Long time no post!

Soooo where do I start..

After December '06 of losing thousands of dollars on sportsbetting I bought some nice toys for myself (big tv, laptop, desktop). Paid tuition and other misc expenses. I tried my hand at trying to beat 2/4, and 3/6 NLHE 6max but I probably bled about $5k over the course of 5 months and I just decided to take a big break. I graduated Caltech in June '07 (w/honors biiiitch), found an Apartment in New York City (living just north of Wall street with a roommate from MIT). Was in London for 2 months doing training for work, and now I'm a full blown wall street monkey in investment banking. Not sure what product group I'll be in...U.S. Treasuries, Quantitative Products Engineering, Complex Risk Foreign Exchange, Interest Rates Exotic Structures, Muni bond indexes......who knows? One thing's for sure, I ain't getting income like I used to while playing poker. But that's okay, in a less than four years I'll be banking it bigger than poker would have ever allowed me. I'm still seething about the WCOOP 06 $1k event where Strassa (now at Morgan Stanley) beat me to first place. Damnit.


I just took a trip to AC and played in a $340 MTT @ borgata. Ah yes the borgata, where last summer I lost over $2.5k in one hand at $5/$10 nlhe. Took a greyhound bus 6 in the mornin, tired as shit, smoking cigs like nobody's business. Ahhh poker, it's been a long time! Apparently my skills haven't deteriorated much at all in the tournament arena - I made it to the final eight (of 105), short stacked. I was able to broker a deal for an eight-way chop despite some stubborn woman who didn't want to chop. took down $3300 for my efforts (minus 25% chopped away in a pre-tourney split). Not amazing ...but I'll take it...It's been awhile...

Tomorrow is the WCOOP $1k event. I think I'll give it a shot. I have class in the morning (Series 63 Financial regulatory exams, ugh). Any of you guys still out there reading this? Haha, I hope you guys have earned a nice pretty penny in the past 6 months while I was out of the poker loop. Good luck to everyone.

-Dan

Sports Betting Debacle

So I had a few U.S.D.A. Grandusands sitting in my Pinnacle Sportsbook account. I got an IM from a friend a couple weeks ago with suggestions on the college bowl games. Well I took his advice on a couple games and I quickly found myself up $3k! And then of course, being the degenerate gambler I am I wanted to parlay this to even bigger winnings. Unfortunately the last few games I bet on have been a huge debacle...

I put a number of $K's on the Virginia Tech v. Georgia game today and I was VERY happy at half time; VT was up 21-3 and VT's defense looked unstoppable - afterall they're #1 defense team in the nation. VT only needed to win by 3 points since I had locked in the spread at -2.5.... But what happens in the 2nd half? blah...A billion unanswered points and VT loses 31-21 and I wanna put my face to a cheese grater....

I did however make money on another bet I made. Tito Ortiz v. Chuck Lidell was on tonight and I had bet $2.7k on 2:1 favorite, "The Iceman". Ortiz was stopped by a barrage of punches in the middle of the 3rd round and at least I recouped some losses there...

Anyway, NO MORE BETTIN ON FOOTBALL. I am sticking to this now, I swear.


Insofar as poker, I still haven't played in a looooong time but I plan to grind it out on MTTs and cashu gamu. Seeing as I had lost a large amount of money at the cash game tables, I'll most likely make my return at a very lowly 1/2 nl game. It will be awhile before I muster up the courage to play at 5/10nl again, a limit I was beating but stepped down from after a brutal -6k swing. No shame in dropping stakes! Until next time......

-Dan

Poker Break semi over

So I took a big 7 week long break from poker to get my fat lazy ass back into shape, no I'm not BUSTO but was rather quite ROBUSTO. I went to Vegas a week and half ago and I dumped a lot of money at 30-60 yuck! I staked ScottyJ to play 100-200 on Pstars - we had a successful first run at it winning a few thousand very quickly. I played some 15-30 heads up and some random 6-max 400nl on full tilt just recently and tanked a couple more thousand :(. I was totally unprepared to play well and I just tilto'd off a ton of money, angry at my Jiu Jitsu tournament results (see below).

Last night I watched as Scott played some more 100-200 but we had a bad run of variance and ate a loss that cancelled out all of our winnings - do'h. My vegas loss and my Full Tilt debacle sets me back almost 10k - that's poker ahh well I hate life, etc. I'll probably be back to grinding out some more tournaments more regularly with posts coming involving epic winning of grandusands of REAL LIFE AMERICAN US GRADE A+ DOLLAR. Still haven't decided how dedicated I'll be to my MMA/JiuJitsu training so I may or may not come back in full poker force next year. But until then I'll def be hitting up some MTTs.

In other news of degeneracy, I have $3k riding on Virginia Tech and $1k on Hawaii in the upcoming NCAA bowl games. PLEASE LEMME WIN, I need to pay for my Plasma TV, Nintendo Wii, and new Thinkpad notebook???? And YES I was a big nerd loser and waited in line at 5am outside Target to pick up one of the fifteen wiis that was coming into shipment that day.

-----
Insofar as my Jiu Jitsu training, I took 3rd at Grapplers Quest, losing to another excellent wrestler in the semi-finals then winning the 3rd place medal match easily. In the semis my leg cramped in the very beginning and I got takendown and gave up 2 points and the guy kept his lead throuhgout the match ughhh so disappointing, esp since my wrestling skills are way better than what I exhibited in the match I lost

my matches on youtube:
First match, I dominate the guy w/mad wrestling and beat him 18-0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qd0kU05NQ5Q&mode=related&search=


Second match, same story, wrestling domination, beat him 12-0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lwzjdmsC42k&mode=related&search=

3rd match, leg cramps in beginning just as he takes me down, sigh, lose 4-2 via lack of potassium
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RloDdUYXD3A&mode=related&search=

4th match unavailable :(, but more wrestling and beat him 9-0


BYE EVERYONE EFF YOU

OMG where I been?

Haven't played poker in like 3.5 weeks. Why? I'm not sure why exactly, just general laziness I suppose. I've been training lot more (wrestling, kickboxing, etc.) and I'm usually incredibly exhausted when I get back home so I just haven't played. Right now however, I'm datamining at 2/4 and 3/6 nl on Full Tilt and maybe I'll make a return after I get like 100k hands of data on players, but right now I'm a bit gun shy to get back into the mix...

In other poker news we got ScottJ pwning the poker challenge:

Current Stage: 10/20 (+0 bets) part II
10/20 (852 hands)
5/10 (2232 hands)
3/6 (731 hands)
2/4 (1012 hands)
1/2 (3244 hands)
.50/1 (1204 hands)
.25/.50 (959 hands)

SO he parlayed $62.50 into about $2.6k or so in less than 3 weeks which is pretty impressive.


So i'm not dead or busto or anything like that, just doin other things. I'll have to make a few grandusands of american dollars soon though.

Until next time....

Vegas Trip Report

Friday morning I trained at MMA Legends and got punched and kicked in the head by a 6'1 Muay Thai kickboxer :(. I returned to campus, grabbed some food at the "Food Vendor Fair" and then headed out to Las Vegas with Mark and SJordan.

*Aside: See end for Scott Jordan's limit challenge (taken from his AIM profile).


We stay at the very lovely South Coast Casino (a new casino a mile off the Strip). We hit up the Bellagio, make some bets on the following day's fights, and scott and I play some 20-40. Some annoying jaded old lady hits a good run of variance, scott gets his aces cracked twice and I am card dead and we enjoy 3 hours' worth of losing a collective $1000 or so.

We then hit up some Roulette. I hit bad variance again and drop a few hundred. Scott breaks even on the roulette session, mainly due to the roulette wheel operator's idiocy: the ball lands on 16 and he pays Scott 5-1 on a bet he didn't even make. Maybe he was sleepy?

The next day we eat wake up, eat, go and watch Pride Fighting championships: The Real Deal. I won two of the four bets I made (Rua over Randleman, Henderson over Belfort; bet against Lawler and Baroni, damnit). The event was great and I hope MMA grows really big in the U.S.

We grab some food dressed in our street clothes at the mostly up-scale Bellagio Cafe and we head over to the Aladdin, to play some poker!!!!

Of course, neither Scott nor I feel like playing good, solid poker and so we settle down at the 2-4 game, preparing to play like total jackasses. We raise and try to get EVERY single pot multi-way and gigantic, and we are for the most part successful. We frustrate the players who are not used to the constant straddling (google the term), blind 3-bet raising, and blind verbal declarations to make it it 4-bets when it comes back around. LOLOLO.

After hitting a couple runner-runner straights and making random two pairs with rags to crack the tourist's big hands, everyone at the table one by one either busts all their chips or just get up and leave in frustration. We broke Aladdin's 2-4 limit game and we both are even on the session.

We move from Aladdin to the Paris, where we go up the Mezzanine area and enter the pitifully small poker room. We set our eyes on the 3-6 limit game and sit down with 3 racks of chips. Scott goes on a ridiculous rush of cards as my stack diminishes a few more hundred. A few interesting hands include: Scott cold calling 3 bets in early position with Q3, flopping two pair, slow playing the flop to allow 2 people to both hit a pair of aces on the turn, subsequently trapping 3 bets on the turn and squeezing out a 3rd big bet on the river and drawing the wrath and disgust of the 3-6 limit pros.

It's funny watching the table dynamics shift so dramatically - a mild game turns crazy, and all the short stacks chips just magically disappear in a storm of poker volatility. Players then bust and go home and new participants enter the game. One guy who paid off Scott on multiple occasions gets up and announces, "OKAY TIME TO PLAY SOME REAL POKER" as he storms off in huff.

I REALLY angered this one dude too, it was funny: He sits down and buys in for like $60 and loses it all very quickly. He mutters things under his breath every time scott blind 3 bet raises my straddles, etc. At one point Scott wins a big pot with T4 and which induces this guy to go nutso. Anyways, in one hand, I make a bad river call
and the pissed off dude asks the dealer to see my mucked hand. Unfortunately from him the cards are deep in the muck and unretrievable, so he asks me, "What did u have?" I cleverly say, "oh, me, nothing - just 7-high, was calling for shits and giggles" The guy is visible distraught and upset at my comment. Later he complains about me to the casion floorman but nothing happens as a result.

Two hours later and about half a dozen pissed off players later, we call it a night and I travel from Las Vegas to Pasadena, CA in about 3.5 hours. Boom.

I didn't proof read anything so eff u all.

-Dan









LIMIT HOLDEM CHALLENGE!
(rules at bottom)

Current Stage: 1/2 (+56 bets)
.50/1 (1204 hands)
.25/.50 (959 hands)

Known contestants: bruce, oogee, jburt, dirtyj, scottiecards

With this challenge I intend to rid myself of some major tilt syndrome, sharpen my skills, remember what is was like to worry about my decisions and not the outcomes, finally practice some good bankroll management, and prove --despite my well known NL fishyness-- I am the best limit holdem player around

Basic Rules:
-start with 125 bets at .25/.5 stakes, ie. $62.50
-move up to .5/1 when bankroll reaches 125 bets, ie. $125
-move up through each limit on PokerStars.com in the same fashion
-move down if bankroll reaches 125 bets of the previous limit
-once 30/60 is reached, the goal is to bring the bankroll up to 250 total bets (not move to 50/100)
-after all is said and done, $62.50 will be parlayed into $15,000

$2.6k Main Event at the Bike

Yesterday I went w/Jon Senn (caltech, 07) to the Bike to play in the $2.6k main event.

First hour goes like this:

Limp 86o utg+1 (I play laggggggg for first hour, looking for quick double). Folds to the sb and bb who limp/check. Flop is 972. Checks to me and I bet pot; sb calls, bb in the middle raises 3x my bet. I am like ....GAMBOL CALL. SB calls. Turn is Ten!!! omgomgogmogmgogmogmgoMOGMOGMOGGOGMGM. SB bets out 2k (starting stacks were 5k), bigblind calls for about 4k more...I am certain the sb has the same hand as I do so I go all in, sb is all in, bb is like "...." and calls. SB tables 86o as well, bigblind has 92o for two purr. River 9. SEE YA LATER DANL YEE.

Senn at this point has about 8k in chips and I go play 20-40 limit for a couple hours before heading home after winning 200 dollurs.

Senn phones me at 2am and tells me he's chip leader with 10 to go. BOINGO!!! I have 25% his action and knowing how good he is I am licking my chops with good expectations of him winning the $110k first prize.

Today I went and met Senn and rail birded him at the final table for 6 hours. Standing for that long is real tough. The whole broadcast can be seen at Live at the Bike for those who have a subscription.

I won't detail all of what happened but a few key things:

Senn has about 190k and this Indian fellow who goes by "Spiderman" has 120k. Spiderman raises in EP and Senn calls from the SB. Flop is Q43 or something like that. Check, Spiderman overbets the flop, Senn raises all in after going into the tank. Spiderman calls with KQo v. Senn's 99. This was the only conceivable mistake Senn made throughout the rest of the tournament. Spiderman doubles after two bricks hit. AIYA!!!


Senn gets bad beated when AJ splits with AT all in preflop

Senn gets bad beated when AJ loses to T6o all in preflop

3-ways, Senn has A8 in bb. Sb completes with A2. Flop is AQ3. Bet by sb, call by senn. Turn is 2. Check, Senn bets , sb raises all in, senn calls after much consternation and busts 3rd.

An interesting point about that last hand: the guy in the sb kept flashing cards to Senn and in the last pot he flashed the As unwittingly. Senn thought the As was the 4s, which, in his mind, prevented him from having two-pair on the turn. Senn thought he either had 45 for the straight or a drawing hand, and this impelled senn to stack off with just one pair, hoping he didn't hvae the 45. Ah well such is life.

Other interesting stuff:
Some drunk, decrepit, overweight old degenerate gambler was rooting for spiderman since the start. At the time when Senn had 190k and Spiderman has about 120k~ I made a "last longer" bet with him, me for Senn and him for Spiderman. Unfortunately Spiderman took 2nd in the tournament and I lost $100 to the drunk fatman. At least he provided some mild entertainment.

For instance, when he tried to root for spiderman he would try to sing the spiderman theme song, "Spiderman! Spiderman....*mumble drunken slurred words*....GO SPIDERMAN" After Senn busted, he HAD to brag to everyone about how he made the last longer bet with me, exaggerating and saying in his drunken stupor, "WHEN SPIDERMAN WAS 3-1 DOG IN CHIPS I MADE DA BET W/THE 21 YR OLD KID'S BUDDY BLAH BLAH BLAH". O well. It was funny cuz he would come rail, yell something incoherent, then be quietly escorted back to whatever game he was playing.


I take home $6.2k of Senn's $26k win. He coulda won $100k! Aiya ah well. Next time.

-Dan

Meh, Bah, Tournament at the Bike

After working out w/ScottJ at the track I headed to the Bicycle Casino yesterday to play Wednesday's $1k NLHE event. 81 players signed up for the event. I was determined to play well!

I play loose in the early round (there are 1 hour rounds, starting stacks of $3k, blinds starting at 25-25 and doubling roughly each round). I double up very early on with 86o! I limp behind a couple others and the see a flop of A57 RAINBOW. Guy directly to my right bets pot, I call, a guy in late position raises to 400, the original bettor folds and I call. Turn is a 9. BOOTIFUL. Check, he bets 300 which is strangely small, so I raise to $1k even-steven. He calls quickly. River is Tc, which completes a 3 flush on board. I heem-haw and go all in for about 1.6k and he calls and bustos. The guy is so dejected I felt sorry for him :(.

I get moved to another table and I get dealt JTd in early position. I make a loosey-goose-goose raiser to 75 chips. I get one call in late position and a big fat old man w/sunglasses calls in the small blind. Flop is 975, one diamond. Check, I bet 250, fold, old fattie calls. Turn is Qd, a beautiful card! Check, I bet 700 which was a very big bet. He considers for awhile and makes a call reluctantly. River is Ac. He checks....and I fail to fire a third barrel even though I really should have. I check behind. He shows 52d for one pair (he picked up the same diamond draw on the turn). I SUCK AT LIFE. I think online I woulda made a move, but old men in real life are stubborn and I don't know if I could have pushed him off a middling hand; clearly I would have in this case though. Sigh.

Blinds go up to 25-50 and then I play the following hand. I get AQo in ep and raise to 150. I get one call from late position. Flop A92, two clubs. I bet out 225, he calls. Turn is Tc, putting a 3-flush on board. I bet 600, he calls. River is an offsuit Ace. I check. He bets 2k chips of his 5k stack. I have about 6k behind at this point....I table my cards and say 'i don't beat anything...' and muck. He shows 67o. Good for him?????? UGH PUKE

I can't recover and stay afloat stealing blinds now and then but then bust in the following hand; blinds are 100-200 with 25 ante. Guy who bluffed me raises to 600. I reraise all in 3.1k chips after I squeeze out an Ace and don't bother looking at the other hole card. Big blind wakes up with AA. WOW good variance, huh? LIFE SUCKS.


Today I played 1.5 hours of 2/4nl, 6 tabling on Full Tilt poker. I made a cool 532 so that sofetened yesterday's 1k debit.

This weekend is .... THE MAIN EVENT, $2.6k . I don't know if I will/should play though, I have gone through like 8 or so live tourneys all out of the money; perhaps I should cool off and grind out $2/4nl.


In other news I have been training at MMA Legends and have been whooping on a lot of people with my wrestling and jiu jitsu. UFC veteran Karo Parisyan runs the academy and thinks that I'd do well in the fight. Imagine that: me fighting in a cage in a no holds barred match. Interesting...

-Dan