Foxwoods

Yes, I have not posted since ever, but anyway....

I am going to Foxwoods for the first time at the end of the month. My dad and his fiancee are going to a concert to see Steely Dan and they asked me if I would like to come along. I plan on playing the $230 deep stack tourney on Friday, July 29th. It's not that simple though! It is more money than I have ever played with before, I have not played in quite awhile, and my confidence could not be lower. All signs point to me picking something different to play or not playing at all, but of course I am obviously very tempted. I have been saving up money for this trip for awhile by saving 20 bucks a week (lame I know), but I have amassed a nice sum of money. With this no online biznass, it is hard to train my game back up to peak performance, but I will hopefully be reading up and playing some heads-up with a super friend and opponent. Good luck me!!

The Epic Copyright Story: Somebody Stole A Picture of Me

So I should of written about this long ago, but something crazy crazy CRAZY happened to me around December of last year...

The Back Story
Flashback to freshman year of college (almost three years ago now), I just moved into my dorm and met my roommate Mike. He was an incredible photographer at only 20 years old so one thing led to another and we were doing a mini photoshoot one night. He knew I was a big poker fan so we were doing different things with cards. We decided to do a picture where I would toss two aces and just pray that they were showing face-up to the camera. It took about forty tries, but eventually we got em' to show pretty well. However, we didn't know how GOOD the picture was going to show up. The final product is my profile picture for this blog so look to the top right to seeeee. This picture is also my facebook picture and as of right now, there are 54 comments from people talking about how awesome it is =).

The Incident
A little more backstory, my Sophomore year roommate has a friend who is one of the best MTT tournament players on Full Tilt and Pokerstars. I love to watch him play any chance I get. In the winter, this player was playing in the Aruba. One night, around 2am, I was looking for a site on Google to track his progress. I clicked on the first one and there was MY PROFILE PICTURE as the main picture of the background of that site. At first, I thought I was tripping from fatigue, but once I realized that this was LEGIT. I ran to my suitemates and tried to verbalize what the fuck I just found. Everybody had a good laugh, including my old roommate who took the picture. It was soo amazing to me that I just stumbled upon my picture. At first, I thought somebody took it from my facebook page, but it makes much more sense that somebody actually took it from this here poker blog! Heyyyy, that means people read this! Hehe, anyway, if you're out there dipshit, yeah u, the one who took my picture, I would like a nice talk please.

Everybody exploded when I posted the picture on facebook and a lot of people wanted me to sue their ass off. I will save what Mikey and I for the Part II of this post. Last but not least, here is a screenshot from the site.

Holy guacamole

Yes, I knowwww. I haven't posted for awhile. I certainly admire people like Josie and others who post very consistently, but it's hard to have lots to say that don't bore the hell out of me and the few readers who come across this barren excuse of a blog. However, poker and wanting to write are still always present in my melon. I don't have the mulah to play online, nor the desire to, really. I certainly have the urge to play some rebuy tournaments from time to time, but I am definitely a better person when I avoid the online felt. This is because I am not in my boxers till 4pm and actually get some stuff done during the days I don't work in the summer (even though being in my boxers till 4 is good every of often!).

My semester ended very well. I finished my internship at an elementary school and received 19 very cute cards from first graders at the end of it. I have potential (probably jinxing it) to get all four A's this semester. Like poker, definitely part luck and part skill. This one class where I was sure I would get a B, magically turned into an A. I think part of that grade was due in part to the fact that I was the only one in my group that did not rant to the teacher about how she sucked and organized the class totally counterintuitive to reality. This class I researched the "Cohabitation Effect" which pretty much says that couples are more likely to experience marital problems and divorce if they live together before marriage. Sounds crazy, huh? Well it is pretty statistically significant. My dad said, "Bullshittt, Jake!" and my response was, "Well... you're a product of it!" Not so nice, I guess...

Other than that, this summer I will be working at my local hardware store for like the billionth year in a row now. I tried getting a summer camp job, but it seemed like those jobs are very "it's not what you know, it's who you know" type gigs. I will also be working on graduate school stuff and the GRE, which hopefully I will actually get in gear with that. Poker will certainly not help that situation. I would be more than happy to play live any chance I get with friends, but I'm gonna try and stay away from online.

I will also be flying down to FL to help my gf pack up and move back to MA since her internship is done. We will be driving back so if anyone knows of any restaurants right off of 95 that is worth going to, that would be saweeeeetttt.

Lastly, HOW BOUT DEM CELTSSSSSSS.

Pauly is amazing

I know most of you read his blog as it is, but his newest post about what he does to railbirds that ask for $5 is hilarious.

check Pauly out

WSOP 2013

So I've always had a goal at playing in Vegas. I have my doubts if I will actually like it compared to the views of so many because I do not like to gamble besides poker. I have read other blogs talking about the people who comes to vegas for strictly poker reasons and it just seems that they do not enjoy it as much as the people willing to donate to casinos. I have been to Turningstone Casino before and I'm not sure if it was getting no sleep or losing 100 dollars in Ferocious Kitty's glove compartment, but I did not have an enjoyable experience.

Late June, I will be turning the famous 21. I do drink from time to time, but I guess I am a huge party pooper since I am slightly excited, but not as much as the avg college boy/girl about going to bahhhhhs. I will not have the money to go to Vegas this year considering my brokeness, but my goal is to go when I am about 23-24 when I am in the work force and making sooooome cash monies. Despite not playing online, I feel my game is pretty strong right now, and feel I would have a good shot against anyone who wants to play live.

On a side note, A blogger who I just started reading, VeryJosie is coming up with some great posts that you all should check out!

Lastly, this week is my spring break and I am going to FL to see the gf who I haven't seen in 2 months. Holyyyyyyy.

Something New

During the school year, I completely ban myself from playing anything called online poker. It started last semester and I was actually 100% successful at sticking to my word. I still play live a few times a week with some college donks, but that's it. This semester is just as successful, but I obviously get help by new semi-addictions. The new thing for me right now is Scrabble. Specifically Facebook Scrabble. It seems like the perfect transition because like poker, scrabble requires immense amount of skill, but definitely luck too. Scrabble is definitely more skillful, but there are a lot amount of mental ties one can make with poker. There is so much strategy behind it and I am just beginning to see a small amount of it. Two bloggers, Ferocious Kitty and Shoving With Air play me all the time and they definitely are getting really good too. I just purchased my first official scrabble strategy book, which apparently is like the Super System of Scrabble. I feel like I'm still really bad. My vocabulary is pretty atrocious (as probably one could tell reading this blog), but I will work hard at improving. So get ready possibly for some boring ass scrabble posts!!!

Other news, this semester marks the second half of my internship working in a local elementary school. I help out in a first grade class as well as hold two lunch groups for some awesome kids. However, after working in the school, I am completely drained of any mental capabilities. I have begun to watch the amazing show The Wire and it is the best time waster of all time. Like woah. Highly recommend it to anyone who needs to unwind.

Anywayyyyy, let's power through this weeeeek! =)

The Softest Game Ever (long post ahead)

So I know I don't blog very often, but I feel like I'm almost obligated to share a cash game I was lucky to take part in last night. The back story is whenever I'm home from college, I play basketball with my dad every sunday with all the other 45-50 year olds who play with him. I've been playing with these same guys since I've been in like sixth grade so I know most of these sweaty and awkward guys pretty well. Little did I know that since I started college two years ago, they started a cash game with one of the players and his business friends. My dad has gossiped about me to them about how I play quite frequently and I'm an alright player. So last night, they held a game specifically for yours truly. I felt somewhat like Phil Hellmuth almost because everyone was gunning for me and going nuts WHENEVER I would lose a pot.

The night started around 7:30 and was a $20 cash game, which was a bit more than I'm used to, but it did not affect my play at all. 11 guys showed up and at first, they all wanted to play at the same table. I nicely proposed to divide it into two tables because 11 is simply ridiculous and instead of hands per hour with these nice fish, it might turn into hours per hand. Luckily, they decided to split us up and my table draw was really loose and passive. There was a family pot about 3/5 of the time. All of the guys at my table were really nice and the atmosphere was good, but NONE of them had any game. I'm not sure if my game has gotten much better where I feel completely in control, but last night was a dream. Here's how the table went down:

Seat 1: Me - the shark obviously
Seat 2: Aeric - local bartender who was hitting his share of cards, but a calling station nonetheless.
Seat 3: Rich - The player who was the most cognizant, but extremely tight
Seat 4: Rob - athletic and competitive guy who limped in every unopened pot (which was almost every pot). had interest in the game.
Seat 5: Fat Dave: prototypical calling station. The guy who you hope just deposits every week on Full Tilt.

The other table that my dad was at was even more fishy. They minraised every single hand so I was somewhat jealous that there was more action, but knew that I would get a piece of them later in the night.

I'm actually not too great at remembering that many specific hands, but the first hand of note was when little dave moved to our table. He was the host and probably the biggest proponent of watching me lose. I hadn't played a pot in awhile so for some reason I was impelled to raise with K7o in the co. Little and Fat Dave called. Little Dave was a pretty cognizant player, who was pretty tight, but liked to raise large preflop when he was involved. The flop came pretty dry with the board 862 rainbow. It was checked to me. I've been taking my time with my decisions and was obviously going to cont bet. I decided on 3.25, which I thought would put people to the test. Dave instaraised me to 6 (which was kosher at this game) and Fat Dave folded. Here, it was very clear to me that Dave was just trying to push me out because he wanted to be the guy that can bluff me. So I took my time even though I was pretty sold at 4betting him here with K high. I'm silly like that. I'm also a young gun who thinks he's the shit obv. I had about 18 dollars behind, and made it to 13.50. This was my big hand and I knew it would probably dictate the rest of the night, which would obviously suck if he called. He took a long time and folded. It probably was a pretty reckless play and most of my friends know I'm known for pulling some crazy shit. It worked here and I showed the bluff because I'm not going to let Little Dave think he can outplay me.

Other than that, simple cont bets helped. 2/3 of the way through the night, we combined tables to play 9-handed. It messed up my feng shui because i was very happy with the hands per hour and now it just hit a concrete wall. I had to like do push ups in between hands because everyone and their grandmother was limping and min raising and I almost wanted to find a gun or just run home or something. I finally picked up AKss on the button and just took down a pot. After that, I decided to step my aggression up and took a few more pots down uncontested.

Anyway, I obviously lost pots as well with an overflush and when i didnt notice a flush on board when i had two pair.

Dream game all around.