SPOILERS BELOW IM SURE

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I came to the Lost party late. Everyone else in world was on Season 4 when my wife finally convinced me to give this stupid show a shot. We rented Season 1 from Blockbuster (they werent extinct yet heh) and went back that night to get Season 2 before we got to end of 1 so that we could have it available. I loved it.

I loved the mythology of it. The mysteries. The way it made me use my imagination. Mainly the way it got me and my wife and other family members talking about whatever mystery/philosophy they were engaged in that week on the show. Recently a friend of mine asked to borrow the Dvd's and I ofcourse said Yes! and couldnt wait to talk to him about things. I kind of felt bad for him though. I think that the best part about Lost was they discussions it spurred by us not knowing that the finale was available. Not being able to just go buy the next season and emmerce into it. We had to wait. We had to theorize. It made it that much better. So, I instructed him to watch it with someone else that hasnt seen it, and if possible to drag it out. Try not to watch a whole season in 2 days.

I didn't like the finale when I first watched it. I watched it again the next morning and changed my mind. It did exactly what Lost has always done. Started discussions, in the real world, with real people. It got people to talk about things with other people they normally dont think about it, let alone discuss. Me, my wife and her mom stayed up for 3 hours after the finale just talking about things. This makes it a good finale imo. As the video below says "The mystery is always more fun that the solution." Just knowing that something is unknown and then thinking about that..using your imagination is so cool.

Heres a cool interview w/ Nestor Carbonell (Richard Alpert)

Ive begun to ramble and know I'm doign a bad job of getting my point across so I'll stop. Here's some critics/bloggers/people involved with the shows thoughts on it that i liked:

Someone that produced the show w/ bad robots behind the scenes take:

Here I sit broken-hearted tried to SCOOP but only bubbled..Or something to that effect.

I played 16 of the 38 events.. Every event I played I played the L and the M version. I only played one H version. Going back to last years inaugurel SCOOP I had yet to cash in any version of buyin but L..This year I had 1 cash in a M event..progress..
I only had one truly deep run in a $5r ..44th/25k~. I chronicled that embarrassing failure last blog :( I played 8 seperate tournaments where I played for 6+ hours and failed to make the money. Bubbling in 6 of those ..I'm not sure if prior to this I'd ever played for 6 hours+ in an online mtt and not made the money, let alone final 2 tables.

A lot of people complained that the structures we're too long. You'd think with my bubbling proficiency I'd be one, but I actually enjoyed it. Its a once a year thing. Its the 2nd biggest if not biggest thing in online poker (wcoop)..Shouldnt it be hard?

The WSOP is coming faster than ever. It starts this year on my sons 1st birthday..10 days away. I'll be pulling into town a couple days later. I'm not exactly coming in with the most confidence in the world. I havent made a dollar since my Sunday Million FT last October..I can't seem to get any sort of momentum rolling. I'll go 6 months just bombing everything in sight, then have some absurd score that rights the ship. Probably means I'm behind the curve and suck :)

Nevertheless, I fully expect to win a bracelet this year. Contrary to what I've believed in the past, and how I've felt at times way too recent, Nobody deserves anything in poker. Just cause you've been f$%cked X amount of times..over and over.. doesnt mean that youre entitled to the "next one". Youre not going to win a tournament on your past failures. The gambling gods arent going to let you have one cause they're sorry for you. Would you want it that way anyways? Shouldnt it be hard? Would there be joy in getting it if it was easy? (That came from my mind, but I'm sure I read somethign similar in another poker players blog. I apologize to someone for the plagiarism. Its like chuck Pahlaniuk wrote "Nothing about me is original. I am a product of every person I've ever known.)

Got really deep in yesterdays $5r 6max SCOOP event..Like 44th out of 24,000..300 million chips in play.. We're on our second 15 min break meaning we've been playing for 12 hours. I tell my wife "I'm going to run to the gas station and get some red bulls, snacks and make sure I can stay awake to finish this out. When I get home I'll just go downstairs to the office so you can get some sleep. Although, it seems like everytime I go down there something stupid immediately happens."

Pack of redbulls? Check. Granola bars? Check. Slim Jims? Check. Something stupid happening? Check.

So, I've recognized noone at my table for 11 hours, as would be expected in 24k person $5 donkament. We're down to 60 ppl or so and I go through remaining players to see Gags30 and gboro780 only people i recognize.Sweet. The whole tournament I had been doing things you can't get away with now. It was like back in 2006-2007. All the old tricks we're coming out. So, I built my stack to 12 million w/out hardly any resistance. Avg stack is 5 million, and ofcourse Gags30 gets moved to table w/ 16 million.

3 hands after I move downstairs I minraise QQ utg to 240k folds around to gags who makes it 650~k from the BB...I flat, which seemed best at the time. If I raise I kinda define my hand and if he 5bet jams I have to decide if hes being a sicko, or has AA/KK/AK. I flat in position and we see a flop of 44T. He leads out 675k~ and I elect to raise to 1.7 milly (my mistake) he then jams the rest of it in. I'm not bluffing when I raise this and I know he's a sicko and is capable so as discussed w/ some friends later on I kinda have to call when I actually have the top of my range here. I am calling off 70bb+ w/ one pair tho..As, you can tell I'm torn on the hand. I def. should have just flatted the flop and proceeded with caution. In a mtt where I've had control of EVERY hand, and have known almost exactly where every player is at, there isnt a need to get into guessing metagame w/ one of TWO players I need to ''avoid''.

Sigh. 12 hours. 24k ppl. Pry one of the top 3 biggest rebuys ever.

Bought Jazz tickets to Game 4 vs the Lakers. I hope its atleast 2-1 and I dont have to watch Kobe close out on our home court.

EDIT: oops..he had KK and board ran out 44T8J

So, around 9 am my son falls asleep in my lap while watching his favorite cartoon Little Bill. It's funny that we live in Utah the whitest state behind Wyoming and my son will only watch an all black cartoon. Anyways, during this 1 hour nap, i'll usually fire up something stupid liek $10 hds up sng or w/e to just be in action while I sit. Well, since FTP started up these superturbo step sngs I found a new love. So, Yeah I ran a $3 step 1 to a $640 Step 6. I used that to buy into the Sunday WSOP qualifier that ended up giving away 19 seats. I rolled up a big stack pretty early and had around 50k when we were 20-30 away. I did some quick goat math and found out that the average stack when we hit the seat will be 60k. So, naturally when I could chill I amped up the aggression and lost half my stack.
:( A few 60-40's didnt go my way and I found myself needing to steal a few extra pots than normal. Thankfully, I didnt really have too bad of a sweat and got the seat w/out having to be all-in. I did jam 45cc from the sb with like 4 away from the seat that allowed me to fold the rest of the way. It's a good spot as he's not calling w/ anything but KK/AA and even then its likely correct for him to fold that.
It's nice to win my seat in April. Last year I had to wait clear til FTP ran their 150 seat guarantee liek a week before the main. I think this will make a really good sattelite video as it shows a lot of pressure plays, and people playing very exploitable.
This is def. the cheapest I've ever won a 10k seat and would really like another deep run where ESPN can focus on me getting in for a mere $3 :):)

Can't wait to be a SCOOPA troopa next month!
Go Jazz! The most likable team this side of the Colorado river :)

I haven't played the best poker so far this year.
There I said it. Sure, I've run below expectation. Sure, I've had some heartbreakers, which have hurt more the past few months, because secretly deep down I knew I wasnt playing that well, so when I'd luckbox my way into something fairly deep and then get badbeat out of it I'd get more upset than usual because I knew it was going to be a "long" time before I got deep again. Holy run-on sentence Batman.

I FT bubbled the Stars $320 last Wednesday. Had some big stacks in the Sundays. Came in 9th in the nightly $162 on Stars last night. Normally these "close but no cigar'' results would be tilting, but I can feel how much better I've been playing..It'll come.. Last nights final 2 tables was kinda sick..Stammdogg, FU-15, bigegypt, paulgees, tilthappens, daisyxoxo. I never had a good seat. FU-15 owned me..It would have been nice to close one of these out and get some serious cash flow before the variance bomb that is the WSOP kicks off..w/e..Still time

My son thinks it's funny that he can stand on his own. He'll pull himself up and if I'm not looking at him he'll do this sort of grunt/yell thing to get my attention. I'll look at him, he'll smile, then fall down. Rinse Repeat.

Last nights Jazz/Nuggets game was pretty good. The refs we're awful and decided early to take over. 30 personal fouls were called by the end of 3rd quarter. I guess you could say they did a good job of harnessing tempers,but it was awful to watch. Deron Williams is flat out carrying Utah. Being able to pull out a W playing w/ people that we're on the D-league THIS YEAR, and other 3rd stringers is awesome and hopefully he'll understand the difficulty of things he's done when they lose this 1st round series. (yeah thats a reverse jinx)

NFL releases schedule today, Goodell suspends Roethlisberger tomorrow, NFL Draft on Thursday.. Like I said "things are looking up"

Went to the Utah Jazz/Oklahomacity Thunder game last night. The atmosphere was playoffs-esque. The losing team scored 139 points. Deron williams made me say "Stockton who?" And Durant again played no defense, didnt move w/out the ball on offense, and cherry-picked his way to 45 points. OK Ok thats not fair. He shot lights out from beyond the arc, and single handidly (sp) kept 20,000 Jazz fans from leaving early in the 4th. We all thought the blowout had commenced..He proved us wrong.

Not too much exciting goign on around here lately. Playing a little online..Booked my house for WSOP. Haley and Mason (wife and kid) are going to be company this year instead of a house full of young,anxious to prove themselves, testosterone-laden poker punks :)

It'll be nice to go home to a warm meal and the love of my family as opposed to an empty hotel room or house full of poker players. I love my co-workers dont get me wrong, but i spent a lot of time last year wishing I was home and thinking "I should just fly home to see my wife..It's only an hour flight... " etc..

Wanted to pass on a book recommendation that a friend gave me. First read The Stranger by Albert Camus..It's only 120 pages, its brilliant. Then read The Magus by John Fowles..Granted I'm only 100 pages into The Magus, but it's looking like its goign to be better than The stranger..
That is all.

Getting back into the swing of poker life. Basically took the entire month of February off with the exception of a Sunday here or there. I'd like to say that I didn't miss poker, but it seems like no matter what I'm doing or where I'm at, my mind drifts back to it. I'll start thinking about where I'm at in the poker hierarchy (more deliberately at where I'm not) and what I can do to change that and it always come back to play more. (and run better for that matter :) )

So, here I am. You can call this a 2010 resolution blog of sorts. But not really. I've had some side business investments not exactly pan out. I have some long-term things going on that will hopefully come through when I'm an old(er) man. I have decided it's time to re-emmerce myself in what I know. Poker. (and writing one or two word sentences..also parenthesis)

I spent a good portion of time the other day reading and watching things about Jeff Sarwer.
I highly recommend:

I'm a rabid, obsessive football fan. I play probably 75% less poker on Sundays during NFL season, then I normally do. That being said, I've never been to a game in person. Not exactly a lot of oppurtunities living in Utah. I thought I would bust my NFL cherry on the biggest game of the year! Just the SuperBowl..No problem.

I went with my wife Haley, Jeff "yellowsub" williams and his dad, and Tyler "brainwash" Cornell and his dad. We got into Miami late Friday night and made a quick trip to South Beach to check out everything. It basically was MardiGras SouthEast. I'd say it was 90% Saints fans and the debauchery they brought down from Louisana. We went to bed pretty early to rest up for the next day.

Haley and I got up fairly early Sat. morning and headed down to a little Cuban cafe to have breakfast. It was only a block or two from SouthBeach and provided fantastic people watching. The restaurant employee watchign was like watching Goodfellas mixed with Scarface. The owner being a complete ass to his Cuban waitresses. His shirt unbuttoned, watch blinging, gold necklace shining, mouth shouting obscenities. It was eerily surreal. (I dont even know what I mean when i say that)

We then headed to the beach and walked around there for a bit. There was celebrity beach football games one every corner. Stages being set up for some hip hop act or another.

Snapped this on the beach:



From there we walked for hours up and down SouthBeach checking out anything and everything that there was to see. We would pay for this later as we were both in flip flops and our feet absolutely murdered us for this torture.




If you look closely you can see a pope directing chants of "Who Dat? Who Dat say they goin beat dem Saints"


:


Man.. Sat. night was even more Saints fan, even more rowdy, and I've got that damn Who Dat song permanently etched in my brain..

Sunday..Day we've been waiting for.. We headed down towards the stadium at around Noon, to pick up our tickets from the StubHub tailgate thingy, and eat free food, and drink free booze. Heres our tickets..Notice Face Value says $1,000..Unfortunately that is NOT what paid for them :(




There was a few former players that Stub hub i assume hired to be there. Doug Flutie, Eric Dickerson, Richard Dent..Here is Haley and I with Dent. Notice his hand is bigger than her head. After this picture was taken, I realized I needed an autograph and went back to get it. Apparently they had decided to abandon the free for all and actually formed a 20 person line to meet him. I didnt know or see this, I walked right up and said "hey man will you sign this?" Dent goes "Um..You just jumped in front of all these people.." I say " Oh man, I had no idea, there wasnt a line before..I'm really sorry" " Well youre here now, so let me see it" he says, and signs it for me..





After I made myself out to be a jackass we left the StubHub thing to head towards the stadium and get in on some more shenanigans. Stopped to take this classic photo with the Stadium in the background




We made our way through all the outdoor stadium stuff..NFL experience type stuff where you can stand behind a cutout of your favorite team and get a pic. Our throw a pass, Or kick a fg... and wanted to go see our seats and view of the field. Here is a shot of that abotu 3 hours before the game..notice the empty seats





We were sitting on the Club level which meant we were able to walk around the Suites area and catch a glimpse of some "Stars" and even talk/shake their hands and get pictures. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was pry my favorite as he didnt put out a vibe of us being an annoyance, and actually approached me to shake my hand after taking a picture with Haley. She chased down David Spade,Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler as they ran to their suite..Only David Spade stopped to take a picture, and I'm sure thats cause it was her that caught him and not me.
Andy Roddick was in the suite right behind us..Not a bad life... They also had the Superbowl trophies from when teh Dolphins won, and National championship trophies from the U. of Miami





After that the game got started. I'll just throw up the rest of the pictures, cause theres no point in giving a play by play..You all saw the game..you knwo what happend.
Some Random notes before pic dump:

I jinxed the Colts with my rooting for an OT :) I said to Jeff "Can you believe there has been no turnovers yet? The whole game!" Right as they snapped the play where Manning throw the pick six to seal it.. Sorry Indy..

Also, the 4th and 1 was right on our side of the field and we had a perfect view of it.. Easily my favorite moment of the game. The onside kick was so exciting! Poor Haley, I wouldnt stop screaming thigns like "Can you believe how big of balls Sean Payton has? Can you BELIEVE IT????"

The Two point conversion play was awful in real life. They didnt show one replay. We had no idea it was being challenged til the Ref gave his decision. Really blew it on that one.

South Beach was insane that night! I swear the first thing I heard when I awoke at 8 am was "Who Dat"

Yesterday was an enormous day for Online Poker. No, the UIGEA wasn't reversed. But, there was a huge tournament on every site, every form of structure/form you can imagine..So, naturally going into yesterday, I had aspirations of giant poker scores, brand new cars and generally just enjoying a full day of some serious poker with HUGE prizepools. Things quickly turned sour.

I started the day off I like I normally do; Watching my son Mason flop around on the floor trying to master this crawl thing. I get a text from a friend saying "Quick,get on UB theres a $11 ultra turbo with 50 ppl that has 5 $1,000 UBOC seats added" I had a slight tug of war with my brain and decided that it would pry end in 20 min. I did the math and figured that Mason pry had about 20 min. left in him playing on the floor, before he got fussy..Game on!

It actually paid the top 6 a seat into a $109 turbo to the 1k, and then the top 5 got an extra $1k seat.. Holy sick value Batman. Like, I said it was an ultra super duper shove every hand turbo, but it still hurt when I got down to 8 or 9 people and my KJ was outran by K7 to leave me with nothing. On the bright side, my son was still watching "Little Bill"

After that, I just went and registered for everything under the son, and went back to being a dad for a few hours.

I had a few smaller goals yesterday that involved getting into the $700 NAPT sattelite for cheap, and subsequently winning it. This will be my last chance to qualify on a Sunday as I'll be at the the SuperBowl next weekend, then in L.A for LAPC prelim. events. I had a few step 4's saved and loaded some of those up when the big mtt's started. No luck.. I played 4 $55 turbo fo's..No luck..I had spent $400 total and was going to buy in anyway.. Thought to myself "what's another $200 when youre spending 3-4k on a sunday" and won my seat in a hyperturbo $200 saving myself $500 then, but only $100 total from all the sattys..I also played the $109 turbo sat to the $1,000 UBOC main event and was lucky enough to get that seat..Small Victories..

Ok, on to the big stuff..The Sunday Million paid out 550k! to first. The FTP milion paid out $260k to first! The Sunday brawl paid out 160k to first! The Mulligan paid 88k to first! The NAPT $700 sat paid 27 seats! I was out of every single one of the above before either the first break or the antes kicked in. Pretty amazing.

I flopped a set of 6's in the first 10 hands in the FTP Million only to get it all in vs higher flopped set. I had AA get run down twice in the first 20 hands on PS Million. etc etc etc Not only was I running sub par, I was playing less than optimal to say the least.

By the time the Mulligan started the only thing I was still in was the UBOC 1k, Mulligan, Turbo Takedown and a random 1r/1a on Stars.. I was basically doing tilt control in the Turbo Takedown and just shoving anything remotely acceptable, and ran like god to build it up to a Chiplead stack with about 200 left.. At which point, I started taking seriously. Which suspiciously enough coincided with when I started bleeding chips off ;-)

60 min. later and the Takedown was all I was in. $60,000 and a brand new Audi TT RS was at stake. The play in this tournament was..well..it was like poker was back in 2005-2006. I would give a lot to have poker back to this easy :)

For example:

PokerStars Game #39043000826: Tournament #229647018, 3000FPP Hold'em No Limit - Level XXVII (9000/18000) - 2010/01/31 18:32:38 MT [2010/01/31 20:32:38 ET]
Table '229647018 1655' 9-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: suprayo (240080 in chips)
Seat 2: shanetrain22 (283643 in chips)
Seat 3: sestino (480565 in chips)
Seat 4: dunnie10 (304968 in chips)
Seat 5: atvcar (438650 in chips)
Seat 6: dimast1 (1000241 in chips)
Seat 7: Watzmann222 (565095 in chips)
Seat 8: tobias fuke (956022 in chips)
Seat 9: EroRICH (223896 in chips)
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to tobias fuke [As Kc]
Watzmann222: calls 18000
tobias fuke: raises 50000 to 68000
EroRICH: folds
suprayo: folds
shanetrain22: folds
sestino: folds
dunnie10: folds
atvcar: folds
dimast1: raises 58000 to 126000
Watzmann222: calls 108000
tobias fuke: raises 828222 to 954222 and is all-in
dimast1: folds
Watzmann222: folds
Uncalled bet (828222) returned to tobias fuke

I don't intend this as disrespect to Watzmann222, but I just cant imagine what you'd limp UTG, have utg+1 raise, then the button reraise, then cold call those raises then I shove and him fold? How was I not up against AA here?

Anyways, We're down to 40 some people and more than half of them had an avg. buy-in of $7 or less. I havent had fantasies this promising! I unfortunately was completely card dead once I got to a million chips, and fortunately was able to tread water, by restealing/stealing vs the amateur player. We got down to 2 tables, and surprisingly the money jumps were really big for a VPP freeroll.

16-18 =$4k

13-15=$6k

10-12=$8k

I managed to keep finding good spots to resteal vs the massive stacks. One of these big stacks raised utg w/ K3hh and ended up having to show when a super shorty shoved.. I mentally made a note of this and waited for him to him raise again :) He did a few times an orbit, and I made a stand with A9o only to run into his QQ and bust out in 16th place :(.. Vvvvvv disappointing. I think there was 2 maybe 3 people left I even remotely recognized, not to mention had any results.

After its all said and done, I spent about 3-4k in buyins, and cashed for 4k in this and a couple min cashes in other spots, to have a Sunday in the BLACK!!! I dont care who you are, thats a good feeling..

I've been blogging off and on for 3 years now, and have never played in the PokerStars World Bloggers Champ. of Online poker.. I'm going to this year. I suggest other bloggers do likewise

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 032006