Playing 100/200 at Bellagio tonight, I play a pretty fun hand. I raise Jd9d from hijack, SB 3 bets, BB calls, I call. Flop is Qd8d4s SB bets, BB calls, I raise, SB 3 bets, BB calls, I 4 bet, SB caps, both call. Turn is a pretty good card – Td for the straight flush no waiting, SB bets, BB calls, I raise, both call. River comes a small diamond, BB now donks, I raise, SB folds (88), BB 3 bets, I 4 bet, and he cries and calls with AdKd. All I can think besides how badly he misplayed his hand is that his LOLturnslowplayament cost me $1200! Poker players are very greedy.

Basic Vegas update is I am doing well in cash games, did nothing at all of consequence in the two donkaments I played, and having lots of fun meeting DC members, other LHE friends, and hanging out with Joe Tall at our rented house. Tonight I am playing the limit shootout, and Monday is the triple draw, which I'm most looking forward to. Aside from that I was home in San Diego for a few days recharging my batteries and now I'm ready to finish off the WSOP right. I also got an iPhone which is a fun new toy to keep me busy!

Weeee I wasn't even remotely excited for the WSOP until a few days ago, and now the 40k event got started and suddenly it seems awesome. I'm headed out tomorrow night and should be there most of June. I am planning on playing a couple LHE events, the triple draw event, and some live cash games. Also looking forward to meeting a bunch of DC and 2+2 LHE guys who are going to be out there ruining the games.

This month I've been playing a bit more online, with typical LHE swings. Though I'm definitely getting back into the swing of things, finding some good games. I even chased a maniac up to Stars 100/200 which I haven't played online in awhile, usually because I don't feel I have an edge in a lot of lineups, but this was certainly an exception. It's sort of funny having played a lot of different limits over the years, one thing you want to avoid is not taking a smaller game seriously, which some guys can never figure out and never get back to the level they were at before having to drop down. On the other hand, its somewhat nice to jump into a pretty big game and not have the complete overwhelming terror that I felt the first time I ever played 100/200 online. It's certainly a familiar game and you don't have to worry about making tilty mistakes just due to the stakes involved.

Hopefully I can play well at all limits in Vegas, sometimes I get in games with 2+2ers, other pros I know, etc. and have way too much fun. Winning $ at the WSOP for once would be a new kind of fun I think

Updates to come from Vegas sporadically, hopefully it will be like last year and I can post about some tourney runs, but that's probably pretty optimistic.

April turned out to be a pretty busy month, as I was in LA a couple times for various dinners + poker trips, and Seattle for a week of work. My wife also was traveling for a week so it just seemed like we both were always running around and a few weeks flew by. A week ago we went up to LA together planning t go to Disneyland on her birthday, and I would just skip off to Commerce while she had some fun with her friends the rest of the weekend. Not a bad deal for me imo

I think I played some triple draw / badeucey / badugi mix games and a bit of 2 card poker (LHE) that trip, fairly uneventful overall. I wound up spending a good chunk of my time getting my wife's birthday present taken care of and then hanging out at Disneyland with her, which was fun as always. They have a thing this year where you go for free on your birthday, since we go all the time we have yearly passes but end up getting the ticket value as a gift certificate on your birthday, I don't mind the Disney rakeback.

After that I stayed with Joe Tall for a couple days and got a little work done and a lot of gin played, plus some yummy food as we like to do. Finally I got home for about a day and a half before heading right back up to go to an awesome dinner at one of my favorite LA restaurants, Tre Venezie, in Pasadena, which apparently got a Michelin star last year for its delciious northern Italian cuisine. Mike L. put the dinner together as always for no real good reason other than why not, but with the proximity to my birthday (the 10th) it ended up a semi birthday party I suppose. Cardsharpcook bought me a birthday cigar so that's how I know

Aside from that dinner I played a bunch at Commerce, winning in 2 card poker for once but then losing a bunch more than I had won in a pretty outstanding white chip hold'em game. Oh well, one day I will be in the right place at the right time and actually win the $50k they are trying to give away in that game.

Home for a couple weeks of normalness, then my brother is graduating so family will be in town, Courtney is running the San Diego marathon, and the WSOP begins at the end of the month, so it won't stay quiet for long!

We'll just pretend I posted a pretty boring South by Southwest trip report (KRANTZ put up way better updates while we were there then I could hope to anyway – dangerlion.com). Since then I've been home for the month with sort of my standard life routine going on. Splitting my time between some programming work, where I've finally put up a bunch of new featuers on www.thehandconverter.com, assisting with DeucesCracked business, making some videos, and been finding some time to play online poker which has been pretty fun.

I mostly am playing triple draw on stars, and a little of the 8 game mix and/or badugi, though I am at this point convinced that I might be a dog in the typical 40/80 badugi game that runs there as my results have been awful and I see the regulars playing somewhat differently from me. I feel pretty confident about my play in triple draw and have been doing best playing heads up, which is really a lot of fun in addition to being lucrative for me recently. I felt with those wins it would be appropriate for me to dump back some money playing the triple draw SCOOP events during the big tournament series. The fact that the mid and the high stakes buyin ones both had an overlay was a nice surprise as well. Unfortunately I dwindled off in all of them around the mid point, about that time when a limit tournament starts to bust a lot of people and you need to make some hands and build a stack for the long haul or say goodbye. I guess it could be worse as I certainly had a ways to go before the money and bubbling hurts more, but after my luck in the WSOP last summer I probably had myself convinced that I'm some sort of limit donkament allstar, glad to get that out of my system

I did an interview with Bart Hanson for the DC podcast – http://www.deucescracked.com/podcasts/deuceplays – we discussed triple draw and draw games in general for awhile. And I submitted an article to Bluff magazine and will try to write a few more if they like that one, I think it will go in their print magazine this month but need to double check.

Other than that just been home with the family but headed to Seattle for a week of work at DC's office tomorrow. I don't know how I'll get through a flight without having Joe Tall there to lose money to me at gin, but I'll try to manage.

Where we last left off I was almost headed up to Commerce during LAPC main event. It was, as expected, quite the zoo.  I played some 100/200 in surprisingly good games before scrambling to find a place to sleep since Commerce was sold out. Thanks LA friends for sheltering me! After a nice 2 hour nap on my second night I woke at 4 am to get to the airport to head to Seattle and meet the DC boys. Seattle was freaking cold and raining the whole time, but nice to get some work done and almost see some authentic winter weather.

After two short days I headed back to LA, wishing I were headed straight home, but instead relegated to another day of gambling at Commerce because I had Lakers tickets the next night in LA and it didn't make sense to drive back to San Diego and head right back up. Tough life I know. I headed straight to Commerce, calling ahead to a friend who put me on the list for 400/800 triple draw. I get there just as I get a seat in the game, and I scramble to sell pieces of myself and get some cash together since its apparently a super good game. I sell off a bunch of action and buy in and as I'm sitting down someone at the table says "just so you know we are playing badugi" and I go "ORLY" and then notice the dealer is dealing out 5 cards. I say "haha good joke" and he goes "no really we are playing BADEUCI" which I mis-heard the first time.

For those that don't know Badeuci is a split pot game, played as 5 card triple draw but splitting the pot between the best badugi hand (2345r is the nuts) and the best triple draw hand. I had played it once prior in my life, at low stakes. I quickly go confer with main backer and tell him I am less confident in Badeuci than straight TDL but I figure no one else has a clue either (turns out I am near correct). We decide to probably just stop if we lose 20k instead of being prepared to go 40k deep like we were – sick life. I get started and immediately realize the game is great, a couple guys are straddling multiple times per orbit because normally the game can only be dealt 6 handed, so at this 8 handed table UTG and UTG+1 have to sit out, but we agree if either straddles we will deal them in and deal it 7 handed. Genius.

I run good and make a few hands and overall feel like I have a good grasp on the right hands to play and draw at, though its too soon to be sure, but I luck out with a nice 20kish win, which I promptly deliver to backers like Santa Claus – selling pieces of yourself is weird in that way but certainly I was glad to get the experience in the game and make my friends happy. The next day I just played some  more 100/200 and went to the basketball game before thankfully heading home to put an end to a long trip that spanned a few cities.

Upon getting home I found out my desktop computer committed suicide, and it took multiple days to recover the vital data off the hard drive and get my laptop up to speed with everything I need just to get through the day   Not fun.

Been home and back to "normal" mostly doing programming work ever since, and tomorrow I head back up to LA to fly directly to Austin for South by Southwest (www.sxsw.com), will report on that when I return!

I finally got sick of the old theme that was very buggy and so I just found something serviceable for awhile. With RSS readers these days and how infrequently I've been posting, I doubt anyone much cares

Like most months when I don't post anything about poker, its because I haven't been playing. I think I logged a short session or two at Oceans 40/80 just to get out of the house, but not much more than that. Lots of code monkeying keeping me busy, expanding TheHandConverter.com with all sorts of new fun features has been most of my work. It's sort of my baby since we have "real" programmers for DeucesCracked

Last weekend Courtney and I got to go to Vegas for the long weekend and see lots of our poker friends, which was a very nice treat. That began a stretch of many trips for me, as tomorrow I go to Commerce for the weekend then fly to Seattle on Monday. After that I'm home for a bit before we head off to Austin, TX for South by Southwest (www.sxsw.com) which I'm very excited about as I'm just playing so much catch up with the interweb and programming. I've come a decently long way, the other day I made the bold proclamation that I "finally understand how the internet works" in reference to figuring out some GET and POST commands I needed to test, lol.

Hopefully I won't be lazy and have an ok Commerce trip report, the main event is going on so it should be quite busy and filled with the poker celebs, maybe I'll find a white chip game to hit and run, we'll see.

Went to LA for the weekend to go to this MMA event in Anaheim that Snowball got tickets for – turned out to be pretty awesome Affliction / HDNet fights card with Feydor crushing souls as the main event. Of course there was some poker too since its hard to be that close to Commerce and not stop in to say hi to all the animals – the LAPC only adds to the allure as the bigger games are starting up and lots of people are in town to see. Too bad then you remember they are going to sit in your games and make them generally tougher, oh well.

Wound up playing a long session in a 200/400 mix of hold'em and triple draw, maybe the greatest mix ever since its my two best games.  I estimate I won a good clip in the triple draw rounds and lost 75+ bets in the hold'em rounds, I seriously don't remember winning one hold'em hand, or really even having any hands. Except for one hand where I got the fish to go 8 bets on the turn with me on a Q84T board where he had QQ and I am not insane so I had it beat. He paired the board no problem in an 11k pot which was right around what I lost for the session, so I guess 8 hours of playing really does come down to one card sometimes

Home now and recovering from a surprising amount of live poker recently, these trips and excuses just keep coming up and I end up gambling. Too bad I am a huge live poker fish now and lose many a session. Online this month not much better with triple draw crushing my own soul for a change – gonna book the worst month of my poker career in probably less than 3k hands total and nothing higher than 50/100, that's pretty strong. Just reminds me to work on my programming and some DC work and not expect much from this silly game we all love!

My wife is running the rock n roll marathon in Phoenix this weekend so we decided to make a trip of it and see both our families in Arizona.  A couple days in Tucson and tomorrow heading up to Phoenix for pre-race festivities. I am tagging along, staying out of the way, and trying to sneak off to Casino Arizona whenever possible

I've been hearing about a 75/150 triple draw and/or mix game at Casino AZ so hopefully the rumors are true, that's around a perfect limit for fun times and I assume a pretty good game. Trip report to follow if they let me gamble!

This month has been pretty programming heavy, as we just rolled out some long awaited changes to DeucesCracked (what we call "version 2″). Over the last several months I learned a new programming language to actually assist in writing site code, which has been nice to help out and just for my own edification. We still have many cool features that aren't quite ready yet, but the cosmetic stuff is all in there now and on the live site. I've also been working on some slow enhancements to thehandconverter.com that are close to fruition.

I played a bit of poker this month, alternating between some holdem and some triple draw and a little badugi. I feel like the rare times I do play I'm doing great since I'm having fun playing poker as a hobby again and not so much relying on it. I expect to mix in a trip or two to Commerce this month with the LAPC starting and just random reasons to get to LA for a day or two. We are also going to Arizona for several days this month (wife running a marathon in Phoenix) and then a couple small trips planned in February too. I suppose the new year will be as random and busy as the last, but that's always fun. Hope everyone had a great holiday and see you in LA and on DeucesCracked!