24 hours from now the Wedding Bells will be ringing. I can't believe it's almost here. Mom, Dad, Sis, and Grandma all got in town yesterday. The rest of the family and friends get in today.

I'll be spending most of the afternoon rushing people back and forth from the hotel to the airport and then tonight is the rehearsal and dinner following. I can't wait to show everyone the slideshow that Missy and I have worked really hard on. It's a 15 minute collection of music and pictures from our entire lives. The way we structured the music and photos will hopefully get some laughs and maybe even a few tears. Should be good stuff.

I've barely played any poker this week since getting back from Vegas, so because of that this month will be the 3rd in a row where my results haven't been good. That's pretty frustrating, obviously, but I've put so few hands in online because of Vegas and the wedding that it doesn't bother me too much. Plus there are bigger things on my plate right now than worrying about poker. There have been tons of details that have creeped up and problems that arise to where I haven't had the time to sit in front of the comp except to work on the slideshow. I'm sure I won't play at all until Monday afternoon...when I'll officially be married. scary, but fun ;-)

Ok well my 5 minute blog break is up. Time to go back to the craziness.

Aaron

So my trip is coming to a conclusion. I'm at McCarran airport now about an hour before take off. I pulled an all nighter last night, as planned, playing the Bellagio 5/10 which was fairly soft as per the usual. I managed to scrape together a $1400 win as I played from 9pm sunday night til 9am monday morning. I sweet talked the floor supervisor to give me a food comp, so I ate up the Bellagio's breakfast buffet, which was pretty dang good.

If you've been keeping up with my updates at all, it will be no surprise to you when I say the results really haven't gone according to plan. Before I took the trip, I thought coming home with 5-6k in cash game profits would have been a very conservative estimate, and if I ran well I felt it would be possible to pull 10k out of the 5/10 game in 2.5 weeks. As it turned out, I came no where close to those figures which is clearly disappointing. However, had some of my hands held up in a few of those key big pots, I would have ended up right around my conservative estimate, so I can't feel too bad.

During my all nighter session at bellagio, I managed to get 1 outed for the second night in a row (thank goodness it was a small pot and easily detectable this time) so I could chk/fold before losing anything more, but I wasn't as lucky when I got caught with second nut straight vs the nut straight. Thank goodness I wasn't playing against a skilled player, otherwise it would have cost me more money.

I'm certainly ready for a break from the live poker scene. Everytime I turn around I end this sentence with something new "the worst part about live poker is ... " but really and truly one of the worst parts is just the flat out annoying people, especially the vegas nit regulars. I could devote an entire entry just to the local vegas nits, but I'll just sum everything up with one statement to the vegas nits as a whole:

"The joke/observation/rule inconsistency you mentioned 20 minutes ago wasn't funny/insightful then and it's not funny/insightful now and it won't be funny/insightful 20 minutes from now...so just shut the hell up and fold your hand."

Ok, enough wasted keystrokes on those clowns. I'm happy to go back to KC and sleep in my own bed and happy to go back to playing mostly online again, although as you've seen in my graphs, that hasn't exactly been a cakewalk lately either. One of these days, this blog is going to be filled with lots of positve graphs, brags, and insightful poker knowledge... not all the negative drivel that has been clogging this place for the last 3 months. That said, bad runs can last a really long time... not all of us can be the high stakes online poker expert that only plays a few thousand hands a month and never has a downswing greater than 10 buyins. Nothing against those people, but they just aren't me... and they aren't 99.9999% of people either.

Ok my flight is boarding soon, so I guess I should wrap this up. I'm going to try and keep putting regular updates/graphs up on my blog, and keep an eye out for an insightful post on how board textures affect hand ranges and bluffing frequencies. I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I think there's a lot of room for growth for most players in this area of hand reading. I made a couple nice calls/bluffs because of some lightbulb moments I had in this area, so I've been thinking of sharing the thought processes with my faithful readers. I'm still sorting out all the ideas in my head, and with the wedding this weekend, I probably won't have time to put it up until next week.

Good luck,
Aaron

quick 5am update, got back to the room after playing a long live session and of course a long online session this afternoon. the online session was a big fat 5 hour break even marathon where i felt like i played ok but couldn't really get anything going. then around 9:30 i got some quiznos and headed to bellagio for their 5/10nl which was sick juicy. managed to hit a few hands and build my stack up to 2200 or so before getting 1 outed with my KK down in flames to AT on a K T T flop. Can't make this shit up. brutal to say the least... but here's the kicker... the guy with the AT was the most donktastic player ever, so much so, that i actually FELT BAD for the guy as the previous hour he had dumped a ton of money by both playing terribly and getting unlucky.

here's the thing... usually i view the poker table as an extension of darwinian theory... let the strongest survive. what people do with their money is their business... but this guy was just brutally playing awful, and then once he'd accidentily play a hand well, he'd get terribly unlucky or cooled and lose his stack. He had his trophy wife sitting behind him watching the whole time... they obviously had plenty of money to spill because he'd reach back into his pocket for another wad of hundos after each donkey play or suckout or cooler... so like I said, it was a VERY RARE situation where I actually felt bad that not only was this guy a donk but he was unlucky as well...

Of course, then he one outs me.

To top it off, he told me when he bet on the flop he "knew" I had kings full but he didn't care because he had the Ace. lol ? Anyway after the turn spiked the ten, the whole table looked at me awaiting a reaction. I'm happy to say I just smiled. It really just one of those moments where it just doesn't get any worse, so why even bother getting upset. Just bend over and take it with a smile. And that's what I did. Even after the guy told me that when he knew i had kings full but wanted to bet and get it in anyway, I refrained from making a smart ass comment and just said "oh really? good read man" -- he said thanks. haha.

So for the next few minutes people were still looking at me and rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, saying "tough beat" etc, but I'm happy to say I just smiled. It wasn't long after that I got called to move to the main game (fuck the whole concept of must-move games btw, i hate it, but thats for another day).

So to round out the story, about an hour later Mr and Mrs donkey get moved to the main game. It appeared he had chipped up a bit more even after the hand with me, but playing his style of see 90% of the flops made his stack in a constant flux. an hour or so later, his final hand came up. Guy opens utg to $40, one caller, lady calls, another caller, folds to donkey in the big blind who makes it $140 with JJ (lol), original raiser calls, next guy calls, lady calls, final guy calls. So there's 5 to the flop, for $140 a piece, $700 in the pot.

Flop comes down 2 4 5 rainbow. Donkey tanks for about a minute, counts up his chips and bills, thinks thinks, finally "i'm all in" with his pocket jacks and $760 total. original raiser thinks for a bit and folds, next guy folds, lady starts doing some counting, thinking, finally she makes the call, last guy shows me 69 offsuit and folds "pot odds" he whispers (lol). But it gets better. Turn A, River A. Time to show down. Donkey triumphantly shows his jacks for 2pair. Lady flips over 9c 3c for the turned straight, and scoops a nice pot. Donkey drops some 4 letter words and walks away....

I didn't feel too bad for him this time.

Live poker... gotta love it.

=)

Aaron

Wheee... -$2200 in live 5/10nl at Caesar's tonight! Fun stuff...

Here are the highlight hands.

DJ Jazzy Jeff look-a-like iced out and blingin' outta CON-TRAWL (and a ill rhinestone cap, you know the type with the oversized flat bill) sits down with $1400 in chips and benjys and takes a peek at his first hand... It's a straddled pot with one limper and he makes it $100 to go...college aged kid next in looks like he wanted to raise but just calls instead, folds to me in the SB and I take a peek at two black Queens. i think about squeezing but I don't know anything about Jazzy Jeff and I've got $2,000 in front of me and I'm not sure I want to play a big pot out of position with queens against this guy. Probably a mistake but you have to remember, live players are so much more passive than online players, there's a good chance I never get called unless I'm beat...so I elect to call. Old guy who looks like someone out of the beverly hillbillies who originally limped calls too, so we got 4 to the flop, $400 in the pot.

Flop comes a beautiful Qh 6s 2s. We check to DJ and he bets $200, college kid with $550 left thinks for like 2 seconds and announces he's all in. Ok, now to me, I've got the nuts and I see no reason to fuck around so I announce I'm all in for about 1300 (effective). Jed folds and it gets back around to DJ who insta-calls his final $1100 into a $2450 pot and flips up AKs, college kid shows 66 for middle set, and I've now got the nuts and about 68% equity (the other set kills 2 of my boat outs). 4s on the turn and no help on the river gives Jazzy Jeff a nice $3550 pot on his first hand.

Little bit later, Tony Soprano wanna be who had been playing recklessly and blind raised to $120 utg+1 earlier (ended up playing and winning a big pot with K5o when a guy minraised him pre with AJo and bluff shoved a K high flop) limps UTG, few more limps, I limp the button with 87o. Flop ($70) 7 8 T rainbow. Tony Soprano bets $50, folds to me I make it $190. He asks "why so much?" (lol) and I reply that it's only $140 more thats cheap cheap. So he calls. Turn Ks which puts a backdoor flush up. About $450 in the pot, he checks to me, i pull out 3 bills and throw them in. He asks "are you still mad about that kid hitting that flush on you?" Of course I am, i replied. He says "ok i'll call then" (lol). River is a Js, putting the backdoor flush up and the obvious straight. He gives me that of-course-i-just-got-there look and checks. I insta check and say "my two pair is no good" he shows me the pocket 9's and triumphantly says "see i was nice to you because that guy (dj) wasn't". lol... "gee thanks, but I wasn't calling anything you bet" i replied.

Last semi interesting hand of the night, newish guy to the table who had been opening a lot of pots and seemed fairly competant opened again in the hijack. Donkey cold called in the CO, I make a squeeze to $120 with 74c (mistake - i should have made it $160 but i had a brain lapse), in any case, the guy asks how much I have left, and calls. Flop $280, A Q J rainbow. He checks, I make it $225 he thinks for maybe 15 seconds and then calls. ugh. Turn 8. he checks, i think for a bit about firing again but I don't, then check behind. River is another blank and he checks quickly. Wtf...I think about throwing 5 bills out there because his hand is pretty well defined as marginal... I'm putting him pretty squarely on AK right now and I want to pull the trigger but decide not to and give up. He shows KK (UGHHHHH) and scoops the pot. fuck, why didn't I pull the trigger... AK really beats nothing I value bet, and KK really REALLY beats nothing. Results oriented thinking says I should have gone ahead and bet big on the river to get him off AK, but then I remind myself that bluffing live players off TPTK in reraised pots isn't exactly sound strategy. I'm pretty certain he would fold KK though, so I wish I would fired.

So in the last 24 hours I'm on something like a $15,000 downswing including live and online poker, which obviously puts me in the red big time for the trip.

Kind of interesting how just a handful of key hands really make or break your days and weeks results. If the turn and river blank off in my QQ hand, I likely end the night with a solid profit. If my AA held up in the donkament the other night, I likely cash in the tournament, or at the very least, I'm there at the rio playing instead of getting my ass handed to me online. It goes the other way too, if a few days ago (when I booked a solid winning session) had I missed one of my key flush draws, or had I not flopped a set against an overpair and got 2 streets of value, my day would have been a lot smaller.

Interesting how when just a few of these hands go for you or against you, it can make all the difference. It's easy to see how a winning a couple key races or dodging a few key big draws in some nosebleed online cash games could turn a shot taking 10/20 regular into the next "big name" online high stakes player (until the long run catches up). Think about where poker might be (or might not be) if Moneymaker hadn't luckboxed into a few key hands, or didn't dodge a few key draws. A person can drive themselves crazy thinking about the "what ifs" in poker. The best players just keep their nose to the grind stone, play the best they can, and keep placing their beliefs in what they know to be true... that eventually things will all even out. Funny though how even the donkeys futilly hope that things will "even out" for them and it's not just their bad play.

I hope, for my own sake, I'm not just another disillusioned donkey. Perhaps on saturday I'll spend some time going through poker tracker and working on my game instead of following the old pattern of just diving into as many tables as possible to "get to the long run quicker".

I can't wait til I get back home and everyone asks "So how did your vegas trip go? Did you win lots of money?" OH IT WAS FANTASTIC I LOST 15K LIVE AND ONLINE! HOW'S YOUR JOB BEEN THE LAST 3 WEEKS?

lool....

Wow tonight wasn't any better than this afternoon. I decided to just chill in the room tonight instead of going out to brave the live poker. wowowow did i get crushed. I was playinig 2/4 and 3/6 and running/playing well, so I decide to heed the advice of many-a-wise poker player and "play higher when running well, play lower when running bad"...so naturally I find a few good 5/10 tables and away we go.


You can see from the graph where 5/10 started... lol so sick. Most of the stuff was your standard assortment of AA losing to AK all in preflop, top set losing to flopped flush, 2nd nut straight to nut straight, overpair stacked by set, two pair can't hold vs the big draw for $1500, etc. etc. etc.

Well not much to say except I'm really disappointed that my 2007 WSOP Journey is officially over. Ugh. Man I really played well in the 1500 nl event too. At the first break, I hadn't done much except steal some blinds here and there, and kept steady at my starting stack of 3000. Through the 100/200 blind level, I kicked it into high gear and started taking down a lot of small pots uncontested. I don't believe i showed down a single hand up until the hand that spelled my doom.

When the next level, 100/200 with 25 ante started, I was sitting at a comfortable 4500 in chips. As time progressed I took down a couple more pots with preflop 3bets and a cbet and before I knew it I was at right about 7000 in chips. Til "the hand". Older, tightish but sort of splashy asian who had about 8500 raises utg to 700 (100/200 25 ante), folds to me in the bb and I make it 2200 with AA. He looks at me and tanks. 1-2 minutes of thinking later, he finally says "All In" and of course I insta call. He flips KK and a flop of Q 5 Kr hits. No ace coming and it's game over for Aaron. fuckkkkkk

So yea I get a cab back to the room and now I'm just sulking for a while before I head back out to play more cash games and try to at least turn a cash game profit for this trip. I might give a last ditch effort to a wsop satellite at the Rio tonight at midnight, but I haven't decided for sure yet. After busting out of the other two events I played, there were some hands that I could second guess a bit, and I knew I'd have other opportunities... but after this event I really feel like I played the best poker I could possibly play and put myself in a position to be in at least the top 5% of chips if I could hold up with an 80/20 one time. ugh.

I don't know how people can play these things for a living.

Aaron "maybe next year" Wilt

... although days when you actually win are much more fun. Finally put together two days in a row where I've made some decent money in the live vegas cash games. I felt like I can say I was actually "running good" as I hit some draws and got paid a bit. Mostly played 5/10 at bellagio and a late night session of 2/5 deep at caesars, which was a very juicy game.

My stay here at this timeshare is almost up, as I have to check out on Friday. I booked a room for my final 3 nights (fri/sat/sun) at the Luxor as it was one of the cheaper venues that still had rooms available. Sucks to be so far down south on the strip, but I figure the tram will be a bit cheaper than cab fare, so its not a total loss.

Thursday is my last wsop event, $1500 unlimited hold them poker. Since I feel like I've been playing with confidence and the poker gods on my side for the past two days, I hope I can keep it going tomorrow during the donkament and perhaps turn this vegas trip around a bit. I'll definitely need some luck and some big hands to do anything in the tournament, so cross your fingers. So far I haven't even made it to the dinner break ... lol. Let's hope that changes tomorrow. I really want to cash in one of these stupid things.

Had a few interesting hands from my sessions today, but no time to type them out now. Need to get my rest, as it's 3:30am and I'm still not in bed yet. Gotta be at the rio by 11:30 or so, preferably earlier so I could get a good breakfast.

I guess that's about it... just trying to keep my late cash game rally going to make this trip worthwhile and hopefully I won't squander my last chance at a donkament score. I think the field is supposed to be huge tomorrow, so a decent cashing could mean lots of $$$.

Wish me luck,
Aaron

It's 4:30 am and I just got back to the room. What an eventful day it has been in good ol' Las Vegas.

Since it's late and I'm too tired to get into all the gorey details, here's a quick run through of the highlights and a short summary:

-Played some 5/10 at Bellagio, standard stuff, made a few moves but couldnt make any hands. ended up a couple hundo.

-Met up with Tom and Diane again today. They wanted to play poker with me again to relive the old home games we used to play in Bloomington. Since they're normal people and not degenerates like myself, they understandably didn't want to sit in a cash game, so cheap tournament was the next best thing. Tom found a $50 20-person MTT at Imperial Palace that did the trick. They generously decided to give me an early wedding gift and pay for my entry. I protested but since they insisted to pay, I vowed take down first and win them some money. And that's just what I did. I got about $500 for first, and gave them each a benjy. I did feel bad for Diane as I knocked her out on the money bubble as my A6s trumped her 56o all in preflop.

-After that I needed to go back to work, so they offered to walk with me back to Bellagio. Once there, Diane wanted to see some named pros, so we scouted around. She got her picture taken with TJ Cloutier. I also saw Ed Miller walk in by himself. Since we were lacking named pros, I figured he would have to suffice, so I told Diane to go talk to him, and ask if he's the "Noted Poker Authority". Of course she had no idea who he was, but she did just as I instructed and he seemed overjoyed to be recognized by his 2+2 nickname. Not long later I met up with my best man's Dad and his girlfriend for a hello and then off to the tables I went again.

-As I was waiting on the list, I saw none other than Brandi Hawbaker, resident 2+2 drama princess. Of course I didn't talk to her but I did get a good chuckle reminiscing about all drama and overnight Internet poker sensation she became by her one (now deleted?) thread.

-After I got to my 5/10 game (which was incredible btw) I witnessed one of the most donktastic-borderline-brilliant hands ever, where essentially a guy calls a flop raise with TPNK oop only to turn his hand into a pure bluff on the turn, and it working. I'll have to type more details out on this one later... wow that guy was a fish and the obvious Internet player was irrate when the guy showed his hand.

-Last and certainly not least, I met Coltrane of 2+2 fame, Sunny Meta. It was kind of funny, before I knew who he was, I see Sunny sit down on my right and pull out a huge wad of hundreds, then he buys in for only $500 at the 5/10 game. Naturally I found this quite odd. Not long after, a couple of obvious internet poker nerds come over to him and start talking about how it's so amazing they are only down a 1200 or so after "serious stripper tilt" and the usage of other poker terms being bastardized by describing real life..haha... It was quite funny, but of course I mind my own business. Anyway a bit later there's a lull in the action, so I decide to ask if those were his Internet poker friends, and he replied they were, inquiring how I could tell. I told him that it was an "easy read" so to speak and I knew a lot of internet players and I'm one of them. He then told me he actually knew them from a poker forum, not actually playing. You can see where this is going. Once I find out who he is, of course I knew right away that he's working on the newest 2+2 nl book. Turns out one of his friends (or "geek squad" as he jokingly referred to them) was none other than Matt Flynn who is co-authoring the book. How cool is that?

So I was highly impressed with Sunny as a person and a player. I had a really enjoyable conversation with him, and I hope I'll be able talk with him more, especially about poker strategy. Unfortunately we were in a must-move game, and not long after I got moved to the main game and didn't get to talk to him much more.

-Around 4:15am I decide it's time to get back to the room, and I quickly cash out and make my way to the front of the Bellagio, trying to avoid eye contact with some of Vegas's finest (and, uh, not-so-finest) ladies of the night. Probably by then they were on at least sloppy 23rds. ick.

Well this was supposed to be a quick entry but I guess I rambled. Coming up on 5am now so time to get some rest and go back to the poker grind.

later,
Aaron

Didn't do any updates this past weekend while Missy was in town. We had a great time. Her mom was actually in town as well as her job as a part time flight attendant for this private jet happened to be staying for a few days in Vegas. So Friday night we get together with her mom and go to Blueman group at the Venetian, which was really fun. Hard to explain what they do, but the most accurate thing I can say is that it's a very visual show that plays on bright colors, percussion instruments, and non-verbal forms of comedy. I think just about everyone could find something in the show that they enjoyed.

So saturday night we got together with her Mom and the two pilots who are in their late 20s/early 30s and drank a bunch of beer at their hotel's happy hour. Afterwards we hit NY NY for some pizza and more drinks and degenerate video poker gambling. Of course I don't really know much about good basic video poker strategy, but I figure my intuition has got to be pretty close. In any case, we prob dropped $30-40. Missy was getting real fast cranking out the hands... lol. Her ptbb/100 was probably something like -.50 ptbb/100 or so, taking after her fiancee ;-) So get this, Missy and I had been playing video poker for like 30 mins at the bar, and I was standing there with her the entire time -- ie both of us were playing the same machine. So she asks the bartender for 2 beers, and he gets them and makes some rude comment about how "he'll ONLY charge us for 1" wtf... since when are these clowns not supposed to comp both drinks? After paying $5.75 for a bottle of miller lite, we gave NYNY a bit eff you and decided to leave.

Sunday I tried my last shot at qualifying for the main event online when I played the FTP 100 seats guaranteed and the pokerstars 150 seat guaranteed. Needless to say it was standard donkament fare and I came up short on both despite Kyle's bring it skills. After that we went out for one last night together on the strip and ate at the planet hollywood buffet, which was really good (pre-cut crab legs FTW) and then hit up the Eifel Tower at Paris which was definitely fun and finished up by catching a couple Bellagio fountain shows and swinging by the poker room so Missy could see some "names". All and all, a fun weekend with the soon-to-be Mrs. (11 days... gulp ;-)

Ok so Monday I had my second chance at a WSOP bracelet and managed to last all of 67 minutes. lol...(but not really lol). I freaking hate tournaments. Anyway I lost 2 mediumish pots with AK which basically did me in. Here's my results-oriented analysis. effective stacks about 4500, 25/50 blinds. I open AKs from the CO. I had been opening a lot of pots. Flop A 9 8r, 350 in pot. Checks to me I bet 250, villain calls in sb. Turn 9. He checks I bet 600 into 850, he calls. River is a To. he bets 1200 i think into 2050. I call it, J9 off good. I dunno maybe I could get away on the river, putting him mostly on 67 or AT, but I have a hard time folding TPTK to live tourney donks with no read.

So that crippled me pretty well, but I soon after picked up QQ and value bet a station donk 3 streets on a Tc 9c Xo Ko Ko to get back to like 4k in chips or so.

Then I open a bunch of pots, fail a bluff that didn't get shown, take some down, crawl down to like 3500 in chips or so, still 25/50 blinds. Pick up AKc. New player just sat in the big blind last hand. He's got kind of messy hair and an 'alternative' look, FWIW. Not worth much at this point. I open AKc utg to 150, guy who has been getting sick of me raising (J9o guy from earlier) calls me on the button, messy hair makes it 650. I consider shoving but decide most people aren't going to try to pull some crazy squeeze their second hand in with no read, so I just call, nine-jackoff calls on button. Ks Qs Jo with about 2000 in the pot. messy hair stares right at me and checks, I check (figured i wasn't getting called by worse), nine-jackoff checks. Turn 6s, so board is Ks Qs Jo 6s, messy hair bets 1050, I call (? can i find a fold here? maybe... in hindsight it feels like he has scared AA -- but he can bet the As, or another AK and maybe AsQx here, maybe more), nine-jackoff folds. River 5s, putting a 4 flush on the board. Messy hair thinks forever and finally bets 1050 again, i fold. So that leaves me with like 2000 in chips or something.

A couple more preflop raises and failed cbets later, I'm at 1100 and the blinds just went up to 50/100. I get T8o in the big blind. Folds to solid guy who was getting sick of my preflop aggression in the sb who completes. I check. Flop T 7 6r, he checks, I bet 100, he makes it 300, i shove in my last bit, he calls. 98s good, no 9 to chop.

So I'm pretty bummed about my results in this tourney, since it was the 6max donkament and I really felt like I was going to do something in it. Alas I didn't. Perhaps I could have played those hands better. Everyone seemed so bad though, except for the solid guy who had 98s in the final hand. Oh well... I guess it wasn't "meant to be" or wahtever.

So for the rest of the day I played 5/10nl at Rio (wow what a terribly run poker room, but in their defense the place is a total zoo) and at Bellagio. I managed to put together a small profit (cpl hundo or so). I met up with some old friends of mine from Illinois who also happened to be in Vegas. Diane and Tom from my old programming contract back at AFNI in Bloomington IL and my Best Man's Dad, Scott from good ol' Macomb IL found me at the Bellagio poker room and said Hi. It was good to see everyone and they wished me the best. Kind of crazy how many people have just happened to be out here in the these two weeks in June...and equally crazy how we probably wouldn't have known if not for my blog.

Around 1am at Bellagio i was starting to get light headed and sick of seeing 72o for the 8th time in a row. I figured I was just overdosing on sugar-free redbull, but then I realized that I hadn't eaten anything since 11am before the tournament. Others at the table were talking about how good Noodles at Bellagio is, so i went over there to get some Phad Thai to go. I took it back to my room to eat, and unfortunately it was pretty terrible. Very little spiciness, even though i specifically ASKED if it was spicy... and only a few pieces of shrimp... and generally just not all that great. Who knew the best Thai food could only be found in Kansas City. A real bummer.

That's it for now... more cash games for me on Tuesday and hopefully I can pull myself out of the red. I'm still down a decent amount in live cash games since I got here. I think I can get it back before my trip ends though. There are so many donkeys, and I did a better job of staying patient today and not trying to get people to fold anything. That said, I won exactly 2 showdowns all day today (11.5 hours of play, including the tournament...) hard to put up big wins when you can't get to showdown with the best hand...

more later,
Aaron

I've got the worst. cold. ever. I can thank john for that one! thanks DUDE!

My head is so congested. I've been slamming the dayquil, airborne, cough drops, orange juice, etc. Nothing is working so far. Couple that with another long, annoying, live session and well, another sub par day.

I've decided that after playing so much online, that I've lost basically any drive to accurately adjust to live play. it's not so much that I can't adjust, it's that the voice in my head that says "fold" when I look down at J7s when folded to me in MP gets overruled by my trigger happy hand that tosses out 4 $10 chips. It's tough to not want and try to out play people in every pot, and it's tough to not pull the trigger when you know the guy is weak. But the fact is he isn't folding anything. But that doesn't stop me from tossing out a few hundos and "putting him to the test"... except he's too dumb to know the question... but of course, knowing that, the real idiot in the equation is myself for not having the self control to just play solid poker, very rarely bluff, and just value bet people to death. I'm convinced that there just isn't much room for laggy, positional, thinking poker in these live small-mid stakes NL games (1/2 to 5/10nl). Get a good top pair+ hand, value bet the hand, hope to not get sucked out on, win money. end of story.

The problem, of course, with that equation is that you're lucky to see 25 hands in an hour, and given that you're lucky if you get a toppair+ hand once every two hours. So ultimately it's just a lot of sitting and waiting. For a person used to getting 800 hands an hour... that is, uhhh rough, to say the least.

From what I can tell there are a couple decent spots you can bluff in these games. Here they are, but use caution. Most people aren't thinking about anything except their two cards, and if they are thinking about your hand, it likely won't stop them from calling.

1) an A on the turn or river. Whether or not it makes any sense for you to have it, the A almost always slows everyone down. As a corrolary to that, value betting something less than an A on a street usually isn't advisable since they aren't calling with less than the A...or more specifically, if they previously had driven the action, and the A comes, they are going into check/call down mode, maybe folding to a big river bet.

2) when the flush hits. They always put you on it. you had better bet big though to represent it. Like a broken record, i keep hearing the local vegas nits say "boy i thought he hit that flush!" as they check behind their set on the river to scoop the pot.

3) squeeze opportunities. Mostly when everyone limps in, from the button or the blinds raising big. or the traditional squeeze opportunity when someone opens in late position and a loose guy calls and you put in a big raise. In live games, the 3betting range for almost everyone is KK+, some "light" 3bettors might actually repop you with AK or QQ, but mostly these are the younger online guys. Go ahead and fire a bet on the flop if they call.

aside from those 3 spots, I wouldn't try to put too many moves on people in these games. I've probably blown close to $1500 in failed bluffs so far this trip. Once instance was vs a tight-ish chick, who 3bet me to $60 from my $25 open with JTs (2-5 game ceasars). We were 225bb deep or so, I made the call. Flop A 9 2 rainbow... dry as you can get. She bets 75 into 120, i make it 200, she insta-makes it 500 to go and i laugh and fold, she shows AAA. oops. In hindsight, she prob doesn't even bet KK/QQ there, and her 3betting range isn't any wider than that. If she has AK she prob isn't folding the flop either. So yea another dumb play by Aaron.

Another failed bluff, i raise from the CO, random not terrible but not great guy limp/calls utg. I got 75s. Flop J 7 2 rainbow. He leads into me for $50 into a $60 pot I call. Turn 8. He now bets same $50 into $160. Obv he isn't that strong, so i make it $225. He insta calls. oops. river blanks chk chk, his QJo is good. his play on this hand is pretty mind boggling, but at the same time I shouldn't be bluffing a guy like this. So who's the real donk in this equation... me.

Another thing I'm doing wrong in these games is betting too big. Most of my bets are around potsized, give or take. Of course no one knows how to calculate a pot sized raise in these games, so they always think i'm overbetting the pot (lol). Everytime they say I "overbet the pot" I say no I didn't but they protest that my $300 raise when the pot was $100, guy bets $80 is an "overbet". ha... Anyway, point is, I think I might be blowing people off their hand in an effort to get good value when I actually do have something. I'm not sure if that's true or not though, because I'm trying to reconcile this point with my previous point about quit trying to bluff these clowns. I don't see how both can be true at the same time, but somehow it seems to be?

John leaves thursday, then Missy gets here Friday. Another friend of mine, Jsnipes from 2+2 is coming this weekend to Vegas as well, so it'll be cool to meet up with him.

Plan for tomorrow is hopefully start feeling better, play online during the day and another 5/10 session at night to try to get unstuck before the weekend. I'd like to have some extra spending money before Missy gets here.

Aaron

The movie was about like my entire night... pretty disappointing. Walked up and down the Vegas strip being indecisive about where to play, got some cold medicine because I'm coming down with something...i'm sure either me or jalex caught something from sharing enclosed airspace with the tens of thousands of people we've been exposed to at the rio/bellagio/caesars/wherever, and then one of us gave it to the other being couped up in this room. Yea fun stuff.

So anyway after walking all over the strip, finally settling at caesars, losing a hundred bucks playing too LAG in a 2-5nl game, we go "meet" up with jay and his buddies at the palms to watch Ocean's 13. Jay was tired and was snoring through half of it (lol) but the truth is he didn't miss much. 13 wasn't nearly as bad as 12, but obv neither compare to 11 which i think is an excellent movie. I wouldn't bother paying the $10 for the theatre ticket, but I guess if you have netflix, it might be worth adding into your queue 8 months from now... maybe. probably not, actually.

So that's it, back in the room early again, 3am. going to read some more poker forums and then go to sleep. Meeting up with my friend Bill who lives in Vegas when I wake up. We'll probably go play at his live stomping grounds -- the Red Rock Casino.

later,
Aaron

Going to head out soon to play some more live poker....probably caesars or bellagio, 5/10. had a decent day online, despite some rather unfortunate setups/suckouts. Standard stuff.

here's an interesting hand from last night's live session. 2-5nl caesars. lady on my right, prob in her 60s or so, was pretty awful. The same lady from my last entry who thought you only needed 4 cards to make a straight. Anyway we had been pretty friendly to each other (i always try to be in a live game, despite a few entries back when I got into it vs bald bull). Anyway, she had been showing her hands to me and i to her, etc. She was awful and I wanted her to have fun so she'd stick around, as it was clear she wasn't going to leave with any money left. disingenuous i guess... but that's poker.

Anyhoo, she had shown the ability to show up with any 2 cards in any situation, and didn't seem to have any grasp for what hands to bluff with, raise for value with, or just get to showdown with. It's true to a large degree w/ most live players, but for her it was an extreme. Let me give you an example. guy limps in MP, tight player raises in the CO, she calls with AQ in the blinds. Flop Kh Qx 5x. She checks, MP checks, CO bets like 45 into 80. She minraises to 90, MP cold calls, CO calls. Turn 6h so now the board is Kh Qx 5x 6h, pot is like 350. she checks, MP checks, CO checks. River 9h. She checks, MP bets 280, CO begrudingly folds, and now she checkraises him all in for like 350 more. He goes into the tank and finally decides he cannot fold (fearing the backdoor flush making it) and calls with JT, which is obv good. She shows her AQ and claims "damn, i thought by the way he was betting he was bluffing!!! I checkraise him because I thought he bluffed!" loool ?

Ok so given that, a hand several hours later came up where I played a big pot against her, and cost myself money. $10 straddle utg, folds to her on the button and she limps. I make it $50 from the sb w/ AQo, everyone folds to her, she calls. Flop A K 5 rainbow. I bet $75 into 100, she calls. Turn 2, I pot it for $250, she's looking at her chips, finally she calls. At this point, i'm putting her pretty squarely on an A, but she could easily have a set, any 2pair, or the gutshot. I wanted to get max value. She could even have a K potentially (in hindsight, at the time i assumed she'd fold a K on the turn, unless it was K4 for the gutshot or similar). So the river brings a 6, final board of A K 5 2 6. I decide to blocking bet $100. We've got about 500 left and the pot is big. this might be a bad but basically I felt like she could easily have any 2pair on this board, and I really didn't know where I was at, and I just wanted to get paid, but i wasn't thrilled about shoving it in (wasnt sure if i could get called by worse) and betting like 1/2 pot and having to call a shove wouldn't be fun either. She has no idea how much is in the pot, but she thinks $100 is a "big bet". I doubt she's the type to see weakness in it, but I could be wrong.

So she starts counting up her chips... about $500 starts stacking up her chips like she's going to shove it in. fuck.... while she's organizing her chips getitng ready to push, all i'm thinking about is "can i really call it off with 1pair here? she's terrible... could she really be value shoving a worse A? could she just shove in with whatever thinking i'm bluffing, even though she might have showdown value? is she even thinking about anything ? how can i figure it out?" what it boiled down to in my mind is that I don't want to be put to a tough decision for a crying call of $400 into a $1200 pot, where I'd prob have to make the call but I'd hate it. So I start asking her, as she's stacking up her chips getting ready to push "do you really have a good hand? I've got a pretty good hand" She said "you do ?" in a surprised tone. I'm like "yea, i mean, its not the nuts, but it's pretty good" she said "i have a good hand as well, is your hand better than mine?" I said "i'm not sure what you have..." so she said "well if i fold will you show me?" and i'm like "yea sure"

So she tanks for a while more, finally folds A4o (DOHHHH) and I turn over AQ. She said "damn i shouldn't have folded, we would have chopped" (keep in mind the board was A K 5 2 6 lol), the dealer said "no ma'am, he would have won, he had the best hand" she protested for a few more seconds then finally believed him. So the morale of the story is that by trying to avoid a tough spot getting 3:1 or so, letting her hang herself w/ TPNK, I open my big mouth and end up costing myself $500. UGH. On the bright side though, I didn't allow myself to make a huge mistake in a big pot.

lol livepokeraments.

Aaron

... but so is online. 6am out here, i'm going to bed now. wow the games were amazing, but alas -800 was the talley live. oh yea and -1k or so online. whee. poker is fun, especially when old ladies call your pot bet on the turn with a gutshot and hit, because she thinks you only need 4 cards to make a straight "i had to call, i was open ended" with her 97o on a 5 6 Ts 2s board, yea my 56h was no good after the 8 came. Why couldn't she have made her "straight" with the 4, I wondered?

wow live players are so bad... i was playing 2-5 today at caesars because there was only one 5/10 table going... i was value towning people left and right, and then the donkeys came out charging and i couldn't do anything but take it like a champ. nh sir, madam, and "other". Yea vegas has a lot of interesting characters.

i'm going to bed. man i'm still on tilt.

Oh yea btw just fyi don't ever bluff a live poker, they are so bad, they never fold anything. wow i'm bad for even trying to bluff. i'm going to bed, still on tilt.

Already back at the hotel room for the night, and it's only midnight. Live poker is so draining, especially when you play for hours on end... plus the worst part about live poker, by far, is the people. Wow are people annoying...especially the live vegas nit grinders who seem to think the key to live poker is some teddy kgb-esque cookie-in-mouth tell which reveals a secret window into the soul. uhmm, yea. Reinforcing this observation is the lack of the fundamental poker skills said players have, that are easily mastered by most .50/1.00 online players.

That's not to say I'm having a poor time, because that's not the case. It's fun to put moves on players live and scoop pots. The toughest part is figuring out what level people are on. For some reason online I feel like I can do this much easier than i can live. I think it's mostly because many live players simply just make random donk plays some % of the time, and trying to anticipate the hands where they seem to "play well" vs the times where they are in donkey mode is an exercise in futility. At least for me. My feeling is that it's probably because most of them stumble onto the "correct" play on accident, or make the "correct" play for the wrong reasoning, and that faulty reasoning later shines through when they are in donkey mode. Or perhaps I just haven't found the "cookie tell". You be the judge.

I did have an interesting exchange with a player today in a live game. This guy is your run of the middle 40ish balding "big tough guy" who feels the need to act like the alpha male at every opportunity. Of course I didn't realize that until this exchange happened.


40ish-balding-probably-mid-life-crisising guy opens for the minimum utg+1 (bellagio 5/10). A few people call, I toss another $10 chip in as I'm in the big blind already with J9o. Flop comes J J 7 rainbow. I check, bald bull checks, others check. Turn K. I pot it, bald bull minraises me. At this point i'm pretty much in wtf mode because it's one of his first hands at the table. He could have kings, he could have a slowplayed jack, or just a pair, or QT i dunno. I decide to just call. River is a blank, and I check it to him (probably a mistake in retrospect, i should probably bet/fold here) and he checks behind.

Bald bull triumphantly turns over KQo (lol) and I'm like "I've got the jack" -- all of a sudden he flies into this tirade about "WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU THOUGHT I'D BET YOUR HAND FOR YOU? WHO DO YOU THINK I AM, I'M NOT BETTING THAT RIVER WITH A KING HAHA I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU THOUGHT I'D BET THERE I'D NEVER DO THAT HAHAHAHAHA" essentially laughing in my face (lol?)

So I quip back: "Hey man thanks for the free lesson. do you have any other tips for me? I'm still trying to learn over here."

He retorts: "Don't be such a smart ass, wow, what a smart ass comment. Don't be such an ass" etc etc etc

While he's going on and on, louder and louder, I try to match both volume and tone saying "listen man, what did you expect me to say when you ask such a question? what response were you looking for? hahaha"

Anyway at this point the rest of the table pipes up for us both to settle down, friendly game, etc. he gives me the tough guy stare down, i look at him and give him the "fuck you" grin-eyeroll-head-back-and-forth-shaking. He proceeds to steam. Anyone that knows me would attest that I'm not exactly out looking for a fight at every corner, in fact I'm usually silent at the table unless spoken to first (as I was in this case, hell I even had the ipod playing...) but certainly I won't let some dumb fuck meathead donkey talk down to me like that. As if I'm going to be intimidated by this guy. HU 4 ROLLZ??? didn't think so.

So yea, good stuff. But the highlight of the day was definitely meeting up with some guys I've played against a lot online at stars/FTP. Me and jalex met up with krantz, foxwoodsfiend, whitelime, and ahnuld of 2+2 at Shintaro, the japanese steak house in the Bellagio. The food was ok, the conversations were hilarious, and those guys all seem really cool. It was fun to put a face to the names and we even relived some old hands played together online (one especially where I bet/3-bet all in on the river as a bluff vs FoxwoodsFiend). Good stuff. Anyway they seem really solid, so hopefully I'll get a chance to chill with them a bit more in the next couple weeks.

Ok that's it for now, I think I'm going to put in an online session tonight, or maybe just go to bed at a reasonable hour. I didn't get in "last night" until 5am this morning. Late night at the Bellagio. So far for the trip I'm down a little (when taking into consideration food/cab fare/etc) but less than a buyin, so no big deal. I haven't run that great live, nothing terrible like some of my online experiences, but certainly below expectation. I felt like I really played my A game today though, playing position well, putting in some big successful bluffs, and generally having a good control over the table. It was a good feeling, but a couple sour hands netted me about -$700. Oh well.

Guess that's it for now, more to come later.

Aaron

Ok so Missy is going to post some updates for anyone who cares, maybe even an interesting hand or two... check back later for any updates. The tournament starts in an hour, so jalex and I are heading out the door.

Update #1

Okay, I’ll do the best I can with these updates!

I talked to Aaron around 2:30 pm Vegas time on Saturday. The good news is he was still in event #15! The bad news is the blinds were getting ready to go up, and he’s pretty short stacked. They were on the first break on level 3 in the tournament. The blinds were getting ready to increase to 100/200. Aaron has about $2400 in chips.

The only pro he’s been with at a table is Harry Dimitrieu. He was short, and Aaron busted him! The board was A96 after a 4 way limped pot. Aaron was on the button with A9. Dimitrieu had A6.

The other big hand that had just occurred when we talked was with “the biggest donkey at the table!” Aaron lost half of his stack with JJ. The donkey had been playing horrible the whole time. The previous hand he had opened 700 utg (50/100 blinds). So this hand comes and again he opens with 750 utg. It folds to Aaron in the big blind. They have about $4400 in chips. Aaron says he thinks he misplayed the hand here because he just should have shoved knowing what a donkey this guy was...but instead Aaron called. The flop comes 964 with two spades. Aaron checks...with an immediate check behind. At this point, Aaron figures he has AK or something. The turn brings the 5 of spades. There’s about $1500 in the pot, and Aaron bets $1000. The donkey instantly shoves all in. Aaron thinks and thinks and finally folds. The donk shows 99 for top set. Aaron seemed pretty happy he got away from it without totally busting.

The only other interesting hand he mentioned was when Aaron had pocket tens against a “tight, old guy in the big blind.” It folds to Aaron who made it 300...the old guy reraises to $1100. Both stacks are about $1900. Aaron ended up winning the pot...but the message Aaron left me was running out of time, so that’s all he said about this hand!

Jalex busted early. I’ll post more next time I hear from Aaron! I hope I didn’t mess this up too much! :)

Update #2

3:20 Vegas time...Aaron busted! :(

An aggressive guy who earlier called a 3 bet putting 2/3 of his stack in preflop with J10 off suit to make trips and bust another guy...opens in late position with $800 (100/200 blinds). Aaron goes all in $3000 more with AJ suited. The other guy thinks forever and calls with JJ. Flop misses Aaron completely, and he's out. Aaron feels like he played the hand alright, but it's unfortunate to run into the top of his range.

Update #3:

Ok this is Aaron again, I'm impressed she did the updates perfectly ;-)

My voicemail message cut out on the TT hand. this tight older guy who was playing fairly aggressively but only showed down strong hands 3bet me to 1100. I had 4600 and he had 1900 or so. I folded this hand, but in retrospect I think I should have juts got it in preflop, mostly because i don't feel like he would have raised "so much" with a stronger hand. I played it safe and folded.

I've been running my final hand through my head since it happened, and I think it was a fine play against the player in question. The blinds were going up in the next 5 minutes too, so even though I had about 19 blinds effective, I don't hate my 3bet shove against him because I had seen him open (and subsequently call) very very light in the past. Just sucks I got my money in bad on the final hand. Only question I have left is where was my "lol donkaments" suckout???

Plan for the rest of the night is to meet up with jkrantz later, then head to bellagio or ceasers to play in the 5/10nl games. Last night the game I was in at ceasars was AMAZING... i wish i could have stayed longer. The game def plays a lot deeper than online, which is fun. The best part about live games in vegas is that $100 bills play, which definitely adds some interesting psychology and just adds to the fun of winning a big pot.

If I can make a couple grand tonight in the cash games, I might go ahead and buy into Event #19 on Monday, $2500 NL tournament. I had a good time playing in the tournament today, and to be completely honest, the first hand I open raised had my blood pumping a little bit. haha i hate to admit that...but it was exciting. After the ice was broken though, it was back to business as usual.

So far I'm up a little in the cash games, but nothing to write home about. Hopefully I'll change that tonight.

Aaron

Real quick update before I go to bed. It's 3:15 in the AM out here, just got out of the shower and ready to catch a few hours of sleep before the noon start to event #15, $1500 NL hold'em. jalex and I planned to play at the bellagio tonight, but because of unforeseen circumstances (pokerstars' hospitality room randomly closed during prime time afternoon hours... lol ?) we ended up walking and cabbing it all over vegas it seemed like.

We started from McCarran airport --> carriage house (timeshare where we're staying) no rooms available yet, come back later... okie dokie --> walk prob 1.5mi+ to US Bank to get our vegas bankroll (got lost, finally made it w/ the help of my uncle and google maps) --> walk to a nearby hotel --> cab it to bellagio to set up an account with them to hold half my money --> cab it to rio, sign up for our wsop events, see sklansky, mattusow, negreanu, elezra, and maybe a few other names i'm forgetting --> cab it back to carriage house to check in and get settled --> walk to bellagio for lunch --> walk to treasure island (ps hospitality room closed, ugh) --> walk to venetian, play some 5/10nl there, lose a few bucks --> walk back to treasure island, get our pokerstars gear. i got two packages of stuff so i just gave one to jalex so now he can be mr pokerstars.net with me (lol?) --> find something to eat for dinner at treasure island --> walk back down to bellagio to play 5/10 there as we planned...oops, list is 25 deep, uhh, stand around for a while --> decide waiting for live games sucks and is reason #234325 why online poker is superior --> hike back to ceasars and quickly get seated in a 2/5nl game, then finally get moved to a 5/10 game that was playing more like 5/10/20 (forced straddle, but it wasn't really forced but everyone was anyway). Ended up playing pretty deep there. More on that in another entry. --> hike back to carriage house where I am now.

I've got awful blisters on my feet because i wore these dumb new sandals I bought. Today is the last day for them in vegas, i'm afraid.

ok so we gotta leave the hotel in 7.5 hrs or so to head to the rio, so i'm going to wrap this up. If i can convince/explain to missy how to log into blogger and post, i might try to have her post updates on the tournament, but if not i'll post something tomorrow night sometime.

holla

So I finally made it to vegas. I'm sitting here in Mccarran airport now. Had to get up at the ass crack of dawn, like 5:15am, which would have been closer to my bedtime last week. Anyway, managed to actually catch about an hour off sleep on the airplane which is rare for me. Of course it's that hanging by a thread sleep where you're just out of it enough to make the time go by quicker but you jerk awake as the damn flight attendant steps on your foot. OOPS SORRY. riiiight.

Anyway, i'm waiting for jalexand42/HibachiMahi's flight to get in so we can share a cab and head to our room. After that the plan is to hit US Bank to get our vegas rolls and then go preregister for our wsop events.

Since I've had a couple hours to kill before his flight got in, I watched the House FInancial Services committee meeting online this morning. I think overall the case for repealing UIGEA was pretty convincing, especially when taking into consideration how dumb and uninformed the opposition was. I realize, though, a lot of the time it doesn't matter how convincing the arguments are, or how ridiculously dumb the counter arguments are, the congress people just vote how they vote. I guess our only hope is to sway some of those on the fence.

Kind of funny but at one point this older african american lady, probably in her 70s, gets the mic while sucking on some piece of hard candy? (i'm going to guess/hope it was candy and not rattling her dentures or something..lol) anyway at first i'm like who the heck is this woman, but then it turned out she made more sense than anyone else, essentially arguing for indifference to what consenting adults want to do, and how if people want to gamble, they will gamble, so you might as well regulate it. Basically what she said in a few words (and clicks of her candy?) was simple and concise and summed up what others had been trying to express over the last hour. Good show and much respect, congresswoman.

So thats it for now... jalex just called me and he hit the ground, so off to crush some donkeys. I'll try to keep some regular vegas updates going.

Good luck!
Aaron

P.S. If i hear someone substitute the phrase "lost wages" when referring to "las vegas" one more time, I might jump off the top of the stratosphere. THE JOKE IS OLD AND NOT FUNNY PEOPLE.

Short and sweet blog entry today. Just do it. Call your representative.

It's important to do this on Thursday or Friday morning. The House Financial Services Committee meeting is on Friday. Easy 3 step process:

1) Call the capitol switchbord at this number: 202-225-3121

2) Give them your ZIP code

3) After the operator connects you, tell the person (an underling of your representative) that you're a voter in their district and you support HR 2046. Tell them to please attend the the hearing on HR 2046 on Friday to learn more about the issue, and please protect our rights to play poker online.

Seriously it takes like 3 minutes start to finish. Just do it.

PPA Link (more info)

If you don't call, you'll make the puppy sad... You don't want that now do you.... DO YOU ??

So another month gone and for the second month in a row I've been really disappointed with my results. Ever since the last day of March where I had that huge downer at 5/10 and 10/20, it seems like I can't seem to keep my head above water. I played a shit ton of hands this month, again, and it seemed like I spent all my time trying to get out of a huge hole.

Looking back at the last 3 months in pokertracker, it's becoming evident that a big reason why I'm always trying to dig out of a hole is because I have huge losses at higher stakes and then I try to recoup them at lower stakes. I played the vast majority of my hands at 2/4 and 3/6nl this month because I wanted to regain confidence after I dropped 10k or so early at 5/10. So I dug myself out of that hole after tons of hands and ended up in the green for the month, slightly better than last month. It's a good thing I have a very good work ethic when it comes to poker because if I was lazy on top of my poor results, I might starve lol...

The last week of the month I played 36% of my hands this month. There were a couple big nights in there since the games were sick good and I managed to run well at the right times...I was happy to get the ball to bounce my way as it had been a while. Hopefully I can keep the ball rolling through June and the WSOP. I joke that perhaps I've saved up all those sklansky bucks to cash in this month. We'll see.

So here's my graph as it ended up in May

Despite the sort of negative tone of this blog entry, I was actually in pretty good spirits towards the end of the month. Yes I had more good days then bad during that span, but I was also feeling like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I felt like I was playing better and had some hopes that perhaps my time to crush had once again come. We'll see if it continues but so far, so good in the early parts of June.

Additionally, it's almost WSOP time! I'm headed to Vegas June 8th and I can't wait. Unfortunately I have a to-do list a mile long before I take off for 2.5 weeks, but somehow things will get done, they always do. The latest project is working on a slideshow of our baby pics through college (and after) in a powerpoint presentation that we'll show at our rehearsal dinner and during the reception. So far it's turning out awesomely and we're very excited about the accompanying music with specific pictures that will hopefully invoke a rollercoaster of laughs and tears. Should be fun to watch our parents and grandparents react. There are so many last minute things we need to do for the wedding on the 30th, including (but not limited to): finalizing plans for the reception menu, finalizing song list for the reception, slideshow, various types of invitations, and a whole host of other stuff that I likely won't have any hand in. In situations like this, it's definitely good to be the guy.

Missy is coming out to visit me in vegas the second weekend I'll be there. So far we don't have a lot of plans set in stone but we intend to see the cirque de solei show "O" at bellagio. We've already seen Mystere and KA and greatly enjoyed both. Other than that perhaps we'll swing by the Rio to watch some of the wsop action. I've scheduled 3 events I'm planning to play for sure, perhaps more if I do well in the first event. Here they are:

Event 15 NL Hold'em Sat, Jun 9th 12:00:00 PM 3-Day Event $1,500 Entry
Event 30 NL Hold'em (6 handed) Mon, Jun 18th 12:00:00 PM 3-Day Event $2,500 Entry
Event 35 NL Hold'em Thu, Jun 21st 12:00:00 PM 3-Day Event $1,500 Entry

I'm pretty damn excited especially since I qualified for the first one on Full Tilt, then I'm using my Frequent Player Points on Stars for the other two, so it'll cost me nothing to play in the events. I'm also looking forward to doing some serious pwnage in the Bellagio 5/10nl game. I heard through the grapevine that the 10/20nl at bellagio was playing like 3/6nl online, so naturally I'm very stoked about that. Doubtful I'll play the 10/20 unless I've made at least a few buyins at 5/10 though.

So all things considered, a very exciting month for me. Getting married, playing in my first ever WSOP events, and spending 2.5 weeks in the greatest city on earth ;-) Hopefully I'll be able to add to the list a big cash month and a bracelet. One thing is for certain though, no matter what the poker results, it's definitely going to be the best month of my life. I'm going into June with good spirits and a good attitude and I'm planning to look back at June '07 for the rest of my life when thinking about the "good old days."

Goals for the month:

-Keep a positive attitude
-Play the best poker I can
-Have a blast in Vegas
-Walk, no, RUN down the aisle to await my bride.
-Make some awesome memories
-Update my blog often when I'm in Vegas

So there ya have it. If you're going to be in Vegas during mid/late June and you want to get together, let me know.

See ya there!
Aaron