MATH

Played in the MATH blogger tournament last night. This is a $24 buy-in tourney at FT. Ran well early on and built a stack only to run 1/2 of it into quad Aces which was great. Guy led out with trip A's on the flop which was a fantastic move, another A came on the turn and I was pretty much convinced I had the best of it after that, wrong! Anyhow still managed to finish in the points at 24th.

The better news is that I pulled another $500 off of the FT 1/2 6 max tables in about 2 hours. So that's a nice 1k boost to the bankroll over the last 2 days and the hourly rate from cash games is now back up to a living wage - barely.

Playing a Little Poker

Played just over 600 hands of 1/2 NL yesterday at FullTilt and finished up $500 which was a nice confidence booster after really not playing for about three weeks. Played surprisingly well given the break, picking off some bluffs and generally just playing tight agressive. Only All-In once all session with AA v AQ preflop (it held up). There's def still some weak players on FT but I didn't see anyone blow through multiple buy-ins or just making ridiculous calls so the play has dried up some IMO.

Played for awhile at a table with blogger Hoyazo. He suffered one of the worst beats I've read about in the FT 400k yesterday costing him the chiplead. Then he blew through some bankroll tilting. You can read about it on his blog. Awful beat...he's a qaulity player though, as evidenced by his two wins already in the FT bracelet races, so he'll bounce back.

I think I'll play in the blogger tournament tonight for the first time and just grind some more 1/2.

Haven't heard anything about the job - fuck'em.

Waiting for the Phone to Ring

A couple posts back I mentioned that after coming back from Palm Beach I had an interview for a job I really wanted. Well Tues of this week they called me back for a second interview. I was interviewed by the entire office (only ten people in this company) and it went really well. It's down between me and another guy. The position is perfect cause it's a maternity leave fill in, which would carry me through the summer/early fall and still let me be a PT by Nov which is my goal. It also pays about 30k more than I'm making. The CEO of the company mentioned that, in a perfect world, he would fill this position with someone who would be willing to work on an as needed oncall consultant type basis. He then mentioned that he knew how difficult this was - getting great people on a part time basis. While listening to this, I'm thinking to myself, how do I communicate to this guy that I'm dedicated and hard working etc but that I would LOVE a job which paid what this job pays requiring only part time hours. The truth - that I want to make my living playing poker, and bonus whoring, but would like something to fall back on during the bad times prob wouldn't go over, so I told him "sounds perfect, let me get you through your busy season (Spring Summer) and then in the Fall I'd be more than happy to take part time hours so that I can take some time off to study for the bar exam." I should hear in the next day or so....wish me luck. I've decided if I don't get this job that I am going to approach my current employer about scaling back to three days a week - I just can't take it here anymore. If they won't go for that, then I think I'm at a stage where I'm just going to quit. Hopefully this other job comes through and it won't come to that.

Since West Palm I've really not done much of anything other than sweat this new job possibility. One of my best friends did come to DC for a visit and we saw a Wizards, Capitals and Nationals game all in the same wknd which was pretty cool except that all home teams got their asses kicked.

Have been betting some sports and am in the black finally. Have actually been on a torrid hot streak with baseball as of late. I literally played no Poker since back from Palm Beach other than this live charity satellite for the WSOP which literally had the worst structure of any tournament I've ever been in. 30 minute levels which isn't horrible and the blind structure started at 25/25, then 25/50, 50/10 but you only got $1000 in chips to start for $150.00. Rebuys were $100 for the first 3 hours and an addon was offered. The problem was (and the one I found myself in) was that after 1.5 hours, the rebuy only got you 10BB. I didn't even bother....I mean I realize that it's for charity, that they have to get the thing over in a day, and that they want as many rebuys as possible but what about the next 1.5 hours. If I had stayed and busted, another rebuy would have got me 7BB.

I've got some money on FullTilt now using mywebatm.com. Played some last night with a positive result. Have nothing planned for this wknd so am going to try and play a few thousand hands and get that cash game hourly rate back up to a living wage.

I'm also going up to Atlantic City next week (Thur) to play the Junkies Poker Open. The Junkies are a morning talk radio show here in DC, sorta shock jocks, sorta sports guys but pretty funny. You can actually catch their webcasts here. Should be a good time. Prize pool should be about 100k. No idea re the tournament itself regarding structure etc....will have to see.

Great Money Management, Phil

Here is the link to Phil Hellmuth's blog where he rationalizes his loss to Ivey. Of course it's all attributable to bad luck etc, etc.

Wound up betting on G'town and the Fla UCLA over so broke even. Picked up a win betting the Mets over the Cardinals so 1-0 on baseball betting so far. Not sure who I'm going to take tonight in the NCAA championship game. Have no doubt that Fla is winning this but the game could be close and Fla is laying 5 right now. The over looks attractive.

Played a little poker this wknd, mostly $50NL. Boring but beatable. Building the bankroll one set against TPTK at a time lol.

Phil Hellmuth - Down $536k to Ivey in Chinese Poker

Phil is such a donkey and a meglamaniac....I mean what the hell is he doing playing chinese poker or anything with Ivey, for that matter.

Final Four

I'm leaning towards Georgetown and Florida today although I'll probably watch the lines right up till game time before I place my bets.

G'town - Ohio St

I think G'town will pull this one out. Ohio has looked shaky at times during the tournament. Oden is a beast for sure but I think Hibbert handles him on defense. Foul trouble on either could push this game either way but all factors considered I think these teams match up well then you throw in Jeff Green for G'town and that puts them over.

Florida - UCLA

I think experience and coaching will help Fla pull this out. I personally think this game will be close though so if the line moves more I may take UCLA.

Sanjaya - The Next American Idol

I pretty much hate the TV show American Idol. I will often watch the first week or two to see the disastors who try out and then are ripped to shreds by Simon Cowell, but let's face it - the show blows.

Well now I'm a fan! There is a website out there www.votefortheworst.com which wants to make a mockery of Idol by encouraging people to vote for the worst contestant, who from what I'm reading, is this Indian kid, Sanjaya. I guess this is causing quite an uproar, is getting the attention of the mainstream media, and Idol is threatening lawsuits. Awesome! Being a contrarian I'm all over shit like this, I think I'll even vote for the first time in my life, although I doubt I'll watch the show.

Anyway as I mentioned, many people are taking offense to this and its not only the frontal labotomy crowd that actually watch this drivel but none other than Daniel Negreanu. Daniel's last blog entry is all about what a fantastic show Idol is and how this site is ruining something great for the American public. He even makes this analogy:



"Frankly, it's not all that much different from what terrorists are trying to accomplish. They want to take your liberties and your freedom away from you. They've accomplished a lot, and anyone who's ever been to an airport since 9/11 should understand that.

Terrorists don't want you to be happy. They don't want you to enjoy things and if they can find a way to destroy something you enjoy, they'll try."

???????????????? What? Are you kidding me? Daniel is an amazing poker player but some of the things he writes in his blog make me wonder if he isn't an idiot savant or something.

Anyhow I don't know anything about the voting process but I'm going to look into it and if it's 35 cents to vote or something I know I'm devoting $10 a week to this worthwhile endeavour.

Juanda Poker Face

I've figured out why FT's customer support is so shitty, they spend all their money on marketing....they truly do have the best ads.

Back from Palm Beach

Well I'm back from Palm beach....actually have been back since Monday. Man what a fantastic time I had. Great condo right on the beach, 3 great friends, lotsa great food and copious amounts of booze. Florida is a funny state, the disparity between rich and poor is as great as anywhere I've ever been. It's like the Intercoastal Waterway is the proverbial train track (on the East Coast at least). On the Ocean side = good. On the other side = bad. If you're on the right side it's a great place to be though.

One highlight was dinner at Cafe Boulud in the Brazillian Court Hotel (picture above) then drinks out in the courtyard until the wee hours. I actually met the owner/manager of the outside bar when I was buying cigarettes. This non descript guy comes up and says "do you have a light" so I gave him my whole pack of matches, we chatted for a couple mins and he says "this is my place, let me get you a few rounds." What goes around comes around.

The Brazillian Court Hotel is a condo hotel with a 400sq ft condo selling for $700k. The cheapest house (townhouse that is) in Palm Beach (I learned from the bar manager) is about 1M. If you do own property taxes are 30-40k minimum, pool maintenance 7-8k, lawn maintenance 12-15k and judging from the valet parking at the hotel you'd better be driving a Bentley. Sigh, how the other half lives.

Depressed to be back at this job as usual. Actually some good news on the job front. I applied for this really really cool job with a firm which provides litigation support. I really don't want to say more than that but I've always wanted to work there. They are routinely in DC's top 10 employers. The great thing about the job is that it's somewhere I want to work, doing something I wouldn't mind doing AND it's to fill in for a maternity leave so it's 6-9 months max and I can still make my goal of being a PT by November. Have an interview next week. Wish me luck.

Have't played any poker since back. Finally got my WEB ATM card so I can now upload some dough to FT and play the bracelet races...congrats to Hammer Player for taking one of those down!

More soon.