world series of poker main event and san diego

I have a few minutes here before heading to the twins game so I suppose I can update this thing.

The main event was pretty dumb again this year. I played great and had my table image honed in and got a guy to stick KQo in preflop when I had aces but for the second year in a row I didn't win (at least last year I got half the pot when the board flushed and neither of us had the suit). I then got AJ in vs a small stack with 88 on a AJT8 board for most of the rest of my chips, and busted out with a very small stack with A7s vs KK.

It really is incredible how soft of a tourney the main event is and given that it's a little disappointing that none of the players I had pieces of did anything notable. I'm not disappointing in them at all of course, but just how dumb big live tourneys are luck/variance wise. Almost everyone had a sick couple of hands they lost.

After Vegas I headed to San Diego again. I've always wanted to golf when I'm out there and we've always kinda talked about it but never followed through. I decided to buy clubs out there so I'll be more motivated to play when I'm there and hopefully we'll golf enough that it'll cover all the fees of renting clubs and playing with rentals kinda sucks anyhow. I've never had nice clubs before and man did I find some I really liked by more or less getting lucky at the store I think. I'm not the hugest fan of the 3wood/fairway wood I got but the iron set (mizuno rx-25's) are awesome. I wasn't planning on it, but now I think I'll have to pick up a set for here in MN, too.

Dave also bought clubs, so we golfed 3 days in a row. I shot my best round ever -an 81 which is kind of bogus cause i had 2 4-putts and a couple others that I really felt should have dropped. I'm gonna play a ton here back in MN and hopefully soon break 80. I think it's time I find a driver I like and work on it. For the past 3 years I've just stuck to a 3 wood cause I can hit it like 230 down the middle most of the time and that's generally good enough cause it keeps me out of trouble. Now it's time to take it to the next level.

Changing topics...I've always loved screwing around in the ocean if there are decent waves. It really makes me feel young again getting just owned by them and it's so fun. Maybe I should try to learn to surf sometime.

I better get moving...

Minnesota

Every time I'm in vegas or LA a few random people ask me why in the world am I still living in MN. I think it comes down to 1 main thing - Minnesota summers are tough to beat. I really like the people here too but...the summers with all the lakes is the kicker.

Everyone laments about the winters and that is understandable. The cold can really suck and be miserable, but it can be really fun too if you try...go sledding, play snow football, have a snowball fight, go ice skating, go skiing/snowboarding, go snowmobiling. Also, with poker I've been blessed with the ability to travel a lot so I don't spend long enough here to grow weary of it. Falls and springs aren't too shabby, either.

This past week in MN has been incredible and exactly why I love MN.

Saturday: had a bbq...great food, infinity beer, badminton, yard games, bon fire rock band.
Sunday: golf, work in the evening.
Monday: Wake boarding and water skiing with the boys on pickett's boat. Twins game.
Tuesday: Work and errands during the day, twins game then check out the new Running Aces card room
Wednesday: Go fishing and plan on wake boarding but it was too windy, rats. Stop up at running aces for an hour and go home and just sit in lawn chairs on the patio with Dave P and chill for a couple hours enjoying the evening air.
Thursday: Financial planner meeting, work, golf chipping game at the park, taste of MN, bar roof/patio
Friday (4th): had some guys over for badminton and hanging out then go to twins before lighting off a bunch of fireworks followed by the bar.

A pretty kickass week if you ask me.

Now I have an hour to get ready for vegas...gotta go start winning the main event. I've got pieces of a bunch of guys in it too so hopefully I'll make out one way or another! Wish me luck!

twins/padres part 2

The boys scored us front row seats behind the twins dugout for the day game on Thursday and it was a sick pickup. Not only do you have a great view, you get infinity baseballs (probably 8, but we gave 5 of them to kids) and you get to heckle the other team and cheer on your boys as they come back to the dugout. We were the Pepsi fans of the game on FSN and on there at least another time.



We went to a bar/patio after the game to get apps/beers b4 jackie (dave's 17 y/o bro) drove me to the airport. I was still buzzin when I got on the plane and and the cute girl next to me asked if she could switch seats with me so she could be across from her girfriends. sure. We small talked for a little bit and she said she was from mn but didn't go to the game...seaworld instead which seemed weird, but who was I to argue. Some people really don't like baseball and I'd been drinking so I didn't really think much about it. I started reading a magazine and she was talking to her friends and about 5 minutes later she turns to me and says "actually I lied to you, I was at the game, I'm boof bonser's fiance." HA! I got pwned. The other 2 girls were Justin Morneau's fiance and Brian Buscher's wife! They were really pleasant and holy cow does morneau's fiance have quite the engagement ring.

Some pictures:

Twins/padres

I definitely am going to be spending quite a bit more of my time out here in the future...probably even start chipping in on rent a little. The boys' new place is sick and a major upgrade from the previous 2. It's huge and spread out and the front deck is awesome for beer pong.

We went to the twins/padres game last night and sat up with the people in the 2nd to the top row in the upper deck behind home plate. At one point this dude started a chant that at least a 3rd of the section was chanting "sit down faggots" when we were cheering. It was a little bit awkward as I'm almost positive 2 dudes in our row were gay, but meh, what are we going to do. I'm sure there were others, but those 2 were the obvious ones. He also got the mascot to come up and steal billy's hat and wiped it on his crotch would be and farted on all of us. Definitely well played.

It was actually kind of a meh game baseball wise because there was no scoring from the bottom of the 1 until the 8th. The beauty of outdoor baseball though is it didn't matter. It was like 70 and calm. Fantastic. After we went back to pacific beach and out to a bar to meet up with billy's gf. I love having a jersey on of the opposing team after a victory.

Today...after the standard beach trip we're having a bbq and then round 2 of the twins. Hopefully another victory so we can bring out the brooms tomorrow when we sit front row behind the twins dugout.

I really think anything Jay touches is lucky. Last time I was out here when I played on his computer I crushed and it's been nothing different this trip. I've probably been playing 90% 50/100 and 10% 100/200. No no-limit and no plo. I'll get back to plo when I start running bad at lhe.

Vegas round 2

I flew back to vegas on saturday because I had dreams of winning the 10k limit holdem world championship...

My first table was actually pretty soft...I'd compare it to a 100/200 live game. Definitely a sweet table pickup. I ran really bad and after like 6 hours our table broke and I moved with something like 12k chips when we started with 20k. I get to the next table which was the sickest table I've ever been at:

1 Andrew Prock (writer of pokerstove)
2 Tuan Lee
3 Howard Lederer
4 me (bicyclekick)
5 David Oppenheim
6 Chris (death donkey)
7 Marco Johnson (crazy marco)
8 daniel Negrauneu
9 daniel Alahi

I didn't ever flop anything and the two times I actually had hands I got beat. Luckily I busted out 20 minutes before the end of the day so I didn't have to come back the next day with just a few chips. At least I lasted longer than schneider and hoppmann. Haha.

The last night crazy mike decided he wanted to play a $4/8 mixed game at the venetian. The mix would be homo (holdem, omaha high, mikes crazy pineapple 8 or better, and omaha 8 or better. It was actually quite the line-up.

1 A2TRM
2 dr_olson
3 jessie (mn guy)
4 KPR
5 Crazy mike
6 me
7 hoppmann
8 schneids
9 dave p

Most people bought in for 5 racks while crazy mike knew better and bought in for 10...I think everyone but 2 people had to rebuy. Crazy mike played literally 100% of the hands, and before action would get to him he'd put out 20 and if anyone else wanted to could announce 20 and it was auto-20. Every once in awhile people would limp or only want to play for like 3 bets and he'd flip out. It was quite fun and ridiculous...most pots were 3 racks or more. Schneids, hoppmann and kpr decided to go a little over the top on messages. Schneider spent 550, hoppmann like 350 and kpr like 350. Goofballs...go to a spa. It was so much better than doing something similar at canterbury...because everything goes. If you get a card dealt face up...tough deal with it. If you arrive to a hand late you can have 4 cards off the top of the deck, etc. Just no bs rules.

I feel like it's been forever since I've been to a twins game...I guess it's probably been 2-3 weeks but now that I'm home and the twins are home I'll probably go to a couple. I'm really pumped for next week...going to san diego on monday to visit the boys and see the twins/padres!

San diego / Vegas trip report

I really probably should have updated this mid trip, because now that I'm trying to think about what to write about...there's more than I want to write/you want to read, so I'll try to keep it short.

San Diego highlights: padres game, riding bikes on the beach, our house combined winning 100k in a day (i was the smallest slice of those who played...GO FRIENDS!), watching the season finale of lost with like 10 people.

In vegas I played the $1500 NL tourney and played my best tourney poker in awhile and almost cashed but didn't quite. I also played the $5k mixed holdem event and felt like I played well again, but was ridiculously card dead late and couldn't get anything going.

I played about 4 hours total of cash games. 9 handed live holdem to me is just pure boredom these days. I did get to play some live plo and just because it's so different I enjoyed it.

I played a $10k freezeout with crazymike and won. He beat me the last time we played live, so it was nice to get some redemption.

Everything above is overshadowed by the fact that a buddy of mine Ducci won the $1k rebuy tourney for 650k and a WSOP bracelet. He had a super tough final table and worked it over really well. We had quite the cheering section and it was super fun to just be a part of watching him win. The celebration the next day was quite the blast too, dinner at michael mina's at the bellagio then table service at tryst. Congrats ducci, you earned it buddy!

As we were leaving the poker room the night ducci won the tourney, another friend of mine tony rivera (more commonly known as togni)was getting deep in the $10k mixed event and ended up scooping it for 483k. Since this tourney involved 8 different games it was thought of as one of the toughest tourney's of the wsop. Nice work togni!

When I got home last night another friend of mine told me his friend Rep (and my acquaintance/friend...we've played a lot in the past 3 years but haven't hung out outside of poker minus maybe a dinner) won the $1500 6 handed NL tourney for $383k. The 6 handed part makes it a much more skilled victory in my opinion because it really forces you to get involved in pots instead of waiting for good hands. Congrats rep!

On the plane ride back I got really into the book 4 hour work week. I bet I'll finish it up in the next few days. I'll save my full recommendation until I'm finished, but so far I think pretty much everyone should at least check it out.

Off to San Diego and Vegas

Obviously I waited until I had stuff I should be doing (packing - cause I'm leaving in 2 hours) to update my blog...

Pickett and I are heading out there to visit the boys for a few days before heading to vegas for the beginning of the world series. I just looked at the sd weather and not that it's going to be bad, but oddly it's going to be about 7 degrees colder than MN every day. Haha. I think we're going to catch a padres game or two and with so many good poker players in one house teach each other a few things.

On saturday we fly to vegas. A number of people will be meeting up with us there...hoppman, dave p, schneids, kirby, and since it's series time I'm sure a number of other people. I have to book the hotel today, but I think we're staying at the Rio as we are all pretty sick of the bellagio. Contrary to other years, I really don't see my self playing that much for cash games at the B, but instead some tournaments and just enjoying vegas...more pool time, maybe some golf, less grinding. Maybe a few combo online sessions (1 person playing with 1-2 people watching/discussing) with all these great minds as those were really awesome last year. As always, I'm sure we'll grab a few shows as well as I usually love em.

As far as poker lately, I took about a 2 week serious LHE break as I was just feeling off and like I was running bad and I didn't want to slip into something bad and be tilted/off for the series. So I took to learning PLO. Hard game. I am making some good progress, but I've played 6k hands and am down 2700. Most of that is from a couple 5/10 sessions, but most of the hands are at 2/4 where i'm up $192!!!! I think with another 6k hands I can make another leap. An old friend of mine told me it would take 20k hands to learn how to not get it in with the 2nd nuts and 100k hands to figure out the flow and when and how to play different draws. Guess I've got a few more years to figure the game out.

A guy who doesn't play cake, but for some reason stalks the games messaged me yesterday about a guy sitting $100/200 who he'd never seen who seemed brutal. I was feeling kinda pumped up from my music and I can handle losing cake money if the guy beat me, so I sat. He ran like god right away and got up like 6k quick, but was playing bad. I think the 2 weeks off improved my mental state, as I was focused and not frustrated. I battled back a little while still running kinda bad when my foot hit the power button on my UPS (the battery backup for my computer) which turned everything off. Ugh. My computer was being dumb so it took at lesast 10 minutes to get back to the seat and the guy was gone. Rats. I still was sitting there and about ready to do other things when that same friend asked me why i wasn't playing him again. I hadn't noticed he had sat. SWEET. i'm in. Bizot was on his way over to play badminton with chal and I, but that would have to wait.

By this time Jay had noticed the guy and since another player sat at one point, hopped in. As friends, unless a 3rd person sits, or the other doesn't want to play the guy heads up, lets the guy who had the fish first play him out of courtesy. I was running kinda bad and was down 10k by the time bizot got here. The fish joined a 2nd table I was sitting at and then I went on the biggest heater in the last year as far as I can remember. I went from down 10 to up 20 in about 20 minutes. I either had it pre, flopped it, or turned/rivered it every single hand. The fish kept reloading and jay was getting pretty sick of my bs and apparently owes me a nice beer over the head when we get there. We played another hour or two where jay got most of the money and eventually sent the fish to busto land. I had got back down to up 12k at one point but finished on a nice note at +21k and brought me back to the black on the month. This was a nice surprise as I had given up on may and just wrote off the fact that I'd lose 20k two weeks ago. I guess I still could in SD, but I bet I wont.

Luckily we made quick time of busting the fish as we still had enough light for badminton! Jon had got some new birdies which made a world of a difference over the stupid ones that came with the set that we tried to use on Saturday. Now we can actually have a reasonable game.

I better finish packing...