect. Magically, the details/scores and all the information about the tryouts weren't available when the athletic department investigated and the Coach had no recollection.


(Pic of me at impact)