I spent six straight weeks living in Las Vegas. Six.  I grew up in Tucson, AZ so it wasn't the temperature that got to me, it was just the neverending rush that the strip gives you that at first is completely addicting, then becomes tiring, and finally just plain annoying.  Towards the end of my Vegas summer there were a couple days where I stayed home (at my friend Crazy Mike's awesome house, thanks for the roof roomie!) and watched movies and only went out to get Taco Bell and retreat to the safety of a cool couch and no gambling.

For the first time in my life I ran good in tournaments, like really good. My first event was typical, was out in two hours, and never had above my starting stack. Then I went 3 for 3 in cashes in the only other events I played, which was pretty cool.  It was an amazing feeling to sit down at my starting table and just assume I'd be there after dinner – ahhh running good! I final tabled the 10k limit "world championship" and that's exactly the way I tell it – "I final tabled" cuz saying "I came 9th" sounds way worse somehow.  I spoke to a couple guys I respect and decided my river checkraise with that AQ was a tournament mistake and that I should have bet and folded to a raise, but oh well.  I ran bad in the 20 minutes I was there, it happens to anyone who doesn't win a tournament and is presumably a winning player.

Next came the triple draw, which I posted briefly about, but wow was this a fun event. My starting table was just ridiculously soft, guy on my right hardly knew the rules, and every "name" pro I played with was completely clueless and just gambling it up.  On day two the games were playing much tighter and tougher, though I did have a pretty big LAG fish (imo) on my right who eventually busted me when I refused to break an 875 against him and he showed up with #2.  I guess I had a tight image cuz he seriously asked me if I had a wheel when I put my last money in.  Oh well, got to play a bit with Billy Baxter who seemed to play as well as advertised.  There's just something about the presence of the few old time gamblers who actually have a clue, where you just know no matter what you do to them, they've seen it a thousand times before.  He had a calmness to him that I have seen in some of the high stakes mixed game players I respect that I'm sure comes from experience, bankroll management, and the quiet confidence you gain by crushing year after year.  That's truly my poker goal I think, to walk into a room and see what the biggest mix game is going, to sit down and have that calmness.

Finally I played the limit shootout which was fun for me because I had been playing so damn tight in every tournament I played that I really let loose here.  I'm convinced the structure of this winner take all first table is such that you should play like a complete maniac, someone feel free to talk me out of it.  That's how I played, probably playing 50% of my hands 10 handed, always putting in the last raise preflop. After an hour I had 600 chips, after two hours I had 6000 and was chip leader, yay variance.  Alex Jacob was at my table and I put some stinkers on him then introduced myself by 2+2 posting name on the break – gotta maintain the insane forum image

I wound up running really well when it got 4 handed or so, picking up solid hands and having AA hold up in a capped family pot.  I had the majority of the chips by the time it got down to heads up between me and a decent playing kid who I suspected was not comfortable playing very shorthanded or heads up.  He realized I had a clue and was asking me some strategy questions as we played heads up that made me think he just didn't have a lot of experience (like "wow do you ever fold a pair heads up?" when he tried to bluff me on a paired dry board and I had a mid pocket pair).  I felt I was running a bit poorly heads up when 1.5 hours later we were right around where we started.  We had a break then came back and it seemed to me that he had just given up, which I recognize because I've done it myself in previous years.  He just stuck his chips in the first two hands we played in really bad spots and I busted him and had made the money in three straight events.

This was a funny day because I was on a completely goofy sleep schedule, having woken up at 7 pm the night before, stayed up and played the shootout at noon, intending to most likely bust out, go catch some sleep and then pick my wife up at the airport, who was coming to visit for a few days around July 4th.  Instead I won and had to play again at 10 pm, she cabbed it over to the Rio from the airport and hung out while I played until 2:30 am, where we called it a night and came back to finish the second table the next day.  I was a complete wreck at this point going on 32 hours awake and played pretty badly that night, even though its hard to tell when I'm implementing my maniac 10 handed style (same payout structure for the second round).  Unfortunately for me it seemed others at the table were insane too so I had to tone it down some because I just would have had to come in 4 betting with my 97o's etc. and couldn't find as many spots to muck around.  2+2er and Minnesota clone factory limit master Kirby was at my table and seemed to be playing incredibly tight that night.

We came back the next day and Kirby was raising and re-raising every hand (playing 6 handed).  I found out he was just incredibly card dead the night before because he sure wasn't shy about mixing it up on day two.  I picked up a bunch of playable hands right away and lost many chips with them, so I got a bit short and desperate.  Kirby also owned me on a really nice play where I raised preflop from CO, he defended BB, flop was T73 two diamonds (I had 98 of hearts) he check/called.  Turn king of hearts, putting two hearts out and I made a debateable check behind after seeing him wait and checkraise the turn a couple times already that day.  River was an Ace of diamonds, he bet and I bluff raised, he went into the tank for several seconds and 3 bet me.  Thinking about it in retrospect I think 4 betting is not at all out of the question because 1) its a tournament and he won't make a crying call with as much as he would in a cash game, 2) I would play a flush this way and he knows that, 3) if he has a flush himself I don't think he'd really have to tank on the river, he'd just 3 bet me naturally.  Anyway that's probably somewhat tainted by being results oriented, as I of course folded and he showed me 56o for a dandy re-bluff.  I wound up busting soon after when a weak tight older nice guy on my left flopped a straight vs my top pair in a blind battle, and I turned two pair before putting all the money in. Kirby sadly followed me out shortly and well known Commerce player "JD" or "sleeves" as some of my friends have called him took it down.

That was my last tournament since I don't really know how to play NL even though I probably could fake my way through it for the soft main event field, but I was pretty burnt out on tournaments anyway.  I wound up playing a good amount of 100/200 at the Bellagio for my last week or so in Vegas and decided to just run awful, donating back around 20k of my summer winnings before thankfully deciding to drive home.

All in all the WSOP was a huge success for me and for my friends and DeucesCracked teammates – we did really well in tournaments, Vanessa won a bracelet, and I felt we got lucky to be in the right place at the right time at times, gaining some notoriety on the poker forums and around the Vegas poker world.  I'm home now and fairly caught up on life, and just excited to get back to working on the site, playing online poker, and seeing what adventure comes up for me next.  KRANTZ and Chuck are off to Seattle for several months so I'm sure I'll get up there to hang out, work on some DC vids, and hustle some gin rummy whenever possible.

Day one report from me:

Starting table: Andrew Prock, Carlos Mortenson, Jeff Lissandro, Thor Hansen, David Oppenheim, me, unknown tough LAG, newhizzle, Danny Alaei.

Later Carlos busts and is replaced by Tuan Lee, Thor busts and is replaced by Howard Lederer, Newhizzle moves tables and is replaced by Daniel Negreanu (which ends up being mostly just his stack being blinded away though he did play for a bit, super nice), Lissandro busts and is replaced by Bicyclekick. So yeah, fun.

Started off super card dead, my image was "rock" which is insanely strange for me. Down to 12k after first break showed down maybe one hand, later things got more normal image wise, 3 bet David Oppenheim a lot as he was correctly stealing a lot with Negreanu's empty seat in the blinds. Played an interesting one vs him, he raises button, I 3 bet sb with Ad 4d my image is still nit at this point, he calls.  Flop Kd Td 8c I bet, he raises, I decide to 3 bet and blow him off a ten at some point, he calls. Turn is 8d I bet, he raises, I call. River Ts I check/call, he has K8, I dunno was gonna CR river but the ten pairing saved me I guess.

Later I win a huge pot when I raise 99 UTG, Alaei 3 bets MP, Bicyclekick 4 bets the BB, we both call. Flop 953 two hearts, BK bets, I raise, Danny 3 bets, BK 4 bets (hello aces), I hollywood and call, Danny calls. Turn pairs the 3, BK bets, I call trying to get Danny's money, but he folds QQ (played great all day imo, got away from QQ twice when it was an overpair and no good). River small heart, BK bets, I raise, he calls though we agree he should have folded probably. Big pot.

I doubled up unknown LAG on my left 5 times before finally busting him, I lost with AK vs AA, KK vs AK, a wheel vs a flush on the turn, 2nd pair vs top pair on the flop, and some other I forget before flopping top pair of aces and having him dead to a gutshot, man was he stubborn!

Later busted BK when Tuan raises, he 3 bet near all in, I hollywood and 4 bet AA in the SB, get action from Tuan on a dry 864 flop before he folds river and I tell BK "ones".  Had a bunch of top pairs and overpairs near the end that really let me chip up in the last couple levels, didn't realize I had that many until we stopped play and I counted up. New table draw tomorrow which is good, my table was awful, very very tough. BK and I agreed it was like a bad 400/800 game, others were reporting way softer tables.

Probably long day tomorrow, hopefully I'll be around for all of it

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.

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

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

Joe Tall and I drove out to Vegas last week to see some friends and do a radio interview for HoldemRadio.com and our friend and DeucesCracked member Cactus Jack about the site.  Here is a direct link to the half hour show: http://www.holdemradio.com/media/bib100307.mp3

We had a fun time doing the show and talking about poker coaching, DeucesCracked, and what we see ourselves doing in the online poker world in the future.  I know for me that means more focus on coaching as I really never have done much of it but every now and then someone inquires.  I certainly like talking about random poker things for hours on end so if I channel that energy into a coaching role, I might be useful to some.

After the show, Joe, Cactus Jack, TT, and I went out to dinner at Enotecca (sp?) the more casual Mario Batali restaurant upstairs in the Venetian.  We had a great meal filled with what TT calls "Italian junk food" and for dessert we were gifted a yummy treat – a bottle of Amaro (which I'd never heard of before), an Italian liqueur which I would describe as Amaretto on steroids.  That got us in the proper mood to gambool so we started a nice 4 handed 4/8 game in the Venetian poker room and donked around some chips.  A woman joined our game and I think wanted to either play bigger or convince us she could play bigger, talking a lot and playing fairly LAGgy – I got the feeling she probably runs over the 4/8 games she typically plays in but she had no shot here, playing 3 handed with Joe Tall and myself it will be pretty tough to outLAG us 3 handed at those stakes   I think she dropped 600 or so, mostly going to Joe who was playing way better than me (90% vpip I'd guess).

The rest of the trip we pretty much relaxed at BigBabyDougie's house in Henderson where I schooled him at Gin rummy (new addiction) and watched baseball.  It's interesting, I've gone on so many Vegas trips since turning 21 and never left the strip, spending a couple days being in Vegas not on the strip is like living in a different galaxy.  Reminds me of being home in Tucson, which isn't surprising because take away the strip and downtown and Vegas and Tucson are the exact same city.

After that trip I think I'm finally staying home for awhile, but things tend to always creep up.