Seattle Trip Report

Posted on May 4th, 2008 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Life.

Long overdue trip report…we decided to have a bunch of people go up to Seattle and work out of the DeucesCracked West offices preparing for Season 3 and its just a lot easier to get work done with everyone in one place. We found some awesome deals on flights from LAX on Virgin America airlines, which turned out to be a pretty sweet airline, where all stewardesses are apparently required to be hot and have European accents. I drove up to LA and first stopped at riverboatking's house, meeting him for the first time. Like everyone, I was surprised to learn he isn't an old cratchety river boat gambler guy, just another degenerate kid living the poker life :)

I taught him how to play Gin which is my new addiction and we pretty much played every spare moment we found for the rest of the week. We hung around his place until almost morning (we had a 7 am flight I think) and Joe Tall came to pick us up and carted us off to the airport. I paid extra so we could have the front non-first class row with extra leg room and wow was it worth it! Virgin Air has nice TVs where you can watch movies, direct TV, or even play Doom with a little remote control! We made the short flight to Seattle, made shorter with lots of Gin action and found Rob (Entity) and Chuck (Danzasmack) waiting to pick us up. At this point RBK and I were on precious little sleep and getting delirious but we intended to stay up the rest of the day and then just reset our sleep schedules and wake up early the rest of the week. That sorta worked out, we slept progressively later each day I think.

DJ Sensei got in later that day and our troupe was complete. Rob found us a really great vacation rental condo in a building downtown that had an incredible view of the Sound from our room on the 21st floor - extremely relaxing to wake up and see that. We were a block from the Pike Place market and could walk to pretty much anything we wanted in downtown Seattle, which usually ended up being coffee shops and bar and grills. Long story short we got a lot of work done over a couple days there, everyone making various video series and illegally gambling on the internet in the state of Washington (note: if you are a Washington state official of some sort and read this, I'm joking, we played Gin the whole time). Chuck and I busted out a cool low limit full ring series, which we haven't yet had on DeucesCracked, and by the end of it we were a well-oiled tag team machine of poker discussion, ready for professional poker commentating gigs I'd say. RBK taught everyone but mostly DJ Sensei how to be a huge LAG at PLO and have fun wild fluctuations, and those two forced (like it was tough) Joe to play 500/1k HORSE against high stakes fishes.

Probably the only other eventful thing from the trip was RBK winning 6k doing flips at a bar $100 at a time, mostly from me…that sucked but thankfully I ran hot at Gin and still booked a small win on the trip. I found out I am awesome at bar shuffleboard and Joe and I are ready to take on all comers in that game, or in a Gin / shuffleboard mix game :)

We flew back Friday night and I went straight to Commerce, intending to play 100/200 but finding infrequent DD.com contributor (see the archives I guess) writer Sean I forced him to go to my room and play Gin all night instead. Of course I won. The next day I played a 14 hour 100/200 session I think where I won a good chunk, and the final day I played a not-quite-as-long 200/400 session where I got killed in a full ring game by getting big pairs cracked and playing like a card dead nit, and then going insane in a 5 handed game with Roc where him and I took turns running over the table and I think I went on a 25k rush in about 30 min.  I ended up giving a bit back as usual and left with a solid 8k win after being down a bunch. Yay.

After a long 8 day trip I made my way home to catch up on DeucesCracked world and get back to normal. Home now I got in a nice 15/30 session yesterday and one tabled a good 30/60 tonight for a bit, booking wins in both. I hope to get in a good chunk of hands this month online before June and the WSOP, where I'm sure I'll mostly be playing live poker. Next week Courtney and I go to Tucson for her sister's graduation from U of A, but otherwise I think I'll be home most of the month. Check out my season 3 series with Danzasmack and all the new series we have over at DeucesCracked!

0 comments.

Live Pokered!

Posted on April 3rd, 2008 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Life.

I haven't been up to Commerce in months but found a couple days free from working on DC and internet pokers so I went up with mike l. for a couple days and got a bunch of hours of live poker in for a nice change of pace. I'm on full-on vampire schedule so we drove up Monday night at like 10 pm and I wound up playing 60/120 all night. Started out in full boring games and slowly siphoned off 5k or so before getting to a 5 handed game at like 4 am with Newhizzle and a few randoms. Mark and I convinced everyone to make the game must-straddle and I proceeded to fluctuate wildly up and down 2 racks, ending down 6k, so probably slightly down after instituting straddles but not exactly an ideal start to the trip.

I crashed and avoided the sun, woke up around 6 pm Tuesday and we went to Gabe's for a homegame, where I donated many dollars but it was all worthwhile because we went to Pink's at 1 am and had fun eating bacon chili cheese dogs and people watching the crazies who go to Pink's at 1 am on a Wednesday morning (crazier than us!).

We headed back to Commerce and I played 100/200 the rest of the night into the morning with the same two guys who were in the must-straddle 60/120 and thought I was an absolute retard gambling addict, but I played good at 100/200 and built up a nice stack after starting off a bit rough, then dumped some back in the morning and was starting to get frustrated so I called it a session up almost 5k. That session featured me getting AA cracked the 3rd hand at the table, but my own fault for playing it poorly - it gets capped 5 ways with the BB capping it and leading a K66 flop, folded to me and I just call and the sb calls too. Turn is a 9, they check to me, I bet, sb now checkraises and I call down to pay off her 99. Still, this was better than how I started the 60/120 the previous day getting AA cracked my VERY FIRST hand! (sorry just remembered this) when the sb in that game flopped a set. Also in the 100/200 I made a royal flush using both my holecards and got to show it down which I've never done live before.

Woke up Wednesday evening and got ready to go to dinner but found a half hour to kill so I attempted to hit and run a 100/200 game (featuring 3 of the same players that were still in the game from my morning session and were going on 40 hours of wakefulness I'd guess). I succeeded in my hit and run winning $50 before I had to go, almost entirely by 3 outering PokerBob when he correctly called my bluff on the turn with QT high when I had JT high and I rivered a Jack and he called me - yay luck. We went to dinner at Sona where mike convinced us to get the 9 course tasting menu, which was…interesting. Sona was sort of standard fine dining fare with a bit of post-modern cuisine I guess is how I'd describe it. Among other things there was a cool plastic tube in the shape of a fish filled with ponzu sauce that you drip on tuna tartare. We also had great duck, squab, bacon wrapped venison, and real kobe beef, and some awesome desserts. Super pricy though but definitely a unique place.

After dinner back at Commerce I jumped into a 200/400 game that was just getting started and it was a fantastic game. I didn't last 3 orbits before I had to go upstairs and get more money, but I turned it around a little and was winning for awhile. The game got short with me, Hansu, and a couple fish but I lost mostly getting 3 bet by Hansu every hand preflop (tough having that dude on my left) and ended down 4kish, which is basically even (10 bb yippy). I broke the game because I had to drive home before morning traffic and they don't continue gambling without the DeathDonkey fish in the game :)

All in all a fun Commerce trip but didn't quite have the desired poker results, though every game I sat in was fantastic and I played really well in the 2/4 game which I was happy about. Hopefully I get back up there before another few months go by.

0 comments.

Poker Grinding as Fun as I Remember

Posted on February 23rd, 2008 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Psychology, Life.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was hoping to split some more equal time between poker and website work. That was a dumb idea. I'd like to report I'm running bad at poker but when you're down almost 400 BB at limit in maybe 10k hands for February, its pretty tough to believe you aren't just a huge fish.

I've tried to snap myself out of it with a variety of methods, most of which have helped to some extent. Basically I've played a bunch of stud/8, NL, and some mix games and broke around even, which is a lot better winrate than my limit hold'em! I guess I try to be realistic when I realize the people I'm losing the most money to in my DB are playing like a solid 60/20 preflop style at 6 max games, but its a small consolation that I probably grinded myself a lot of Sklansky dollars and a bit of rakeback :)

Otherwise, DeucesCracked is going well, we are wrapping up Season 1 and I'm at work on Season 2 now, where I'll be doing a heads up limit hold'em series, which is a fun challenge for me to think about how to structure teaching such a (in my mind) broad topic. I felt like I actually had it a bit easy in Season 1 working with a partner in FoxwoodsFiend and doing what I do all the time, sweat sessions / coaching videos at mid stakes limit. I've done some heads up videos in the past, but this series is a bit more structured, and hopefully proves useful, as I know how easy it is to feel lost at heads up, its just a game with so little "set in stone" rules.

Tomorrow I'm going to Arizona for a week to see my family - with Sweeps Week upon us its a bit calm so it was a good time to take an overdue trip. I'll hopefully find some internet while there too to gamble a bit and keep up in the forums etc.

5 comments.

Interweb Gambling and Travelling

Posted on January 29th, 2008 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Life.

A couple weeks ago I took my brother to Vegas because he just finally turned 21, and has been playing internet poker for awhile but always misses out on the fun Vegas trips I've taken. We stayed at Bellagio mid week so it was pretty dead, but we managed to have fun anyway. I realized I really prefer Vegas to be a total zoo like when I was there for NBA all star weekend, but then I also want to leave after like 2 of 3 days of that. I can stay for longer if I manage to live sane, not drink, sleep plenty, etc. - this was not one of those trips.

We played a bunch of live poker, my brother ran terribly in live 15/30 games (he plays the same stakes online, so basically in a game 10x as tough) and I got stuck huge every day at 100/200 and got even almost every time! We went to B&B for an awesome dinner, though I was disappointed with my entree, their steak for one (had the steak for two before which was awesome), but I go there for the pasta course and desserts anyway. Private Joker and his GF came and we found some yummy wine to drink and food to share. I introduced them to bombolones (sp?) and caramel and sea salt gelato for dessert, and we gambled on the Amaro tasting flight, which was well worth the gamble.

Other than that we did a bunch of poker playing, a bit of touristy stuff like walking through a few casinos I normally just tear through trying to get somewhere else, and ate some more moderate meals, I had a nice relaxing time and I think my brother enjoyed it too, though he is convinced he can't beat live poker, I still think his sample size is useless but he should have such a huge edge, and he plays great every time I've played with him. Meh.

We flew home from Vegas and I had just one day before Courtney and I ran off to LA for MLK weekend, to see many poker friends and mostly to drink Daver's wine at a huge wine tasting dinner Dave and Mike L. scheduled at AOC Wine Bar. With a day to kill Courtney convinced me we clearly needed to go to Disneyland, and we took along Entity and his wife who had not been for years.  I was worried the park would be a total zoo on a holiday weekend but it was a more manageable-sized zoo, and we got on all must-ride rides in one day.  We took a smaller (lol) group of 15 to Ciudad in downtown LA that night, which has to be one of my favorite restaurants just because their menu isn't typical.  I drank way too much wine but had a yummy meal as always.

The next day Entity and I attended to some DeucesCracked business early in the day as our wives went shopping at the Beverley Center, oh joy! They both survived the trip and my bankroll did for the most part as well, so we lazed around the hotel a bit before the big wine dinner. It was great to have so many random poker people all in one place, from like 21 year old kids to old guys like Tommy Angelo and Andy Fox :) :)   Joe Tall and Michelle brought Baby Tall who none of us had met yet and all the girls had a great time taking turns with her.  Food and wine were great, Daver brought bottles as old as a 1978 dessert wine I think.

Since then I've been home working a bit on website stuff but sort of calm there for the time being. I've been playing a bit of poker, trying to find out what I want to play, I've mostly just been jumping around all sorts of games the last few days.  Trying again to learn and not hate omaha/8 but I'm still a fish I think, though now I'm a pretty tight fish.  I've been doing well playing stud/8 when I can find games, as long as I avoid the bigger games on Stars I think I'll do just fine there.  And yeah playing a bit of limit texas hold-them for short sessions. Hopefully I'll continue to dive back into poker a bit as I play pretty good when I'm enjoying the game, playing 1 or 2 tables and having fun.

February looks like I'll be doing more of the same with hopefully a couple trips up to Commerce for the LAPC side games, stay tuned.

0 comments.

Site Live and Almost Normal

Posted on January 11th, 2008 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Poker Strategy, Life.

Well if you're here for poker strategy you already know www.deucescracked.com is live, out of beta, putting up new videos daily (or sometimes twice daily) and more or less going smooth. I'd say we had more than 0 bugs and errors that occur when you make a huge change and test software for the first time, but really nothing devastating and anything remotely serious was fixed within a day, thanks to our amazing programming team. I almost feel back to normal, without a deadline hanging over my head I can get back to running the day to day stuff, participating in our forums and the poker community, and even log a few hands :)

I thought with all the new NL videos I've watched from the other DeucesCracked Executive Producers this would be an excellent time to put them into practice, and I'm running good already up like 3 buyins in a couple hundred hands at modest stakes. I'll hopefully continue to sort of flip flop between playing some poker and working on website stuff - if I did that all year or for the foreseeable future I wouldn't complain, just so long as I get a bit of both in I think it keeps me sane and balanced.

Very much looking forward to going to Vegas with my brother in a couple days, though I'll have to see how much time I spend in the hotel room on my laptop, I think everything should go smoothly with the site though and its very nice to have my series (Minbet Madness) complete in advance.  Once I get back we do the LA weekend and then I'll probably dive right into producing season 2.  I am leaning towards doing a HU limit hold'em series but not locked in yet.

1 comment.

Anything Besides Work

Posted on January 3rd, 2008 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Life.

As almost an aside to the work mentioned in the last post, my first year anniversary with my wife snuck in just before the New Year, and with her crazy busy at a retail job during the holidays and my previously recounted toiling, we were thrilled to get a couple days to go away for anniversary / New Year's.  Joe Tall highly recommended this spa / resort in Rosarita Beach, Mexico, so we went there for a couple nights, driving into Mexico for the first time.  I only got a little lost and we had no real trouble other than sitting around at the border for hours to get back into the U.S.

This month I have a couple trips coming up - my brother turned 21 in December so we are going to hit Vegas for a few days.  I have no expectation other than to eat some good food and play a bit of live poker with him.  He's been doing really well lately crushing the heads up games, I'm claiming its all due to the times we've discussed HU strategy and the few HU videos I've made, but the truth is he is quite dedicated to getting in hands, something I'm a bit jealous of, and he always manages to surpass me at things, so I shouldn't be surprised he's playing like the same stakes or higher as me now and doing fantastic.

As soon as we return from Vegas, Courtney and I are up to LA for MLK weekend, and will get to hang out with Entity and his wife who are coming down for a well-deserved vacation.  Friends and 2+2ers mike l. and Daver (who has written on this blog occasionally) are organizing a ridiculous wine tasting dinner at AOC Wine Bar in LA that weekend which should be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to seeing some friends I haven't seen in quite awhile.  I actually got this HUGE book about wine for Christmas but I don't know if I'll even make a dent in it by then, my knowledge is certainly lacking but I suppose I have a lifetime to practice :)

0 comments.

No More Secrets - DeucesCracked.com

Posted on January 3rd, 2008 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Life.

I hate to call it a secret, we just are of the mindset that there is no reason to hype something and make crazy promises when we ourselves aren't even sure what the final product will be. Until now, its finally done - DeucesCracked.com has re-launched with an expanded cast of characters and if I do say so myself, a snazzy new look.  We've been working on this for 6 months at least, and in the last 3 months I've worked harder than any time in my life (deadlines are funny like that) and haven't played any poker (good and bad).  At long last we can settle into a state of normalcy, and I hope to find a rhythm or balance between pokering, working on my next series for season 2 on DeucesCracked, and managerial tasks behind the scenes going forward.

Much as I'd like to recount the whole story of the expansion and our work, its really been done and if you are tenacious enough as a reader to check out blogs of my fellow DeucesCracked owners, you will find yourself quite inundated with a similar story.  So here are KRANTZ and Danzasmack's versions:

http://www.dangerlion.com/?p=31

http://justicewagon.com/?p=20

It's really been a lot of fun working on this project. I've been able to use my engineering and programming skills on problems that interest me and I have an interest in seeing succeed, and that's all I can really ask for in a job.  It's not the same as pokering, but to me its been like the best real-life example of engineering problem solving I've had yet in my life, working with a highly skilled team of site owners (you know them all) and programmers (who never emerge from the shadows but put in amazing work). The only disappointment I've had in the last several months has been having to more or less embrace the appearance of laziness as we sort of wanted to keep quiet until all was settled, especially when adding one of the biggest names in the NL Hold'em world in KRANTZ / pr1nnyraid.  In many ways its a testament to the good nature and respect from our DC members that there weren't more complaints about our limited production, and I thank them for their faith and hope they get a lot out of the expansion.  Only in the last few weeks did I see any sort of grumblings about the infrequency of videos etc. which I totally understand, and really can't hand wave away with a "look at the new site!" because we have / had an obligation to our customers. I'm learning every day about the right way to run a business (a skill I never was interested in when younger which I find quite silly now) and I think we all made our best effort to strike a balance between working on new things and keeping the old (I hate calling it "old" it was like 9 months "old" LOL) site going.  I'm very relieved to not have to worry about that anymore and just move forward getting back to what we do best, coaching and teaching poker, especially the limit hold'em variety, and I can just do my personal best to earn back anyone who felt wronged by our geared back production as we prepared for this huge upgrade.

I hope you'll check out the new DeucesCracked, we are in beta testing mode right now but all season one pilots are up!  If you don't have access and want it and know me well enough to have a way to contact me, feel free, as I have plenty of invitation codes to spare :)

6 comments.

Rolled Up at Commerce

Posted on December 10th, 2007 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Poker Strategy, Life.

Justin A. and The Dude were in LA avoiding the zoo that is the Bellagio poker room so I joined them for a short Commerce trip.  I went up late Friday night since I'm on semi-vampire schedule as usual and jumped into a short 100/200 must move game. Pretty quickly it became 3 handed between me, Roc, and a guy who seemed to play ok 6 handed but clearly wasn't capable of adjusting to a very shorthanded game and was just in general doing a lot of weird things, most notably being way weak tight postflop.  Roc and I are basically maniacs 3 handed but we have a healthy respect for each other, and this kid was just in over his head playing 3 handed. We more or less took turns bluffing him out of pots postflop and soon the kid busted and left.  I don't have much good reason to play Roc HU so I went back to Justin and Drew's hotel room with them where we played 17 card Chinese for awhile.  Eventually I taught Justin how to play Gin and crushed him for 120 points (at a nickel a pop baby).

We crashed at like 8 am, woke up at 3 pm or so and headed back to Commerce for a day's work.  Justin and Drew took turns running awful at 40/80 and I quickly bounced from a 40/80 game to a new 100/200 game, to taking the last seat in a meh-looking 200/400 game, which seemed to me to be a bit better game than the 1/2.  I had the seat on Roc's immediate right, which was shockingly the one open :)   I recognized Ian from AC, several decent Commerce regulars, and a couple unknown Asian guys who turned out to be pretty bad and tilty. I pretty much broke even for 3.5 hours, like + or - 3k at various  times, but nothing significant really seemed to happen to me. The game was pretty tight but straightforward and a bit passive postflop, which is a style that suits me well, because I feel like I can get away with murder preflop and never get into too many tough spots postflop.  That said, I can't do too much in a 9 handed game so I was pretty snug and boring.

Commerce was a zoo because they were showing the Mayweather/Hatton fight but I managed to make it +EV…guys at the table were discussing the fight and I learned the Vegas line was Hatton at +220. Roc said always bet on black in roulette and boxing and offered to lay 3:1 on Mayweather, which sounded too good to pass up considering the Vegas odds, so I took it for $100.  I lost of course but it was still a good bet I'm quite sure, knowing nothing about boxing.

Around 9:30 it was time to go to dinner so I had mike l. and Justin fetch me some racks (maybe stuck 1k, basically even) and then these hands happened right before I left.  UTG limps so I limped 98s, that encouraged like 3 more limpers, then the BB raised the field.  BB was pretty tilted and sort of random LAG but mostly too loose and too passive.  Everyone called of course and BB bet out on a A98 rainbow flop, folded to me, I raised and cleared the field, BB 3 bet.  I called planning to raise any non A/K turn but was pleasantly surprised to see the 8 on the turn, raised as planned and got called down frustratedly.  Now I had some new found chippies to stack and rack up and was preparing to leave with now a modest win when I look at 99 UTG the next hand.  I raise preflop with Justin sweating and get 2 coldcalls, the SB (BB from previous hand) called and BB called.  Flop T96 with two spades, I bet, folded to Peter on the butto who raised, SB coldcalled, I 3 bet, both called.  Turn is an Ace and puts a second diamond out, I bet, Peter raises again, SB coldcalls again, I 3 bet but feel like if Peter caps he flopped a straight, but he just calls and SB calls.  I'm rooting for the brickiest brick ever on the river but instead its the 5 of spades. I'm all set to crying call the SB's bet or check if he somehow checks the obvious flush but he checks and yells "DAMN" which tells me he had the diamond draw instead, so now I get to value bet Peter's AT and get paid off.  I rack up and leave now up almost 10k after those two great hands.

We went to Ciudad in downtown LA for dinner which is a really yummy Spanish / Cuban place that has really unique food IMO.  Most of us ordered the "black beef" which was shortribs braised in a spicy cola sauce (I know sounds weird but soooo tasty), and Mike found us some great wine as always.  Ciudad has quite a collection of rums which is pretty different so we all had some rum tasting flights with dessert, yum.

After eating we went back to Commerce and started a brand new $4/$8 7 card stud game, which sounded like great fun at the time. I lost $400 playing every hand, culminating in getting rolled up jacks and making a boat on 5th street in a pot that was capped 5 ways on 3rd, 4th, and 5th.  I'm all in by the end of 5th street action and Gabe is still doing tons of raising with a board of (xy)K77, Mike has seen all holecards and gives me a sad look and I realize Gabe had bigger rolled up or quad sevens and this was going to be the sickest beat of all time at 4/8 7 card stud :)

Gabe gets ridiculous action from some random guy who made aces up and then tens full on 7th and scoops a ~45 BB pot with rolled up kings. I get some sympathy for having rolled up jacks smashed like that but I'm actually strangely amused because its 4/8 and that random of a beat is just pretty cool and I'm glad it wasn't in 200/400 :)

After busto-ing there I hit and run the 100/200 for 1200 or so in 45 minutes of fun and drive back to San Diego before morning. Quite a decent trip overall and I'm glad I got to see the Vegas guys, have a yummy meal, and run good in a big game.  I played pretty decent too though I definitely made a few mistakes and suck at rivering one outer quad jacks :(

1 comment.

Downgrading from Defcon 3

Posted on December 2nd, 2007 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Life.

I'm not even going to apologize for a lack of blog posts, because I do that too often. What I will say is its very frustrating to not be able to write about all the things I've been working on the last few months. I'm sure any readers I have left think of me as the laziest poker pro out there, considering I think I've played less than 10k hands in the last 3 months combined.  The truth of the matter is I'm working 60+ hour weeks on DeucesCracked.com business and otherwise trying to keep up the home life because my wife is super busy at her retail job around the holidays.

We had a fun family emergency when one of my cats broke his paw jumping from the highest thing in our house (only like 6 feet tall) - apparently they don't always land on their feet, or at least squarely on their feet :P

So he was in a splint and had a cone around his neck for two weeks.  I'm very sorry to say I have no pictures of this because we expected him to have the splint and cone for 4-6 weeks and he got off early for good behavior and fast kitty-healing powers :)

I spent a week up in Seattle staying with Entity and working on the aforementioned secret website business, which was awesome - we got a ton of work done, he got me fairly addicted to coffee and espresso drinks, and the weather held up! I spend so much time in front of my computer it was a nice change of pace to do so in other place for awhile.

Well I can't reveal all my secret work right now but one big thing I've been going crazy working on is going into production tonight: I'm very proud to say DeucesCracked.com will power the official hand converter for 2+2 which is integrated into the VBulletin upgrade.  I wish I could take credit for writing all the hand converter code (as I did for the old converter we used on DeucesCracked.com) but we hired an amazing Perl ninja to handle it and I just hung onto his coattails for the most part.  I had never seen Perl code before a few weeks ago but I'm not too shabby at coding myself so now I'm familiar enough with the structure and syntax to make some basic changes and additions to the code base myself, which will be one of my jobs going forward. Our ninja has to go back to his real life so I will be the one maintaining the hand converter and expanding the functionality for the foreseeable future.  Still, we are obviously thrilled 2+2 chose us to work on the hand converter and I'm so excited at how well it turned out to this point.

Stay tuned in the weeks ahead for hopefully a more clear picture of my other activities, and check out that hand converter :)

0 comments.

LA trip and mix game fun

Posted on November 3rd, 2007 by DeathDonkey.
Categories: Poker Strategy, Life.

2+2er and infrequent DD.com writer Sean has been telling me for awhile about how good this mix game is that he has been playing up in LA.  I finally found a day and a half to drive up and check it out for myself, and get my live poker fix in.  I haven't played much live serious poker in awhile so when I got up there and found the mix had been kicked up to 150/300 I was a bit disappointed as that's pretty big for rusty old me.  Then I saw the way a few of the guys were playing, plus I got the best seat on the loosest guy, and all was quickly forgiven.  We played Badugi, 2-7 triple draw, A-5 triple draw, Omaha/8, and stud hi/lo no qualifier (often called stud hi/lo regular), quite an eclectic mix, but I was pretty familiar with all the games from previous mix games, even a little of the obscure stud game thanks to the 40/80 mix at the Bellagio.

Most of the guys were competent at the draw games, as those tend to play pretty straightforwardly in live mixes from what I've seen and people don't make huge mistakes, plus there is a ton of luck in draw games so its hard to tell if people are making egregious errors anyway.  People are super loose and bad at omaha/8 and a couple of the guys didn't really understand the fundamental strategy to the stud game (basically to play razz and if you backdoor a high hand yippee!  Big pairs besides aces are completely unplayable and Sean and I decided it would be really rare to find a spot to play a rolled up hand).  As for me, it was a weird session where I hardly swung at all, which is crazy to think with all those high variance draw games and my typical LAG style, but I was never up or down more than 10 bb I don't think and finished up a small amount making an early morning comeback when the game got short :)

After that I played 60/120 at the Commerce a couple times between sleep, which is just a ridiculously awesome game.  I didn't run so well and gave back my mix game winnings but I've been playing calm and tight recently and I was happy to continue that trend, I feel like its just a matter of time when I see the errors these guys make (that you don't see from 100/200 regulars, very different games IMO).  Anyway that was pretty much it and I finished the whole trip maybe up a couple hundred bucks.

Home now catching up on online business and getting back to playing online.  I'm fairly sure I'm going to Seattle sometime this week to hang out and work with Entity but its going to be a last minute decision.  Thank you Southwest air for a free flight that I can schedule with just a few hours notice :)

1 comment.

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