One Way Ticket to Vegas

I'm heading to Vegas for the World Series of Poker in twelve hours. It still seems surreal to me that it's already WSOP time again. It feels like not more than a month or two ago I was sitting on a sidewalk outside the Rio taking a moment to honor the inevitable emotions one will feel from going deep in the Main Event and having dreams dashed by a three-outter for an average-and-a-half sized stack. But although it feels like just yesterday, it's been a pretty long year for me. I'm not quite as wealthy after losing a small fortune betting on the Presidential election, but I do feel like I've grown up a lot as a person. I'm much more at peace with my thoughts and life, a peace that I hope to maintain through what can be a very emotionally rattling stretch of six weeks.

I've spent most of tonight making sure my iPhone is loaded with music I can use to 'stay in the zone' (a corny, over-used phrase, but one that seems appropriate right now) for a summer of tournaments. The playlist will mostly alternate between hip-hop and trance. This weekend is the $1k 'Stimulus' event. Beyond that, I'm really not sure what I'll play, but the $1,500 6-Max event on Tuesday looks appealing at the moment.

One aspect of this trip I am excited about is the unknown. I have no return flight. I have no hotel accommodation beyond Monday. And I only have enough money for what I would describe as a slightly larger than meager amount of participation in tournaments. Within a week, I could be completely broke and back home or living in a high-rise condo following through on an outside chance to win WSOP Player of the Year thanks to a fantastic start... or anywhere in between.

For the fourth year in a row, I'll be documenting the ups and downs, but hopefully mostly ups, on my WSOP blog at PokerTips.org.

Thanks for reading and may we both have a good summer!

Memorial Day Update

I've been in Indianapolis this weekend visiting friends and family before heading to Vegas next weekend for the WSOP. I skipped online poker yesterday to attend the Indianapolis 500 with a friend and his girlfriend and father. It's a pretty fun event to attend if you ever get the chance. It reminds me some of the WSOP. For those drivers, so much of their lives depend on the outcome of that race, and yet, there's quite a great deal of parity in determining the winner. No matter how good of a driver they are, it definitely takes some good fortune to be standing in the winner's circle at the end. You have to avoid being the victim of an accident despite not making any error of your own (bad beat) and also have to catch the right breaks with the timing of caution flags and integrity of your vehicle (run hot, table draw).

Despite growing up in Indiana, this was only the second time I have attended the 500. You'd definitely be hard pressed to find an event that attracts such a huge and yet nearly non-diverse population. I think something like 300,000 people attend the race annually, and it seemed like probably 299,500 of them were white. The irony is, many of the drivers are foreign. I'd say maybe only like 10 of the 33 drivers are American. There are quite a few Brazilian drivers including Helio Castroneves, the very likable guy who yesterday won his third Indy 500. I did not observe his triumph without some disappointment. To pique my interest in the race, I placed bets on a few drivers who seemed to be under appreciated by the betting market. One such driver was Dan Wheldon who finished second.

I leave Friday for Las Vegas. The $1,000 buy-in 'Stimulus Special' is this weekend. I'm pretty pumped for that event and for the series in general. It'd be really nice to snap off a sizable score right from the get-go and therein be positioned for a more extensive degree of participation for the summer. And that's my 'LDO' statement of the day.

I have an Uncle joining me in Vegas this weekend for his first live tournament. He started playing online last year after hearing about my bits of success and has built up a bankroll somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 despite never having made a deposit. Sometimes I have pointless, ego-driven thoughts like, "I wonder if I'm the best poker tournament player in Houston?" His results make me wonder if I'm even the best player in my family!

Most Ballin' NBA Jersey

My buddy Paul and I had a discussion last night regarding what the most ballin' or cool or gangster (or whatever other adjective you care to use) current NBA player's jersey is to wear. We agreed on a few criteria that should be weighed in reaching this conclusion:

Non-Mainstream

You have to immediately rule out wearing jerseys of super-mainstream guys like Kobe or Lebron. As pimp as those guys might be, if you wear a Kobe jersey, you're not a baller, you're just another donk in a Kobe jersey. In order to wear the most ballin' NBA jersey, you have to go with a player that your Mom has definitely never heard of.

At the same time, you don't want to wear the jersey of someone who is too obscure. People who maintain a casual following of the NBA should have heard of your player before. No one has heard of Damien Wilkins and there's nothing ballin' about wearing his jersey. People will probably just think its one of those lame custom jerseys where people get their own last name printed on it.

Not Too Fresh

One suggestion Paul had for most ballin' NBA jersey was Houston Rockets point guard Aaron Brooks. I objected to this however on the grounds that he's too fresh. A month ago, no one knew who Aaron Brooks was. Fast forward through two playoff series of fantastic play and now he's a pimp. However, I feel like the problem with wearing an Aaron Brooks jersey is that he's too fresh. If you saw a guy wearing an Aaron Brooks jersey, you'd almost want to inquire how he had enough time to cut the tags off. There's just a certain 'trying too hard' element to wearing a jersey of Aaron Brooks at the present moment.

The Team They Play For

One consideration you have to make beyond just the player himself is the team he plays for. In a vacuum, I think Kevin Durant is a very interesting choice for most ballin' NBA jersey, but the problem is, he plays for the unnervingly un-baller Oklahoma City Thunder. The fact that they're in Oklahoma City is bad enough, but on top of that, their jerseys are teal colored. Ouch! On the same grounds, I would rule out Pacers stud Danny Granger who is an otherwise fantastic candidate for this honor. There's nothing baller about Indiana.

On the flip side of the same coin, you don't want to wear a jersey of a guy who is on a team known for having tons of donk fanboys. Sorry Lamar Odom.

Not Too Current

At this very moment, I think you have to rule out wearing the jersey of any player who is still in contention for the NBA title. Wearing a Nuggets, Lakers (though you can never wear a Lakers jersey), Cavs, or Magic jersey is just going to send the message that you're trying to be 'in the moment'. Part of what makes a jersey ballin' is a certain timeless element to it. If you aren't sure what the answer to the question "will this jersey still be ballin' in two months?" is, then you shouldn't wear it.

Upside

Lastly, there should be a lot of upside to the player whose jersey you are wearing. You don't really want to go for a proven veteran. It's too much of a risk-averse, lame decision. The player whose jersey you wear should have a good chance of being much, much more well-known 3-5 years from now than he is currently. The idea is that once he finally reaches Kobesque status, people can look back on your clothing choices from years ago and be like, "damn... he saw this coming!"

With all of that criteria in mind, Paul and I decided that the most ballin' NBA player's jersey you can currently wear is: Andre Iguodala (white home jersey, not black road jersey).



A couple of other guys we considered in addition to Iguodala were Brandon Roy, Kevin Martin, and Devin Harris. Any other suggestions?

What Lodden Thinks

I spent some time with my buddy Dave in Vegas tonight. We played this tournament at Treasure Island called 'Head Hunters'. It's a $125 buy-in: $50 goes to the prize pool, $50 is put on your head as a bounty, and $25 to the house. With only 17 players tonight, it was a pretty friendly and casual game. Since so much of the buy-in consists of a bounty, it basically prices people in to taking thin gambles in hopes of knocking players out of the tournament.

One of Dave's friends in the tournament, a guy known to as 'O.D.', got some 'What Lodden Thinks' action going.

I am not the best source of information on how this game acquired its name. But the gist of it is that some poker players (I want to say Phil Laak was one of the originators) decided to gamble amongst each other on what poker player Johnny Lodden (who was at their table at the time) thinks the answer to a bunch of random questions are. So the game became known as 'What Lodden Thinks' and has retained that title to this day.

Here is an example of how it works:

I suggested to O.D. that we bet on the number of miles per hour that Dave thinks an elephant is capable of running. So Dave thinks of that number in his head and informs us when he has reached a decision. Then O.D. and I set the market in an auction fashion. One person states a number, and the other person can either say "sold" (thus buying the "under") or counter with a higher number.

So with the elephant example, I started the auction at 4 (miles per hour). O.D. countered with something like 10. I countered with 15. He countered with 25 and I said "sold", thereby making it so that if Dave's number is 24 or less, I win, and if it's 26 or more, O.D. wins.

I think in this particular example, Dave's guess was something like 24. Whatever, it doesn't matter. The point was just to explain how the game was played.

Obviously when you get around a bunch of degenerate gamblers, you can start having a lot of fun with this game. O.D. and I kept it friendly and went $5 per prop on a bunch of random stuff. We probably came up with 25 random propositions over the course of the night. Here are some of the memorable ones:

"How much money does [Bystander A] think [Bystander B] has spent in his lifetime on watches?"

"How many trees does Dave think are on Earth?"

"How many miles does Dave think Michael Phelps has swam in his life?"

"On a scale of 0-100, how will our waiter rate Barack Obama's job performance as President?"

"One in how many people will Dave think get struck by lightning in their lifetime?"

"What is the highest number that Dave thinks a human has ever counted to out loud without ever stopping for more than one minute?"

"How many people does Dave think live in Sarasota, Florida?"

"How many WSOP bracelets does Dave think Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, and Allen Cunningham will have in their lifetimes combined?"

What makes this game so fun is that the potential is limitless. You can bet $1,000 on how many M&M's your cocktail waitress thinks are in a standard sized package. An interesting part is that it never matters what the real answer is, it only matters what someone thinks the real answer is. This forces you to factor in variables like the intelligence of the person who is thinking of the number. Because you might know full-well that there are probably ~50 M&M's in a package, but if your cocktail waitress partied a little too hard in her early 20s, she might think there are 600.

With $5 on the line, we asked our waiter at the Grand Lux in Venetian what the most number of T-Rex's he thinks have been alive simultaneously on this planet. I think we had set the number somewhere around 14,000. The waiter's response was 5, as in "five". His logic was that "there could never be that many of them because they would all just eat each other." Needless to say, this game can teach you quite a bit about someone's intelligence and/or reasoning abilities.

The funniest one of the night was when O.D. and I bet on how much money a young guy at our table thinks Britney Spears would want in order to sleep with O.D. with a condition being that she knows no one will ever find out she slept with him, let alone accepted money to do so.

After O.D. and I ran the auction from $20,000 all the way up to $800,000 before one of us bought it, the young guy at the table goes, "man you guys are way off. My guess is $45, the cost of four shots of Patron."

Bodog Beat Interview

The people at Bodog interviewed me recently in the wake of my third 2nd place finish in their marque poker tournament, the Sunday $100k Guaranteed. I've interviewed several poker players over the past few years on behalf of PokerTips (see right sidebar). It was enjoyable to be on the other side of the questions for a change.

Bodog Beat Interview

A Happy Mother's Day Indeed

Today was a pretty good day for me. After waking up and calling my Mom to wish her a Happy Mother's Day, I got after some online poker pretty hard while watching the Lakers vs. Rockets game. I had quite a bit of money on the Rockets +9 (and unloaded some more on +9.5 in the second half) and also stand to win quite a lot if they win the NBA Championship (which admittedly is a longshot, but I got great odds). Anyway, they dominated today in a game where the Lakers never held the lead. Despite losing Yao Ming for the rest of the season, I think this team can still be competitive against L.A. Yes, they're dogs to win the series, but I like their chances of forcing a Game 7, and if they can do that, anything can happen.

Online poker went really well today. I made a couple of deep runs in a few tournaments, all but one of which resulted in mildly-disappointing mini-cashes. In the Bodog $100k, I finished 2nd for $15k. I've historically had a lot of success in that tournament. This is the third time in less than two years I've finished 2nd. I've also bubbled the final table in 10th twice and have a couple other high finishes in that tournament. I think it suits my strengths very well. The field is soft and the structure basically dictates a shove-or-fold strategy towards the end which I think allows me to play pretty close to mistake-free poker.

That score helps lighten my need for a backer at this summer's WSOP which means I'll be able to have a lot more of my own action. Unlike the other two 2nds I took in that tournament, I have no regrets about my heads-up play this time around. 'jjjj' played great and deserved the win and the $25k.

I'm going to Vegas this weekend for no particular reason other than to hang out for a couple of days. If there's a Game 7 next Sunday, it will be awfully tempting to hop over to L.A. and watch it in person...

Hardcore Fail

With Apologies to Vanessa Rousso

A few weeks ago, I made a post insinuating that I think it's a joke for Vanessa Rousso to be running a poker instructional workshop. But it now appears that there might be more to Rousso than just good looks. In a field of 79 of the game's most talented players, Rousso emerged as the champion of the €25,000 buy-in European High Roller Championship. To go along with the €720,000 first-place prize, she now probably has the respect of a lot of people who didn't realize she's got game after all (including the ones like me who fell asleep earlier in the year when she took second at the NBC National Heads-Up Championship).

An Update From the Front Lines of the Continual Struggle for Self-Improvement

If anyone ever said blogging was easy, they're either delusional or gifted. Anytime I go 7-10 days without an entry, I get this little voice in my head that's like, "you should make an entry." But then I'm like, "but I don't have anything to say!" And then there's just an awkward stand-off within my own mind.

The "you should make an entry" voice won the battle tonight.

I've been laying low recently and trying to drum-up a general sense of order in my life in the weeks leading up to the WSOP (which I am really excited about; it's one of the few things I think I am capable of attaining a childlike sense of excitement about anymore). As of late, I've been taking Bikram Yoga classes very regularly. Bikram Yoga is a 90 minute series of poses done in a room heated to 105 degrees. It's an awesome exercise which is perfect for me in a lot of ways. When it comes to pain and super-intense exercise, I'm too much of a wimp to stay committed to any type of regimen. The beauty of Bikram is that it maintains a very consistent level of moderate intensity for a full 90 minutes. In a way, the class kind of circumnavigates my wimp-radar since it's never intolerable at any one point in time, but the sum total of the class is a very intense exercise.

In addition to yoga, I've also cut out alcohol consumption almost entirely. Not to say that I'm a teetotaler or anything, I've got no problem going out for drinks with the right company, it's just that lately I've lost the appetite for alcohol and its effects. I think the time has come and gone where I'm thrilled about regularly ingesting something that impairs my senses and loosens the control I have over my own thoughts. Additionally, my friend shaniac put it very bluntly to me recently and it has kind of stuck with me: (paraphrasing) "alcohol is just a smelly, disgusting substance that turns people into bumbling idiots."

So my health and fitness is on pace to be at a peak right around the start of the WSOP, which I'm really happy about. I'm hoping to luckbox my way into being able to say the same about my finances. On Wednesday night, I took 3rd in the $10 rebuy on Stars for $6.5k. Today, I final tabled the $10 rebuy again, this time settling for 8th and like $1.6k. I also finished 9th in a $75 6-max on Full Tilt where, like the $10 rebuy, I lost a big flip at the end to dash my hopes of taking it down. Regardless, these scores were nice and hopefully can lead to some larger scores and opportunities. If not, it might be kind of a lean series for me in terms of participation unless my efforts to arrange a conglomeration of investors are successful.

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One enjoyment of mine is armchair quarterbacking various forms of marketing. A couple years ago, I actually switched car insurance providers to Geico solely because of how much their commercials entertained me.

Another business that seems to always have stellar marketing is Jack in the Box. Recently, they've outdone themselves with their 'Mini Sirloin Burgers' campaign. I have the jingle from this commercial stuck in my head constantly, and I love it. Think about how effective that is. They have managed to get me singing over and over again in my head "yippie ay yay, mini sirloin burgers!" I can't go an hour without thinking about their new product line. I love this commercial. Just when you think this commercial couldn't get any better... BAM! There's a midget cowboy playing guitar right in your face!



Good luck getting that unstuck from your head!