It’s been quite a long time since my last blog. To be honest for a good chunk of time I had lost interest in just about everything, including blogging. Hell, including eating. I’ve lost roughly 4lbs since I moved to Vegas….and if you’ve ever seen me you know I can’t afford to lose any weight.
These [...]

I had a lot of shit written, and then my computer restarted and didn’t save. It was all probably worthless anyway, so fuck it.

***
On one occasion a student burst into his office. “Professor Stigler, I don’t believe I deserve this F you’ve given me.”

To which Stigler replied, “I agree, but unfortunately it is the lowest grade the University will allow me to award.”

***
Seattle, USA

Ben and I chill in the corner of some girl’s room. An opened Swisher package lays emptied on the floor. A few of our fattest blunts get passed around the room, over and over again. The smoke swirls around, reminds me of Saturn’s rings. People get high just sitting in here.

“White people like to smoke weed, not Asians.”

There’s not one Asian in this room in this crowded ass house party in Seattle.

I know all these kids are moochers but I’m just happy to only be drinking a little, and smoking. Just chilling.

This one girl sits next to me and keeps trying to get me to pass more blunts. I’m like chill, I want to get blazed too, just give it time. The girl keeps going and I finally go, “yo, make music happen and I will spark another.” Stoner groupie girl hops to her feet to run to the other side of the room and get a laptop ready. She grins like a happy puppy.

“See I get shit done.”

There’s no music playing. This girl is annoying. This girl is ugly. This girl is too young.

I was promised music.

“Well, considering you haven’t gotten done with the one thing I asked you to get done I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

Ben busted up laughing. I was just joking around, but she seemed pissed. Meh, whatever.

Pass. Pass. Pass. I want to look like you.

Stumble out and we come onto this beer pong match. Ben and I put $300.00 on it, I get odds. I’m betting on some randoms. I thought I heard the guy say something about being newer, and I knew one of Ben’s guys had been in a fraternity so I wanted a proper handicap. Then my guys started setting their shots up perfectly and boasting about their “73-6 reeecord MAAAANG! EXTREEEME!” So I’m getting odds and I probably have the 2-to-1 favorite here.

This guy in a black shirt who was about three fucking meters tall is sinking every shot. He’s so tall it’s as if he pushes the ball an inch or two and it just drops into the cup. I’m laughing my ass off at Ben. I go to the bathroom and come back out to my guys’ having half their cups gone. The partner of my freakishly good beer pong player is missing every single shot. Leviathan of Beer Pong gets angry! But to not avail! The stoner fraternity kids owned my guys and I lost $300.00.

Ben and I go back to his apartment which has been turned into a grindhole. We sleep ten hours then go to grind.

I like this life. I like the madness that surrounds my life at times. I love how we set up here and just grinded, and we’ve both made a lot of money.

***

I played pretty well on Sunday, but not my best. I closed off the $20.00 rebuy for $12k. I was really proud of that because I am handling bad players really really well now. All those hours at 200 NL to 1000 NL on Cake paid off. I can get such thin value it’s ridiculous.

I also ran like God and didn’t really make a huge mistake. It felt ridiculous to even win another tournament. That’s three in the last few weeks, and I haven’t even been playing that much. I’m just running so above expectation. My other horses made final tables and Buki won a Costa Rica package. It was just sick.

I blew up deep in the Full Tilt Million again though. I was final 50 for the second time and was playing hard, but I just took it too far. I 5bet 8-7 high one time. My chips just went up and down and then I had a really iffy hand to end that I’m not sure I like. I don’t know how I felt. It’s easier to not think about it than it is to face up that I might have blown another opportunity.

I feel mixed feelings because on one hand I had a fantastic Sunday no one should complain about. On the other hand I feel like that made me not take the Million as seriously as I should have, and I blew it.

Then again that’s what makes me good. Just some disconnect in my head, I don’t care. Then afterward it’s all real again and I’m like, “fuck why did I do that.”

The next day Ben and I woke up feeling like death, and decided to go pick up some things before we left for Costa Rica. I cut through and shredded about five pairs of jeans going out most nights in Malta, and I’ve been doing really well lately, so I treated myself. I got a bunch of basketball shorts, jeans, good sweatshirts, etc. We went out to get Ben a laptop but nobody helped him at Fry’s for like an hour while he was checking prices on units and looking at things. He finally just said fuck em. I went to an Apple store and got to deal with their bullshit. Just a long ass day of dealing with sales people.

It was just weird too as we got more bags from more expensive places how much every girl at that mall just came after us. We came in no one gave a fuck. Then, every store we’d go into Ben and I would clumsily ask to put our bags somewhere, and just every girl here’s eyes lit up. I was such a geek in high school it still catches me off guard when women pay me that kind of attention, especially when its just over our perceived net worth.

This was much more humorous back when I was busto and I would just front like I had money, because I did at one time. Now I guess they’re onto to something. Briefly.

It’s just weird now. In my mind I’m still the same person, but just the way people treats you changes completely. Back when I’d go with my mom places when I was a kid I just felt like people were mean to us solely because we were poor. It was like we’d go into these offices and people would just give us shit from the moment we walked in. The way adults would talk to my mother confused me, and made me angry. It always seemed to be about money in some way. I hated money because it seemed to control everything in my life, but it was no where to be found.

Now it’s like everybody kisses my ass just out of habit. People laugh way too much at my jokes. No one tells me when I’m fucking up, except for my real friends. Women who wouldn’t give me the time of day are suddenly fascinated with my friends and I.

I’m not in better shape. I’ve gained 30 lbs since I went on the tour. I’m not a better person. I feel like my patience is gone after failed backing operations, 100 flights, getting ripped off at every stop, getting taunted by strangers, and six figure swings. I just can dress nicer. I convey I don’t give a fuck anymore.

We go into Lucky Jeans and the girls welcome us in. We bullshit and drop our bags off (’Z0MG SO MANY!?’), and this girl starts stalking me. I mean, trying to guide me around the store, show me different pairs of jeans, whatever. I’m cool with that. I’m male, I like a girl being into me, although I am leaving in a week and we’re way the fuck from where we live.

I bring up a few pairs of jeans to the front (she makes sure to meet me there) and she goes, “I need to get your number for this store thing.” She does that like half lip bite thing girls do as she says it. Hope it’s not for a store thing. I’m into it. I’m high, and kind of wondering if I’m just imagining this. She’s like mid-twenties cute brunette.

Then yeah…things were awkward. In a few seconds -

I realize she has a wedding ring when she hands me the clipboard, and make a face when I see it. My eyes just get a little wider with realization.

She realizes what I am looking at and halfway through handing the clipboard to me decides to just hold it an inch or two away from my hand, while making an “oh shit I’m caught” look, while looking back at her hand.

I leave my hand just hanging out there, while she’s holding out her arm, for a few seconds. She realizes what she’s doing, and we look at each other awkwardly.

I start laughing and she nervously laughs with me. I joke with her about something she says after, and smooth it out. I fill out the thing. Walking away I feel fine until I realize I just gave her a disconnected number.

Ben goes into a Tempurpedic place. I walk by a few times and see this girl repeatedly going over him on the bed to bring him new items while he’s “trying things out.” The stoner fucker chills there for 30 minutes, just winding her up like a top, making her do a sales pitch for everything, then just ending every one of her pitches with “no, naw”. She giggles through everything, which provides a stark contrast to her eyes, which look like a cat’s eyes in the dark. Just a size or two too big. At the end he buys nothing, and she still remains chirpish. Still follows him out.

I stressed so much when I was 16 trying to figure out how to start conversations with girls. Now they start them with my friends and I, but only when we’re just displaying our financial position like douchebags. So many times I deliberately try not to bring up my job or where I’ve lived but they ask about it, or there’s no other real way of explaining who you are without your job coming up. They freak out. Try to make more conversation. Hints.

Hey, no problem with it, just different as hell to me. I just hadn’t really ever bought that much shit at a mall before. I listen to rap all day that talks about that kind of shit, or Weezy boasting “the whole mall following us” or whatever the shit. I always laughed and thought the materialism was fucking ridiculous, the constant boasts that you could buy a bitch anything and she was yours. Yet, the older I get, the more I watch people react, they’re on the fucking money. Here anyway.

A traveling circus you can’t enter. Carelessness and release is what they want. Not you.

Haven’t been doing anything otherwise. I went and saw Zombieland with Mike and Ben, which was excellent. Incredibly standard, but you can’t help but cheer when they fuck up everything onscreen. That girl is so hot too. We chilled at a hookah bar. Other than that I’m just reading a lot, writing, jogging, leaving Utorrent on long enough to destroy Ben’s internet, playing with my new unlocked iPhone that finally has sevice again, and chilling. I don’t feel like playing. I’m kind of just gunning to go. We’ve trashed this place and I’m ready to move on, and finally have a permanent residence for the first time in years.

Currently Listening To:

Sweatshop Union - Natural Progression
Tech N9ne - Collabos: Sickology 101
Gorillaz - Gorillaz
Swollen Members - Monsters in the Closet

…I’m already dead.

***

***

***

Look at what you did, you don’t even see what you did.

***

Seattle, USA

The grind’s been gentle lately. I’m not going hard and I don’t really care that I’m not. I have the option to work now because I enjoy it, but I don’t need to work. I just am such a good little capitalistic puppet I feel the need to work every time I wake up. Then like a trained puppy I’m so excited to spend my newly acquired money on clothes or drinks.

Not really doing much here. I went to some tiny ass house warming party yesterday. It’s weird, like the dynamic now when I smoke at parties, as opposed to drink. I feel more out of place since my activity is illegal. It’s like just delcaring yourself a misfit. I just prefer it to drinking. I used to drink a lot when I went out because I had anxiety in social situations. I just wanted the anxiety to go away. If I don’t have that anxiousness I don’t really drink. I’m really in control. I act much more like myself, and am much more interested in the world around me.

I just like chilling after work. Gin and tonic, Hennessy, vodka, something and a blunt, pass it around, I want to look like you.

I actually just really enjoy people’s company when I’m smoking. Mike and I were talking to this Hawaiian girl who was a nice girl, but, I don’t know, just said a lot of the shit that would normally irk me. “White guys just go from girl to girl, white girls too.” Yeah, okay. I’ve lived in Asia and here, don’t be telling me Asians don’t fuck the first night they meet someone. Since I was high though I just wanted to figure out why it was she had this view on things, what caused that. Yeah, lol, sure enough some white guy burned her. I just wanted to know the root of it all. If I’d been drinking I’d have been like, “that’s fucked up!” I would’ve caused a problem. Instead I could still enjoy this girl’s company despite her naivete. I was just relaxed.

Was trying to go to Tech N9ne but Ben got so baked he told me he just wanted to grind. So then he went and passed out, and woke up three hours later going “damn a Tech n9ne show would’ve been good.” Fucker.

He was my ride and I didn’t even have tickets bought anyway so I just didn’t even bother.

I went down to 100 NL to get back to basics because I haven’t been able to beat 200 NL on Stars or PLO. I just started but its irritating to work on a site every day and not just see the progress right away. I feel like I’m starting to get close to getting it. I want to be able to do well on Stars cash at some point, because so many fish go through that site, even though its the toughest.

Truthfully I’m probably going to run to Euro sites again once I’m in Costa Rica.

You’ll probably offend me by then by trying to relate.

Today’s my Mom’s birthday so I’m probably going to go see her and hang out. Probably come home to grind or maybe go drink somewhere in the ave before I leave here again. Going to just work out and write this morning, see if I even feel like playing. I’m probably going to make myself get back to basics and win 20 buy-ins at 100 PLO or NLH before I start grinding higher again, since I got so out of whack for a while. It’s just a good habit, moving down and slaughtering for a day to get your head right, or continuing to lose and going “holy fuck I need to review hands I can’t even beat this limit now”.

We did some hand history review the other day, just going through hands I had marked as interesting. Those arguments about hands are so eye opening. I’m hoping I can do this with my guys every day in Costa Rica and I can quit just doing well in tournaments and half assing cash.

It’s become more real to me that I’m leaving here again. I can’t say I’m going to miss it too hard. I feel too apart here. I love it here a lot, Seattle’s an amazing city, and a lot of my attitude and life has been changed by this city. That said I’m not going to school or anything, and if I live here again I’d like to be going to school or something, just to have a normal social activity, and because I like taking certain classes. Not going to school I just smoke weed all day and work. It’s fine for a month or two but at some point you want to have other things going on besides poker, other people coming into your life.

I’m just staying here now because there’s loose ends to tie up before we leave.

I’d love to live here and learn how to make music, Korean, film, photography, philosophy, history. I’m into that.

Oddly I fucking hate writing classes. I hate people telling me what to write;.

I made good money here in Seattle, more out of fluke than anything, but hey fuck it, I’m allowed to run good.

Currently Listening To:

Paul Oakenfold - Tranceport
Jay Z - The Blueprint
Arch Enemy - Anthems Of Rebellion
2pac - Pac’s Life

… Unfortunately not mine though.

Good news, only a freeroll, so didn’t cost me anything.

Playing in the Carbon Badugi freeroll today, where generally, like most freerolls the play is extremely loose.

So with blinds at 75/100, I have t1,840 (M= 10).

I limp in with Q[d] 5[h] 7 [c] 2[d] , and 2 other players limp, BB checks.

I draw A[s] , so I’m thinking that my 752A is probably a winner.

I throw in a min bet, so as not to scare everyone away, get one fold, two callers.

Villain1 draws 1, Villain2 draws 2.

I throw in another min bet, Villain1 calls, Villain2 shoves for t1,265, I insta call smiling.

I’m expecting to see anything from a J to maybe a 6, … the thought of a 6 isn’t good, but in my very brief Badugi “career”, I’ve seen very few 6’s so …

Cards exposed and ….

Hero :

7 [c] 5[h] 2[d] A[s]

Villain2

4[c] 3[d] 2[s] A[h]

Ouch ! [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

My friend is playing $2/4 NL Hold’em 6-max on PartyPoker when he gets involved in the following hand:

The player first to act (Under The Gun), who has $827, raises to $12.

It folds to him on the button ($852 stack) with black Kings and he raises to $44, UTG calls.

The flop comes 8h 4c 2h, UTG checks, he bets $55, UTG raises to $164.

At this stage we have to try to work out a range of hands he can be doing this with. Without any reliable reads it’s impossible to know whether he can be doing this with no pair and no draw, but that would be rare. I’d include some hands like AQ with the ace of hearts as possibilities some amount of the time. We also need to consider whether this player would be calling a big reraise with a low pair like 22 or 44 in the first place. Most solid players won’t, so we’ll just reduce the percentage chance of those showing up in his range.

So lets say his range includes any three of a kind, QQ, AQ and AJ of hearts, 56 and 67 of hearts and the AQ with just the ace of hearts. I’ll also throw in a trickily played AA and the occasional low equity bluff because our opponent may be tilting or decide a bluff would work for whatever reason. I’m going to reduce the likelihood of 44, 22, AA, AJhh, 56hh, 67hh and AQ with the ace of hearts because a lot of players won’t be calling with the first 4 hands before the flop and of course a lot of players will not elect to check-raise with AQ with just the ace of hearts. I’m also assuming that our opponent will always reraise with AK before the flop because that is how the cash games play online.

Now I’m going to cheat. I’ll use an online software program called PokerStove to calculate our equity against the range we’ve given our opponent. Obviously we can’t do this fast enough in the middle of the actual hand we’re playing, or indeed not in live poker, but in order to be a top class poker player this is really the kind of study we should be doing away from the tables so that we have a better ability to approximate real time decisions in the future.

I can tell you that PokerStove calculates our equity against our perceived range of our opponent to be around 33%. So does this mean we should be folding to his check-raise on the flop? Well, not quite. We have to consider other factors. If we are bet/folding kings here, this means that we are bet/folding on the flop a ridiculously high percentage of the time since it’s not often we’re going to have a stronger hand than kings in this spot. This in turn means that perceptive players will pick up on our tendency to fold a lot and start bluffing us a lot more - and indeed, had we folded in a similar situation earlier in the session, our opponent’s bluffing frequency here may be a lot higher in which case our equity would be a lot higher. So, what do we do, do we get all in with around 30% equity (we will fold out his bluffs) and take the ~$300 in the pot the few times he is bluffing, rendering us unexploitable and meaning we will be able to pick up more money later with lighter continuation bets, or do we fold, saving ourselves a small amount of money considering the hand in a vacuum?

If that was the question, we should choose the former, since we will more than make up for whatever equity we lose (assuming our range is close to accurate) later. We do have another option though of course, we can just call. When you consider that we think our opponent’s range consists mostly of sets and flush draws and that we have position, this should be clearly the best play. Since our opponent has to act first, were he to miss his flush draw on the turn, it would be almost impossible for him to not still bet and commit himself to the hand, since he must imagine there is still a chance that we can fold and he still has outs to win the pot. However, now against these hands our equity is much much higher with only one card to come, in fact we’d be a considerable favourite. We can safely fold on heart turns since we think it is only rare that he should bluff the flop without hearts in his hand, and even if he only had the Ace of hearts or a different kind of hand, he is likely to have picked up additional chances to improve against our kings. So when we call on the flop, we are moving all in on all non-heart non-ace turn cards - we should fold if an Ace hits since that also connects with a large part of the perceived range of our opponent.

The reason calling is so effective in position here is that our opponent doesn’t have a choice but we do; he must commit his chips on all turn cards since he acts first, whereas we get to see if we like the card to the tune of $620 or not. As it happened, the turn card came the 8 of spades, making the board show 8h 4c 2h 8s. This was a great card for our hand - the most likely three of a kind our opponent could have had, 8s, now became severely more unlikely, and now his range would be weighted far more towards flush draws and bluffs, making our decision an easy one. We have even stolen one of his outs since the King of hearts would give us a full house! Our opponent bet $272, an obviously committing bet but a futile attempt to look strong rather than just moving all in. My friend moved all in for an additional $346 which the opponent called, showing 67 of hearts. The river bricked and he took down the $1660 pot.

___________

This was a copy of a recent article for PokerNews magazine, you may be interested to see it here.

Cheers,

James

But I’m not complaining

Final table of the PS $109 Turbo $20K guar last night and down to 6 handed and this hand comes up: (technically 7 handed but 1 is so short hes moot)

PokerStars Game #33972860098: Tournament #203040062, $100+$9 USD Hold’em No Limit - Level XXVIII (5000/10000) - 2009/10/13 3:29:43 ET
Table ‘203040062 16′ 9-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: !HEE-HWN’ED! (162000 in chips)
Seat 2: mchacal (227090 in chips)
Seat 4: AAspitfireAA (156766 in chips)
Seat 5: kobsame (8070 in chips)
Seat 6: stan4stl (220084 in chips)
Seat 8: AndyVNL (270480 in chips)
Seat 9: Podiman (173510 in chips)
!HEE-HWN’ED!: posts the ante 1250
mchacal: posts the ante 1250
AAspitfireAA: posts the ante 1250
kobsame: posts the ante 1250
stan4stl: posts the ante 1250
AndyVNL: posts the ante 1250
Podiman: posts the ante 1250
kobsame: posts small blind 5000
stan4stl: posts big blind 10000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Podiman [Qs Qc]
AndyVNL: folds
Podiman: raises 23333 to 33333
!HEE-HWN’ED! [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]