HugePoker

I arrived in Vegas Wednesday after a three-day drive, played two tournaments on Thursday - the $350 Deep Stack Extravaganza at the Venetian and the $160 nightly at Caesar’s, both with sort of dreary results - never got much above starting stack, took a couple of routine bad beats, bled down enough that I had to start shoving marginal hands, and sooner or later ran into big hands. Today I went for the $550 “Mega Stack” series event at Caesar’s, similar to the Venetian’s “Deep Stack” events but with much smaller fields. Last year I decided that the tournaments at Caesar’s were softer than Venetian’s, partly because better players want to play with bigger fields to have a shot at a truly big score. I tend to like smaller fields because I think a big part of my edge over weaker players comes at the final table, and I’m much more likely to make a final table in a 100-player tournament than in a 700-player event.

So I went to Caesar’s, with somewhat excessive 25k starting stacks and 25-50 blinds, but they go up pretty fast after that. By the end of late-registration and re-registration (they’re so desperate for bigger fields that if you bust out of the tournament they let you buy back in for the first 4 hours and 40 minutes) we had a whopping 69 players. Things were mostly quiet for the first three hours or so, and I made slow progress up to around 30k. A hand came up where a player raised from middle position to 2400, super-loose Asian kid to his left flat-called, I look down and find AQ in the small blind. I’m out of position with a pretty good but not superpower hand, and I’d love to just take the pot down right away, so I raise to 8100. The initial raiser folds, but the S-L.A.K. immediately shoves for more than my 30k stack. So I’m in a weird spot … if the initial raiser had shoved I would have a pretty easy fold, but the S-L.A.K.’s play smells really weird. Of the 4 hands that beat me, if he had AK I’m pretty sure he would have 3-bet right away, likewise with QQ and probably KK. Maybe with KK or AA he flats to induce a squeeze, but maybe not. So why did he flat for 2400 and then shove for more than 30k? I don’t do this very often, but this was definitely a situation where a big bet really smelled fishy and made me more inclined to call. So in the end I think forever and then call off my stack and hold my breath until he turns over A-T-suited. I get in one breath and then hold it again until the board fills up with no Ten and no flush for my opponent, and I more-than-double up. I work my way up to 75k, which was about double average at the time, but I can’t get any more chips than that, and things started turning sour. I lost a big pot when my AK lost to KQ after we both flopped a King but my opponent made a one-card flush on the river - yuck. I made it to the dinner break - BBQ brisket is covered by the $10 food voucher you get with your tournament buy-in - yum. I get moved to a new table and it becomes clear pretty quickly that this is a much meeker bunch, and I commence immediate aggression, which makes me some progress, until I look down at AQ again, which is a lot better than all the other hands I’ve been shoving with, so I shove again with 40k (blinds 1k-2k-300). An old guy on my left agonizes for 3 or 4 minutes and finally calls, turning over 99. I’m hopeful that I might double up again with AQ, but that hope is dashed quickly when the flop contains no Ace, no Queen, and a big fat nine-ball. So I’m out in 24th (only 9 people got paid) on an annoying coin-flip, but at least I feel like I put together a decent run and got a flip away from a well-above average stack with 24 left.

Tomorrow is day 1A of the $1000 WSOP event at the Rio, and I’m about 80% sure I’m playing (if I don’t feel like playing tomorrow I can play day 1B on Sunday). It should be a massive donk-fest, and hopefully my tables will be filled with random tourists taking their one shot at WSOP glory.

Noon Pacific time … cross fingers (or whatever).

-huge

I busted out of the EPT San Remo main event about 20 minutes shy of the end of day 1B. It sucks not to make it to day 2, but in truth by the time I busted out I was so short-stacked that I really wanted to get my chips in and either double up or bust out before the end of the night, rather than coming back for day 2 with a miniscule stack - I would have preferred the former option, and I put myself in a good position to get it, but the latter, sadder option took me in the end.

I got off to a pretty good start in the first two hours, working my 30,000 chip starting stack up to almost 40,000, thanks largely to the generosity of an older Italian gentleman who didn’t seem to have a firm grasp of some basic poker tactics, like “if you don’t have a strong hand, you should usually fold”. Very early on he took a pot from me by check-raising my continuation bet when I didn’t really have anything (and before I had determined how bad he was). I decided he was a good person to play pots with, and that I should never ever bluff him under any circumstances. When he called a raise and I had position on both him and the initial raiser, QJs seemed good enough. The big blind also called and we saw the flop 4-handed. KQT, two suits. Not too shabby, but with three opponents I can’t go crazy with second pair. The raiser checks, Guido bets out 600, I call, BB folds, original raiser calls, so we’ve got a decent pot brewing. The turn is a beautiful Ace, giving me the nut straight but putting a second flush draw on the board. Now raiser and Guido both check, allowing me to dare to hope that neither of them have another Jack. I can’t slowplay anything here with two flush draws out there and either opponent perfectly likely to have one of the flush draws, two pair, or even both. I fire 1200, which should make my hand pretty transparent, and the raiser folds but Guido shakes his head and calls, like “OK, I know I’m beat, but I just can’t lay down top pair here, damn it”. The river is a perfectly brick-like offsuit deuce, and I know I’m not losing the hand, but before I can decide how much I can milk Guido for, he actually fires into me, for 3500. Hunh? Could he *possibly* have slow played a Jack on the turn with two flush draws on the board and another player in the hand? OK so that would be really weird, but he’s bad and might do something really weird (hold that thought for later). It doesn’t really matter though - I can’t lose the hand - the worst thing that can happen is that we’re chopping, in which case it doesn’t matter what I do, so I can completely ignore that possibility. If we’re not chopping and he has a weak hand, then no matter what I do he’ll fold, so I can completely ignore that possibility too. So the only thing to consider is that he has a pretty strong hand but not the Jack, and I need to decide whether to just min-raise him, tempting him to call for the size of the pot or shove out a big raise to make him think I’m trying to bluff him. I opt for the min raise, and he agonizes for a long time and I pray pray pray for him to call, and he ends up showing his cards to his heighbor before folding, which prompts another player to insist that he show his cards to the table (a rule known as “show one, show all”). He does, and he has AQ for two pair … I wonder if I had bet bigger if he might have suspected weakness and called me down, but I kind of doubt it. Anyway, nice pot for me, and more info on this Guido guy.

I tangle with him again a few hours later on a hand that brings back sickening memories of my bustout hand at the NAPT main event in Las Vegas in February. I have Tens and there is, once again, an early position raise and a call from Guido. No reason for me to reraise - I call in position to see what develops, ready to give up on the hand if overcards flop. But no … BANG! … The “door card” (the first card exposed by the dealer) is a secret-inner-fist-pump inducing Ten of Spades, and the other cards aren’t to shabby either - Seven of Hearts and Deuce of Spades. I have the best possible hand, but there are a couple of possible draws out there, and I’m up against a guy who’s not very skilled in the art of folding his cards, so there’s no reason to get tricky. Both players check and I bet 1600, almost the size of the pot. Non-Guido gets out of my way (a good player who knows that I know that Guido can’t fold, so he knows that I pretty much have to have a big hand here) but Guido does what’s expected of him and calls. He could have a lot of hands here given my read on the guy - flush draw, 88, 99, JJ, AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KQ, or maybe even (please let it be true) trapping with a lower set. I am of course crushing that range, and the only hand he can have with a decent chance to catch me is a flush draw. The turn is an off-suit King, which I think I like - if he happens to have a King I might win a big pot, and the flush didn’t come in - with the second nuts I’m sure I’m golden, and again, I’ve got a fish on the line who just doesn’t know how to fold. I bet 5500, again just about the size of the pot, enough to make it a mistake for him to call with a flush draw, but it’s a mistake he seems likely to make. And if I’m really lucky he’ll have a King in his hand and he’ll checkraise me. But he just calls, and the river is a Nine … of Spades. Damn It! But I’m not sure he has the flush, and when he checks to me again I’m confident he doesn’t have it (hold that thought for later). I mean, COME ON! … after the way the hand played out, he has to know that I think he might be on a flush draw, so if I have a hand like AT or AK or KT on that river it’s unlikely I’m going to bet it, and even if I did it’s dubious to hope I’m going to call a checkraise, so it’s completely idiotic for him to check if he has the flush, right? (hold that thought for later) He *HAS* to try to get some value out of the hand, and he can’t be confident that I’ll bet it for him. So I think I have to have him beat, and I want to milk him for just a little more money, and I decide it’s safe to do that, so I bet 4000, about a third of his remaining stack. He immediately shoves all his chips in and I groan inside. REALLY? Now I’m kicking myself for betting, but it’s 7,000 to call in a nearly 30,000 chip pot, and I just can’t lay down a set to this guy who I‘ve already seen make a ridiculous bluff at me, so I hold my nose and call and he turns over KJs for the flush, and I hand over more than half my stack, resisting the impulse to puke all over the table.

Another nasty river came up later with me holding JTs, calling a raise in position and seeing a flop of J-8-2. I called on the flop, not thrilled with my hand but certainly not folding. I got happier with the Ten on the turn, but when my good opponent bet strongly on the turn I felt like he either had an overpair or a set, and in either case it wouldn’t do me much good to raise - he might actually be able to fold an overpair, and I didn’t want to lose my whole stack to a set. The river Eight was another puker. Now whether he had an overpair or a set I’m beat, and the only decent hand he could have that I can beat is A-J, and when he bet half my stack on the river I just didn’t think he would do that with A-J, and I made a soul-crushing fold. He wouldn’t tell me, so I’ll never know whether the river was a bad beat, or whether I was behind all along, or whether he bluffed me or value-bet me off the best hand, but either way it was super painful.

So that made me pretty short … not quite desperate, but definitely uncomfortable. I went up and down for a while, but never doubled up or gained any real traction, and as the end of the night neared and the blinds went up I was in fact in desperate mode. I paid the blinds and realized that I would need to shove my chips in at some point that orbit, and just before I got to play my button the floor man came over and handed out chip racks, meaning that we were breaking our table. Horrible news, since I had just paid the blinds and was so short on chips. I got moved to a new table miles away, and luckily was in late position so I would get several hands before the blinds chewed into me, but there was a raise every hand in front of me and I never had a playable hand. When it finally happened that everyone before me folded, I was prepared to go all-in with any two cards, but I had to make a show of looking at my cards and trying to make it look like I was excited about them. It turned out that none of my (considerable) acting talent was required, as I was staring down at QQ, the best pair I had seen all day (the only other decent pair was TT, and we know how that turned out). So I push in my chips and actually hoped for someone to call, and when the small blind with a short stack (meaning only double mine) asked for a count and deliberated for a long time I was pretty sure I was in good shape. He finally shoved over the top of my shove, the big blind folded, and the small blind tabled AK. I don’t know what all his thinking was about, but we were off to the races. My misery was ended quickly with a King on the flop, and I made the walk of shame out of the poker room and back to our apartment.

That’s two big-buyin live tournaments in a row in which I’ve flopped top set and lost a massive pot, and two big-buyin tournaments in a row in which I’ve busted out of the event on pocket Queens. At least this time both events didn’t slap me on the same hand … I guess.

Vanessa and Chad both busted on day 1 as well, so it was a weak showing all around in San Remo for Team Rouge (get it?). There is a satellite tonight for the 2000 Euro event tomorrow, so I’ll try to win a seat for that (but probably won’t play the event if I don’t win a seat), and then there are 300 Euro turbo tournaments for the next few nights. So there’s a chance for some small bit of redemption, but the big event is finito.

Now on to the Italian vacation …

-huge

We’ve had a lovely 5 days in Nice (France) and 2 days in San Remo (Italy). I haven’t had time to write a blog entry, but it’s all been great, except for playing two satellites here and failing to win a seat into the main event. But I bought in with cash today (5300 Euros, about $7,000) and I’ll be playing tomorrow at noon. They had 585 players today for day 1A, and my day 1B will probably be a little bigger - so probably over 1200 players total.

We found out today that Chad and Vanessa are staying in the apartment next to ours (as in, we can bang on the wall if their TV is too loud). Chad played today and had three nasty coolers to bust out mid-day, and Vanessa will be playing with me on day 1B. We had a very nice dinner with them tonight at which we managed not to bore Rachel *too* much by talking about poker-poker-poker.

So if you’re up at 3AM west coast time (more like 3:30 because everything starts late here), say a little poker prayer for me. I don’t think I’ll have wifi access, so I’ll probably have to just post a report at the end of the day. There will be live coverage on the pokerstars blog, which I can’t get to because I get diverted to the Italian language version, so I can’t post a link. Maybe pokerpages has coverage too. If one of you is industrious enough to find it, perhaps you can post it in a comment here.

[edit: pokernews live coverage will be HERE]

we found the best gelato in Nice - still searching in San Remo…

ciao
-huge

[special note to my Seattle readers: my last post, from a few minutes ago, will be a time-sensitive announcement of a fundraiser poker tournament that I'm running tomorrow night, so if you might be interested make sure you read that]

I meant to write a post-mortem on my NAPT Venetian trip sooner than this, but by the time I left Vegas I was, in addition to being sick of the rotten luck I was having, also physically sick (with just the usual crud that’s going around). Here’s the post-mortem: nothing got any better. OK, that’s not entirely true … since my last report I didn’t have Aces cracked any more, and in fact I cracked other people’s Aces in two different tournaments, so I guess that’s a little better. In one of those, my last tournament at the Venetian, I put together a good run, ending up near the bubble with Chris Moneymaker on my left and Shawn Rice on his left (a pretty crappy position for me to be in, unless I caught some cards to trap Moneymaker with, which I never really did) … but in the end I fell short again. In my final day of poker for the trip I played a couple of single-table tournaments at the Wynn, and actually won the first one – my first and only cash of the entire trip. I put together another good run in the nightly Wynn tournament, and once again managed to crack someone else’s Aces, but once again busted out short of the cash – I think I busted out on some sort of nasty bad beat, but it wasn’t Aces and after the whole string of beats prior to that I don’t even remember the details.

To top it all off I bubbled *BOTH* first-class upgrade waiting lists on the flight back to Seattle – on both flights I was third in line for an upgrade and the first two people on the lists got first-class upgrades and I had to slum it in coach (yeah it was an exit row with extra leg room and all, but I really could have used the free drinks, AND on the second leg I had the largest human I have ever sat next to on a plane sitting in the middle seat, which meant that my back and shoulder were completely twisted and sore by the end of the flight from trying to avoid being crushed by him). For those of you who wonder what the hell I’m talking about when I say that I just “bubbled” a poker tournament – this upgrade list story is a pretty good non-poker parallel (without the extra-large human in the middle seat, though I guess that’s like the agony of bubbling a tournament).

So playing poker at the faux-Italian Venetian tournaments went about as badly as they possibly could have … but … I’m headed for the *actual* Italian Riviera next month to play in the European Poker Tour event at San Remo! I haven’t won a seat into the main event yet, and I guess it remains to be seen whether I would play the main event if I don’t win a seat (it’s a 7200 Euro buyin, so a hefty price tag), but many people talk about this being one of the weakest fields on the EPT trail, so I really hope I get to play the main event, and there are several smaller buyin events I can play in addition to the main. But I will be doing my best to win a seat in the next two weeks, so cross fingers for that. Rachel has some time off so she can join me for this trip (yay!) and we should get to do a little traveling for a few days on either side of the poker tournaments. If anyone has any favorite spots in or near the French/Italian Riviera let me know. We’ll be there from April 8 to April 29 … if you’ll be in the neighborhood, let me know that too.

In my last attempt to win a San Remo seat online, I had Aces cracked by Queens in a massive pot, so the badness continues playing online, but not quite so relentlessly. There’ve been some good results too … nothing significant enough to blog or crow about, but the onslaught of bad beats has at least diminished somewhat since returning from the Venetian.

In non-poker news … I’ve just landed two upcoming acting projects. The first is a very short piece that’s part of Stone Soup Theatre’s original playwright’s festival in mid-May – I’ll let you know more about that when I have the exact schedule. The second one is a bigger deal, and has been a long time coming (over a decade germinating in the fertile – some might say fecund & marshy – brain of Your Old Pal Dan, in fact). Dan had an idea back in the late 90’s to create and direct a play about a group of would-be bank-robbers who almost pulled off the 2nd biggest cash robbery in U.S. history until they got hilariously stupid and got caught. Two years ago when we were all at the World Series of Poker sitting at the pool at Bellagio, Dan brought up the idea as something that Rachel should write the script for and Deb and I should act in … and the idea caught hold. Rachel has indeed written a script, and we’ve had a couple of readings, but we were beginning to despair of ever being able to produce it, until a spot opened up in Annex Theatre’s fall schedule, and they chose us to fill it! We’re all pretty excited about that, and of course I’ll publish more details as things develop, but the performance dates should fall some time in October and November.

This means that I now have my year much more mapped out than is normal for me, bouncing from European Poker Tour to Stone Soup Theatre to World Series of Poker to perhaps a bit of a breather to Annex Theatre’s world premiere production of Rachel Atkins’ & director Dan Morris’ soon-to-be-given-a-new-title “Heist!” (for which I will probably have to pass up on my annual poker pilgrimage to Aruba – just one of the sacrifices one has to make as an artist I guess, sigh) to the Virgin Islands to our New Year’s Eve party and 2011. Those of you who know me know how freaky that is for me to have more than one thing scheduled more than a week in advance. Yikes. Next thing you know I’ll be getting a job or something insane like that. Maybe not.

-huge

Sorry for the late notice, but … I will be the tournament director for another fundraiser for the Nebunele theatre company tomorrow (Friday March 19), and most of Team Huge will make up the dealer staff. This will be the third year we’ve run a tournament for them, and it has always been a lot of fun (can you say “scantily-clad massage/rebuy-babes”?). If you can make it tomorrow, even if you just want to come and watch to see what all this poker tournament stuff is like up close, please come and support a good cause. Here are the event details:

It’s that time again. Get out your flapper duds, ’cause on Friday, March 19, Nebunele will be holding its 3rd Annual Poker Party Fundraiser!

Once more at the excellent, jewelicious, hidden-away Beacon Hill Arts Center. World-class poker pro Laurence Hughes is once again at the helm for a night of tournament thrills and spills; and if you’re not so much for the heart-pounding adrenaline of pushing your stack of chips into the middle of the table and holding your breath, you can come for the cocktails, the music, the party, and the good time in fine clothes.

All proceeds will benefit Nebunele Theatre’s brand-spankin’-new collaborative theatre project: Friend’s Enemy. If you liked Cussing at the Moon, please come out to help us make the next crazy, exciting, whatever-it-is theatre experiment. Be one of the people who makes the art happen and some of the first to know what it’s gonna be. We will, as usual, love you forever.

The poker tournament will be No-Limit Texas Hold’Em (just like you see on TV), with a $20 entry fee and unlimited (optional) rebuys for the first hour. Never played poker but wanna try? We <3 beginners! There will be a rules and strategy tutorial before the tournament starts – be sure to get there by 7:30 if you want to join the tutorial.

Friday, March 19
Party starts at 7:00pm
Lesson/strategy session 7:30
Tournament play begins at 8:00

Arts on Beacon Hill
4951 13th Ave. S. (corner of 13th & Shelton)
Seattle, WA 98108

Party entry is FREE!
Donations toward the bar are appreciated (and also benefit Nebunele)
Come looking good! Extra bonus points (and some extra attention from a sexy Massage Babe) if you come dressed in your 1920’s Gangster best.
This party is a private party. You are part of the special in-crowd who gets invited to our more exclusive events. Please *do* spread the word to all your personal friends who are over 21 and will enjoy this, and please *don’t* forward to public lists.

I had a slow & frustrating (but not terrible) start to my NAPT main event yesterday, winning a small pot here, losing one there, never getting involved in anything massive, never picking up any big hands. I actually was dealt AA in the first few hands of the tournament, but everyone folded to my raise - at least I didn’t get them cracked this time. I felt like I landed at a tough table - a couple of players seemed a little tight or timid, but no-one seemed terribly weak, and there were clearly some big-buyin tournament regulars sitting around me. From a starting stack of 30,000 I drifted down as low as 23,000 … lost a decent-sized pot making a hero-call with bottom pair when a player made a runner-runner flush against me and I was pretty sure he either hit the flush or had absolutely nothing. But I ground back up to 26,000 by taking pots with C-bets or one nice flat-call/float-the-flop/bluff-the-turn maneuver. But I mostly just never had any strong hands or great opportunities.

The first real excitement came after about 5 hours of play, when I looked down at QQ in early position and threw out a standard opening raise. The guy to my left (clearly a pro, though I didn’t know who he was - pokerstars reporters kept coming over and asking him for his chip count) called, the button called, and the tight older guy in the BB called. Great - 4-way action with QQ - not exactly what I was looking for … but when the flop came Q-J-8 with two spades, I thought I was probably in pretty good shape. With 3 opponents though, and that scary board, there’s nothing tricky to be done here - I just have to play it hard and hope no-one sucks out on me. The big blind actually led into me for 2,000 (blinds were 150-300 with 25 chip ante, and I had raised to 800, so there was 3400 in the pot after the preflop action) which seemed like a very odd play if he actually had flopped the straight (the only hand beating me) … but he was pretty conservative so I had to think he had a hand he liked and wanted to protect it against all the possible draws. My dream scenario would have him with a lower set with JJ or 88, either of which seem to be right in his range, or top-two with QJs. In any case, no time for pussyfooting around - I raise to 5500. The guy on my left thinks for a while and then shoves for 30,000, a bit more than my stack. The button thinks forever and finally folds, and the big blind folds quickly. The pro on my left had overbet-raised the pot at least 4 times before, and seemed to love making big raises to capture fold equity, twice in pretty marginal situations. I felt like there were a lot of hands he could be doing that with - obviously he might have the nuts (9-10 for the straight), but he could have a bunch of other hands, some of them big combo draws like Aks, Ajs, Ats, J9s - any of which would leave me either flipping a coin or decently ahead, or *HE* could have the lower set or top-two-pair, in which case I would be in fabulous shape. So there’s just no way I can even consider folding. I call and he has the best hand he could possibly have without having the straight - Ace-Ten-spades for the nut-flush draw and a double-gutshot straight draw. He needs any spade (other than a Jack) or a Nine or a King to beat me, but even if he sucks out on the turn, any pair on the board and I would turn the tables on him with a full house. The player on the button reports that he folded Ks-Js, good news for me since it removes one of my opponent’s flush outs. So I’m a 60:40 favorite to double up and escalate to a well-above average stack for the first time in the tournament.

Six of spades on the turn. Flush for him. Sadness for me.

But I still have hope - the case Queen, any Jack, any Eight, any Six on the river and my full house pulls me out of the fire.

Three of hearts on the river and I’m busted in the middle of day one, top set cracked to put an exclamation point on the string of Aces-cracked hands that had defined this trip until now.

I was pretty grumpy, but Rachel is here to cheer me up. I took the day off from poker today, and we’re headed for the V-bar for happy hour in a few minutes and then Bouchon for a nice dinner. Will probably return to the regular Venetian $350 tournament tomorrow and see if I can avoid having any monsters smashed. I have yet to (A) win a coin flip, or (B) put a bad beat on anyone, or (C) get anywhere near cashing in a tournament on this trip. And I have been getting my money in as substantial favorites in every tournament so far … pretty depressing, but as they say (“they” being really annoying cliché-spouting poker idiots) … “That’s POKER!”.

-SadHuge, aka Luckbox Larry MY ASS

Yes, Aces cracked again … This time in the first ten minutes of yesterday’s $350 Deep Stack event … by the mighty Eight-Five-Suited. It didn’t knock me out of the tournament, but it cost me half my stack right at the start, and I never really recovered.

Last night in the little $120 “Second Chance” tournament, I finally played a tournament in which I DIDN’T get Aces cracked (yay!), but after the blinds were pretty high and my stack was getting a bit short I got all-in preflop with AQ vs. Q9, and found not one but two nines on the flop to cripple me.

In today’s $200-rebuy satellite for the NAPT main event (270 players, the final 26 would win $5000 in tournament chips for a main event buyin), I was blessed with a surplus of premium starting hands, but with AA (twice) and KK and QQ I got no action to my raises (during the rebuy period no less - blecch) and with AK (thrice) I got more action than I wanted, missed the flop each time and had to fold. And then after the rebuy period was over AK was my betrayer again, with the blinds high and my stack short I was facing a shove from another short stack, looked down at AK and happily called - things looked OK when the other guy turned over QTs, but not so great when a Ten hit the flop and the turn and river bricked away.

So I’m running like crap, and the main event starts at Noon tomorrow. Hopefully the badness is out of the way - maybe I’ll even put a bad beat on someone else for a change. I’ll let you know.

I’ll try to post updates on my twitter page so you can follow along. I’m guessing there will be updates on the famous pros on the Pokerstars blog page, and maybe elsewhere, but I’ll worry about posting those links if I make it to day 2.

-huge

P.S. For those of you with money invested in my poker tournament forays, I’m sorry I haven’t sent you detailed account statements recently. I don’t have my investors’ email list with me here, so I’m hoping most of you will be reading this. As you know, the last few big buyin tournaments have not gone well for me, so whatever your balance was before, it’s … umm … a lot less now. My plan is to take half of the remaining pool and invest it in tomorrow’s main event, saving the remaining half for the next one (possibly the European Poker Tour event in San Remo Italy in April). Your money has not been in play for the preliminary events, which is a good thing for you, but half of it will be riding on me tomorrow, do or die.

I’ve been in Vegas for a day and a half, played in two of the Venetian “Deep Stack Extravaganza” events, both $350 buyins. The good news is that I’ve been dealt pocket Aces more than my share, which seems only appropriate given that today is my birthday. The bad news is that out of the four pairs of Aces I’ve been dealt, I’ve stolen the blinds once (always a mildly sad result with Aces) , chopped a big pot against Ace-Queen-offsuit (almost the best possible matchup I could have in all of poker) when we both rivered 5-high straights, and lost two massive pots against 66 and KQ-offsuit, in both cases with my opponent calling my large re-raise out of position and then either calling my bets on flop and turn with a gutshot (with the 66) or check raising me all-in on the flop with top pair (with the KQ) and then sucking out on me on the river. The first one was yesterday, and I recovered from that near-death blow to build up my stack again and then ran into the same guy when I flopped top-two-pair with KQ and he called me (AGAIN) on the flop and turn (with AJ this time) with a gutshot, and then (AGAIN) sucked out on me on the river. The second hand was today, my ACTUAL birthday, in which the guy raised with KQ, called my reraise out of position, and then check-raised me all-in for about 70BB on the Queen-high flop, only to catch his King on the river for two pair. I had built up my stack somewhat so I was well above average, but he had even more chips so I was out.

In about six hours of play over two tournaments I’ve been in all-in confrontations six times, I’ve been the overwhelming favorite all six times, I’ve won two, chopped one (when I was a 9:1 favorite to win) and lost the other three. I don’t think I’ve ever had this bad of a string of results with pocket Aces. Happy Borthday My ASS.

After I post this I’m changing my clothes and going out to birthday dinner at Pamplemousse with Mark and Vanessa and a few other friends, so at least I can’t have any more Aces cracked on my birthday - I don’t even want to think about what would be the non-poker dinner equivalent - maybe having the restaurant comp me to some foie gras and caviar and catching botulism.

The $5000 main event of the NAPT is Saturday … I’m just expelling all my bad luck before then, right?

-huge

After my last whiny post about all the bad beats I’ve been taking lately, I feel honor-bound to publish the following. This was in a $700 buy-in Step 5 tournament, in which the top 2 finishers get $2100 Step 6 tickets, 3rd and 4th get their $700 Step 5 tickets back, and 5th and 6th get downsized to a $215 Step 4 ticket. There were seven players when this hand came up, so if I lose the hand I walk away with nothing but a hole in my pocket where $700 used to be.

I was recording the tournament, so you’re watching and hearing it as it happened, just a few minutes ago…

Luckbox Larry eats top set for breakfast

As some of you may recall, Ace-Ten vs Queens was my fateful matchup against Dmitri Nobles in the 2006 WSOP. If the cards had fallen this way with the ESPN cameras rolling my life might be very different now … “Carry your OWN damn self out on a stretcher, you cocky little piss ant!”

Back to reality, I went on from there to capture the chip lead, but sadly lost a big coinflip with the mighty deuces against some other bastard’s Ace-Ten (how can he play that crap?) and finished fourth to break even in the tournament. I’m pretty sure IamMcLovin88 smiled smugly when he outlasted me, but he busted in 3rd on the serious bubble, and only got the same prize I did, which must have stung a bit.

It would have been nicer if my suckout had led to victory, but I’ll take a refund on my $700 over a sharp stick in the eye socket any day…

After a stellar first half of January it’s been a dismal slide for the second half. I’ve continued to play a lot of “Steps” tournaments in hopes of winning another $7000 NAPT package, which, because I’ve already won one, would translate into cash for me … but not only have I failed to secure another $7000 package, I’ve been pummeled by several nasty bad beats in the attempt, to the point where January is now basically a wash. I’ve still got one more day to salvage the month, but it doesn’t look good. Disappointing.

I like to think that I’m not a chronic bad-beat complainer. I don’t believe that I “run bad” at poker the way some people claim. Sometimes I run very well indeed, and sometimes I’m on the wrong side of variance for a while, but in the long run I believe that I run just about average, the same way every other poker player runs if they play enough poker to reach anything resembling “the long run”. When people at or away from a poker table say “I run sooooo bad” I immediately lose a bit of respect for them, and my eyes roll back into my head for the rest of whatever story they’re about to tell. So I’m not saying I run bad, OK? But what I’ve run into in the last couple of weeks has become a bit comical, and I felt a desire to present it in some entertaining form, so here it is…

HUGE CRACKS HEAD REPEATEDLY

In a good-news-bad-news development, a few days ago I managed what might be my best finish ever in a big field tournament, and unquestionably my biggest comeback ever – taking a 95-chip stack (with the blinds at 50-100) up to over 350,000 chips, finishing 6th out of 1900 players. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it was in the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker, a freeroll tournament open only to “verified bloggers” in which finishing 6th out of 1900 earned me less money than in just about any tournament I’m ever likely to play … my prize was a $215 tournament ticket. [I just did the research to confirm that that is in fact my best finish in a 1000+ player tournament – I have some 4th-6th place finishes in various 800-ish player tournaments, and my best online cash was a 3rd place finish in a 780 player tournament, but I’ve never made the final table of a (non-free) tournament with over a thousand players in it, which seems like a pretty bad monkey to have on my back … add that to the list of 2010 goals]

Just to add some EXTRA icing on the cake (that would be poop-flavored icing on the cake of despair), in the most recent Team-Huge home game, which we played for higher stakes than we ever have (TEN DOLLAR rebuys, omg), I took more rebuys than anyone else, then got all-in with AA against Dan’s stupid AJ … almost the best matchup I could possibly have … and the flop came KQT for the nut straight, taking me from 11:1 favorite to 10:1 underdog with one chop of Dan’s stupid, ugly, fat (or should I say “tubby”) axe. No reverse-a-miracle full house for me and I was out in 7th place, while everyone’s old thieving pal Dan went on to win … great job Dan (NOT).

Some small consolation can be taken in the fact that I did win the weight-loss bet I had with Dan, so he will have to use all the money he won in that tournament to buy me the Rossini Burger the next time we’re in Vegas, and he’ll have to dip into his savings account to buy himself that veggie burger.

[After writing the bulk of this post, I did have one piece of unadulterated good news … I won a satellite into today’s $1050 buyin “Ultimatebet Online Poker Championship” with a $1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool, which will have Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, and the other UB pros in it. So that’s my shot at redeeming January – 1PM Pacific Time – I’ll let you know if anything exciting happens.]