It's about time for me to begin blogging again as I've returned to Vegas for the 2012 WSOP. Expect a decent amount of updates over the next 6 weeks chronicling my massive success (or likely failures) in attemtps to win a bracelet.
I'm playing a lot of poker tournaments. I find them very boring for the most part, but I wake up every morning feeling like a champion and head to the Rio for 12 hours of torture. I've also brought many hats with me, which I find are very important to wear during poker so the other players can not get a read on my emotional state.
Here's me looking very stylish recently...
Well, I wrote that intro about 2 weeks ago when the summer was just beginning and some stuff has happened since. Let me catch you up on this "stuff".
We're making some runs in some tournaments. When I say we I'm of course talking about team hermoso, the house of guys I'm crashing with this summer. Here's a quick recap:
- Derek and Sadan kicked things off in the very first no limit event by finishing 26th and 22nd respectively out of about 3000 people. Both picked up around $15k for their efforts.
- I decided to play the $1500 limit omaha 8/b tournament despite having limited experience in the game. I found it quite easy however and made a pretty deep run ultimately finishing in 19th place. Here's me looking very confused while all in on day 3.
what???
- Next up for me was the $1500 no-limit re-entry event that got a whopping 3500 players or so and had what will likely be one of the largest top prizes all summer at over $800,000. I had a pretty awesome run in this event and with 50 left I played a pot that would have put me in the top 3 in chips had I won. Unfortunately, I lost the pot and was eliminated in 50th place, but it was a great feeling going that deep in a huge field holdem event.
This seems to be getting a bit long, and the next one will likely be a lengthy post as well as I'm going to write a ton about the 10k pot limit holdem final table that I just made.
But to close this one out, here's a nice fellow from the television that Sadan spotted at the Rio. We ended up playing a bunch of 3-card-poker with this fine gentleman, and he assured us that Kenny Powers is a pretty awesome guy.
At the start of 2011, I was on top of the world. Well, the poker world at least. My personal life was the complete shit show it still is today, but I had just come off an incredible year. I wrote this post http://heynotilt.blogspot.com/2011/01/2010-recap-2011-goals.html and figured it'd be fun to look back.
Lets see how I did...
2011 goals:
[ ] Enjoy life. Great success for the first 6 months of the year. Tahoe was incredible, met some great people and traveled to some awesome places. Last 6 months of the year, epic fail. Grinded live poker and lived an overall miserable life.
[ ] Start working out regularly, put on 25 pounds by the end of the year Well this was a pretty massive fail. I probably worked out a good 5-6 times all year, including a 3 day stint of P90x. I'm still the skinny Jewish kid taking all of your paper.
[ ] Eat healthier I did pretty well on this and it's only getting better. Getting into cooking has helped a lot.
[ ] Feel comfortable enough to snowboard on any mountain in the world after 3 months in Tahoe While I wouldn't say I'm a world class boarder, or even really an expert, there's no mountain I wouldn't hit now. I'm still a huge clown in the park and managed to mess up my knee pretty bad at the end of the year, but I've definitely got a new hobby.
[ ] Travel to 5 different countries I'm cheating a bit here, as I only stopped in Copenhagen's airport for a few hours, but.... Bahamas, Spain, Italy, France, Denmark. Oh, and a night in Monaco so I win.
[ ] Volunteer as often as possible I'm a shitty human being.
[ ] Break par on the golf course Shot a -2, 70 at Trophy Club in Atlanta sometime in August I believe. Haven't really been close since but I'm fairly happy with where my golf game is. Looking forward to going pretty low in 2012.
[ ] Win another ALTA city championship if I come back to Atlanta Check
Yep that's me Tebowing in the front right.
[ ] Find something I want to learn and potentially go back to school No effing clue. But grad/culinary/med school are potentially on the horizon.
[ ] Learn the basics of trading stocks, options, bonds I'm still a pretty big fish in the market.
[ ] $200k profit from poker Was certainly on pace, Black Friday didn't help too much.
[ ] Cash a $10k tourney (planning on playing at least 3) Cash the EPT Grand Final in Madrid for 35k euro I believe. Busted PCA on day 2 and dusted off a nice stack in the WSOP Main day 2.
All in all it was a moderately successful year. I accomplished a few poker goals, and a few life goals, but there's still a lot to be desired.
So what's in store for this year...
[ ] Figure out where I'm going in life
[ ] Watch the start-up I invested in make me billions
Wow, it's been a while since I've last written, and since I'm sure everyone that reads this blog has just been smashing refresh non-stop for the past 6 months, here's something new. The last I wrote, I was having a pretty terrible summer in Vegas for the World Series. Well that continued and I managed only 3 cashes in around 30 tournaments. After a pretty profitable first half of the year, I managed to dump most of it back in 2 months.
After Vegas I went home to Atlanta and tried to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with the next few years of my life. Unfortunately, I still haven't come up with an answer to that question.
I've tossed around countless ideas with a ton of people. At one point I was 99% set on moving to Whistler with a few poker buddies and going for SNE again in 2012. That fell apart. A few weeks later I was 99% set on moving to Whistler with another group. Nope, no go again. I think some part of me is dead set against moving abroad to continue playing poker online, as I'm looking to work my way out of poker. Moving to Canada would simply keep me in for much longer then I had ever intended
So, I've decided to stay in Atlanta, and am trying to figure out what it is I want out of this thing called life. Poker was certainly fun and good to me for the past 3 years, but it's run it's course and I'm ready for a new challenge.
No, this isn't an "I'm Quitting" blog. I still play a few big juicy live games (nitontilt is now a PLO pro), and have put a bit of money on the Merge network to pass the time. I don't think I'll every truly quit the game unless I go broke (which at the rate I'm losing this year could happen quite quickly!) However, I think it's highly unlikely I'll put as much time or effort into the game as I have the past few years. I've been fortunate enough to make enough money to hold me over for quite some time until I find what's next, so that is the ultimate goal.
The title should sum this one up pretty well. The first 90% of the summer is off to a poor start. I'm 0 for my last bagillion in tournaments since the final table of the Venetian event with the exception of a mincash in a Venetian $1600 , and have only made day 2 in once. I bubbled that tournament when AK lost all in pre to AQ for a double average stack with ~300 left.
I haven't played much cash unfortunately and am stuck a bit due to a few drunken sessions with friends. Hopefully I can put in some hours in the next couple of weeks and make this summer not a complete waste monetarily. I've got 2 weeks of tournaments I'm really looking forward to, and will hopefully play some 5/10 and 10/25 cash on the side. Somehow, the only game I'm beating so far this trip is the table game ultimate texas holdem, which is a pretty fun game where we're convinced the player has an edge. But I won't bore you with the details there.
I left off my last post with my roommate Sadan being 3-handed in the first $1k wsop event. He ended up chopping it heads up and got a bit over $500,000 for his efforts, but unfortunately lost the heads up match after about 6 hours so we don't have a bracelet in the house.
There's about 1 week left and then the main event, so hopefully I can string a few good days together and maybe win a bracelet of my own. Or at least cash in something, that'd be a welcome change! I just finished up day 1 of the $2,500 mixed holdem event (half limit holdem and half no limit) and I'm 5th in chips with 135 or so left. The top 54 pay so this would be a nice change right before the main event. I'd event settle for the $300k or so and a bracelet.
A few buddies from home came out a few weeks ago (yah I haven't blogged in a while), and I finally took a day off to play some golf and have a nice dinner. It was over 100 degrees on the course, so the scores weren't too great, but the dinner was out of this world. We ate at Picasso at the Bellagio and were seated on the patio right in front of the fountain show. It was incredible, and so was the food. Here's some pictures from that night...
Lobsta Salad
Absurdly good oysters
Scallop with a large potato chip thingy
Foie Gras. I know it's fancy and all, but tasted pretty horrible to me
Zoidberg deer
Colorado lamb
Ze fountains
A bit more has happened in the past couple of weeks. I haven't been partying too much however as I've been busy every day with tournaments, but we've definitely gone to a few dinners, and maybe a club or 2. Good times were likely had, but I don't remember much from those nights.
Speedle and company will be coming in to town in a few days as well as some others, so expect some interesting stories pretty soon.
Just a short post here I'll write something big up soon.
I've been in Vegas for about a week now, and have played 4 WSOP events and a few deepstacks tournaments at the Venetian. Currently 0-4 in the WSOP but got 10th in the $1k Venetian tournament for about $5,300. I came to the final table in 2nd however and ran KK into the chip leader's AA on the first hand so it was a bit disheartening.
In other news, one of my house mates for the summer is currently the chip leader of WSOP event #8 with 3 left. It's about $615,000 for first and he's got 2/3 of the chips in play. We're all headed over to the Rio in an hour or so to watch him take it down, so this is going to be an epic start to the summer. I'll definitely get tons of pictures. He's been absolutely destroying this tournament for the past 2 days and would have already won this thing if not for a bunch of real unfortunate hands.
As for me, today is my first day off since I've been out here, so I'm just gonna get hammered and rail Sadan to his first WSOP gold bracelet. Hopefully I can make a run (or at least a day 2) in the near future :)
It's been a while since I've updated, but I'm back in the states now and fresh off a 2 week adventure in Italy, France, and Spain. Oh, and there was a little stop in Denmark along the way, but that's negligible. I began writing this post about 2 weeks ago right when I got into Spain, but didn't finish it, and have been ridiculously busy and haven't gotten a chance to post it until now. And by that I mean I've been lying in bed and have been too lazy to write. So without much further adieu here we go...
*** 2 weeks ago***
I just got into Madrid a few hours ago, and decided to update the world on my adventures from the past week. As I write this I'm waiting on a 33euro piece of beef tenderloin and a 9euro apple juice from room service, but hey, it looks like monopoly money so I'm going to treat it as such. I don't like how the purple ones are so much bigger than the others. The top quarter of the note sticks out of my wallet and everyone who gets a glimpse of it immediately starts weighing the downsides of robbing this poor boorish Americantard.
In the past 10 days I've been in 5 countries. US, Spain, France, Italy, Copenhagen. And I'm looking at buying a place in Canada, but that's another story entirely. The first week over here I spent in San Remo, Italy, so the story will begin there. Actually the story will begin in Atlanta, Ga because it's my story and that's how it's gonna be.
ATLANTA TO SAN REMO
I left for Europe on the 26th of April, and my flight path looked something like the following. ATL --Richmond -- New York -- Nice. I then had plans to meet up with some other poker players and take the hour cab ride from Nice to San Remo, Italy. Unfortunately, my flight out of Atlanta was delayed enough that I was going to miss my Richmond -- NY flight, so everything was completely fucked. I only had about 12 hours to spare before the tournament was going to start with my original flight plan, so I begged Delta to find me a way to Nice.
Luckily Delta came through in a big way and got me on the next flight directly to JFK in New York and then onto Nice through a connecting flight in Madrid. Also, I was upgraded to business elite on the way to Madrid, which was something like a $4k plane ticket purchased alone. The only problem was I only had about an hour to get off the plane in NY and onto the Madrid flight. Naturally the flight was delayed 30 minutes in Atlanta. We finally boarded and after a half hour the pilot came on the intercom and announced there was a mechanical failure and we had to switch planes. Our new plane was at the other end of the terminal and wouldn't take off for an hour.
But now for a musical interlude...
Ok I'm back. I got into NY about 10 minutes before my Madrid flight was scheduled to take off. Naturally I was in the back of the plane. Somehow I managed to push through and get off the plane along with the 1st classers. I told the agent inside of my troubles and they took me over to the other terminal on a shuttle. Luckily the Madrid flight was delayed 30 minutes, and I boarded just as they were closing the door. The other business elite people looked at me like a complete bum, which wasn't far from the truth as I was wearing pajamas and probably smelt horrible. Oh well, nothing new there. Business elite was awesome, the seat reclined 180 degrees into a bed, so I slept the entire 7 hours of my first overseas flight.
Madrid to Nice was uneventful, however after waiting 30 minutes at baggage claim it became apparent my luggage had been lost in limbo somewhere. After haggling with the lost baggage department for a while (keep in mind he speaks little English and I speak 0 French) they determine my bag is still in NY. I also have no idea how to get to San Remo and don't have enough money to cab it alone. The lost luggage guy tells me they'll deliver my bag to San Remo when it gets there in the morning but I have my doubts.
I call Dmitri (Blaabar) as he had arrived in Nice earlier in the day and took a couple of trains to get to San Remo. I finally figure out which trains I need to take and an hour later I end up at a train station in Ventimiglia, Italy. It's 10:30pm local time and I find out the last train to San Remo leaves at 9:00. Sweet! I ask a local policeman where a hotel is and he speak 0 English. Luckily Italian is close enough to Spanish and I make out "2 streets, red, left, bus, wait." This seems fun. The cop is apparently telling me to go a couple streets out into the city, take a left, and wait for a bus. In a foreign country where I don't speak the language and am clearly lost.
I wasn't too thrilled. On my way to the bus stop I managed to hail a taxi and after some awkward hand gestures and me yelling "San Remo" 4 or 5 times, I think he had the idea. Honestly he could have charged me 300 euros for the cab ride and I would have taken it but I managed to get to the hotel for 50. I tipped 10 euros and the driver was suddenly much nicer and carried my bags in and such. This is about par for the trip so far, I guess tipping is ridiculously uncommon over here.
EPT San Remo and The Royal Hotel
Now, if you've read any of my previous posts (which I certainly hope you have because they are quite amazing) you'll know that I'm a Supernova Elite on PokerStars and we get a lot of "perks" for playing so much. A lot of this comes in the form of cash bonuses, but we also get to travel to a couple of tournaments per year and play for free. In addition, PokerStars puts us up in a 5 star hotel and we are treated like kings for a week. Unshaven, drunken kings without the class of most of the other people that stay in these ridiculous places, but kings nonetheless.
The room at the Royal wasn't all that amazing. Pretty simple 2 bed with and a cot we bought for the 3rd member of the crew, Isak. However, the bathroom had a bidet which was pretty much the highlight of my trip. I was scared to use it but I lost many hours simply staring at this modern wonder. They gave us a continental breakfast every morning which was probably the best breakfast I'd ever eaten (and then ate again for 7 days straight). And then there was a spa which was also very interesting, and I took an emotional shower where instead of water I was sprayed down by some perfume. Very emotional.
Some pictures from San Remo...
Here's the pool area at the Royal Hotel
Some rocks and an ocean
Blaabar deep in thought about moustaches or something
Proof that it's actually San Remo, Italy
Definitely climbable in Assassin's Creed, see all the little holes?
Narrow backroads, perfect for black market transactions
Not just 5 star, 5 star L!
View from the back of the hotel with Blaabar and Isak
9L bottle of Moet, which we promised to buy if someone won something
Crazy euro chips and plaques used during cash games
Casino Sanremo
The poker part of the trip went pretty horribly. I had a VERY good starting table for the 5,000 euro buy-in main event with 5 or 6 bad Italian players, 1 seemingly bad online player, 1 very good online player (but his online name is 'passiv' so I tried to bluff him lots) and 1 wealthy Russian dude who was not very good but had final tabled this event the previous year. In level 2 I lost the majority of my chips, in a pretty interesting spot. Here's how it went down... (enter boring poker talk, but I will try to make it user friendly)
I started the hand with about 24,000 in chips (30k starting stack), and the Russian had about 23,000. He raised preflop first to act to 400 at 75/150 blinds. He had been raising close to 30% of hands with no regard to position, and seemed to be in the mood to gamble it up to build a big stack early. He had also called a few 3-bets before the flop and shown down A7o and QTo in those spots, so he was definitely defending very light. It folded to me in the big blind and I looked down AKo.
Against almost any other player with this many chips still in play, I would usually just call here for 3 main reasons. 1) I disguise the strength of my hand and can likely get 2 or 3 bets on an A or K high flop, 2) I will win the pot often when both me and the other player miss the board, and 3) I will be put in a very difficult decision if I 3-bet and my opponent 4-bets. Most good players will not get it in preflop this early with anything but KK or AA, thus getting in AK is a terrible proposition. However, against this player, I felt that what I had seen of his play thus far outweighed the negatives of 3-betting, and thus I reraised to 1,300.
He very quickly make it 4,600. This confused me a bit as it was the first time he had 4-bet preflop, so he definitely had some kind of hand. At this point, I considered his range to be TT+, AQ, AK. (for the non-poker junkies this means {TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AQ, AK}). However, due to his sizing, timing, and few other things about his bet, I heavily discounted KK, AA. Thus, my AK was doing very well against his range and I was pretty happy to push all in. Ideally I'd have liked a fold from TT-QQ, but the dead money in the middle made up for the slight disadvantage I'd be to those hands. After a couple of minutes, he made the call with TT and I was pretty surprised. The board came 9 high and I was knocked down to around 1,000 in chips. I battled for a few hours and actually got back to around 6,000 chips, but eventually got it all in preflop with A2 vs. KK for a 15,000 chip pot and did not find any help.
So, my first EPT event was a pretty massive failure. After talking about the big hand with a few other pros, we decided that it probably would have been better to not take the coinflip this early, given how good the table was. But, it was too late for that, so I went out and drank a ton of Italian wine and ate great food for the rest of the week. I ended up playing 2 more events and busted shorted of the money in both, and combined with a losing session at 10/20 euro cash (the smallest game they had), it was a pretty poor trip monetarily. However, I still had a blast and can't wait to go back to Italy.
Blaabar also had a pretty poor trip, playing the same tournaments I did and failing to cash as well. However, Isak played a 2,000 euro tournament and came in 9th for what I think was his biggest score ever. Unfortunately, the final table was only 8 players, so he bubbled the final table and was pretty dissappointed. At least one of us won some money on the trip.
*** Back to the present ***
I'm leaving for Vegas from Atlanta tomorrow and will be driving out again, so hopefully there will be some awesome new stories to write about. For a blog on last year's journey, check out this post: http://heynotilt.blogspot.com/2010/07/driving-to-vegas.html.
I still have a lot of stories from Nice and Madrid, but I'll probably be writing those up from Vegas, so expect them in the upcoming week. I'm planning on playing close to 40 events this summer between the World Series and the Venetian Deepstack Series, so I'll be very busy but hopefully there's a bracelet out there somewhere with my name on it.
One of the last weeks I was in Tahoe, my buddy drew from Georgia Tech came out to visit and brought his friend Justin. Now somehow Justin knew me, and I supposedly knew of this fine human being, but the details of us knowing each other are highly debatable. One thing for sure is that had we ever met previously, large quantities of alcohol were involved.
He wrote up quite a nice trip report of the week at our place so without much further adieu, I'm simply going to copy/past it here for everyone's enjoyment. Although I would like to confirm that I was indeed texting someone with a vagina (this'll make sense soon enough).
In the spirit of na na na boo boo, stick your head in doo doo... here's a trip summary from lake tahoe(3/13-3/18/2011) Had a blast on this trip. highlights below:
sunday morning (3/13/2011) we went to lake lanier at sunrise with our buddy Doug Wilks. I didn't bring my wetsuit - mistake. it's fucking cold. Air temp was 32, water temp was 50F. We couldn't decide who was going to go in first, and drew lost the worst game of rick paper scissors ever. He hops in:
I give him massive amounts of hell. It couldn't be that cold. Drew makes a few passes and attempts the backroll and wipes out.
we can scratch that off our bucket list: wakeboard and snowboard in the same day. although next time I'd like to snowboard behind a boat and wakeboard down the mountain.. this will probably happen next year. might look a little funny putting a wakeboard on at the top of a double black run..
that night we went out with our friends/guys we are staying with. they're professional poker players, however weinmann has an ME degree from tech and just slums around playing poker. dmitri is from switzerland and came over for a tournament in vegas. I think we had something like $15k in cash on us. weinman just won a tournament in vegas and felt like walking around with a massive wad of hundreds:
Dinner was at the montbleu hotel. shitty casino, but really nice restaurant. We rolled in dressed like bums and were treated accordingly until we started ordering food:
noms. we ate and drank and attempted to be merry... until the maitre d' politely asked weinman if "he could check his hat." I laughed my ass off. We paid and rolled out to the casino floor.
One thing you learn about professional poker players is that they really fucking hate casinos. table games suck, and if there is no real money in it then it's mostly boring. The motto of the week was "anything under $1,000 is free"
To make things interesting, all week long random side bets were being placed with minimum bets of $100. They go from the outrageous to the mundane..
For the shit of it, we decided to play craps. drew had never been in a casino, and we thought virgin shooters would be awesome. wrong. weinmann drops $1,000 on the pass line and drew immediately craps out. ahahahaha. I laughed my ass off. we walk away about $2500 poorer.
we got drunker and drunker as the night went on. ended up drunk playing a quarter horse racing game and yelling at some people. I think we had to bribe some people to give up their seats - no idea what their price was though... our cocktail waitress is laughing her ass off at us the entire time (as we all try to drunkenly hit on her). The horse racing game turned out to be fantastic - think betting 25 cents at a time on random electronic horses, all the while smashing buttons and yelling loudly at the other participants (and the fake horses, as if their fake plastic jockey ears could hear us jeering them on). We made $.25 side bets (the white horse will always finish last in the next five races.. because hey? it's a white horse)
we roll over to the poker room and decide to piss everyone off. the guys are playing a $1-2 table and we buy in at table max and just start going all in pre-flop. they are taking this shit really seriously, which we all find incredibly funny and start to egg them on. the guy next to me was absolutely pissed so we started taking his money and he mutters some shit like "this isn't real fucking poker" and "what the hell do all you young assholes do for a living?". We are obnoxiously drunk and at one point someone makes me laugh so hard I spit ice all over the poker table. I fuck with the guy for a while and as we are standing up I tell him my two friends are professionals and just won 60k last week in vegas at a tournament. haha - he was pretty unamused and looked pretty pissed off at this point. Losses totaled $3,000 for the group.
We stumble back over to the horse racing game and drain about $100 each into it. At this point we are shit housed. This is where things start getting blurry and extremely entertaining. Our waitress is fairly attractive (and gets more so as the night goes on)
A creepy white knight casino patron comes over and starts talking shit. Apparently that is HIS waitress and does not take kindly to her laughing at our charm, wit, and hilarious jokes all night long. He is late 20s, early 30s and reeks of douchebag - seriously the guy could have been the CEO and Chairman of Summer's Eve (I'm not only the president, I'm a user). Total asshole.
He saunters over and says some stupid things (I have no idea what) and orders a few shots of vodka.. as he leaves our waitress informs us of the guy's level of douchebagness and we all agree. Weinman offers to pay her $300 just to bring the guy shots of water. She laughs, but declines citing her need of employment. We up the offer to $500... small price to pay to see this guy's soul get crushed. She politely declines again but does offer to bring us another drink.
I'm in a fighting mood and casually tell dmitri I will punch the guy in the face as hard as I can for $200. Dmitri laughs and pulls a wad of 100s out of his pocket. shit, you can't bluff a poker player! we decide not to because of the potential loss of that amazing lobster bisque we had.
It's snowing hard outside. None of the cabs will take us home (staying at the top of the mountain). Apparently, it has never snowed in tahoe before and the cabs are set up to deal with this. We decide to drink more, and the poker room dealer offers to sell us his car for $750. We whip out the cash but he decides not to - oh well. We stumble around in the snow and find a 4WD ASTRO VAN TAXI. OUR SAVIOR.
end of night one.
Monday morning we wake up hungover and tired. time to go skiing! We're hiking down the hill to catch the shuttle when the most awesome guy ever rolls up and offers us a ride down to the mountain. score!
it dumped about 9" of snow the night before and conditions were perfect. We go bombing through the woods and tear up the fresh stuff.
not pictured: 12 beers and 2 bottles of sake. oh and the disgusted look on everyone's faces when we started doing sake bombs in the restaurant and generally being assholes (nothing new there).
so remember our friends that always have to gamble on something? let me introduce you to the concept of credit card roulette. big expensive dinner? check. habitual bored gamblers? check.
there are two ways to settle paying that pesky check:
1) put all your cards in a hat (aforementioned hat that was checked at montbleu)..pull them out one by one. last one out pays. we all play and speedel gets the bill! sucks for you buddy - free dinner was had by the rest.
2) approach random strangers in the restaurant and have them pick a card from the stack. this card pays.
I feel pretty confident this game will be played at a local irish bar near you
Wednesday rolls around. just drew and I awake from our slumber to ski. On the first chair up, we meet a nice middle aged woman (hello Liz!) who introduces us to the concept of an on mountain pub crawl. HOW THE FUCK DID WE NOT THINK OF THIS. ugh, it made me feel like such an amateur. tomorrow is st patty's, so what a better time to get this a shot?
Thursday rolls around and we scheme up a drunken game plan - john madden style with the Xs, Os and all his batshit squiggly lines on a trail map. "you see john, you've got to get the liquor... in my blood stream! to kill my brain cells!" fuck you john madden.
We're one of the first lifts up and decide to hit the east peak lodge. hell, we weren't even sure if they were open but sure enough the bar was! the plan is to hit 8 bars in 7 hours and have a different drink at each bar. easy enough. I will admit, I was slightly worried about being so inebriated I might attempt double back flips in the terrain park. We took pictures at each bar and had the bartender sign our trail map for future framing. Might as well have something interesting to tell the nurses when you're shitting your pants in your "golden years"
it was tame. the actual on mountain section was fairly easy, but everyone kept telling us to "stay safe". pfft. amateurs. sober @ bar eight, so we decided to get drunk on car bombs - after all it was St. Amateurs day!
after stumbling home we suited up for dinner. we decided on the chart house. we had the usual fare: squid, oysters, crab stuffed mushrooms, sea bass, ahi tuna, swordfish, lobster, mahi, prime rib, etc. food was uneventful in my opinion.. mushrooms were good but most everything else was just kind of meh.
speedle was on a mission to get drunk and the drink of choice was jager. europeans (other than the germans) pronounce this pretty funny.. with a hard J. nothing like pounding jager in a swanky restaurant to continue the asshole and uncouth streak. weinman and dmitri were doing their usual side bets, $100 minimum if you please. weinman had been texting some girl (or possibly a dude, I won't ask) back in atlanta. the time read 32 after the hour.
"Dmitri, $100 (in US DEEZ) this girl texts me back before quarter till"
"You're on"
in anticipation, we decide to do more shots. this place reminded me of the ritz inside - the kind of restaurant where they take themselves way too seriously for what it is. class issues aside, we decide on some royal flushes.
the water returns a few short minutes later without our drinks. "sir, um, the bartender doesn't know what that is", he stammers.
begrudgindly, we explain to him the make-up of our drink.
14 minutes later weinman's phone blows up. a slow grin passes over his face as he saunters over to the bar and an annoyed dmitri. I spy a fresh benjamin exchange between the two. obviously, weinman's boyfriend had texted him back.
six shots later, we stammer out of the restaurant.
at this point, the night gets a little fuzzy. we're feeling good and decide to head down to the local shit hole irish bar in town. you know, for authenticity sake. crowded as expected. we push our way to the bar and order some drinks. let me try and reiterate how shit housed speedle is at this point. that little portugese bastard can NOT hold his liquor - and he turns into a violent drunk.
that being said, the next five minutes at the bar was the strangest bartender to drunk-asshole-patron I have ever encountered.
Speedle doesn't know what to order, and because of his intoxication level starts yammering in portugese. I can't help but giggle like a schoolgirl studying penises on the first day in biology class. The bartender looks at me, and I almost believed that looks could kill.
'What the fuck is his problem?", she glaringly asks me.
"He's european", obviously thinking I am the funniest man on the planet at that time.
"Well, does he need something? It's fucking packed in here"
"Yeah, two shots of Jager.. and he's buying"
"Does he have any money?"
Suprisingly, speedle manages to catch this request and whips out a stack of hundreds. I estimate it to be around $2,000 USDEEZ.
The bartender grabs his wad and tells him to "put that shit up before you get fucking rolled in here, you eurotard". I laugh uncontrollably. Something about this exchange was so bizarre I couldn't keep it in. She returns with two shots. Speedle leers at the blonde next to me and "orders" her a drink.
Apparently in portugal they order drinks different than the states. Speedle throws a $100 bill at her. Maybe he thought she was a prostitute (that's an entirely different story...), or just had no physical ability to order her a drink. Needless to say, she was pissed and threw his money back at him.
I throw back both shots and hustle him out the door. "We need to go, before speedle gets us kicked out."
Naturally, he is calling us all sorts of names in a usual violent drunk manor. We chug out drinks and head out into the street.
The geographic layout of the state of Nevada is quite interesting. Western states are deceiving. They're big. Really fucking big. I had planned on driving to Vegas and meeting some Navy buddies there, until I looked at a map. It's a ten hour drive through state highways and my five minutes of googling yielded me one word: "fly, dumbass."
The closest real airport (and city) to tahoe is Reno. Everyone flies into there. And in case you didn't know, some of the surrounding counties have legalized prostitution. You may have heard of one such institution (made famous by a TV special): THE BUNNY RANCH.
At 11:30pm on March 14th while blackout drunk, Mario Rui (aka Speedle) decided that come herpes or high water... well he was going to fuck a prostitute that night. We scoffed at him. He scoffed at us. Mutual scoffings were had. We called his bluff.
He climbed into a $200 cab ride (one way) to reno to accomplish this task, all the while with us yelling things like "hope you don't pay all that money for an expensive case of whiskey dick!", and "want to take the GO Pro camera to film your sexcapades?!"
He called us assholes and left in the cab. We returned to our cabin around 1am and decided to get shithoused drunk.
At 6am we hear a rumbling downstairs. Speedle comes staggering up. His pants are half off and he looks like a portugese hobo.
"you guys are a bunch of fucking assholes!"
he stumbles off to his room and slams the door. we burst into laughter and pass out.
The next day we find out speedle took a cab out to the bunny ranch. He was so drunk and belligerent they wouldn't even let him in (yes, to nail a prostitute). He sat on the curb for an hour and eventually took a cab back home.
/end tahoe trip
ENTER WEINMAN AGAIN
On another interesting note a bunch of stuff has happened with the US Governement and Online Poker. I'll cover this a bunch in my next post which should be up before I head off to Europe on Monday. But the bottom line is I'll likely be a Canadian in about 1 month's time, eh?
What's up kids! I've been pretty ridiculously busy for the last 2 weeks, so I haven't had a chance to update this shindig. Aw hell, who am I kidding, I haven't been doing shit but laying around and playing the occasional few hands of poker. I'm right on the verge of losing SNE, which would be most unfortunate considering how close I was to offing myself at the end of last year trying to get it. If I can somehow get 2 more hours in this month, fortunately, I'll retain those sexy black stars till at least the end of April.
Yep, there you have it. That's the clown takin' all your money.
And now, since I don't really have anything super exciting to talk about, I'll just talk about a bunch of random crap and hope that at least 3 of you find something in here worth reading.
I'm back in Atlanta now for a couple of weeks. I don't have a very good explanation of why I left Tahoe early, but it seemed like the right move at the time. Unfortunately, I forgot that I can't walk 5 minutes and be on a mountain in this place so now I'm homesick. I think I'll likely go back for one more week of boarding before we lose the house.
Here's a picture of my Dynamics professor from Georgia Tech. He was likely the best avatar I ever had.
Baseball started today. I hate baseball. Does that make me un-American? Nah I don't think so, and I buy enough silly electronic things and fast food to balance that out. On a side note, Jason Heyward is kind of good at this excuse for our national pastime.
I'm currently homeless, which is rather exciting. Fortunately, my parents live in Atlanta and for some unknown reason are o.k. with me stumbling in at 3:00 each morning smelling like you average hobo on the street corner. What excellent parental figures I have!
I'm going to be in Atlanta probably until the 11th of this fabulous month of April, so if you are in town and would like to see me make a fool of myself somewhere, give me a shout. After that I'm off to Tahoe for one more week of boarding, and then will probably be going right to Europe for about a month. I'm pumped about Europe, mostly because I imagine all Europeans to be just like Speedle, Joop, and Blaabar, and these 3 individuals are simply prime examples of the human race. Look, I will show pictures to justify this claim...
speedlebot
joopaloop
blabby *PUSS*
So that's pretty much what I'm expecting when I go to this foreign continent. I'll be playing the 5,000 euro buyin tournament in San Remo on April 27 (27 April for you Euro folk) and then the 10,000 euro buyin tournament in Madrid on May 6 (6 May if you're still confused). In between I plan on having speedlebot teach me how to properly buy a 391 piece suit and spend over $1k on drinks in a strip club after getting cut off. He's quite the champion.
After Madrid I have a friend with entirely too much hair flying out to bum it around Europe with me for a couple of weeks before she starts school in Germany for the summer. It will likely be a thrilling adventure of epic proportions. Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest and many other cities are on the to-do list, so hopefully we can have some fun and avoid accidentally ending up in the basements of too many sex dungeons.
I'd also like to update everyone on the current scores of my ongoing Words With Friends games. You're going to pretend to care, because if you've gotten this far, you are thoroughly bored with your life.
Jooooooooce 113
matthorsecock 111
tiles: cielegu
Jooooooooce 123
heatherwhizkid 98
tiles: haha heather i'm not gonna tell you
Now that all of the important topics have been covered, I will end this blog with a song I've been listening too a lot lately. It's nice because I often do not know what day of the week it is, so I count on Rebecca to keep me informed.
Ok, I'm kidding. If you haven't watched it, then I'd suggest you watch a few dozen times to let it soak in. Because "WHICH SEAT CAN I TAAAAAKE?" is likely one of the deepest lyrics I've come across in a while.
Let me start this blog off by saying that I really don't like Vegas all that much. You may think it'd be my Mecca given the whole 'you play poker for a living' thing, but the city itself is just too much for me. Most of this stems from the fact that I lived a ridiculously crazy 2 months there last summer, and every trip I've made to Vegas since then has just brought back shitty memories of lighting way too much money on fire.
I was hoping this trip would be a bit different. My good buddy Nolan randomly decided he wanted to go for a few days and wanted someone to share a hotel room with. Given that I do absolutely nothing with my life, it seemed like a good chance to get down there for a couple days and hopefully not spew money like I usually do. Well, we failed pretty miserably at that part right from the get go. Speedle and Blaabar ended up wanting to go as well so we just ended up booking a Penthouse Suite at the Mirage. I know what your thinking, "don't spew money... Penthouse?" It was worth it however. The room was awesome (Kim Kardashian was staying next door), and we didn't really spend entirely too much on the room.
I don't think I took any pictures of the room itself, but it was gigantic with 2 master bedrooms and a living room area that was about twice the size of normal Vegas hotel rooms. We were also at the top of the Mirage which was pretty awesome.
Now, the plan was to not play any poker, and just go see a show and have some nice dinners. Unfortunately, nothing in my life seems to go as planned and I found myself playing a $500 poker tournament at the Wynn the 1st day we were in town. I'll save a everyone reading a bunch of time talking about boring poker hands and such, but this was the outcome...
Yeahhhhhhhhh, wooooooooooooooooo. We ended up chopping the remaining prize pool when there were 5 people left, and then I went on to win the whole thing for about $16,000 and that cool looking trophy thing. Of course, Blaabar swapped 10% with me again so although he busted just short of the money, he still made over $1k in the tourney. What a luckbox. Oh, I guess it wasn't too lucky when I busted him with A3 vs. his QQ all in preflop. Sorry buddy, but clearly a straight is better than a pair.
So the tourney ended up taking up most of the time on the trip. The guy I beat heads up was a pretty nice guy and was in town with a couple of friends so I took everyone out that night. I was more than content just getting bombed playing beer pong at O'Sheas, but Speedle was with us, so naturally we ended up at Sapphire. A bunch of bottles and champagne rooms later, I was reminded of why I hate Vegas so much.
So that's about it for this time. I'm definitely on a major heater in live poker with 2 'wins' in my last 3 live events, and I'm pretty excited to play some more live tourneys. The next one on my schedule is the EPT Grand Final in Madrid on May 5th, but I'm eying an EPT tourney in San Remo, Italy the week before that should be a lot of fun and a pretty soft field. I've never been to Europe and I'm planning on spending the majority of May over there, so expect some cool pictures at the very least in upcoming blogs.
I've got a few buddies in Tahoe right now, and one of them has a GoPro camera that attaches to a snowboard helmet, so we've got some interesting videos of snowboard action. Hopefully I can get a few of them onto my computer and I'll throw them in the next post. From what I've seen they're rather excellent given that I've been very much inebriated every time I've worn the camera.
Finally, although I had planned on being out in Tahoe until April 20th, I'm going to be coming home much earlier, probably sometime in the middle of next week. I'm about ready to be out of the cold, and I think I've snowboarded plenty for one trip. So watch out ATL, this busto ass clown in about to come home (for a whole month this time!)
Hello world! I'm back in the fabulous Lake Tahoe after a week in West Palm Beach, Florida, and a lot has happened. So what better for me to do then tell the whole internet about it.
I guess I'll talk about the boring stuff first since this is a blog about poker, and I have to get my little fix in each post. Poker went really well down there. I lost about $1k in cash, which was actually a pretty big accomplishment since each of the 2 out of the 3 nights I played cash I was stuck over $5,000 within the first 20 minutes. One of the nights I lost $6k in the first orbit and vowed I wasn't leaving until I was a winner. So 5 hours later or so this was the scene in front of me. A few k after this picture I had met the goal. The highlight of the night was definitely winning a $4,300 pot with 2nd pair in PLO that went 3 way to the river and was potted on the turn.
I lost the main event in about 2 hours, so there was another $1,600 down the drain. Fortunately, I went really deep in the penultimate $1k No Limit event and was fortunate enough to get some pictures along the way.
Here is me looking very intense at the final table
Here is me looking very calm as I jam my entire stack in with Jack high with 4 people left
Since you are likely getting tired of looking at me, here's my Tahoe roomate Dmitri
And now back to me eating some soup and then getting a massage
I had about 50% of the chips in play when we got down to 3 people, and the $50,000 first prize was in sight!
Unfortunately, the first hand of heads up play I decided to bluff away my entire stack and my opponent made a pretty ridiculous heroic call with 2nd pair on a very flushy/straighy board, and I ended up getting 2nd place for about $32,000. Dmitri was happy as he had 10% of my action, as was my buddy Brian from high school who had swapped 5% with me.
But it was still my second biggest live score ever, and definitely got me back on track for the year which had started out rather poorly.
And we are finally done with the poker part... onward to more important things!
My good friend Chris and his girlfriend April came down for the last few days of the trip, and one night we spontaneously decided to take a limo ride down to Miami to watch the Heat play the Wizards and check out my cousins new restaurant. You may know Chris as the legendary csfalcon18 Rush Poker extraordinaire. You also should remember my cousin Josh from a post many months ago; you'd better because he's the famous one in the family, not me.
Anyways where was I. Oh yes a limo ride from Palm Beach to Miami.
I was surprised to find out that a legend of online poker lived right in between the two cities and was up for coming out with us for the night. I'm speaking of course, of the legendary vinivici9586. If you play online poker at Poker Stars you know vini. Hell, you probably don't even dare speak his name for lack of 7 months of runbad. But he's always there, taking your paper and hiding somewhere in the confines of his parents' basement. Vini's real name turned out to be Vincent, but I had known him for way to long as the legendary vini, so henceforth he will be referred to as such.
But first, a picture of most of the crew in the limo!
If you've read this far, I assume you can figure out who is who. As we arrived in Ft. Lauterdale to pick up Mr. Vini, we were informed that he'd be bringing a date. Naturally as poker players, we decided to gamble on her ethnicity. I took Asian and Blaabar took the field giving me 3:1. I'll let you readers decide who won the bet as there was much confusion.
That's vini on the left, if there was any confusion about that part. Yes, that is the guy taking your paper every day. And yes, that is his 100% asian date for the night.
Moving onward!!!!
We proceeded to the Heat game which was a lot of fun. Dwade put up 41 points and Lebron can fly which was interesting to watch. I snapped a few pictures of the game...
The Heat won by 8 if I recall correctly, so everyone was happy. We quickly exited the arena where the limo was waiting for us and moved on to location number 2, Josh's new restaurant.
Now, I knew the restaurant was new, I just didn't know how new. The sign displaying the name of the place wasn't even up, and it turned out to be the second night that the restaurant was open to the public. We got lucky that the hostess flagged us down as we passed the place for the 3rd time. I'm not sure whether Josh let the staff know that we were coming, or it was because we all got out of a stretch limo, but they ended up clearing out the nicest table in the place for us. It was separated from everything else and in a library-esque room which was pretty amazing.
Speaking of amazing, I should talk about the food here. Oh first I should give the place a shout out since it's really great food. The name is Symcha's and it's located in South Beach, FL.
But back to the food. I had lamb with some truffle infused sweet potato mash and asparagus and everything was just about perfect. I also tried some of everyone's plates and would definitely order everything off the menu. I think the sea bass was my favorite though, so give that one a try if you end up at Symcha's.
Naturally, I couldn't contain myself and took a ton of pictures of food as you probably realize I do a lot by now.
What I'm getting at is if you happen to find yourself in the Miami area, check it out because I pretty much guarantee an awesome meal. And if you happen to be lucky enough to meet the chef, mention your a fan of cousin Daniel and maybe you'll be lucky enough to have the executive chef himself choose the cards when you Credit Card Roulette for the bill.
And Dmitri finally lost and had to pay for a dinner, so all was well with the world.
Here's the whole crew from that night...
The rest of the trip was pretty relaxing and uneventful.
We played some Chinese Poker on the beach.
We watched a master chef make onion volcano and scream "JAPANESE KETCHUP" at a hibachi place
And Dmitri and I played golf. It was his first time. He shot 78... on the front.
I think that's about it for now. The few days we've been back in Tahoe have been eventful, involving a Harry Potter lookalike, a very drunken night at Montbleu, and me buying the jacket off a guy's back. But we'll save all these stories and more for next time. And I promise there will be more as I'm headed to Vegas in 2 days for some festivities.
