Poker Blog – icemonkey9 on PokerStars

As the month wraps up and I’ve passed the 10k mark for my new nitty Full Ring experiment, I was faced with a crap-hole trifecta today at the tables during a single session.  I usually play 7 tables of Full Ring play and get in about 450-500 hands per hour.  So during this single session this “trifecta” consisted of KK, QQ and JJ all running into AA pre-flop – in that order!

It was really crazy to have that happen but I was able to make the reads and really minimize the damage.  I was lucky that one guy actually showed the AA to make me feel better, the other guy I **KNOW** had AA and the third time I shoved into the shortstacker (so minimal loss).  It got me thinking about the last 10k hands and hands I’ve had (and run into) during an all-in pre-flop scenario at Full Ring play.  The rule of thumb is that AKs is the absolute bare minimum and usually isn’t even good enough because most everybody won’t even get in QQ pre-flop.  Welcome to the new world of nitty 100nl ($0.50-$1 blinds)!  I did a filter in HEM, and here’s what it came up with for me …

- JJ vs AA (shortstacker)
- AKs vs AA (shortstacker)
- KK vs AKs
- AKs vs ATo (shortstacker)
- QQ vs TT (shortstacker)
- AA vs KK
- AK vs QQ vs ATs (2 shortstackers)
- AQo vs A5o (shortstacker)
- QQ vs AA (shortstacker)

Out of the 9 times I’ve been in an “all in” scenario, a whopping 7 were against shortstackers.  Interesting to look at that and wonder what I’m doing right or wrong.  It’s possible I’m laying down hands like QQ or even KK too often (well KK just once this month, and I’ll explain why below).  Chances are though I’ve been making good reads thanks to the HUD and having looked through other villains it looks like I’m on the right track when playing against a fellow deep stacked opponent.

There was a hand, which happened today, where I laid down KK pre-flop.  I can’t remember the last time I did that, if ever – of course that’d be a mortal sin in my normal 6max play.  This time around though let’s look at the action and villain. 

- I have KK UTG and make it $4 to go.
- UTG+1, a 14/9/2 nit with 3% 3bet stat (note that it’s 1% 3bet in EP) 3bets me to $13.
- I 4bet to $30.
- Villain insta-5bets for $110 more
- I tank. I fold.

Although there is no 5bet stats in HEM, I really didn’t think I needed to see it.  I had 5k hands on this guy so he’s someone I know pretty well and this was just so far out of the realm of normal behavior for him it wasn’t even funny.  Given that his probable range was 1% as HEM said it was … what on Earth could this guy be doing this with?  QQ? Impossible.  KK?  Very unlikely since I have it too.  AK?  Never ever.  JTo?  LOL, who knows.  AA?  That fits the bill perfectly.

I know a lot of players will blindly shove in KK even if the other player is giving off every possible tell they have AA because they beat all the bluffs, are a big favorite over AK (the unlikely possibility) and will suck out 20% of the time against AA.  But in the end, it’s still a woefully losing proposition against THIS type of player I faced in the hand.  That’s the important thing to note.

That’s my 2 cents on the issue.  I’m hoping not to have a big pocket pair run into AA again anytime soon, I definitely had my fill today!

First of all I’m on web browser tilt.  For whatever reason after upgrading to Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1 (or whatever it is) everything inside the browser took a giant e-dump and now lots of sites are showing up as not existing and it’s SUPER annoying to have to hit the refresh button two or three times in order to get it to load (if it does at all).  I recently upgraded IE to its new 8.0 (or whatever) version and it looks solid enough and plenty fast.  Looks like I will just use this one for the time being until Mozilla gets their act together … but the whole thing is just upsetting even though nothing has really changed (I’m just browsing web pages!).

I had a real interesting day at the tables.  The first two sessions I had were “lost a big hand early then made an epic comeback” type of sessions which were fun and had me feeling great.  The last session was just plain weird.  I played about 600 hands in a little over an hour and had to review things to make sure what I thought was happening really happened.  What “happened” was that in 6 hands out of those 600 I got to the river making a value bet only to see it face a sickening raise.  It’s just one of the worst feelings in poker to see your river value bet raised.  You’re just almost never good and it takes some sick hand reading ability to sniff out the rare bluffs.  Fortunately my radar was on and I’m pretty sure I made some good laydowns and I did make 1 good call but in the end it was only a -1.5 buyin session so nothing huge and I think I was actually up like $20 or whatever on the day, so definitely not complaining after such a weird session like that.

Another really “smart” thing I did was play the Midnight Madness $11 tournament tonight … wow that was dumb too because nothing is less productive for me than playing in a multi-table tournaments.  I don’t run particularly well in them, at least, I don’t play enough of them to justify dabbling in them so I can make my expected ROI.  Anyways in this one I actually came out with a great lead and a top 100 stack out of the starting 2,300-ish players.  Then with a 7k stack and blinds at 80-160 it all fell apart.  Someone with 2,500-ish shoved into me and I got AA.  He shows 22.  You guessed it, AA<22 AIPF, so I see my stack roughly cut in half.  Literally next hand UTG I have AQ and I made a raise, 2 callers and the flop is QT6 rainbow so I go ahead and shove and get called by 66.  And that was that … lol, gotta love tournaments!

Anyways so I have my mental razor working to delete those entries from the memory banks and actually am happy I’m not upset in the least bit, just kind of smirking at hands like the KK<K9s in the 3bet pot at 100nl.  Just weird stuff went on today, so I can just forget about it.  These kind of days/sessions will occur and make the rest of the winning ones just that much sweeter.

Poker-wise that’s about it.  I’m hoping to put in a good amount of hands in at 100nl Full Ring before the end of the month and look at my nit-ville approach and see some decent indicators of success.  At the 2p2 forums it seems like 4 or 5 regulars from 200nl are dropping down but I don’t think I’ve spotted them just yet, but I don’t know their screennames so who knows.  I hear so many conflicted reports that 200nl is  reg-infested and tough … while others say the regs are bad and 200nl is actually easier than 100nl.  Who knows, right!?  All I can do is just keep my head in the game I am playing and take 100nl literally one hand at a time.

Usually I have some great update or information and topic to share and rant about, but as you can tell this month, I’ve been a pretty mellow fellow. I think the blog’s entries are dwindling in number due to the fact that:

• I am tilting less thanks to a new focus in life and poker and don’t need to “rant it out” on here
• I don’t want to post results and +/- here anymore, because that’s really none of anyone’s business but mine
• I don’t want people hunting me down for information about my game … that’s why I’ve kept my SN and the site I play on secret (shock – NOT icemonkey9 on Pokerstars exclusively!!!)
• Just been tied up with playing, forum drama and real life

Anyways, that’s what’s been up with me. I got an interesting comment from a new reader here about my last post. It seems this person wanted to see an insight into what makes a poker player tick … here’s one of his comments so I’ll just respond to that …

i really don’t know you or your friends so it’s hard to tell if you actually have any activities non-poker related

Obviously, this person (who incidentally didn’t leave a return email address so I could respond directly) kindly says he doesn’t know if me or my friends have any non-poker activities, but really seems to make a judgment that we don’t do anything but log in, play poker and take money and gamble (you can read the entire comment in the previous post) and do nothing else with our lives. Frankly, that’s a load of “it” if you know what I mean … this is clearly a poker blog and if I started writing about religion, cooking, dancing, what Smurf is the hottest or about television shows a lot of you would get real bored quick. It’s a blog specific to a subject, and that’s why people visit it.

So, very briefly, here’s a bunch of things I am into that don’t involve poker:

• I teach a children’s class once a week on weekends teaching “moral values” to under-privileged youth that are universal in wholesomeness.  Last week the lesson was “music” and how music is important to people.  We’ve also had classes about justice, truthfulness and other human virtues.  It’s my way of giving back to the community and the class is aimed at a general message of doing good no matter what your religion/race/origin/whatever.
• I regularly donate platelets at the Red Cross.
• I spend a lot of time with family, and most specifically my wife.
• I’m a console football junkie (Madden)
• I play several organized adult league sports, specifically ice hockey and baseball

Anyways that’s just a taste of my life.  Poker’s not on that list because you know it’s already on the list, because if it wasn’t this blog wouldn’t exist and wouldn’t have a theme, it would just be the Me-Blog which would be super boring for the majority of the internet.

Writing Articles…

If you didn’t catch them, I recently interviewed 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event winner Joe Hachem at Poker News Daily.  In addition I interviewed friend Fredrick Paulsson about his WSOP ME and Vegas experience and both are fantastic reads that I highly suggest all poker fans take some time to read.

Software …

I am real glad the folks at Tilt Buster have come back with their new editions to Full Tilt mods.  I like the Full Tilt software but absolutely hate the artwork done for the tables, but these guys really know what they are doing.  Well worth the $20 imo…

Unfortunately a lot of software specific to Full Tilt hasn’t been working right … however I know people are working around the clock to get it to work with the new client.  I’ve had to keep up with this for my assignments for various websites …

OH!  Totally forgot to mention that I ordered the upgrade edition of Windows 7 a few weeks ago.  The deal was that it was half-price if you pre-ordered before July 22nd, so I went ahead and took advantage of the offer.  Everyone (well, that means the handful of people I’ve talked to and a few tech blogs I’ve read) have given Windows 7 a big thumbs up after giving a big middle finger to Vista.  Apparently the new programming team got the OS right this time, so I am gonna try it out (after installing it first on my wife’s laptop!!).

What’s Going On with RESULTS!?!?!

This has to be the most common question asked because I think it’s been like 2 months since I’ve posted results here.  Like I said before, I don’t want to post about results or money anymore. It’s nobody’s business how much I win or lose in a month, but some have interpreted this as me losing and going bust.  So, I’m forced to assure people, I am definitely NOT losing this month and doing just  fine at the cash game tables playing 100nl ($0.50-$1 No Limit Texas Hold’em), thank you very much

Today sucked in terms of announcements and realizations from some of my poker friends. Although I am not shocked to hear the news, hearing it in its finality really sucked today. Three friends of mine that grind online poker games quit … and maybe for good. The first was BW07507 who was, at one point, 100nl’s top winner at PokerStars for a solid month and was in the top 10 for a good chunk of the start of 2009. Unfortunately, BW’s tilt problems and high variance LAG style simply became overwhelming and it greatly effected the personal relationships in his life. After what he said was over 100k+ hands of break-even and losing poker, he cashed out and left just enough to dabble in 25nl for fun.

Another person hanging ‘em up is King Curtis, who is genuinely one of the good guys online. He doesn’t play high stakes at all, but has done really well considering his small bankroll grinding out tournaments and Sit & Gos at various poker sites. His claim to fame was taking down a tournament for over $10,000 which is just an enormous score. Curtis tried to move over to cash game poker for a while and was doing okay at 25nl as he got his feet wet. Due to his family situation and life, Curtis entered into the Air Force, which I find noble and fantastic for him (coming from an Air Force family myself!). His creativity and intelligence will be appreciated in this branch of the military. He leaves any day now for Basic Training and will be 100% out of touch until October 1st, and then from there most of his time will be dedicated to his new job and/or family.

Finally, I found out another player that plays HU went busto, and I’ll not mention his name because I am not sure if he wants me to announce it publicly. He’s a good guy that I’ve occasionally butted heads with but overall think is a funny and nice guy. Of the three, I think he has the best chance to bounce back quickest, although if he gets his head straight on, BW could come back “best” if given the opportunity. Anyways, I was real sad to hear this 3rd guy went bust, but he admitted to play HU severely under-rolled, so that’s the risk he took.

It’s just the risk that we run playing online poker … certainly playing a LAG type of game induces tilt due to the swings the game will take you through, and life stuff happens and can easily take you away from the game. Since I started playing recreationally online about 1.5 years ago I’ve known these guys so seeing them leave the game is a new experience. I’ve now outlived some players. Will they be back? I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see it by the end of the year, and certainly hope that’s the case.

In terms of other things going on I’ve been grinding out full ring with a new mindset and strategy and so far so good but it’s been way too short a range of hands to draw any conclusions, so I’ll be sure to check in with results type of stuff (since everyone craves that info) by the end of the month.

One thing I omitted from my last post about the whole Vegas experience was that I had a dream about poker my last night in Vegas. This new conscious mentality of putting tough hands out of mind and memory might be highly effective, but I am not sure it works for my sub-conscious. The night that I took that set under set loss I went to bed later that night, and re-lived the hand all over again in my dreams. I woke up when I saw my opponent had the TT for the bigger set and had a ache in my heart which was racing. It’s funny now to think about but I remember that night thinking what a terrible nightmare! So later that same night I went back to sleep and had a conversation with Mike Matusow about Full Tilt Poker and how he was helping develop an iPhone application so we could play real money poker from our iPhones. I was very excited to hear the news in my dream, and when I woke up in the morning actually looked it up at the iTunes App Store (perhaps I had a vision of the future?!) but alas, no Full Tilt Poker application exists.

Speaking of Full Tilt Poker, I’ve been playing there recently and couldn’t have picked a better time to re-establish my game there. They recently released a completely new edition of their software (backend really, everything looks the same to me) which rendered everything from AHK scripts to graphical mods completely useless. In addition some bugs have cropped up, including one “patch” they released which caused the dealer button to appear in the wrong spot during a hand! This actually happened to me while I was in a hand, thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, and upon reading about it at the 2p2 forums promptly emailed FTP Support for a refund of that hand (I lost $2.50). I have yet to hear back. The good news is that software is coming in the form of Poker Shortcuts and Table Ninja Full Tilt both of which are collections of shortcuts and assistants to help players multi-table. In addition I just checked and saw that new editions of some real slick table and card mods for FTP are up over at TiltBuster.com.

In terms of my game, I’m 6-8 tabling Full Ring because I haven’t really played online poker in any sort of regular fashion for 3 weeks. That’s actually a long time off and I think easing into things rather than jumping into 100nl 6max is better for my mindstate.

Last night while following the eventual November Nine via the updates from Andrew Feldman at ESPN, I got the bug to play in some tournaments, so I registered in a $3 KO, a $5 PLO, a $5 STT SnG and a 5 FTP Points Freeroll. After 2 hours of play between the four tournaments, I ended up -$0.96 lol! I had fun, and thanks to Combu for hanging out. I think me and the rest of the poker universe was rooting for Phil Ivey to make that November Nine, which he did, which is absolutely awesome.

Finally, that wraps up the blog entry … but not before we get back to our first topic – dreams! Last night I had another poker dream, but this time it was me at the Main Event and I was able to shortstack my way into the November Nine! I was not at the Rio but for some reason at Commerce (here in Los Angeles) and was absolutely ecstatic that I made $1.1 million just by making the final table and kept looking around for someone to bring me my check. I remember calling my wife and mom in my dream, both of whom were really happy for me. The worst part about that dream was waking up!

Going to Vegas was a tremendous experience on a lot of different levels. I got to meet friends from CardsChat.com, a forum community I have been a regular at since January of 2007. Meeting people from the site after being in touch with them for over a year and a half was a surreal experience to say the least. Let’s try to recap the trip in chunks according to activity, otherwise I’ll probably miss commenting on one of the many experiences of the trip.

You Don’t Need a Car in Vegas

My research in transportation was time well spent.  Instead of renting a cheap car for $25/day plus gas expenses, I took a shuttle for $6.50 from the airport directly to my hotel.  From there, because of the proximity of the Imperial Palace hotel to many destinations on the strip, I walked.  For those places that I could not walk, specifically the MGM, I took the new monorail which was $5 a ride which was a time saver as well as relief from the hot sun.  I got over to Rio for free via the free shuttle from Harrahs which was next door, so for the most part, I was able to get around to everyplace I wanted to go by walking or via the $5 monorail rides.

Meeting CardsChat People

I got to meet a lot of CC people and I know I will forget a few.  I’ll mention those that I have mentioned in the blog before – ChuckTs and Zachvac.  Both of these guys have played 200nl and dabbled at 400nl and have games that consistent and intelligent.  I’ve learned a lot from these two and thought of them as friends before the trip and definitely think of them that way afterward.  We hung out a lot as a result of previous relationships built before the trip plus we all stayed at the same hotel which made logistics a factor.

ChuckTs is a tremendous guy off of the internet, very easy going and fun to hang out with.  Zach is a great guy and always seemed to have a funny witty comment or two to add to the conversation.  Hanging out with Debi (Datoka-xx) was a lot of fun, she’s such a funny lady and a great poker player and I’ll remember the dinner she and I had with ChuckTs very fondly.

I got to meet guys I didn’t know very well in Joe, Fredrick and Curtis and had extended conversations with all three.  Joe is a gentleman and the guy everyone would love to talk to at a party.  A nice guy I was very pleased to get to know.  Fredrick writes a blog I often visit and I wasn’t sure if he and I would hit it off for whatever reason, but we actually hit it off from the beginning famously.  Fredrick is definitely a guy I’d keep as a friend if it weren’t for the geographical distance from Los Angeles to wherever he calls home in Sweden.  His wife Lori is very nice and his son Benjamin made me a teeny bit jealous for fatherhood.  Curtis (Jamile) was a guy I barely knew from the forums but was someone I really was impressed with in person.  He’s from Hawaii and for those of you that don’t know, native Hawaiian people are about the nicest, most generous and downright cool people you’ll ever meet in life.  He and I started calling each other brother which I almost NEVER do with someone who is not related to me or in my fraternity. I guess I’ll always be a wanna-be native Hawaiian person   Anyways, Curtis is a tremendous individual and I look forward to seeing him again.

Other people I really enjoyed meeting include Tammy, Amador_Ed, Beth and of course the biggest character of them all, Jason (AlienGenius).  Jason was hilarious and his off-internet personality was a bit different from the forums.  He’s a wacky guy that exudes personality, especially when he’s been drinking.  Think crazy casino happy-drunk guy with blue hair.  I had a lot of fun hanging out with him and crusing the strip in his rented 1952 Jaguar.

Accommodations

Staying at Imperial Palace definitely saved me some money.  I spent a grand total of $89 out the door for staying for 4 nights which is an incredible deal.  The negative was that my “upgraded” mini-suite was a disaster, from the stains on the ground to the lack of an internet connection (which I had paid for).  I got to see Debi’s room at MGM which she slipped a tip for and it was gorgeous, and on top of that because she had played so much poker there, they comp’d her two nights.  So in the end, maybe you should pay a little more to make sure you sleep a bit better.

Tournaments

I am almost famously a hater of tournaments and Sit n Gos.  I can’t get over that one bad hand ends your session completely and throws away hours of work in a fireball of disgust and despair.  Despite this, I ended up playing in 2 one table Sit n Go tournaments and one multi table tournament.  The two Sit n Gos were played at the MGM 11-handed with the entire CardsChat group.  The structure was re-donk-ulous with a 1,000 starting chip stack, 25-50 starting blinds, and 12-minute intervals.  Somehow, I managed to take down the first one for first place, and then get heads-up for the second one.  After trading the chip lead just on blinds on three consecutive hands I asked Joe if he just wanted to chop 1st and he agreed.  Back-to-back!

I got support for organizing a “CardsChat Invasion” tournament, so what I did is research which one had a low buyin but good structure and ended up with the one at Sahara.  It had a $65 buyin and that got you $6,000 in chips, 25-50 starting blinds, and 20 minute levels.  I think seven of us entered the tournament which started with 80-some players, with both myself and Tammy making the final table.  I tried to get everyone to agree to a final-table chop but that wouldn’t happen but we did agree to pay 9th and 8th a $65 bubble prize paid by the 1st and 2nd place finishers.  That meant I was ITM as a shortstack and happy as can be!  I actually lasted until 7th, where I again asked for a table chop (would have been +$300) but one guy said no (resident luckbox of course) and I busted shortly thereafter, but doubled by buy-in and left happy after 4 hours of entertainment.

Cash Games

The cash games going in Vegas were a bit tougher than usual, especially at rooms like Venetian which looked like where all the 2p2′ers ended up to “rake in the juicy cash games during the WSOP” as a couple of early 20-somethings told me at my hotel.  The juicy side cash games during the WSOP is now a complete myth thanks to the improved player pools and lack of whales thanks to the economy.  However, I sat at many a bad table during my stay and really like the MGM and wished I had played there more.  Both Taylor and I ran terrible in Vegas as I saw him have AA cracked twice while railing.  I’ll briefly go over my three “table groaners” which weren’t fun …

Slowrolled at Venetian

Dealt KK in UTG+1 at the 1/2 NL table.  Raised to $15.  Two callers both behind me, both look like LAG type players.  Flop is 6TQ rainbow and I cbet to $40.  One fold, and the next guy shoves all in for my last $180ish.  I call, not too happy about the situation once a Q and a 9 roll off on turn and river.  I say “I think you won with that turn” and show my KK.  He looks at it somewhat surprised and says, “No you’re good” and then waits a second and then says “Ohhhh wait.  I hit my gutshot” and shows 78.  So he made a move on my cbet (fair enough) and was drawing to runner runner or a gutshot and hit.  The slowroll was just bullshit and something we saw a little bit of in Vegas … I guess respect isn’t on the menu during the WSOP.  Jason was there to watch that hand and was probably more upset than I was but it was late and after that called it a night.

Disaster at the Mirage

I had to learn a tough lesson when playing really old people – they NEVER FOLD.  Ever.  I had AK in MP and bumped it to $15 and got called by the SB and the LAG player in the BB.  Flop came 2JJ two spades and I cbet just about pot.  The old geezer in the SB tanks and calls, and the BB insta-folds.  The turn brought a Q and filled the flush and the SB checks again and I bet a good amount.  SB tanks again, calls.  River brought a 3 and the SB checks and so I figure there’s no way he’s folding even to a shove so I check.  He shows pocket 8s and I fold and he announced he figured I was gonna bluff him as a young aggressive guy.  Guess he called it.

A few hands later I pick up QQ in MP and again make it $15 to go.  Folds around to the BB (same old geezer) who calls.  I figure he’s never folding to me EVER.  Flop came a wonderful AK4 and he checks. I check.  Turn is a 9, he checks, I check … I know the geezer has an A.  River he bets $15 and I turn over QQ and say “fold” and the table kinda gasps (as if it were a tough fold) and the geezer turns over AK.  lol.

Finally at the same table I pick up QJ suited in LP and I make a raise to $12 and I get called by a belligerent immigrant on the button (he complained the entire time) as well as three others.  Flop couldn’t have been better – 9TK rainbow.  Checked to me and I cbet it, and the immigrant guy pushes it in and everyone folds to me so I get in my last $120 or so.  I show my flopped straight, he doesn’t bat an eye, turn is a K and he turns over 99 for the boat.  Table groans, I leave.

The Coup de Grace

It’s the last night and we made our way over to Mandalay Bay which I had never seen before.  It’s a nice little shuttle ride over from Excalibur and I was impressed with the high ceilings and nice layout of the casino.  The poker room is small but known for recreational fish throwing their money away.  I sit at a super fishy table where one guy is donk betting bottom pair every time and an Asian girl is going crazy with her flush draws (she said “I just want to give bad beat tee hee hee!”).  I sit back and basically either steal the blinds or fold for about an hour.  In MP I got 55 against an UTG raise to $8  so I flat and so does the button and BB.  Four to the flop and its AT5 and I’ve picked up bottom set.  The BB donks out for $35 and I tank and shove for the Hollywood effect.  Everyone folds and the BB calls and the turn river come 2 and 3.  I turn over my set, the table says “wow!” and the villain turns over TT for the bigger flopped set.  Table groans, I mutter “all trip long…” and leave.

Keeping a Level Head

Having met Fredrick Paulsson, a man who famously never tilts, I got to see a little bit of what it takes to really be successful as a full time online poker player.  He mentioned that if you have time to convert the hand, post the hand and complain about the hand, then that is just way too much time to be focusing on the bad beat.  I also got to see how well he handed the Day 1D registration disaster and how he kept a very level head and how impressed I was with that.  So I kept that in mind the whole time while playing poker to not let coolers or beats get in the way of a great trip.  I was real happy that I kept a positive attitude and never let the beats get to me. When someone asked me about them in Vegas I just said “I don’t remember them” even though the last night I actually had a dream reliving the last set-under-set hand that woke me up lol.  Anyways, it was a real good lesson into anti-tilt behavior and despite those  experiences I had a lot of fun playing live cash game poker.

Final Thoughts

I had a lot of fun on this trip and will be going again next year assuming that it happens.  I would really like to see everyone again, as well as meet some new faces.  All the way around I had a great time and look back at it as a very positive experience.  The CC party at the MGM Lofts was amazing, I took a video which I will post later about how sick this crib was, it was just unreal.  As far as poker goes, I feel fine about my game and was happy I was leaving +$8 overall during my trip

Last night wad a lot of fun as we played two private table $60 sit and gos with the cardschat group. I win the first one and chopped first for the second one. A good time was definitely had by all.

I had two cash game sessions and took in almost +$100 so for the day I was over +$400 so I slept rather well thank you.

We also went to the Rio and checked out the WSOP main even and I took sone pics below.

Today went checked out Fremont street and Binions but the place was totally dead for poker. Since it was a bust we left and I took a ride in Jason’s rented 1952 Jaguar which was straight baller. Now we are at TI waiting to play!

Had a great breakfast over at Caesars with Taylor and Zach. We took the hree shuttle to Rio and met up with friends and watched the second featured tabled with 2008 winner Peter Eastgate. We are now seated at the feature table watching Erick Lindgren play. Cool stuff to be here.

Can u name the cc people in this pic??we played at MGM for a little over and hour and now we’re out to dinner at Diablos next to NyNy

First, if you want detailed activity reports from me, check out my Twitter account of “icemonkey9″ and you will find it there. I’ll be updating the blog once or twice a day.

Well I made it to Long Beach airport after a bit of hassle with the driver who took the wrong freeway … Two times!

Still got here with and hour to spare until boarding. The LB airport is small with 4 terminals and little hassles.

The word press app for iPhone officially sucks when trying to add photos. It will crash or just delete the post. Frustrating!

I am not sure WTF is wrong with this thing. Arg.