Nice thread man.

I liked reading the words of determination in your early posts in the thread, and I liked your realizations and recent updates late in the thread highlighting all the positives you have surrounded yourself with in terms of non poker and real life stuff.

We no doubt lurk and post in a lot of the same Vegas themed threads, and it's cool to catch your backstory finally. Not sure how I missed it up until now.

Keep up the awesome updates, and I'm sure I'll see ya around. GL WSOP 2016!

This guy in particular has a $250k line of credit anytime he visits the Bellagio. I'm sure there's an electronic way of transfer onto his card.

They just give you tickets

I was waiting for the weekend to be completely over to update. It wasn't a big weekend of tournament poker but I did put in about 20 hours of play and learned a lot over weekend.

Friday 4/15
Went to play the 7pm $125 tournament at the Orleans. It drew 191 entries for $4680 for 1st with the 10th spot @ the final table, $448 and the low to cash (25th) at $225. The theme of this tournament was "Table Draw Means Everything"



My very first table I was seated with 3 guys that I've regularly made deep runs with. One guy in particular (2 to my left) is a very LAG player and will not hesitate to fire a few bullets in the tournament if he busts. He will regularly overbet multi-way pots, and make 4 & 5 bet all in shoves in order to chip up early. The other player (2 to my right) is a tight ABC player who usually has a monster when he is in a hand. Within 20 minutes, I had a great read on everyone at my table. I was pretty card dead, but was able to scoop 3 good sized multi-way pots without showdown. One hand in particular was when I caught T9 suited diamonds in the big blind at the 100/200 level. It was min raised UTG+1 by the very aggro reg to 600 and 4 callers including me. The flop comes TJ7 All hearts. I lead out for 500, aggro-reg rebets to 2100 and gets a caller. I rebet to 6600 (with <5k behind) and was able to get both of them to fold with one guy showing me the KhQs. Chipped up to a little under 20k up from the 12.5k starting stack.



It was shortly after this that my table broke (table break #1). With 2 levels before the break I reach a table that's literally taking 5 mins a hand. One player has a mega stack of about 75k and he's not even playing aggressive. Until.... I look down at AhKh on the button with the big stack raising to 1800 preflop (150/300 levels). I call with one other caller and the flop comes AJT all spades. Big stack checks, MP bets 2000. I call, big stack raises to 16k putting both of us all in. MP calls, I fold. The big stack shows KK with the Ks against a set of Tens. a low spade hits the turn and another player eliminated. 5 minutes left until the break and my stack is now right around the starting stack.



I fold a few hands and blind off and I'm left with 10,800 2 minutes before break when I look down at Ad4d on the button. Limped action goes around to the player 2 to my right and he raises to 1500. I call and the BB calls. The flop comes KdQd8h. 1st to act goes all in for around 9.2k, next to act calls, and I reraise all in and get a call. KT vs. AQ vs. Ad4d(me). Turn comes the Th for the nut flush. River comes the Jh for the royal just to twist the knife and I triple up right before the break.



Post break I'm moved to a new table. This table is full of regs and the guy to my immediate right is so drunk he can barely keep his head up. He does have a large stack, about 60k. I lost about 7.5k at the 400/800 level on a hand when I couldn't bluff the guy off of pocket 9s. Action went like this:

Villain, 1st to act, raises to 1600, I call, flop comes JJQ rainbow. Villian bets 1600, I raise to 4000 and he quickly calls. Turn comes 8. Villain checks, I bet 2000, he reraises to all in and I snap fold. He shows the 9s as he mucks. I was flat outplayed there. 2 hands later, the table breaks. We're at 40 players now and I'm moved to a table with about 6 regs that I recognize and two of the largest chipstacks of the tournament at my table. One of them directly to my left. I'm floating around 7-9 adjusted BB for a few orbits when I look down at QsTs. limped 3 ways into me in LP and I'm all in for around 12K. A big stack around 100k calls with AK suited and it holds up on an all low card flop for my exit in 39th.

I felt great about my play all night, as it felt like guys were playing with their cards facing up on every table. This was the first time in a long time I had 4 table switches before the cash. At 30 minute levels, it felt like as soon as I knew where I was at with everyone, it was time for me to move. Looking back at my stats, 5 of those deep runs, my table did not break until very close to the cash. What can ya do? I played cash 1/3NL for about 90 minutes after my exit, but it was getting very late, I was getting tired, and my table literally had zero action. Guys were letting BB's walk left & right and I decided to leave +35 up.

Overall: -$90 (-$125 Tournament entry, +$35 cash)

4/16/16
I planned on playing today at the Aria.....NO CHANCE! I woke up around 10:30am with a bad pinch in my neck and couldn't roll out of bed. I had a BBQ to attend later this afternoon so I figured I'd take the day off and play Sunday. I took two of these and went back to sleep:



I went to the BBQ at an awesome house on the lake. It was a sick time, here's a view out of the backyard. Coming from living at the beach for 4 years before I moved here, it's so cool to see moving water in Vegas.



4/17/16
I woke up at 5:30 AM this morning. On work days I'm usually up at 4:15 am. On days like this when I have nothing to do, I find early morning poker games to be very good. There's a great mix of players who stayed up all night and are still tilting off into the morning hours, as well as brand new players ready to do some early morning drinking & gambling. Around 9am I decided to go to Planet Hollywood. They had one 1/2NL game going but it was a full table. A $1250 GTD tournament was abount to start at 10am, so for $75 I figured I might as well take a shot here and if they open another cash game, I can play it after the tournament. The tournament ended up getting about 24 entries. Before the break was a rollercoaster of run good -> getting coolered -> run good -> folding monsters on many 4 cards to a flush boards.

Skill level, the players were very soft. I was able to coast to a 3 way chop, not playing any crazy hands and letting the maniacs bump each other. When we were 5 handed, the hand that lead to us negotiating a chop was a 3 way all in, QQ vs AK vs. K5 (suited spades). I'm sure as you were guessing, K5 gets there with 4 spades on the board, eliminating the other stacks. With the chop, I was about 37k with the other two stacks at 92k and a little over 100k. I felt like I could have outplayed the two for a better payout but they were willing to negotiate a $500/$500/$250 chip chop, which was $100 more than the 3rd place posted $150. I ended up leaving PHo to do some errands and meet a friend for lunch at Red Rock. That was it for live poker on the weekend.
+$175 (Live)

I ended up playing about 7 hours on WSOP.com, a mix of $5 sit n gos & WSOP satellites. My online game isn't what it used to be. I just can't muster the patience for grinding the MTTs on there anymore. My plan was to Satellite my way into a few events this summer at the WSOP, but I don't want to feel like I'm spinning wheels by burning money into the Sit-N-Gos when my live play is so much better lately.
-$55 (wsop.com)

Work wise, I'm going to be super busy this week. This weekend coming up is another Phamous Poker Series swing at Planet Hollywood. I'm going to shoot for at least 2 of those events and most likely update next Monday again.

Cool thread dude. Looking forward to more stories. I think you made a typo above right before break, you said the turn and river were hearts and I think you meant diamonds.

Mmm those vanilla macaroons

I think this chop was a mistake. You have $150 locked up. If you shove ATC and double up through either of them on the next hand, you'll be in 2nd place. If they fold you pick up blinds/antes and you can keep shoving an even bigger stack. They won't want to call you too light. If you get called and lose, you win $150. But by agreeing to $250 you only got $100 more. Getting to 2nd place could get you a $400-500 payout, $150-250 more than you got. Just my 2 cents to consider next time.....

Anyways, I like the thread--been reading it since it was recently revived. Any chance you can use Imgur instead of Photobucket? Some of us can't see the pics until we're on a PC or non-work computer, ha. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/10...orial-1441885/

Refuse a 3 way chop and the other two may tag team you.

You should always check your equity.

http://www.texasholdem-poker.com/payout-chop-calculator

...this...or the other 7...w/e :P can be great but not if your card dead bc they will start jamming everything into your smaller stack to play chop police while walking each other taking dead $

that sed, its fine to chop there, its fine not to, sounds like it was really shallow at that point

Watching players spew chips at a final table because they are mad someone won't chop is one of my favorite pastimes!

#TalkingStickResort

Glad to see this thread resurrected.

foatie you are one of the best posters in LVL, keep up the good work!

I go to only two very much unrelated message boards on the entire internet and I can't believe it's taken me this long to figure out you are on both.

Foatie, are you a Dave Meltzer fan?

I will take note on imgur. I usually only post from desktop so it's force of habit. The photobucket app crashes 50% of the time on my phone so I'm all open to other options.

Regarding the chop situation, I forgot to mention that blinds were at 2000/4000 and moving to 3k/6k in 5 minutes. At 5 BB I would have rather chopped it and have a decent hourly than to go on and play 5 or 6 more orbits and potentially take a $100 loss on an eventual flip. If the levels were longer, or I had maybe 15-20 BB, then I'm definitely playing it out.

Thanks for all the feedback and good vibes guys. I appreciate it.

LMAO! I respect Dave a lot, and you know what....he's a super nice guy in person. Does drive me nuts on some of the shows though, lol. I forgot my avatar & SN are the exact same over there

Awesome. And it wasn't meant to be a big criticism--I may have made the same decision you did in the moment. Hope this doesn't derail the thread any further.

No worries at all. The chop situation can get quite annoying. That big score I had at the Orleans almost 2 months ago, chop was in negotiation for almost an hour as we played from 6 down to 4. I try to look at things from an "hourly" perspective as much as I can, some people just don't see it that way when they're hellbent on not chopping. Especially when they aren't the chip leader, which I'll never get.

I'm going to move a lot of my stuff over to imgur now. I see the Tapatalk app kind of integrates that in. I never noticed it. Good stuff.

that early morning GTD PH tournament structure is ridiculous and turns into a complete crap shoot at the final table. A chop is the right play but really you should hold out for equal splits. With the structure you are basically betting on who will win at showdown with random hands.

The wynn 250k signature is coming up this week... going to see you there OP?

No. I don't have time to play a long format mid week, but I will definitely be at the PHamous Series this weekend at P Hollywood

Three flights for wynn... thurs fri and sat... 545+55

I may consider the Saturday flight actually. I thought the 2nd day started on Saturday. Depending on how my Friday goes, I just might cancel Sunday at the PHamous Series. I do feel the Wynn tournament will be a little more pro heavy. In theory, if I'm expecting a deeper run in the WSOP, I need to be playing stronger fields. On the other hand, the PHamous Series are usually a little softer and has some of the more LAG w/ no endurance types that I feel I have an edge against at the moment.

The "Come to Jesus Moment"

Let me preface this by saying, I'm nowhere NEAR the degenerate I was 5-7 years ago, but certain bad habits/personality traits are hard to break. My biggest downfall has always been procrastination. I like to sum up life like this:

Life is a series of events over time that I like to refer to as "Data". I've had the opportunity to learn from a lot of successful people and the one thing that they have over the common man is superior decision making skills. Decisions in every aspect of life, based on the data that they've analyzed from their past. To bring this back around to poker, my philosophy on life is to "Always make the most +EV decision possible, given the data that you have on this same type of situation that may have happened in the past."

The problem is, when you try to balance that reasoning with sporadic impulsive behavior, procrastination, and former substance abuse issues it becomes a constant "fight" with yourself to not gamble on life decisions.

With that said, after the summer of last year I began a relationship with this girl for a period of about 4 months. I knew she was trouble to begin with. She had a past abusive relationship, combined with past sexual abuse, which eventually lead her to moving to Vegas to guess what.....becoming a stripper. Now, "Why?" "WTF are you thinking dude?", you may be saying, and this is what I would say to myself everyday. Yet the adrenaline junkie/gambler/procrastination/nice guy in me felt that this was a "project" that I had to take on. Moving 2600 miles away to a town with no real friends will make anyone make some illogical decisions in life because it's human nature to not want to be alone. We want to fulfill that need of love and to give love/care to someone, even if it wil be bad for you. Why I keep putting an emphasis on "procrastination" is for this reason...

Sometimes in life, when refusing to face our own problems, we turn to taking on new projects to focus our attention on so we can have a sense of accomplishment. Sometimes these new "projects" manifest themselves in relationships, risky business ventures, and new hobbies. You know, the hobbies that last for a few months and then you stop, like going to the gym, running 5ks, blogging, photography etc. For me, it was always taking on a new friendship or relationship with someone who is toxic.

It always starts the same, you have a lot in common with the person, you love hanging out with them, you seem to always get along, and of course with crazy women/dancers...... well you know what we all say about crazy girls. The have the best..... Anyways, I'm sharing this story and will eventually catch up on other stories to fill in the time gaps in this thread. But the biggest reason for this post was, everything started going on a life downswing.

In my current career, my pay is pretty feast or famine. It's based on profit sharing so I've had months where I've made 10k, I've had months where I've made 1k. It wasn't until recently that I've been able to stabilize it. It hasn't been until recently (January 2016) that I've eliminated the phuckery out of my life. I was on a serious downswing the 2nd half of 2015. This included a 2 month stretch where I was down 3k at 1/2 -& 1/3, and going 0/5 in Phamous Series events in November to the tune of about -$2500 in MTTs. Everything I worked so hard for in my new position was gone. And why? Because of associated drama that I got myself into with dealing with this vampire of a woman.

"Vampire? Yes, a vampire. They disguise themselves as charming, sociable, slick, infatuating characters that you allow into your life, and they suck you dry. Of your emotions, your time, your money. But just like the tale of Nosferatu, a Vampire can't enter your home without you inviting them."

This was a quote I got from comedian/podcaster Duncan Trussell. A great great man. In the span of 4 months, I went through a fist fight, an armed robbery, multiple nights of waking up out of my sleep to pick this chick up and listen to hate fueled drama for hours on end, and the occasional $500 nights out to expensive dinners/drinks/partying only to end the night in arguments. It wasn't until I finally dropped this Vampire out of my life, that I really started to "Get it". Based on what you know about people like this, situations like this, this is the most -EV life decision you could ever make. Fold or go Busto. So I folded and dumped the relationship with the chick. I heard two months ago that she was arrested in Washington State on an attempted robbery. A real shame, because in her heart was a good person. Just a good person who was incapable of making good decisions and not letting go of the past.

I keep tying this back to poker, because I honestly feel that poker has changed my life. That's part of the reason I moved out here with about $2500 to my name after getting settled in. I've always been a student of the game. There's not an acclaimed book that I haven't read & studied and I've had the opportunity to play games all over the country against some of the best & craziest characters I've ever met. I've tried my hand at a lot of things/hobbies in life. From team sports, to dancing, to music, to entrepreneurship and nothing has changed my life like the game of poker. For every fault that I've ever had as a person, poker has gotten me past them and exploits my strengths. Those strengths being a very logical & analytical thinker, the ability to read people very quickly through body language, and having a super strong memory of past events (hand histories & previous plays).

If you got through all of this, I'm sorry for the long entry with not much relating to current poker. For those of you following, I wanted to give some insight into how my mind works and hopefully share some inspiration so that somewhere people don't make the same mistakes that I did.

Mentally I feel good, I'm in a current upswing, and I honestly feel like I am playing the best poker of my life. I'm ready to attack the PHamous Series this weekend at Planet Hollywood, play the best poker that I can, and to have a final table story to share with all of you.

Cheers to all of you!
-40

Pics of vampire?

I'm going to have to think about this. Part of me doesn't give a ****, and part of me kind of wants to not say too many more details about her because it could probably be easily reverse traced to see exactly who it is.