A week ago I got to tag along with Leo (Superfluous Man) to the NBC HU championship draw party where Gavin Smith about took my arm off barreling up to the stage when his matchup was drawn.  After that was over, apparently Jason (JCarver) was in town on his way to LAPC or something and dropped in to sweat Leo and Negreanu so we went to go get food.  This is always fun because you get to watch Jason sweat and worry about what’s on the menu.

Of course I have the worst sleep schedule ever so I missed the actual games which started at noon the next day.  No spoilers, but while the winner of the whole tournament is disliked by a number of poker players, the result will probably be good from a pr/publicity standpoint.

Jason, Leo, and a bunch of other people came over to my place to watch WEC and eat chicken (obv) on Saturday which was fun.  WSOP is gonna be sick when everyone is in town for a solid month.

I also just ordered a new desktop which I’m pretty excited about.  Basically in the past 10 years I’ve had two desktops, both of which I built myself.  I had a ton of problems with bad hardware on my latest one, and it tends to reboot at random times usually every 1-2 days, though sometimes it might do it 30 minutes after a reboot.  It makes it really annoying to play poker or record a video on.  I have a laptop and even mobile broadband, so if my desktop crashes or if the power or internet goes down I’ll be OK.  If you play cash games and things go wrong, no big deal.  Miss a few orbits of a MTT? Usually no biggie.  If I’m playing a decent number of SNGs and everything dies then I can lose $1500.

Anyway I configured a bunch of stuff on the Dell and HP sites.  Does anyone even do configurable desktops aside from them anymore?  Gateway got bought by Acer, so they don’t.  Sony sort of does but it’s all-in-one stuff I think.  After building a couple of models I really liked I parted it out on newegg/pricewatch to see how much I’d save if I built it myself.  Surprisingly, it was within $100, and that’s with a service plan.  So the new box should be here before the end of the month.  It’s an i7-930 (yeah I know i5 is the sweet spot, but I’m drooling over triple channel and 6 DIMMs, and it was only around $150 more), 12GB DDR3-1066 (6×2GB DIMMs — the board supports 1333 but the manufacturer doesn’t offer it and the speed difference would be negligible), 2×500GB HDD in a RAID 1 configuration, and a Radeon HD 4850 (I don’t play any games really).  Thanks to Eric, nachos, and ultimatemike for letting me bounce ideas off them.

I’ve sort of retired from online tournaments for the time being.  I’m not really sure if I’ll quit playing sundays – doubtful – but no more weeklys (besides the 1k I guess) or anything that’s remotely near “tiny”.  I guess with those conditions this isn’t much of a retirement – or even much of a change – but I’ve just become bored by tournament nlhe.  There’s just a finite level of options with 20bbs, a finite level of creativity, and nobody’s edge isn’t particularly great.  Beyond that, though, there’s no feeling of a challenge for me anymore in that arena.  I’m still driven to play live tournaments – as much now as ever – but I hear my inner degen crying out for some attention and so off to cash games I go.

I’m considering making a “challenge” for myself – something like $ won in a month – to “motivate” me further and convert my desire into hands.  I’ve spent more time the past few months reading and learning about NLHE (and other poker, but less so) than I have probably since I first started my career, but that hasn’t necessarily resulted in playing a ton of hands.  This year hasn’t been my best (although in terms of gross cashes, it probably is up there), but I’m feeling like I’m going to put in a strong finish to close out the year.

As I’ve mentioned here quite often the past 12 months, I’ve long felt a desire to teach others poker, but never really had a great vehicle to do so.  I dislike combo staking/coaching deals – I tend not to have the stamina to work with someone individually for a time period that makes freerolling their education pay off in the long run.  I dislike making videos – it’s so cold and impersonal, and I’m hardly infatuated with having no control over who the audience is (and having little of that Confucian give & take after the “lessons”).  A pure coaching deal with 1 person was just not going to work either with my time restrictions and most people’s inability to pay a market rate (alongside my inability to find another perfect-storm pupil a la the one and only senor nguyen).

After a fair amount of brainstorming, I came up with a vehicle for a long-term coaching project that I launched a few weeks ago.  I do realize by posting this that I’m going to get a ton of applications – and I’m ok with this – but if I don’t know who you are or have a recommendation from someone I know personally you have a near zero percent chance of being considered.  I don’t really want to post details, but I’m sure those who participate in this and ’survive’ it will make it in the poker world if they so choose.  I’m clearly only accepting a very select group of people whose commitment equals their ambition, a group of individuals who want nothing but to bloodbath the tables all night and improve all day, every day.  If you think you qualify (AND you meet the “I know your (at least forum) name or someone I know knows you” qualification) and think you’d be interested, email or pm me something brief.  I don’t think we’re accepting new people right now, so don’t necessarily expect an immediate response – but we’ll eventually let you know what the next step is if we think you might be a good fit.

In other news, I’ve went on a mini-TV tear lately – finishing S1 of Oz, S1 and S2 of Californication, and rewatching the first 3 seasons of Lost (still love it).  I’m particularly psyched about the fall’s return of Dexter (John Lithgow is pretty awesome) and the rest of Mad Men.  I still have to watch Big Love (it’s next I promise!), Breaking Bad, and Sons of Anarchy…and then is there anything left on TV worth seeing that I haven’t seen?  I caught myself wondering what I’d do if I ran out of TV to watch the other day because I was “worried” that I’d seen everything.  It’s sadly not that far from reality, haha, but for now at least there’s still some good stuff left to watch (oh, and I want to watch Deadwood again, but with subtitles.  I feel like watching w/o subtitles was one of the biggest mistakes in my TV life.  Seriously.)

If I do decide to do a 25k/50k challenge (50k at 3-6 in a month has to be impossible with even the maximum amount of hands I’d possibly play, no?) I’ll post updates here.  Later all…

I got in on the evening of June 8th and promptly got lost getting to my hotel a couple of blocks east of the strip.  There’s a ton of roadwork going on all hours of the day which is probably the most annoying thing about Las Vegas.  Flamingo from the Strip to Paradise is completely tore up and closed down to one lane at night, the interstate to Henderson has some lane closures, and even some side road next to the Rio that I was on once to avoid rush hour traffic was being worked on. 

The first event I played in was the $1500 shootout.  The WSOP this year started with triple chips but the structures on some events were modified.  Overall, though, events were a tad slower than in previous years.  If you know me you know I love fast structures with short stacks, but even with the structure changes the $1500 seemed to go by too fast for me.   Nobody notable was at my table and everyone was pretty bad.  I caught every person open limping at least twice, but could never get anything going and lost my first flip, 99 < AK to bust during the third level. 

A couple of days later though, I sweated JCarver when he made the final table of the event.  Got to meet gobboboy, mlagoo, Adam Junglen, ActionJeff, Unamuno, EC10, and Psyduck, amongst others.  I think the 50k HORSE event was on the final two tables, so both the feature and secondary featured table (they are adjacent to each other) were being used for that, which relegated the shootout final table to a nearby table that didn’t have much room on the rail.  After a level or two the HORSE event went down to one table and the shootout got moved over.  JCarver got 2nd and didn’t really have much of a chance once it got heads up as his opponent had pretty much steamrolled everyone and had a massive chip lead, something around to 10:1.  Big congrats to Jason for shipping about $200k in that though.

I’ve been thinking of moving to Vegas for a while now, and so the next week I checked out Panorama Towers, where a ton of poker players live.  It’s a very nice place.  Gated access, valet, movie theaters in each tower, exercise rooms, pool, great views, etc.  You have to rent through real estate agents, so MTC got me in contact with his current agent and we toured the place.  No 1-bedroom condos were available to look at, so I just got to see a couple of 2-bedroom places and tour the grounds.  I went back a few weeks later when I could see a 1-bedroom place and saw a small one that I didn’t want, and a larger one that was just perfect.  Too bad it wasn’t available, sigh.

Unamuno and MTC both made it deep in the $10k heads up event, so I sweated them starting with the round of eight.  Actually MTC busted by the time I got there, and Johnny Chan was playing vs someone for the last spot in the final four, but Leo had won so I stuck around for that.  He eventually won his final four match, versus the guy who beat Johnny Chan.  The plan was to play through the best-of-three final match that night but delayed it until the next day because it was midnight.  A ton of people showed up for it, with very little rail space, and the match took forever.  Leo’s opponent was John Duthie, who created the EPT and is a well known figure in poker in Europe.  Some of the Hendon Mob as well as Andy Black were there sweating Ross Boatman who had made a final table nearby, and when he got knocked out of that they started sweating Duthie.  However all the internet kids were there sweating Leo.  Even lilholdem showed up to sweat a while.   He’s much more well spoken in real life than he is online.  The first match lasted 100 hands and Duthie won, the second match took fewer than 10 hands before Leo won, and the third match went 200 hands, and Leo won a bracelet.  So sick.  After the second match they agreed to chop $450k and play for 100k and the bracelet, so he shipped $550k.  He also got a lot of press because of his law background and the fact that he’s here in Vegas doing work for the ACLU and could only really play events on the weekends.

The next event I played in was the $5000 shootout.  The structure was a bit deeper and slower than the $1500, which I definitely preferred.  Unfortunately, there were actually notables at my table this time:  Nick Binger, Isaac Haxton, and Scott Seiver.  I know Ike and Scott are good friends, and were backing a lot of people in events.  MTC even talked to them about backing me in some stuff, but they ran out of backing money.  So, they obviously are very familiar with each other.  This led to some interesting spots where we would all be involved in a pot and I’d end up tossing the best hand when one would bet and the other would call and somehow my weak 2nd or 3rd pair would have been good.  Hasan Habib was also at my table but he showed up very late and lost QQ < AQ to Seiver and was gone.

After a while I kept hovering between push/fold and slightly above push/fold stack size.  When it was down to 4 players it was me, Isaac, Scott, and a local guy.  I doubled through Scott twice, with KQs > ATo, and AA > TT, then Isaac busted to the local.  I then busted Scott, AA > A6, and was heads up versus the local with about a 4:1 chip disadvantage.  I was still in that push/fold mode for most of the time heads up because I had 10-15bb or so.  In probably 100 hand I must have pushed on this guy like 40 times but he would never call.  He also open folded his sb only twice, and limped it the other 90% of the time.  Eventually he does call, and fortunately for me I have AKs, but he has AA and I’m gone.

I spent most of the next 10 days in bed with pretty bad allergy problems, but it finally cleared up a couple of days before the main event. I registered on the Friday that the main event started and then hit up the Pokerpalooza displays they have near the poker rooms.   JCarver works for PokerVT, and I’m a member there even though I haven’t ever really used my account, oops.  But that was where ultimatemike and a couple other goons were hanging out so I went there for a few hours before crashing.

When I first decided to play some events it was just going to be the two shootouts and that was it.  JCarver told me to play the main event because it’s the softest tournament of the year, but I wasn’t sure if anyone would back me for it.  Thanks to StefanProdan, EC10, and Unamuno buying the majority of my action, though, I was able to play it.  Unfortunately for them and me I got an incredibly tough table draw.

There were several PokerStars Supernova Elites at my table, including on my immediate left and immediate right.  Urindanger (Di Dang) was also at my table, and he struck up a chat with one of the other players and they reminisced about playing 25/50 on Party five years ago.  Nobody was over 30, everyone was pretty good.  Most people were tight but not afraid to play back.

Jeff Lisandro was at an adjacent table, so he got some camera time, especially since he won 3 bracelets this year.  2008 final tablist Dennis Phillips was nearby as well, complete with trucker fan contingent and trucker horn sounding off during level 1.  The call of “shuffle up and deal” was given by Barney Frank, and during the day I saw Norman Chad and Lon McEachern walking around.  In Lon’s case it was on crutches due to knee surgery.  I also got to see Phil Hellmuth’s entrance, which was pretty retarded.

During the first few levels of the main event I was really card dead except for a ton of pocket pairs, none of which ever flopped anything.  We started with 30k at 50/100 and I was down to 23k pretty quickly, then back up to 30k by the end of the second level.   Right before the end of the third level, and dinner break, I lost about half my remaining stack.  After coming back one of the SNEs, Richard “Tzen” Veenman, a limit grinder from the Netherlands, busted.  I figured the table would get easier at this point, but his replacement is Adam Junglen.  During the 4th level I 3bet urindanger’s CO open with AKs.  I have slightly more than a PSB after he calls, so I jam on a Q52r flop and he calls with AQo and that’s the end of me.

Despite not doing shit in WSOP events, I enjoyed the trip.  Bad Beats Crew members have about $1m in cashes this WSOP, and ultimatemike is still in the main event and in the money so good luck to him. I didn’t get to grind at all, but now that I’m back in Austin I am going to tear it up. If things go right I’ll be moving to Vegas at the end of August.  It would be very nice not to have to put my life on hold for 1-2 months for the WSOP every year and being so close to a bunch of other poker players I know, including BBC members, should be fun as well.

This is JCarver if you don’t know.

Vegas tomorrow, twitter updates here: http://twitter.com/PokerDerk