As for the tourney, I sat with, among others, Cincy Sean from Lord Admiral, tekb0t (a colleague from FullTilt), Bobby Bracelet, Facty, Gvegas and Iggy. Sitting with the wife was bound to be trouble and we talked about asking for a table change…

The problem with pocket kings is they have the feel of aces without the strength. Preflop, you never expect kings to find aces, and when your wife flat calls your raise and then comes over the top on a rainbow, baby-card board, you don’t really expect that she flopped a set of fives. Or at least I didn’t. Of course, the turned two outer bails a man out… or something.

Facty had me covered, so I didn’t bust her. That honor went to Iggy a short time later. I then later returned that favor and busted Iggy with some crap hand, taking the coveted thong as a bounty. Thanks again, my man. Just my size, too. I won a second bounty later from Dr. Chako when I bullied his short stack from the small blind with the powerful 95o. His A5 might have looked dominating, but the flopped 9 turned things around. Sorry, Doc. Again, I owe you one. I finished 28th after pushing in with junk short stacked and running into Grubby‘s ace. Congrats to Ftrain for the hard fought victory.

So Facty booked us onto some flights and into the castle. we thanked both sets of grandparents for splitting the babysitting, kissed the kids, and headed for little Bob Hope airport.

First order of business upon arrival was getting Facty registered for her birthday WSOP ladies event on Sunday. We walked the tournament floor at the Rio, me pointing out obscure and not-so-obscure poker pros while she nodded as if she a) cared and b) knew wtf I was talking about. Sadly, this session did not feature a Sentil Kumar sighting.

Later Friday night we stormed the lion. $2-$4 HORSE was once again the game of choice, but 2 tables were full when we arrived so I jumped in a $4-$8 limit holdem game and found myself across from Chilly and the Rooster. We donked it up for a while and I played about even. Eventually, I got called for the HORSE game and remembered that my non-holdem games are rusty. I had no idea when I should draw and when I should fold. I still managed to hold on to chips until hoyazo beat my baby flush with a bigger one in holdem and a new, female blogger (?) sat down and immediately caught a snowman-tater-house to wipe out my nut flush while playing stud. She then racked up and moved to the other HORSE table! Anonymous blogger horse hit-and-run! Sheesh.

I headed to the famous sports book bar and shot the shit while Facty was capping 89s preflop against Chilly. One nice moment: I walk over to see how she’s doing and see she is heads up in a hand with a civilian. The board is something like [K Q 9 J Q] and the two of them are reraising each other over and over. As the fifth and sixth raises go in, I quietly hope that she realizes there is a straight flush possible, and that her full house or quads might not be good. She finally looks at the poor civilian and says, “Do you want to just go all in?” “No.” was the reply. Facty raises one more time and the guy finally just calls and turns over his ….. pocket nines?!? Facty flips over the KT suited for the straight flush and drags a big pot.

Next time… Irish coffee, kowboy’s revenge and Iggy’s panties…

[Pics from the whole weekend are here.]

Now go fill up his blog comments with backslapping and gladhanding. If you are lucky, he might stake you or buy you a drink.

First off, Facty won the 16k guarantee on Full Tilt Tuesday night. She played great poker and had 15+ railbirds between the irc bloggers and others. And I don’t mind the comments from multiple parties about who is buying who into what and “aren’t we glad that the right member of the family is the regular at the Friday night blogger game”.

The only reason Facty doesn’t also regularly appear at the Friday night game is the babysitting challenge we face. So this week I’ve offered to switch up and send the poker player in the family to the game while I stay with the little ones. Watch her blog for a report.

Meanwhile, our own Absinthe goes to the LAPC last night and proceeds to work his way through 1100+ pairs of sunglasses and baseball caps to make the final 18 in the first event. It finishes up tonight at 7 and he needs to double up early. Send him some love.

Which leads nicely into the MGM. We arrived a little late and the 3 HORSE games were already in full swing with deep waiting lists. I signed up for the HORSE and some low limit holdem, then went off to meet and re-meet bloggers. Of course, no one was moving from the horse games so I got called for 2/4 holdem and sat down at a table with helixx and change100. I sat down in the 8s.

The table looked like it was out of a video game, with all the poker cliches represented. The two Tuan Le / John Phan gamboolers next to me, the big fat guy in the track suit and pony tail with lots of gold who played every hand to at least the turn was in the 10s. And the confused soccer mom way down in the three seat. Shortly after I sat, track suit rivered a flush against her top two and she cocked her head and furrowed her brow and rechecked the board, dog-whistle style.

Position wasn’t really an issue for track suit, so when he limped utg, it started the limp parade around the table. 6 limpers to me and I look down at 5-2 or diamonds. I limp too, looking for a wheel flop or a set, I guess… flop is 3d 4d Js. …or an open ended straight flush draw . I lead at it, track suit calls, as does soccer mom. Turn is the beautiful 6d. I lead again. Track suit folds, buyt soccer mom stops and thinks. Under my breath, but loud enough for the 7s and 9s to hear, I mutter, “raise me, raise me” and she obliges. I three bet and again plead quietly for a cap. She just calls. The river is a blank and, with an unpaired board, I lead again, hoping she sees nothing scary and raises me. She just calls and turns over the nut flush. I flip the nuts over and rake in a nice pot. She looks for sympathy from the 2s. Of course, I took this to mean that my luck was now used up for the weekend.

Amongst all the blogger anarchy, I heard my name called for the HORSE game and picked up, +$40. Rini had finally appeared after the previous night’s I.P. blackjack and cowboy jamboree and delivered my personalized tiltware hockey jersey (see last post). as I arrived at the HORSE table, I got to show it off to Stb, Daddy, Drizz and his pyramid of chips, -Ev, Performify, and others (sorry, I missed some introductions). Had a great time, but no real hands to speak of. Frankly, it was more about socializing and not donking off chips too quickly.

Things get a little blurry at this point, but the next thing I know I’m at the infamous sportsbook bar watching Drizz and Speaker eat pretzels while Daddy, Human Head + Mrs. and a cast of seemingly thousands congregate. At some point, Speaker is pushing a $100 into Mrs. Head’s hands and she is being coaxed into challenging Phil Gordon to a roshambo match. Speaker tells it better than I will, but I raced over with everyone, pulled out the cameraphone. One must capture ” the greatest gambling moment” of one’s life.

I was privy to Gordon’s post-game interview with Dr. Pauly and it was classic. Gordon was still on tilt and it will show in the interview.

All in all, the MGM was the highlight of the trip for me. Hanging out with bloggers, joking with bloggers, buying drinks for bloggers, having drinks bought for me by bloggers, etc. This is really the essense of these events. The poker is absolutely secondary.

next time: king(s) kong…

Thursday night also happened to be one of the more unique office games – the first after a big software release – and it came complete with a surprise – personalized hockey jerseys for folks who went through the struggle of the latest push. Much as I wanted to play in the game and take a shot at busting a pro or two for a bounty, I was wiped out and had to get home for some rest before flying out to Vegas on Friday morning, where rest would presumably not be on the schedule. Somehow I drove the 35 miles from office to home with a minimum of nod-offs and exhaustion-induced hallucinations. I will admit to once seeing a couple of giant redwoods in the middle of the freeway out in the distance, but I was able to snap out of it before swerving to avoid them and ending up going off an overpass like every chips episode ever.

Facty and I did the Friday morning rush-hour crawl to LAX and had an uneventful flight that landed at 11am. I had told Joe Speaker I would try to play in the noon $100 tourney at Alladin, so we landed and went to grab a cab. We ended up at cab stand 7, which I immediately took to mean that my luck was now used up for the weekend.

We hit the Alladin right at noon and Speaker found me right as I was starting to have second thoughts. While he was busy convincing me to play, I spotted Bad Blood, CJ, and Otis. I buy in and the tourney director gives me the card with my seating assignment: table 2, seat 7. That’s right, I was dealt the hammer even before the tourney started. I took this to mean that my luck was now used up for the weekend. Facty bought in to a cash game.

CJ was in seat 6 and we caught up a bit while I folded for the first two orbits. We started with 1500 in chips (I think) and the blinds were 25/50. 15 minutes into the tourney I posted my second big blind. There were three limpers, including CJ in the small blind, and I looked down at Hiltons. I say “raise” and push out 300 more before counting the pot, which was 200. the first limper, in the 2s, is the only caller. Flop is jack high with 2 hearts and i like my hand. Again, I don’t count the pot carefully and bet 1000 into an 800 pot. the 2s pushes in for 600 more and he has me covered by 25. What do you put him on here? I thought that a set, while possible, was no more likely than ace-jack or a nut flush draw. I thought about it and called. He turned over …….. ace-king, no hearts. I’m 77/23 here but the turn is an ace and I wish CJ luck before heading straight to the closest bar.

Lets check the scoreboard, shall we:

• Time in las vegas: 75 minutes
• Bankroll: -$110
• Drinks consumed: 1
• Tiltometer: 9.4

Next time: Storming the …. lion?

I have registered to play in the

Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 7442965

First off, I was actually playing in the weekly office game. Once Hdouble started hosting his Friday night game, I had to a choice to make. With Facty, two kids and a hell of a commute, home time is precious for me and playing cards two nights in a row is not really practical.

Choosing between the office game and the Hdouble game is not really a tough one for me. In one, I get to laugh it up with friends and actually learn something by discussing hands in a casual atmosphere with a number of people whose poker skills I respect. The beer flows, the pizza flows, the jokes flow. To go programmer nerd for a second, its poker++.

The office game is none of these things. It is that new guy in marketing who has never played before but heard once that any two cards can win. Its the guy down the hall that thinks he’s a world class player playing in a championship event. Its rushed and disorganized. Its cramped and chaotic. Its not my thing.

So its no surprise I skip almost all the weekly office games in favor of the friday Hdouble game. In almost 7 months, I’ve played the office game a total of four times and that number includes this weeks game and brings us to the point of this little story.

This week I played in the office game for a few reasons: (1) I’m going to miss the friday game this week. Facty has one of her school/pta/girl scout meetings and i’m on kid duty – (2) The office game was twice (~40) as big as usual (~20) and there was an extra bit of excitement in the air because (3) a special guest was to scheduled to appear – one Mr. Phil Gordon.

Seats were determined and we slammed into four tables. Not only did I draw the same table as Phil but he was two seats to my right. So much for blind play. Furthermore, Hdouble
was two to my left and Geek was 3 to my left. Lovely.

On the first hand, Jon, who also plays in our friday game got AA cracked by AT on a flop of TTx. Phil then proceeded to run over the table. A conga line of players made their way to our table to balance the others and were soon bounced out by Gordon, one after the next. He soon had
a chip lead that allowed him to raise almost every hand – often blind. On one such occassion, I over called a small raise from the cutoff with KJ that gordon had also called. The flop was Jxx, but the raiser pushed all in and Gordon called before the action got to me. I wimped out and folded, fearing QQ/KK/AJ/a set/etc. Gordon shows 99 and the raiser had nothing. The turn and river didn’t help anyone and I would have been good.

This became the theme for me. Folding made, but vulnerable, hands in the face of Gordon’s (and other’s) aggressiveness. Meanwhile Hdouble was the only one keeping up with Gordon – tripling up with pocket fours and busting two players with flopped quads. Gordon was playing extremely fast against us all except Hdouble, where he slowed down just a bit against
the only player he considered a threat.

Tables combined and combined again. We were half way through the field and I’d only stolen a few pots to stay ahead of the blinds. We were at 75/150 and I counted my stack – 1250. Ugh. I was going to have to pick a hand soon. The good news was that if I could find one, i’d certainly get action from gordon, who at this point was raising every pot and calling every push from stacks short and tall. I folded A5o, A4s, QTs, etc. The blinds were coming.

Under the gun I see 66. by far the best hand I’ve seen all night. I push my 1250 in. Its folded to gordon (on the button now as others have filled in spots between us) who says “This is a real tilter hand if I call. Alright, I’ll double you up”. The blinds fold. I turn over the 66 and he
does not turn over his cards. Flop is 3xx. Gordon says “Eight or a three!” Turn is a blank. Gordon says “Eight or a three!” River is a 3 and he turns over 83o.

Lots of groaning from the table. Lots of disbelief. I stood up. Gordon was somewhat apologetic about it.

He’d brought some copies of his Expert Insight dvd for everyone playing. I grabbed one and a sharpie and said, “The least you can do after that is sign one of these for me.”

For the crappy-phone-cam impaired, it reads, “Don’t play 8-3 offsuilt”.