Small Update

Took a small break from poker, but I came back with a vengence. I cashed in both FTOPS events I was in and finished with an ROI of 132% in my 4.40/2.20 heeb. Because of my recent success I have put up a 1k MTT BAP on talkingpoker.com/forums. I will be posting more updates to track my progress through the MTTs.

Voting Rant

So as most of you already know I am 18 and this is my first time being able to vote. I am not a very political person, but I do believe it is our duty as citizens to choose the next leader(s) of the US.

Now I know that more people don't vote than those who do. And it is especially common among young people to not vote, but it does upset me how people look at voting.

Last couple weeks at work they have been having us hand out little stickers, pens, postcards or w/e to give to students with the slogan "Yes on 39" written on them. Issue 39 is a levy that will increase taxes by a measly $98 per year on average to keep our school as cheap as possible for the students. As the weeks ran on we began to run out of swag to hand out until we eventually had nothing last night. Now seeing as last night was the night before people had to go out and vote I figured I would do my best to try and remind people to vote, and to vote yes on 39.

As I was doing this, it really began to hit home how little people care. I got comments like "Yeah Right", "Like it matters", "Why should I waste my time", and "Oh, it will pass." When students were saying this it just pissed me off. Kids, my age not giving two shits about the future of the country, or even the school they go to for christ's sake. See, it upset me even more because, I live in a different county and cant vote for the levy because it isn't on my ballot, and students just want to blow it off and not vote because they don't care. THIS IS SOMETHING DIRECTLY AFFECTING THEM AND THEY DON'T CARE!!! Are they serious? I mean, I'm sure they will be bitching like there is no tomorrow when the cost of schooling goes up because they couldn't get off their lazy asses, click a few buttons, and make a difference.

The worst part, Is that 95% if not more of these students wont even be affected by the increase in taxes because they obviously don't own a home.

I mean, I know I can't do anything to change things other than go out and vote myself. Its just sick to know that we have the freedom to vote, a freedom that many others would die for AND HAVE DIED FOR, and these idiots don't even care.

/end rant

Live Tourney Report

WARNING WARNING WARNING

WAY LONG, DON'T READ


I'm gonna go ahead and post a whole update with all major hands I played. So I bought in, got my chips and took my assigned seat. I sat down next too a guy who I will call "Ipod" because of his rather annoying habit of having his Ipod on and not listening/following the action and us having to remind him. This is the discussion that followed.

Him: Bullshit, they allow the check and raise move here.
Me: Yea, So?
Him: Well it is normally a gentleman's agreement not to check and
raise, that is a dirty move.
Me: (Phil Ivey WTF Face) What?
Him: Yea, the check raise is dirty and uncalled for it can get you shot.
Me: It's part of poker.
Him: Not real poker sonny.
Me: LOL

He called me sonny, awesome, the old fart who thinks that real poker is played without check-raises just called me sonny.

So the game begins 40 players registered, 5 tables 8 each to start. My table is a very very loose passive table, lots of limp/calling and normally around 4-5 people see the flop! Most players who bet or raised would only bet or raise the minimum, I seriously for a minute was confused as to whether or not it was limit poker. There were only two semi-decent players at my table. Sweet I figure I'm gonna have an easy time here. First hand I play is about 10 hands in to the first level.

I get AKo UTG and make it 200 to go (25/50 Blinds).
UTG +1 Calls.
All Else Fold
Flop AK3 rainbow. I bet 375 into the 475 pot. He min raises to 750 and I shove. He only had 800 more and called with 33.
He holds up and I am down to 600 chips.

Now because it was still semi-early in the first blind level I didn't want to use my shove, have to use my rebuy and be stuck shortstacked when the blinds got pretty high before the break. I held on and grinded it out and got my stack back up to 1600 when the following hand came up. blinds 100/200. I am in middle position and it folds around to me. I shove from MP with AQand it folds around to the BB who also happens to be my mother. This wonderful conversation took place.

Mom: Honey you know I hate decisions like this.
Me: LOL
Mom: Ugh, such a tough decision
Me: LOL
Mom: Oh well, its too good to fold
Me: Oh Shi....

Now if you have ever played poker with my mom you would know she is way to tight especially in later stages, so when she called I assumed the worst. Luckily she had KQ and no miracle king for her and she was out. She tells me that she is disowning me because I knocked her out, yada yada yada.

Me: I love you mom, will you still cook me dinner?
Mom: (Already out of the building smoking a cigarette)

She only had 1200 in chips so I am sitting on 2900 and stay about there by picking up the blinds once every rotation. I'm chilling out waiting for a spot to double with about 5 minutes left till break.

Ipod limps utg and 3 other limpers. I wake up OTB with QQ completely content on taking the blinds and going into the break/add on period with 5k. Ipod gives a whole speech about how he hates his hand and he has played it (Insert ludicrous number here) times and never won with it. He eventually calls and flips AK.

Board comes
2 5 7 J

Ipod: Ace Dealer

River: Ace

Ipod: Thank You, Sorry Kiddo.

Whatever I lost a race, it stung that it was on the river, but whatever. I get my rebuy of 2500 chips with about enough time for one or two more hands. To my excitement I wake up with Aces the very next hand, looking at a pot with two people already all in. I instacall, hold up against the Jacks and AK and the round ends with me sitting on 6700 in chips. I add on for 2500 more making my total stack 9200 with 300/600 blinds after the break. SWEET! I'm actually in pretty good position to do some damage after the break.

During the break I made the stupid fucking mistake of getting into a discussion of politics with the players at the table. The topic of discussion was Bill being Hillary's running mate if (won't happen) she wins the nomination. I as well as a few other players thought it was a very high probability. Then Ipod chimes in.

Ipod: Bill cant be elected as vice president.
Me: Yes he can.
Ipod: Constitution wont allow it, he has served two terms as
president
Me: Constitution says you cannot be elected as president of the
U.S. for more than two terms, it says nothing about being
president for two terms and then running again as a vice
presidential candidate.
Ipod: Well what if Hillary dies, what happens then? He cant be
elected president again can he.
Me: He wouldn't be getting elected as president again would he? No
he would be furfilling his role as vice president ASSUMING the
role as president of the U.S. if anything were ever to happen to
Hillary.
Ipod: Ha, you don't know anything, you are just a kid.

Now normally, someone calling me a kid, or sonny, or anything like that doesn't upset me. However, I become very upset when I am told that I don't know anything by and old fart who doesn't even know what the constitution of his united states says. At this point I actually had to walk outside before I started to get upset with the guy. See the event had a no swearing policy and when I get upset I tend to swear, so I didn't want to have to serve any penalties.

I come back as the next round is starting and take my place. Tables were condense so there are two new players at my table, but they suck just as much as the last two did. Lots of limping with 10 and less big blind stacks, you know expert plays, level infinity thinking. The following hand comes up.

I am in the BB with 8600 and my 600 blind in the pot. I have AQ
Ipod Limps from MP. Ipod has me covered.
Rest of table folds
I make it 1400 more, total of 2k.
Ipod calls.
Flop AQ9
I check, going for the extra dirty, check and raise play, hoping with every fiber of my being he doesn't think we are playing "real poker" and pull out a gun and shoot me.
Ipod Bets 600.
I laugh and shove my last 7200 in there, 6600 more to Ipod.

Ipod thinks for a while, asks 4 times how much it is. Counts out the chips. 3 times during this minute that he is thinking, he acts as if he is going to fold. At this point I know he is fairly weak and want him to call obv so I can be rich. I call a clock on him. Not only to try and tilt him into calling, but also because we are on short fucking levels and its live play. I cant have this fuck eating 1/5 of my whole level time limit while deciding if he wants to call with his mediocre holdings. He gives a little speech, really didn't pay much attention to what he said and he calls. I ask him what he has, he says he doesn't have to show and he doesn't
Turn J
River 5

I show my AQ and look at him, he sits there for 15 seconds, looks at his cards, my cards and the board. I go to scoop the pot as he hasn't showed any interest in it when he finally flips and shows JJ for three Jacks.

Now everything that has happened. Up until this point, and then the slowroll/suckout combo kinda got under my skin and let it get to me. The last thing I said before I left was "That wasn't fucking called for."

I just guess its good so that I didn't have any chips so that the Jesus crew couldn't give me a time out for swearing.

All in all I feel that I played excellent poker and just got very unlucky in the end. I feel that my player reading abilities have gotten much better as I was able to start to pick up on how weak/strong a player was by his gestures. It was an awesome experience and I thank everyone who gave me a shot and showed support. I'm just sorry I couldn't come home with some money to fill your pockets to show you how grateful I really am.

Update

My 75 cents into 1k journey was a very short and peaceful one. I realized very quickly that $24 isn't much of a bankroll and variance quickly got the better of me and I busted the last bit I had in my account. Since then I have been running stakes for CalifNaughti on TalkingPoker.com. I have been playing $5.50 45 man sit n gos on PokerStars. In my first two I cashed in one enough to return her stake back and turn a small profit. In the second one I went out early as my QQ ran into a set all in on the flop. I lost the small profit that I had made almost as quickly as I made it was again left with 0.00 in my account. Luckily Cali decided she would stake me for another round of two and I have begun playing those.

In live play news, I managed to sell 10 $12 shares to members on TalkingPoker to get enough to play in a local $50 buy in, one $50 rebuy and one $20 add on tournament which begins tomorrow at 11:30. Wish Me Luck!

Yea, so trip is over, I was way to lazy to update. Good Time, Lots of Booze, Lots of "smoking." Once in a lifetime experience. It was amazing, New York was beautiful. Everything was awesome!
Anyhoo, back on to poker. Haven't really been playing seriously, cashed out almost everything I had online and busted what little bit I had left.

Now onto my recent "endeavor" Im trying to turn water into wine I guess you could say. Following in Chris Ferguson's footsteps and trying to turn 75cents that I had leftover in my account into 1k. So far I have done well, I have my total bankroll at $24.

Hockey and Deer

So, I started my trip this Saturday. Flew from Dayton to Chicago, then flew out to Edmonton, Canada. Luckily Wes opted to pick me up (good for me, not so good for him. See later). Went back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit. Ate at the ballin' restaurant at the hotel very good food. Later that night we went to the Oilers game. It was tickets for the troops night so all 10 of the Canadian soldiers got tickets to the game and were in attendance. We of course were rooting for the home team because that makes the game so much more interesting. The first period was rather boring not much going on. Chicago went up one-nil and Edmonton tied it shortly after. Edmonton took the lead shortly after, but Chicago tied it up and it went to overtime and eventually shootouts. The stadium erupted after the Oilers put it away with this shootout goal.After the game we went to the local casino as the gambling, and drinking (!!!111eleven) age in Alberta is only 18. The kind pit boss or whatever he was told us about the 4/8 limit dealers choice game (AKA drunken limit Omaha). We sat and Wes managed to scoop a sick pot with the kill on on the very first hand when he sat. Over the next couple of hours I managed to lose a couple hundred bucks and get a few drinks in me so it was a fun night. All together between the two of us we went back to the hotel -$87 and drunk off our asses so it was a good night. The next morning we left Edmonton on our way back to Rapid City. It's a two day trip so we stopped for the night in Great Falls, Montana and headed out the next morning. Now let me tell you, MONTANA SUCKS. We were on the road, scheduled to be back in Rapid City about 7pm local time, well, the Montana deer obviously didn't have that in their plans. As I am driving down the Montana "highway" its pretty dark and a deer steps onto the road, I barely had any time to react and swerved to the left. The deer took another step and I hit it. I screamed "Oh Fuck" Was yelled back "What the fuck was that?" and I yelled "A Fuckin' Deer." I drove a little further, barely avoiding another fuckin' deer on the road and found a place to pull over and look at the damage. It wasn't pretty. This is what we saw.We got back in the car and I managed to drive about 35mph like a scared little bitch for about an hour. We stopped at a little ma and pop shop in bumfuck Montana and found out the nearest hotel was about 35 miles away, rather than taking another hour to get there, Wes drove the rest of the way back to Rapid City (about 1.5 hours NORMAL speed) and we made it back to his house, went to the sleep for the night. Next day when we got up we had lunch and went to the dealership to find out what the damage on the car was. Found out it is going to cost about $3500 or so to get the whole thing repaired so I'm back to busto from my very short stay in robusto land. Wes managed to break his xbox so he went out and bought a new one, along with Guitar Hero 3 and we played that. The next day we went to the Firehouse restaurant and had dinner there. Very good food, had a laugh when the waiter (very very good service) about shit his pants at the 100% tip (Bawwwwwwwlin). I made $200 forcing myself to eat the biggest cookie I have ever seen in my life while Wes made vomiting noises (fun times). That makes me +$200 in prop bets so far on the trip, hopefully I can run like I normally do in prop bets against Wes (flawless) on the rest of the trip and win some money back :-) Next day we went to Best Buy and Wes bough Rock Band. Not the greatest IMO, the drums are very hard to play and the guitar sucks worse than GH3, but hey its fun to play different instruments I guess. Got some coaching from Wes on 50nl and railed him while he played 1000nl and such. Learned quite a few things, mainly that I open way to tight and need to 3bet with a wider range. Oh, and Wes runs like a god. Anyway, should probably get some shut eye, its like 5 am local time. I will post again soon.

Fildy

Family and Food

Spent today with the family, it went way better than expected considering I hadn't really talked to my mom in a while before hand. Figured I would post a few pictures of the "Fam" to let everyone see why I am so crazy! First up is PaPaw. I really wish I got to see him more often, only really see him around holidays and such but he is such a riot!So then it was time to eat, caught up with my brother in the kitchen (who am I kidding, he found ME in the kitchen) and I told him we should take a hawt myspace picture, this unfortunately was the result.After chowing down I found my cousin and asked her if she had drank my pop. This was her reaction. Guilty much?On to the rest. My brother and his wonderful girlfriend.My mom wire-kung-fu fighting my aunt. WTF?, and my granny with both of my baby cousins. Oh, and how could I forget the guy who made all of this possible, and the BEST boss in the world, my uncle.

In conclusion, I would just like to add that it is usually not a good idea to try to get four people who love to hate each other together in a room and take a serious picture.