My good ol’ friend Matt C. and I love to give each other the business. For the past twenty years, we have taken it upon ourselves to keep each other in check. If one of us ever gets a little too big for his britches, the other comes along with a good-natured smack in the head, returning the recipient to cold reality and taking him down a peg. It sounds more ruthless than it really is. We’re both capable of laughing at ourselves and as well as each other.

Today I’m happy to report that Matt and his lovely girlfriend Alfia were recently engaged to be married. This news—in and of itself—opens a veritable treasure trove of Matt-ripping material for me to enjoy. You see, the formerly perennially single Matt has always availed himself of a line of humor that pokes fun at the duties and responsibilities foisted upon me by my commitment to Janeen (“Who are you texting?!?”). It would therefore suffice if I were now merely able to return the favor with similar jokes. But something much greater and more abundantly humorous has arrived. Something irresistible and packed with delicious, oozing irony has been bestowed to me. No, it is not a twelve pack of Hostess Fruit Pies. It’s better.

One of Matt’s favorite topics throughout our little twenty-year war is my mother. I was reared by an energetic and protective woman. Some might say I was coddled. My mother remains interested and involved in my life to this day. Matt certainly capitalizes on this fact with his humorous imitations of my mother’s thick New York accent and constant reminders of our shared adolescence filled with strange admonitions from my Mom (“David can throw up in the basement, but I expect better from you, Matt.”)

One of Matt’s other repeat topics is my alleged materialism. When I proceeded directly from law school into a high-paying job and an upper east side mini bachelor pad, Matt began giving me the business about it, and continued every time I purchased anything he perceived to be a newfangled luxury item. Most famously (and I’m aging us here), he used to give me a very hard time for owning…. (gasp!) a cellular phone. Matt’s preference in consumerism is for the quirky and offbeat (including some hilarious flops like those god-awful Crocs), so anytime I came up with anything he deigned expensive and/or mainstream, he gave me holy hell about it.

Another of Matt’s go-tos is this blog’s existence, and the act of blogging in general. The salt-of-the earth Matt loves to laugh at how pretentious I’ve become. I have the gall to presume that my professional gambling somehow transforms my daily life into something noteworthy to others. Matt has an oft-repeated two-word summation for this sentiment: “Dear Blogisphere!” End of story.

As you can see, I have taken a beating for many years from Matt for a) my mother’s ubiquity; b) being in a committed relationship; c) occasionally enjoying fancy things; and d) blogging.

So without further ado, I am now thrilled to present to you Matt’s future mother-in-law’s handiwork:

REALLY? I’M MOTHER OF THE BRIDE?

I’ve had some trouble conjuring anything to write here. The problem is that there’s no underlying theme to draw from; my thoughts have been all over the map lately. This has been reflected in the way I’ve spent my time.

One day I grind my ass off, the next I’m crafting an outline for a yet-to-be-written book. One day I’m up at the crack of dawn, driving down to AC determined to dominate, the next I lay in bed all day reading. One day I gorge on MTT training videos in an effort to cure my maddening futility in online tourneys, the next day I’m pondering some business opportunities and thinking my old life as a suit wasn’t really that bad.

For those keeping score, my bottom line this year is about break even. I’ve had success in fits and starts—I won a small tournament at Mohegan Sun and came fourth in a big $500 event at Borgata (neither of which got any play on this blog), so it’s not all doom and gloom—but I’m used to having more success than this. The upcoming summer-long WSOP is likely not only to have a disproportionate impact on my 2010 income, it may also shape my future in a larger sense. My summertime plans were just solidified. I leave on Memorial Day.

The last time I was having the proverbial “bad year” at the start of the WSOP, I ended up hitting for what remains to this day my biggest score, so perhaps history will repeat itself. But perhaps it won’t, which would be okay too.

In the immediate future I’ll probably tune up for the WSOP with a couple of Foxwoods and Harrah’s events. And I’ll probably continue to get drubbed online, I’m a glutton like that.

There’s a lot of complaining in poker. We poker players are inured to the constant whining around us, but taking a step back and looking at it objectively, there is a grotesque and epic amount of bitching and moaning in this little world I reside in.

It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to decipher the reasons for this. We humans are prideful creatures, and we invariably crave validation when we fail. In tournament poker, you fail a lot. In fact, you fail pretty much every day. With failure comes self-pity. Show me any tournament poker player and I will show you a man who spends half of his life feeling sorry for himself.

People who are capable of rationalizing their need for self-pity are of course not immune to it. Nor are those of us who try to avoid all the wallowing because we ultimately believe it is destructive. I need to commiserate too.

And so, please pity the fact that my yesterday sucked:

I was 17th out of 295 players headed into Day 2 of the Borgata Spring Open’s Event #1. 100 players were to be paid and I was sitting pretty with 210,000 chips. Once play started, I managed to build my stack to around 270,000 without incident. And then I got pooped on. Repeatedly.

I iso-raised a short stack’s shove with Ac3c. He showed me 10-9 and hit a 10 on the turn. 250,000.

I called a short stack’s shove with pocket jacks. He held pocket eights. Eight on the flop. 220,000.

I reshoved on a 12 big blind shorty’s ship with QQ and found myself matched up with 22. Deuce on the turn. 160,000.

And then one final travesty. A player open limped, I raised the button to 20,500 with KK. It folded to the big blind who decided to cold four-bet jam all in for 150,000. I called, he turned over 99. Nine in the window.

These beats came in rapid, mind-boggling succession within a period of maybe 40 minutes. I rarely lose my composure at the table, but the last one proved too much for my battered constitution (it also happened to be a one-outer, the gentleman to my left gave me the pointless but obligatory “I folded a nine” before the flop rolled out). Unsure of how to properly express my exasperation, I collected all my chips with two trembling fists and forcefully slammed them down into the center of the table, then released them there for the dealer to corral and redirect. Two days of poker down the drain. Good game!

I was still feeling the sting of that tragic and unjust turn of events when I sat down to play a multitable satellite for a seat in today’s $7,500 buy in high roller event. There were 37 players in the satellite. Enough for three seats, with $4500 cash for fourth place. The tourney started at 7:00 PM, and the structure was outstanding for a satellite—almost too good. The tournament was a long, drawn out, endurance-testing grind. I found myself sitting there with 10 big blinds halfway through, but I was able to pick spots and chip up, hanging around long enough to reach the final table. Eventually I found myself sitting in fourth place on the bubble with five players remaining. It was 3:30 AM. I was so tired that I could barely see straight, but I was one bustout away from a good score, and I really wanted to get the bad taste from earlier in the day out of my mouth and pick up a seat in the $7,500 tourney.

If there’s one thing in poker that I understand completely, it’s ICM push/fold/call-off ranges. This stuff was etched into my memory during my days grinding sit ‘n go’s online. I seriously know that stuff backwards and forwards. And I know that if we’re on the exact bubble and I shove 20 big blinds from the button, and the other short stack is sitting in the big blind with approximately 17 big blinds, he isn’t supposed to call it off with A-8 off. But that’s what my opponent chose to do, and I couldn’t win a flip with pocket threes. Good game and good night.

Cliffs notes: April 12, 2010 was Kick David In The Balls Day. I lost three consecutive pair-over-pair dominated all ins to blow through a huge stack and bust out of Event #1, then played an eight-hour MTT satellite and finished on the exact bubble. So yeah, I’m running pretty good down here so far!

I’ve taken a pretty long break from poker and plan on resuming live tournament play tomorrow at Mohegan Sun.  This cannot stop me from sharing with my loyal readers my observations about poker fashion.  Oooh child, it’s time to dish! Let’s tawk about what’s in and what’s out. *snaps*

Poker In:  Monster™  Headphones.

Look around any large poker room and you will find a shitload of kids wearing the same exact set of headphones with a “9” or a “6” (or is it a “q” or “b”?) on them.  There has been a noticeable and rapid proliferation of these things in pokerland.  Mildly annoying!  It seems that no one wants to use their crummy old ipod earbuds or any other headphones, they’ve gotta have these.  I’ve asked people why, and have been informed either that “Monster headphones are the best!” or that “Monster headphones are endorsed by Dr. Dre!”

I happen to know a lot of true audiophiles (even some who work in the business) and I’ve now asked them about this product, and I also did a little bit of research on my own.  These headphones are actually demonstrably not the best; most experts have given them lukewarm reviews and some call them overpriced.  That leaves us with the second theory:  that a West Coast rap producer who was last seen either jacking every hook in the P-Funk catalogue 18 years ago or “discovering” a white rapper 11 years ago is the driving force behind the popularity of Monster headphones in the modern poker community.  Okay.  I’m convinced that a third theory must hold the real answer.  Perhaps Tom Dwan or some other young poker demigod served as a trendsetter?

Poker Out:  Ed Hardy gear.

In a development as surprising as the sun rising this morning, heterosexual men have grown tired of bedazzled mesh caps.

Poker In:  Facebook Spew.

Facebook status updates are fascinating.  And by fascinating, I mean morbidly fascinating.  Car wreck fascinating.  I’m sure that some good sociological studies on them have already been done, but allow me to state the obvious:  these spur-of-the-moment ramblings are an enlightening glimpse into the minds of your “friends,” and Facebook doesn’t discriminate.  Even your dumbest, weirdest and most deranged acquaintances are allowed to share with the class, and the burden’s on you to either “hide” them or remain exposed to the spew.  I prefer rubbernecking.  I stay exposed.

I have accumulated a lot of poker friends on Facebook.  And this has been a rewarding experience—poker players love to update their status!  I’ve been reading them religiously for some time now.

My primary finding is that there is no correlation between skill at poker and the ability to type coherent thoughts.  And I’ve noticed that there are certain character profiles.  Here are a few:

• Mr. Itchy Fingers.  This guy updates his status four times per tournament level.  He does this well before the money bubble in $300 events.  Who are these updates supposed to appeal to?  The other poker players could care less and everyone else has no idea what the hell you’re talking about.
• Mr. Amnesia.  This guy wins $250,000 in a weekend, then waits less than 48 hours before resuming his daily vitriolic “fuck my life!  OMG aces cracked again!  I hate poker!” rantings.  Classy.
• Mr. Birdseed.  “I’m at the final table of the $7 rebuy on Absolute!!11!  Plz come root me on!  I’m gonna ship this one!  Run good one time!”
• Mr. Fame Whore.  This dude’s is so desperate for the world to recognize his accomplishments and superior skill level that all he does is complain about being under-promoted.  He may even dream up a bizarre, unintelligible motto and spam you with it every few hours.  Awesome!

Poker Out:  Humility, a Sense of Perspective.

I can’t recall if it was Al Alvarez’s book or Anthony Holden’s, but there is a telling passage about playing poker in a Las Vegas card room on the day Ronald Reagan was elected president.  The author (an Englishman) announced that the United States had elected a new president, and the only remark made by another player at the table was that the odds posted on Reagan winning the election a few months earlier turned out to be good value.  The game moved forward without further comment.

This is an accurate depiction of the world unto itself that poker exists in.  The day after the heath care reform bill—which is likely the most controversial and far reaching political event the US has seen for some time—was passed, my facebook page was filled with commentary thereon (some frightening in its own right).  But then you had the poker players, who littered the page with the usual updates about relatively stupid shit like running kings into aces again.  I don’t think other professions work this way.  Obsessed much?

Poker In:  “Muppet,” “Monkey,” et. al.

Poker players devote a lot of time to coming up with new ways to describe morons.  These are just two of the terms of art that are currently in favor.  I have always loved the Muppets, so that one’s my personal favorite.  It is of course roughly synonymous with:

Poker Out:  “Donkey.” 

Poker players are finally giving the time-worn “donk” a rest.  You’ll still hear it quite often, but it’s no longer on the tip of everyone’s tongue every freakin’ hand.

Poker In:  The Intimidating String Call.

You’re a live tournament poker pro doing what live tournament poker pros do:  playing a live tournament.  You could be at The Borgata, The Rio, a cruise ship in the Caribbean or in your cousin’s basement.  It really doesn’t matter.  The buy in could be $100, $1500 or $10,000.  It really doesn’t matter.  The blinds are 300-600.

The bad guy opens under the gun for 1700.  The bad guy could be an internet kid wearing Monster headphones, an obese Italian-American in a sweatsuit, or a woman with monstrous tits.  It really doesn’t matter.  It folds to you in the hijack, cutoff, button, whatever (it really doesn’t matter).  You decide to call.  You’re heads up to the flop.

The flop comes 10-6-5 rainbow.  Or it comes K-J-10 of diamonds.  Or maybe it comes 7-2-2.  Or it could be three aces.  That’s right, it really doesn’t matter.  The bad guy bets 2800.  Now the stage is all yours!

You are gonna call this bet.  You may be calling because you have top pair. Or possibly a flush draw.  Or maybe you’ve flopped the nuts and are gonna trap the bad guy.  Or maybe you’re attempting the old double float river bluffraise with eight high and no draw.  It really doesn’t matter!  What does matter is that you are about to execute the coolest, most amazing, fantastic move in the book, and you’re going to relish every second of it.

You look at the bad guy, then you look at your stack of chips.  Gee whiz, there’s a lot of ’em.  Now you start to dig in.  Do you pull out 2800—two yellows, a purple, and three blacks?  Nope.  Here comes the really sick part.  You  remove only three black chips from your massive stack and fling them into the pot.

Three hundred? What the fuck is this?  Have you been daydreaming?  Are you retarded?  Color blind?  Hell no!  None of the above!

It’s… an Intimidating String Call!  You’ve now stated your intention, looked incredibly suave, and maybe even scared the living shit out of the bad guy using merely three black chips!  You will get to the purples and yellows when you’re good and ready. WOW!  SICK!

Poker Out:  Chip Tricks.

And good riddance.  The standard flipping and riffling that most of us do subconsciously will be with us for the forseeable future, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about sophisticated chip dance routines that take weeks of practice to master. You used to see a lot of that, but I’ve noticed very little David Copperfield stuff lately.  Maybe people are actually concentrating on playing well?  I dunno.

I am still trying to digest what I witnessed this weekend.  My alma mater’s basketball team just reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.  Cornell University is part of the Ivy League, which means no athletic scholarships and teams that trek across large swaths of America’s Northeast by bus to play basketball in small decrepit gymnasiums.  The games are never scheduled on weeknights and are not televised.  There is relatively little fanfare, the rivalries are extremely insular, there is no conference tournament, and critics rightly claim that it barely resembles Division I basketball.  However, Cornell’s current squad is senior-laden and has been building momentum  and chemistry for years.  This was their third straight trip to the big dance.  Still, a total dismantling of Temple and Wisconsin, two serious basketball schools?!  Unthinkable.  I’m over the moon.  They play Kentucky—probably the biggest powerhouse of them all—next.  Wow.

When I was in college, my friends and I treated NCAA tournament games with reverence but also open resentment.  For my money the NCAA tournament is America’s most captivating sporting event, particularly in its first weekend, when the games fire nonstop and strange matchups abound, giving kids from even the most obscure schools a moment in the sun.  The telecasts are filled with shots of students and alums from these varied institutions going absolutely bonkers.  Being a huge fan of this event and going to one of the Ivy League’s perennial bottom-dwellers has always left me with bittersweet feelings about it; I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve looked at the crowd and thought to myself “I want to be them.”  The frustration is captured nicely by the plight of my good friend Sherm, who was my freshman roomate at Cornell and has been my NCAA Tourney watching partner for nearly 20 years now.  Sherm has always despised Duke University even more than the rest of us, because Duke is the perfect school for a kid who loves hoops—perennially ranked as one of the country’s top schools both academically and in basketball—and they rejected him, relegating him to a lifetime of interested but non-fanatical observation of March Madness.  Until now.

It’s finally our turn!  I appreciate the fact that this will likely be the only time in my life that I will be able to say that, and it makes it that much sweeter.  GO BIG RED!

the slipper fucking fits!

See you in Syracuse.

Okay, so I’m back from Las Vegas.  The trip was a bad one overall, and I’ve been doing some heavy meditation about things since I returned.

When you take repeated trips to the same city you (should?) end up making some choices about how to shape your life while you’re there.  Vegas is a town with two separate and distinct economies:  tourist and local.  If you add up all the time I’ve logged in Vegas I’m practically a local, and I’ve now reached the same conclusions that they have.  Namely, one should eat, drink and sleep in places that offer some semblance of value and/or sanity and one should avoid the strip at all costs.  I do this by renting a car (my sole contribution to the tourist economy), then staying away from the so-called action, either at a “locals-friendly” hotel or at my friend’s house in Summerlin.  For someone who lives 3,000 miles away I’m now fairly expert at navigating my way around Las Vegas; if someone tells me that a restaurant is located on Spring Mountain and Rainbow, I know exactly which way to point my Ford Focus.  I also know where I like to eat breakfast, buy toiletries, gas up my car, go for a jog, find decent iced coffee, and I know where I like to go when I invariably get sick of being around other people.  I guess this means that I’ve reluctantly adopted Vegas as a second home town.

On this trip I purposely stayed in two distinct modes:  poker and non-poker, with nothing in between.  I therefore experienced a few things I’d never considered before, such as taking in a movie, excursions like Hoover Dam and Red Rocks, and I also went bowling.  I go bowling once every couple of years and each time it reminds me of how much I love it.  I grew up making frequent trips to my local bowling alley, and I turned out to be pretty a pretty decent bowler.  I ended up doing three years of competitive high school bowling, a college bowling course and two years in a pretty tough NYC league after that.  At times my average has crept into the 180’s, which is pretty serious biz.  Compared to what I’m used to, the bowling alleys in Las Vegas are amazing—massive, immaculate and very cheap.  When I velcro’d my red and white rental shoes at The Orleans I was transported to a very happy place.

Alas, for the serious bowler, there are problems with bowling far from home—it’s a sport where personalized equipment is vitally important.  I’ve already bored you with a lot of bowling chatter, so I won’t go into the details of why serious bowling is impossible without your own stuff, particularly your own ball.  Suffice to say that it becomes an entirely different game.  In the end, because I find bowling to be such a pleasant diversion, and because traveling with a sixteen pound sphere stuffed into your luggage is a major drag, I have resolved to visit a pro shop during the WSOP and buy myself a serious Vegas-only bowling ball that I will store in my friend’s closet and use frequently.  I will then have my own nerdy special escape from poker when I’m out there.  Dropping $150 on a Vegas-only bowling ball may strike you (pun intended) as strange, but I will quickly earn that money back in the form of tilt and boredom reduction.  Woot.

plastic hard hat = baller.

Now let’s talk about poker.  First how about some good news.

Pokerstars’ NAPT is an obvious smash hit and a boon to tournament poker.  872 players showed up to play the 5k event at Venetian last week, which is a very big turnout for a $5,000 buy-in event during any time other than the WSOP.  Consider that last year’s non-NAPT February Venetian Deep Stack main event was a $2,500 buy in and drew only 263 players.  The direct-online entry aspect of the event was an obvious shot in the arm, as was the excitement generated by the new NAPT brand.  Plenty of big names turned out to play and the field was remarkably tough for its size.  I had the opportunity to play against a host of big names.  At my tables alone, the draw included David Benyamine, Jon Turner, Vanessa Rousso, Paul Wasicka, Andrew Robl, Burt Boutin and “PhilDo” Collins.

Now for the bad news.  I achieved nothing for the entire trip.  I had zero (0) positive sessions.  No MTT mincashes, no second place finishes in sit ‘n go’s, no $80 wins at 2-5 NLHE.  Zero positive sessions.  I went to bed a loser every single night.  Some days my stack withered away and died.  Some days I got drilled with a two-outer.  Some days I committed hari-kari running elaborate bluffs.  On one day I even suffered the cruel injustice of finishing on the exact bubble of a live tournament (a $500 event), a catastrophic feat I had never before accomplished.  The effect on my psyche of this ultramagnetic critical beatdown was predictable.  On a couple of mornings I arose in my hotel room and found that I was truly disappointed to be awake.

My main event went like this.  I got off to a nice start on Day 1 but then stumbled, paying off a river check-shove from the kid who eventually finished second.  A rivered full house over flush.  It was a stupid call.  I spent the rest of the day regulating with a small stack, painstakingly regrouping, waiting for a spot to get my money in good.  One never materialized and I went into Day 2 with a short stack.  On Day 2 I doubled up on the second hand, AK > A9.  This left me with a still below average stack, but I was able to turn up the heat at that point.  This included a well-conceived cold 4 bet jam with K-10 against Robl’s button 3-bet.  This gave me some gamblin’ chips, and I was able to play more aggressively from there, and I was just below the chip average with 300 players left when my bustout hand occurred.

I suffered the indignity of busting out against a player who is well known to many casual poker fans, owing to his appearance on a televised WPT final table back when people watched the WPT, in the show’s first or second season.  His name is Paul Magriel.  For 20 years he held the title of the greatest backgammon player in the world, and he has authored several books on that topic.  He is also credited with conceiving of the concept of “M” (named for him), which famously appears in his buddy Dan Harrington’s seminal books on tournament poker.

All of this is really beside my main point, which is that Paul Magriel is an absolute loon.  Extremely unkempt with a tumor-looking fleshy little friend connected to the side his left nostril, he suffers from some sort of neurological disorder that makes his movements choppy, abrupt and sometimes scary.  This includes the constant flopping of his tongue, which meanders back and forth and doesn’t confine itself to its home in Paul’s hygienically-challenged mouth.  The best I can do in describing Magriel’s overall look is “nutty professor on a meth binge.”  Magriel also slows the game down to a crawl by painfully agonizing his way through every decision posed to him at the table.  When it’s his turn to act he exhales sharply, pulls at his hair, mutters things to himself, stares into space and flops his tongue around.  Only then does he actually fold his cards.  Probably my favorite part of the act is that he only bets in multiples of 22, owing to his backgammon-world nickname “X-22.”  Now, a deuce in poker is sometimes referred to as a duck and a duck quacks, so 22 becomes “quack-quack” in Magriel’s world.  When he bets “quack-quack” it means 2200, “double quack-quack” means 4400, and “triple quack-quack” means 6600, etc. etc.

My initial double up on Day 2 (AK>A9) was actually at Magriel’s expense, and when the flop rolled out 6-6-2, he began begging the dealer for “quack” (another deuce, for a chopped pot) as I protested by chanting “no quack, no quack!”  Back to my bustout hand.  Burt Boutin raised under the gun to 4500 at 800-1600 (200 ante), and I held two black kings.  I elected to flat UTG+3 because I had determined that while Burt is a good player, he has a slight bet sizing issue and I probably would be able to get my entire stack in against him on a favorable board.  It folded over to Magriel in the cutoff, who also covered me, and he sized Burt and I up for a few moments before announcing “double BIG quack quack,” which of course meant a massive bomb of a reraise to 44,000.  I did my best to hide the erection rapidly forming in my pant leg as Boutin mulled the bet over.  When he eventually folded I announced that I was all in and Magriel concluded that he had to call.  I dumped my kings onto the table and he looked at me sideways and said “oh well, I need an ace.”  As he turned over big slick I replied “yes sir, you do.”  When the flop came J-9-4 I began chanting “quack quack quack” but I was quickly silenced by an ace on the turn.  Oh no.  Standard.  Except for Magriel.

I suppose I’m now officially in a rut.  This drought doesn’t approach the magnitude of the No Haircut drought of 2007, but a drought it is.  The really bad news is not the drought but my reaction to it.   Past ruts have made me hungry and determined; this one leaves me pondering my future.  I continue to be visited by bouts of boredom, even in the midst of my poker battles.  I’m pretty tired of the scene and of poker in general.  I’m tired of the same conversations about tournament structures, who the hottest players on the circuit are, and whether I should sometimes be checkraising top pair to balance my range.  I’m tired of telling bad beat stories, of hearing bad beat stories, of the same fifty faces popping up in the same eight venues over and over again.  I’m actively considering making some changes.  Also, the answer isn’t to simply start winning.  History suggests that I will eventually pull through and end this drought, but winning isn’t a cure-all this time.  Even as I was making deep runs in the two January Borgata tournaments I (sort of) final tabled, I found myself half-jokingly asking friends if they’d like to play my stack and wondering when those tournaments would be over already.  I’ve lost a bit of my mojo.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to go back to a square job.  I’m not that deluded.  I know that I would suffer from a deep and desperate despair on the very first day that an “honest day’s work” was asked of me.  I just want to diversify—not just financially but also mentally.  In the end, grinding tournaments gets boring just like anything else, and truthfully it’s not where the big—the really big—money is.  I’ve made plenty of money at poker tournaments and I’ve got a bunch of it in the bank.  I’m not going to commit the stupid error I’ve watched so many of my colleagues commit by reinvesting poker money in poker.  The top of poker’s economic pyramid is a long, long way from guys on my level.  Trying to get there is a great way to go broke (and look stupid to boot).  What I’m looking for is something new to hold my interest, and if it’s something I can make money at, that would be nice too.

Some people have told me that I’ve got a great book in me.  I like the idea but I’m not convinced.  I see myself as a decent writer, not a gifted one.  If I was truly gifted this blog would not only come effortlessly but would have reached critical mass by now.  Sitting down to write a book about my experiences in poker would require a greater leap of faith than the one I made in 2006 when I started all of this.  I don’t think I’m ready for that.  Instead I will probably invest a chunk of my savings in some sort of side business(es) and see where it goes.  Right now I only have vague ideas about it, but I’m serious about doing it.  I’d like to make some moves soon.  Open new doors, find new challenges.

It’s all gambling in the end.

I depart for Las Vegas tomorrow.  I’m feeling quite dispassionate about this trip; going out there for the first time in seven months arouses nothing in the way of excitement.

The purpose of this trip is to enjoy the possible fruits of the grand return of the direct-online-satellite entry tournament to the poker scene.  It arrives in the form of Pokerstars’ newly minted NAPT, which debuts at The Venetian on Saturday.  ‘Stars has located a handful of US-based entities who are less squeamish about them than Harrah’s Inc. and taken the bold step of forming a tournament tour in the States that will compete with the WSOP and WPT.  This means attendance that will be heavily fortified by players who have won non-transferable seats online, theoretically creating a larger, softer 5k than is typical in the post-UIGEA/post-recession poker world.  My attempts at winning a seat online were laughably futile, so I will either win a live satellite or peel the five dimes.  I’m a baller like that.

I have less than zero interest in experiencing the Vegas-y side of Vegas right now.  On this trip there will be no gluttonous steak dinner, no limo rides, no Spearmint Rhino, no Drai’s and no wandering about the Strip in goofy blue sunglasses at 6:30 am.  I will probably spend nearly all of my time away from the poker table alone.  I’ve purposely selected The Orleans as my home away from home for this trip.  A relatively sleepy casino hotel that caters mostly to locals, The Orleans is located a couple of miles from the strip, on a stretch of road populated mostly by strip malls, gas stations and fast food joints.  (It’s also a testament to my abstinence from pit gaming:  it’s the last casino from which I can still wrangle a comped room).

My itinerary, roughly, is:

1.  fly in

2.  rent a car

3.  set up shop at the Orleans

4.  report for work at the Venetian poker room every day

5.  profit

If the NAPT event goes poorly, I may hop in my rental car and drive to LA to make my LAPC debut.  I’ve never done the fabled LA/Vegas desert drive.  It will give me the opportunity to see Barstow in February, which I hear is quite lovely!  It will either be very Fear & Loathing or it will be something more dull and lonely.  If I were a betting man I’d put a few bucks on the latter.  As it turns out, I’ll be lacking the insane cohort and the trunk full of exotic drugs on this journey.  Yes, definitely the latter.

I’m not sure how many more of these trips I have in me.  This could be the last cross-country sojourn for awhile (until the WSOP at least), but we’ll see what kind of tune I’m singing in a couple of weeks.  A score of some kind would be welcome.

My 2010 Borgata Winter Open Main Event was a disaster.  That may sound like a harsh assessment but unfortunately it’s true.

My first misstep was innocent enough.  This past Sunday was one of the biggest online tournament days in a long time.  Apparently Pokerstars ran a two million dollar guarantee, Ultimate Bet ran the main event of some big series, and all the Full Tilt guarantees were doubled.  So when faced with the decision of playing the Borgata Main on Sunday (Day 1a) or Monday (Day 1b), I chose Sunday.  I envisioned an army of online pros sequestered in their hotel rooms dumping thousands of dollars in online buy ins and I aimed to avoid them in the real world.

When I took my seat at Table #1 I was in for an unpleasant surprise.  There were two excellent high stakes live cash game players there along with a LeggoPoker instructor who crushes online heads up cash games.  There were also a few other competent pros in our midst.  I was the fourth best player at the table at best. So much for my crafty plan of matching myself up with donkeys.  I’m fully capable of holding my own against tough players, but by the middle of level two I had managed to destroy that possibility.

I played a hand atrociously at the 50-100 level.  I’m not ready to discuss this hand in detail, but the despicable fact that I lied about my hole cards when recounting this hand to a couple of people tells me all I need to know.  The long and short of it is that I made an absolutely hopeless call on the river, giving away three streets of nearly pot-sized bets to a strong player who was obviously value betting every street.  A nitty player would have folded the turn, and any sane/observant person would have snap-folded the river (and a true baller would have check-shove bluffed the river).  So what did I do?  I called him down the whole way.  I’m very disappointed with how I handled this hand and it will probably haunt me for awhile.  I had not made a blatant, stupid, “WTF was that?” type of mistake in quite a long time.  I saved my first one in awhile for the biggest tournament of new year.  Oops.

In closing, I’d like to announce that I now have a new leak in my game:  I’m a calling station.  Making correct hero calls is so goddamned exhilarating that I can no longer restrain myself, even in big spots early in a $3500 Main Event where any moron can see that I’m beat.  I just hate folding, and it’s gotten out of hand.

Possessing this particular leak is an amusing development because my progress as a tournament player has closely tracked my de-nittification; my ability to sniff out bluffs and make big calldowns has served me well over the years.  I’ve undressed a lot of clowns in my day.  But now I’ve gone a bit overboard.  I’m a total station!  At least I’m capable of diagnosing the disease.

Good luck to my friends who are still alive in the BWO Main Event.

My next live tournament action will be at a dog track in Fort Myers!

Just yesterday a longtime reader of this blog told me he thinks that discussion of specific poker hands has always been the best part about my blog, and that my recent reluctance to discuss specific hands here is a shame.  It just so happens that I just played an interesting poker hand about two hours ago, and I am going to talk about it now.  And I’m probably going to get a little obnoxious.

The situation was as follows:

$560 Borgata Deep Stack Event.  I worked my 25,000 chip starting stack up to about 130,000, which was well above average with approximately 240 of 730 players remaining.  Seated at my table were your garden variety of live poker players, but most pertinent was my friend and competitor Joe Cutler sitting two seats to my left.

It was my button and Joe’s big blind.  I held the Ac4c.  The blinds were 1000-2000 with a 300 ante.  A young aggressive player (~100k stack) opened to 5,000 in middle position and was flatted by a calling station (stack covers mine) to my immediate right.  I had not been out of line at my table for a long time and decided that I was in a nice spot to three bet, so I made it 17,500 to go, intending to fold to a 4-bet from the original raiser.  It folded over to Joe in the big blind and he jammed all in for a total of approximately 71,500.  The original raiser folded and so did the calling station.  I thought for awhile and the more I pondered the more I realized that I ought to call.  I thought it through and asked myself if I wanted to do it.  Yes, I did.  I cut out the 54,000 additional chips and called.  Joe turned over AK offsuit.  There was shocked silence when I tabled my small suited ace.  The board improved neither of our hands and Joe won a big pot with ace-king high.  And then the uproar began.  In one fell swoop that confused the hell out of everyone else at the table, my stack was cut more than in half.  (Two levels later, I ran QQ into AA to bust).

Word spread pretty quickly about my out-of-the box call with a trash ace.  I am told that people at other tables had witnessed the hand and were discussing it.  For their part, my tablemates were alternately dumbfounded and highly critical (one announced that I’d had  “senior moment”).  I was approached on the next break by a couple of my friends asking me what in the world I was doing.

The answer is that I was making a mathematically sound decision and trying to win a poker tournament!  At the risk of sounding a bit obnoxious, hands like the one I just described indicate to me that my ability in poker tournaments far outstrips most of my competition, including many fellow pros.

In the aftermath of this hand, I had the strong inclination that my decision was correct.  My decision was made on intution and feel, not pure math.  It is impossible for me to actually calculate percentages while sitting a the table.  However, upon returning to my room I sat down and actually worked through the numbers.  My goal was not to justify the decision but to get an honest read on it.  Here’s what I came up with (and please, because I don’t run these calcs often, I’d love to be corrected if I’m doing it wrong):

Preflop, there were 6,000 chips in the pot.  The opener’s 5k and the caller’s 5k added an additional 10k and my reraise put another 17.5k into the middle.  That brought us to 33,500 in the pot before Joe acted.  When Joe pushed all in, he was calling 15,500 additional chips and raising 54,000.  Therefore there was 103,000 in the pot, and I had to call off 54,000 to win it.  This meant that I needed 54/157, which amounted to 34.4% equity, to make this call correct.  I needed to be roughly a 2-1 dog or better to make this call-off.

I ran pokerstove, and giving Joe a range of 88+, AQs+, AQo+, KQs for his re-ship, I found that Ac4c has 32.95% equity against this conservative estimate of what he might shove with.

Now let’s consider a few other factors.  First, Joe happens to be a very good poker player—a poker player who knows my reputation for three-betting light and a poker player who puts in a lot of online volume (where 4-betting is standard practice).  Joe knew that he was in a very nice spot to cold four bet jam—even with shitty hands that I was actually favored against.  Even without  putting those hands into the mix (i.e., presuming that Joe is never bluffing) and assigning Joe a very tight range, I am getting very close to the right price to call.  Adding in just a handful of bluffs easily tips the scale in favor of a call.

Let’s further consider the implications of winning and losing the pot.  If I won the pot, I’d be sitting on a monster stack and my entire table would become very reluctant to play pots against “Mr. Crazy.”  It’s safe to say that I could begin opening pots with impunity without fear of being three-bet light for the remainder of the night.

If I lost the pot (as I did), I would not be knocked out of the tournament nor crippled.  I’d have a solid reshove-type stack.  It is key to remember that the structure of the tournament in question is incredibly slow, and that the money bubble is not reached until well into Day Two tomorrow.  This is a $500 event and is NOT the kind of tournament you want to cockroach your way through.

Finally, there is some residual value in long-term advertising.  Joe is bound to remember my “crazy call” for some time, and word has (and will continue to) circulate about it.  The more loony my reputation becomes, the less I will have to deal with opponents playing back at me.

In summary, to all the tightwads out there who can’t wrap their brains around calling off half of a big stack with a marginal hand:

I’m not crazy.  I’m just better than you.

At the end of 2008 Janeen and I were newly wed and had just returned from our honeymoon.  While our wedding and honeymoon were wonderful experiences, I came home with a smoldering sense that I had unfinished business to attend to.  On the professional front, the last half of 2008 had been a disappointment, a poker washout lost to the rapturous world of wedding planning.  I showed up for 2009 hungry and determined to have my best year of pro poker yet.  When it was all said and done, I believe I accomplished that goal.  Here’s a look back:

Key Accomplishments:

PPI Elite:  When Poker Players International was created, I made the short list of players they initially asked to join their “Elite” team.  I was bestowed this honor despite not having compiled the minimum amount of lifetime winnings supposedly required.  This was a tacit acknowledgment of two things:  that my peers think I can play and that I am not a douchebag.  If my agents thought I was either a moron running above expectation or a douchebag, I would not have made the cut.

Lock Pro:  Without PPI Elite status I wouldn’t have been able to land my Lock Pro deal, as the initial roster of Lock Pros was culled from the PPI Elite group.  Becoming a resident pro at an online poker site was the biggest “off the felt” accomplishment of my career.  By the way, does anyone want to sign up for a Lock Poker account?

One Million:  When the bubble burst in the August Foxwoods Megastack event, it became official.  I had over $1,000,000 in reported live tournament earnings, all compiled since 2006.  Not bad.

Back to Back Final Tables:  In March, again at Foxwoods, I ran really good.  I ran so freakin’ good that I made appearances at back-to-back final tables, creating a small, barely audible buzz in the East Coast poker world.  Hey, a buzz is a buzz!

Shipping Mohegan:  On August 1st, I took first place in the main event of a summer series at Mohegan Sun.  It was my first outright win since January of 2008 and my first six figure score since 2007.

Another WSOP ME Cash:  It took some more serious rungood (I was drawing to two outs on the river twice along the way), but I was able to put together my third WSOP Main Event cash in five years.

The Bad Side:

Traveling so much was a drag:  Traveling around from casino to casino gets old.  I’m over it. Does it beat a regular 9 to 5 job?  For me, yes.  But it does get old.  I was away from Brooklyn probably one-third of the time this year, and that is a lot of time away from the comforts of home and the people I love.  There is nothing like the sight of Ruthie sprinting back to me at the dog park after catching a dirty tennis ball.  She’s exhilarated, silly, stupid and proud all at once in that moment.  I don’t get to see that in Atlantic City!

“The Circuit” gets pretty stale:  I spent 2009 playing a lot of poker with the same people.  With the state of the economy keeping a lot of recreational players away from all events with a buy-ins of $500 or more, the East Coast poker scene was like an extended home game.  I could give you a pretty decent scouting report on almost any East Coast regular (go ahead, try me).  While familiarity doesn’t necessarily breed contempt, being around the same people all the time isn’t so great when only a select few are trusted friends.  I wouldn’t mind an infusion of new blood, but that seems unlikely right now.

Hideous Dry Spell:  At the 2009 WSOP, I threw up more bricks than Chris Dudley.  It was comical.  It was like getting punched in the face for a month straight.  Spending most of the summer in Las Vegas while steadily losing money is probably more fun for 23 year olds than it is for me.

I’m bored: I hate to admit it, but this year wore on me.  I’m bored.  I just am.  I guess I’ve been doing this for awhile.  I expect this feeling to fade soon, but it’s there.

2009’s Big Hands:

I’ve lost my mojo with respect to describing poker hands.  All I can do is approximate the stack/bet sizes and boards in these hands, but I will convey the general idea for each.

Slowrolls:  2009 was the year I got slowrolled.  I was the victim of poker etiquette’s biggest no-no on three occasions.  They were:

a)  Day 1 of the WSOP Main Event, we are playing the second to last hand of the night.  I picked up QQ and got into a raising war with an aggressive Brazilian guy.  I put in the final raise, all in for my tournament life.  He agonized for probably around a full minute before making a resigned call with… two kings!?  The board wasn’t particularly interesting until a queen rolled off on the river.  Oh hi!

b) My bustout hand from the same tournament (WSOP Main).  We were pretty deep in the money, and I’d scratched my way up to having a decent sized stack.  I had JJ in the hijack and opened to around 2.5x.  It folded to Fabrice Soulier in the big blind and he put in a hefty reraise.  I had no read on him but figured that he was an accomplished player who might do this with a pretty wide range, and it looked like a standard late position vs. blinds battle, so I simply four-bet all in.  He proceeded to go into a chip shuffling routine complete with a series of pained “woe is me, this is such a tough decision” faces.  The chip shuffling and hemming and hawing went on for so long that I reached the conclusion that I was trailing exactly one hand—an unlikely QQ that he couldn’t possibly have tanked that long with.  I waited patiently, for probably at least 90 seconds, for what felt at that point like an imminent fold, until Mr. Soulier announced “call” and turned over two kings (again).  I was both dumbfounded and irate as I watched the board brick out and exited the premises.  My best guess is that he was waiting for ESPN’s TV cameras to come over to cover the hand, which they never did.

c) I was pretty deep in the last Borgata deep stack event, maybe 20 or 30 players from the money bubble.  I had a large stack and was in the big blind with the 9-5 of spades.  A good young player opened in early position and got flatted by a lunatic by the name of Tae Baik two spots behind him, then by Bagels Cavezza, and then again by the button.  Both Baik and Bagels covered me, and I liked my implied odds in this very unusual five way pot.  I tossed in the chips to call.  The flop came J-9-5 rainbow, giving me bottom two pair.  Rather than risk seeing the flop checked all the way through, I decided not to mess around with this already sizeable pot, and led at it with a nearly pot-sized bet.  The early position raiser was visibly unhappy about it but chose to reraise all in for just a bit more.  Then it folded to the lunatic—an unpredictable, strange and (frankly) sometimes terrible player who I have history with—and he tanked for a long time before flat calling the all in.  Flat calling in this spot was simply ridiculous.  The size of the pot already made it one of the biggest in the entire tournament, and any normal player would decide whether his hand was good enough to go with, and if so, try and shut me out.  But not this idiot; he flat called the gigantic bet.

It folded back to me and I asked the dealer if I could reraise.  I knew that the correct answer was no, but I gave it a shot anyway.  He said no, so I put in the chips to call, planning to jam the turn unless it was a jack.  But then turn was a really bad card:  an eight.  I aborted the plan.  Q-10—which this dumb-dumb was actually capable of flatting the flop with—had just got there.  I chickened out and checked.  The guy thought about this briefly before making a big bet which amounted to almost my entire stack.  This sent me into the tank for a very long time, probably ranking in the top three timebanks of my live poker career.  A big crowd gathered to see what would happen.  I asked the guy, whose command of English wasn’t strong enough to answer anyway, “you really flatted the flop with Q-10?” and he reacted by standing up, grunting and pumping his fist.  Ummm, okay.

In the end I decided—based on my history with him and by his flat call on the flop—that he had AJ and KJ and even AA often enough for me to go with the hand.  I said “Okay, I’m all in” and pushed my stack forward.  His reaction, incredibly, was one of horror.  Fist pump time was over.  He slunk bank into his seat forlornly.  He had to put in something like 1/16th of the amount in the pot to call but for some reason he wasn’t doing it.  I had the best hand!  Bagels laughed aloud and said “oooops!”  The moron looked like he had seen a ghost and again went into a long period of silent contemplation.  Now half the room was watching.  Finally it must have dawned on him that he had to call with any two cards, so he did.  I flipped over bottom two pair like it was the nuts and he showed us:  pocket nines for a flopped middle set (for the record, the short stack had KK).  He had a powerhouse hand from the start and I was drawing dead!  An epic slowroll.  My tournament was over.  If looks could kill this guy would have been dismembered in the two seconds it took me to gather myself before I stormed out of the room.

Ballsy Barrel:  I was really frisky on the money bubble of the WSOP Main Event.  I pulled off a preflop four-bet pissing contest with QJ to pick up a bunch of chips, and then only around fifteen players off the money, this:

An excellent internet player was seated two spots to my right.  He had a very big stack and was abusing the bubble.  I waited for a chance to possibly make a stand, and chose to do so when I picked up AQ on the button.  The internet player raised and I three-bet him.  Everyone else folded back around to him.  He chose to flat the three bet and we saw a flop of J-5-3 with two spades (I had no spade).  He checked and I made a half-pot continuation bet.  He called rather quickly.  I now had a pot sized bet left in my stack.  I decided that the kid had to have something in the 1010-77 range or top pair at best, as a stronger hand or a draw would likely check/shove the flop.  I felt strongly that it was a pocket pair that didn’t connect.  The turn came a blank, a red seven.  He checked, and it was time for a huge decision.  I could give up on this hand and comfortably fold into the money, or I could do what a professional poker player ought to do:  go with my read and try to bluff him off his medium strength hand.

When you are near the money bubble of the WSOP Main Event, poker hands are not played in a vacuum.  I had been though a terrible summer in Vegas.  I was taking an awful beating, with zero cashes over a month’s time and I was now finally on the cusp of getting off the schneid in the biggest event of the year.  There was a strong argument to be made for the sub-optimal play of taking the safe route, checking the hand down, and locking up the money.  That would ensure a profit in this tournament, but true professionals do not play simply to profit.  True pros play the way Herm Edwards once famously exhorted:  we play to win the game.  In Herm’s honor, I conjured up my most impassive expression and pushed my stack in.  “All in.”

The internet kid was well aware that this kind of a bluff was in my arsenal.  And he didn’t fold immediately.  He took his time.  After a long think, he made several attempts to engage me in conversation.  I passed on the chit-chat.  In fact, I was incapable of talking.  As the seconds ticked by I became acutely aware of how upset I would become if he called me down.  I envisioned him making a ballsy call with two eights and busting me.  I then imagined the cold-blooded, ruthless, evil scrutiny I would subject myself to in the aftermath, along with the ensuing havoc it would wreak on my psyche.  It was not a pretty picture at all.  He better fold.

For the first time in a very long time—probably for the first time in over two years—I was scared at the poker table.  Straight-up scared of this kid calling me down.  I was consumed in the gravity of the moment, on the verge of fucking up my biggest event of the year.  My genitals shrunk to the size of peas and I could feel the perspiration coming out of every pore in my body.  I was helpless.  I stared straight ahead and silently begged this kid to please have mercy on my poor tortured soul and fold his fucking cards.  After what felt like an eternity, he complied.  I tried to hide the massive relief that washed over me, into me, through me, to my very core.  I flicked my cards into the muck like they were on fire then did my best to collect the pot with both hands, which were shaking violently.  I haven’t been scared at the poker table (or anywhere) since.

A Thoughtful Gift:  At the final table of the aforementioned Mohegan main event, I came in with the chip lead.  However, it was really a co-chip lead because there was one player with only a few thousand chips fewer than my 1.4 million.  He’s a deceptive player by the name of Steve Fiorentini.  I call Steve “deceptive” because there is an incongruity between his appearance and the way he plays.  He’s probably in his fifties and looks like a happy-go-lucky recreational player who decided to play poker instead of golf that day—the kind of player who generally gets eaten alive in the bigger events.  But that’s not what he is.  In actuality he is a very sharp player with a dangerous wild streak.  He is a live wire who can and will try crazy things.  At the time, I had relatively little experience playing with Steve, but I was given a scouting report on his play the night before from a reliable source.

I came out of the gate quickly at the final table, winning a few uncontested pots, thereby surging into the chip lead by a small margin.  I probably won five or six of the first ten pots.  Then I picked up two black sevens in early position and dutifully put in another raise.  It folded around to Steve in one of the blinds, and he put in a very large reraise.  Based on what I knew about Steve, the size of his reraise and the previous ten hands, I felt that he was making this play pretty light.  I called the three-bet to play the flop in position.  It came Q-4-3 with two clubs and he fired a big continuation bet.  I still felt I had the best hand, so I called immediately.  A big pot was now brewing.  The turn card saved me a tough decision, because it was gin:  a red seven.  Steve moved all in and I snap called.  He turned over 55 and missed his gutterball on the river.  I had ALL the chips and cruised to a four way chop that netted me over $120k.

The hand was immense, worth tens of thousands of dollars in equity.  This is a fact that is not lost on Steve.  To this day, he greets me with a cordial “you’re welcome!” instead of the more traditional “hello” whenever we see each other.

Goals For 2010:  I’m going into 2010 without any specific goals, just some general ideas of what I’d like to accomplish.  I honestly don’t know where this year will take me.  It might look just like last year and it really might not.

Travel less:  I have an online deal with Lock Poker and a very comfortable life at home.  It’s obvious what I should do.  I am going to play more online poker this year, which means I will spare myself the rigors of traveling the circuit.  I’m currently encouraged by the fact that a few nights ago I made a couple of final tables online.

Play more cash and learn other games:  I’ve been saying this forever, so take it with a grain of salt.

Do something in a major:    The final frontier in live tournament poker is for me to do some serious damage in a tournament with a big (defined as 5k and up) buy in.  This is the only obvious tournament accomplishment that has escaped my grasp—the elusive monster score.  This is partially because I refuse to play majors unless I satellite in.  My policy of not buying directly into majors will not change in 2010.  Even though I am convinced that my expected value is positive even in the big events, I consider totals exceeding $5,000 to be too large a chunk of my bankroll to put at risk.  If I choose to chase the goal of hitting a major in 2010, I will need staking.  And therein lies the problem.

I abhor the idea of staking.  I am convinced that long term staking arrangements are bad deals for both the player and the backer, unless the backer has the capital to create a huge stable that reduces the variance by effectively carpet bombing the poker world.  Even the best players in the world have only a razor thin edge in poker tournaments.  Chopping that edge into smaller pieces makes little sense.  Add in the concept of makeup (i.e., the debt incurred by a player with a negative return for a period of time) and you put both parties, but particularly the player, in an unenviable position.

I will only be staked on my own terms.  These are: absolutely no makeup and I personally select which events I will be staked in.  I also want my backers to be friends and family that come from outside the poker community.  My only brush with staking in 2009 was positively disgusting.  This blog is not meant for drama, so I will provide only a cursory description of what happened.

I received an unsolicited offer to be backed in a single tournament.  Because the terms of the offer were for a single tournament outside my typical price range, I quickly accepted the offer. The offer came from individuals with whom I was not friendly.  They were, however, close with one of my so-called friends.  This particular so-called friend caught wind of the offer and ended up procuring it for himself, to my exclusion.  The facts stated in this last sentence are partially disputed (of course), but after twelve years of developing and practicing the skills of weighing and analyzing evidence followed by four years of observing the behavior of liars, I know when I’m being fucked over.

The end result is an increased conviction that any backing I accept will come from only people I know and trust.  It’s a matter of deciding how important the big tournaments are to me.

Shameless pitch:  if you are an actual friend of mine and are reading this, do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to be part of the great DZ staking conglomerate that I have yet to form!

And that about sums up my 2009 in poker.  In current, more exciting news, Janeen and I are headed to Southern California on Friday to a) visit her family; and b) witness the New York Jets shocking the world in person.  On the live poker front, I have no interest in playing anything until the Borgata Winter Open begins in about ten days.

Happy New Year loyal readers!