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So Sunday night was the SSOP Main Event. It didn’t have the same hype as it did a year ago because the overall SSOP was a flop. I take some responsibility in not planning it as well as we did last year. Nevertheless a ton of people showed up and I was looking forward to defending my title. My starting table was really tough with Justin and Matt but there were rebuys so no need to fear.  After a whopping 5 hands, Justin and I found the right time to shove it in dark. He picked up J6 to my 63 and the board bricked out obv. Looking back it probably wasn’t the smartest idea because you got 750 chips compared to the 1000 starting chips if you rebought. I ended up rebuying one more time before the hour was up when I shoved A2o w/12bbs and was called by K8o and QJo and got runner runnered :  (    I grinded the short stack for a looong time till I picked up AA in the sb against a button shove by Matt w/99. GG   At the final table I shoved TT utg w/12bbs and doubled thru Justin’s 99 in the bb. Then 5 handed, in the sb, I picked up AA to his button shove and yet another GG. He went outside and fought a tree. Take a guess who won. 4 handed poker lasted a good 2 hours when I finally busted just squeaking into the money. I guess I’m no Johnny Chan after all. It was about midnight when I finally got home and fell asleep around 1am. Unfortunately I had to wake up at 5am to start packing and get ready to leave for the airport with my mom at 6.

As we’re on the ride into the terminal, I hear on the radio, an announcement that the actor who plays Jack on “Lost” is getting a raise. I comment to my mom that I love the show and have all three seasons on DVD. As we approach the security check-point, I notice that my ticket is Flight 815. The airplane on “Lost” that crashes on an unknown island was Oceanic Flight 815. Standard. After surviving the plane ride, we arrive in Charlotte and get news that Hurricane Fay is doing serious damage in Florida. Awesome. As we arrive in Miami, it’s pouring but the storm appears to be further North. Phew, finally some good news. We meet my sister and she takes us around to her school (Univ. of Miami), to her old apartment, etc. We eat dinner and call it a night. We couldn’t do much with the weather being as bad as it was. My mom and I stayed in her apartment while she slept at her friend’s house. The next morning, she picked us up and we met her boyfriend, Rick, at the metro. He turned out to be a really straight dude. Born and raised in Miami, he was a really big help as a second tour guide. The four of us decided to check out the strips which are just full of shops. I hate shopping but they had some really cool hat/sneaker stores.

As we get to the end of one of the strips there was a movie theatre so we decide to check it out. I walk in and I think I see Fat Joe but I figure nah it can’t be. Then I take a closer look and sure enough, it’s Fat Joe! He’s just chillen there with his posse which includes dudes you don’t wanna look at the wrong way and girls who you can’t stop looking at. My mom has no idea who Fat Joe is, I’m wearing a Boston Red Sox cap so no way and hell I’m gonna go up to a dude who’s got a hundred guns, a hundred clips cuz he’s from New Yoooooooooork New Yooooooooork, my sister was too nervous to approach him and Rick said he’s a “Curtis Jackson” fan. So nobody approaches him and we all watch him walk across the street into a sneaker store. As we’re finishing up the tour of stores we decide to head to a hat/sneaker store that Rick says has some sick custom Nikes. As I go to open the door, who’s staring back at me? Who else? Fat Joe! lol   A little startled I jump back and tell’em uhhhhh I don’t think we’re gonna get in there. I point to Joey Crack and we all see that they got the place on lockdown. As Fat Joe and his posse walk out, none of us approach him for the reasons previously mentioned. We do however overhear his convo which includes “aight man load this shit up in the truck (referring to his completely murdered out escalade)” and “”aight niggas lets riiiiide!” By this time, we’re all hungry and decided to eat at some place on the beach. My sister suggested “Mangos”, a place that has girls in bikinis dance around while you eat. So at first I was all for this but then Rick said there were “fruitloop” dudes dancing too so I changed my mind. I don’t know the name of the place we decided upon but the food was excellent and the view of Miami at dusk was beautiful. We call it a night hoping to wake up to good weather Wednesday morning. We do and the four of us head down to South Beach. We went there Tuesday and I went swimming while a Hurricane loomed. Eventually the life guards blew the whistle because I guess they figured it was too dangerous. This time, there was nothing but clear blue water. Ironically, this time I ended up NOT going swimming but I did walk the beach and admired the lovely ta-tas of girls lying on the beach.

Speaking of women, there are three things I take away from Miami. First being they have the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. I’m not exaggerating when I say that 80% of the women there are 10’s. Just absolutely stunning. You’d see a beautiful blonde model one moment and the next there’s a perfectly curved Latino chick. The next is the weather. It was very scattered. It could pour for 20 seconds and then turn into sunny 80 degree weather. Unfortunately, we maybe had a total of 3 hours where it was sunny and nice. We weren’t able to experience the unbearable 110 degree heat. Meh, oh well. The last thing I noticed were the cars. Holy shit you wanna talk about “got money and you know it.” These people do. I think the worst car I saw was a 2007 Camry. I told a bunch of people that I wanna own a Lamborghini before I turn 30. Well, I got to see a bunch of Lambos in person. I mean just a flat out sick car. So were the Ferrari’s that punched it the second the light turned green.  Soooo much money in Miami, it makes you want to get to that status. Hopefully one day I will. Until then, I’m stuck writing blogs about the ups and downs of $20 stts.

Lil Weeeeeeeeeeeeeezy

—–Don—–

The night of poker that I had been looking forward to for years finally came two weeks ago to this day. I’d been looking forward to Turning Stone ever since I found out legal gambling age is 18 in NY. So finally Justin and I just said fuck it, we’re going. Of course, he’s underage but it’s all good. Fake ID’s ftw. We packed up the movie “Rounders”, a bunch of Doritos bags, and a couple grand in cash to head up to Verona, NY. As soon as we get onto the highway, it starts pouring………….standard. I drive for 3 hours straight in pouring rain but finally get to within 30 minutes of the casino and we look in front of us and it looks like a tornado is about to hit the ground. Then it starts to pour harder than I’ve ever seen in my life. My windshield was white and I couldn’t see 5 feet in front of me. But again, all very standard. We run bad. Finally, we arrive at the casino in one piece, and it was actually much nicer than we both anticipated. First order of business was to get a hotel room. So we ask the front desk if they have any rooms and they say they have two but they’re $270 and $300 a night. We didn’t want to spend that much so we decided to use my GPS to find hotels in the area. The first one was a B&B at someone’s house so we weren’t doing that. The next one was this shitty motel with this creep who kept staring at us so we weren’t staying there. We went to 5 more hotels and every single one of them said we had to be at least 21 to get a room. Now we’re both frustrated and a little nervous that we wouldn’t have anywhere to stay. If I wasn’t so exhausted I would’ve just went to the casino, played for the night, and drove back. But I was so exhausted, there was no way I could even drive the 4 hours back. I needed sleep. We stop at a Super 8 Motel and I go in to ask if they have any vacancy. The lady says they do and asks how old I am. I’m like ahhhh fuck here we go again. I say I’m 18 and she says how many people. I say 2 and she asks how old my friend is. Me being a moron, I say he’s 17. She says sorry, both people have to be at least 18. Daipghri5hhq5h48   Such misclickaments. So we decided to try one last place. We get there and it’s a bar. We’re like wtf is this place. So I go in there and it was BY FAR the shadiest place I’ve ever been to. In fact, I’d go as far to say it might be the shadiest place I’ll ever be in my life. Needless to say, we didn’t stay there. We both agreed that we needed to go back to Turning Stone and pray that those two rooms were still available. Luckily they were. We decided to stay in the $300/night room in the Tower. Wow what a room. It was so nice. A little expensive yeah but at least now I know what it feels like to be a balla.

The sight of a safe in my room woke me up and we decided to head down to the poker room. We both decided to join a 1/2nl cash game. They started up a new table and we got to sit next to each other with him having position on me obv. Maybe 20 hands in, I get KJdd in the sb. MP limps, cs raises to 6, I call, MP calls. Flop: KsJs9c. I check, MP checks, cs bets 15, I raise to 45, MP folds, cs shoves for 5 more. I call pretty confident he has AK, maybe KQ. Turn: Q   River: A. He flips up AK. Oh hi live poker. Justin took some brutal beats like $400 pot, he got it in with middle set, vs TP and a straight draw, and the straight draw got there on the river. He was down to the felt so I decided to quit as well so we could get some dinner and regroup. We headed back down to the poker room at midnight. Justin was playing well but made one bad shove that cost him so he went back up to the room. I stayed and kept grinding. I can’t tell you how exciting it was just being able to sit down and play real poker. Not all this betting pattern, +EV bullshit. To just stare across the table and know what a guy has. “They wear their tells like signs around their neck.” These guys were soooo bad. I sat down at midnight with one stack of $100 (max buy-in) and left the table at 3am with 6 stacks of $100. I went to bed that night feeling great. We woke up at 11:30am Sunday morning, a half hour past the 11am check out but we’re ballas, they can wait. We packed up our shit and put it in my car so we could play one last short session before we headed back to Connecticut. Unfortunately, Justin got stacked very early on so I obviously had to get up too. So that was it, I finally popped my live poker cherry and it was everything I hoped for.

I ended up not going again this weekend because the Empire State Hold’em Championships started the 15^th so I’m almost positive I wouldn’t be able to find a room, not to mention there’s probably a select few cash games running and I don’t want to drive all the way up there to play one donkament. It’s okay though, the SSOP Main Event is tonight. I’m expecting a tonnn of people to show up but we’ll see. Then it’s off to Miami early Monday morning. I’ll give a TR when I get back.

Live Poker FTW

—-Don—-

It’s been a loooooong time since I’ve updated this damn blog. For the two of you that are still reading this, enjoy the rants that are sure to follow. I guess I’ll start with the fact that I’m lazy. I’ve been living in my apartment for over a week now and haven’t managed to take any pics or give any kind of description of the place. It’s technically a townhouse but it’s easier to just call it an apartment so I don’t have to answer all the “what’s the difference between a townhouse and an apartment?” questions. I guess it’d just be easier to take pics and post them then to try and describe a place littered with empty McDonald’s bags. I’ll get around to that ASAP.

So the SSOP is officially underway. In fact, I just got home from an event. I shove 99 utg with about 14bbs, and it folds all the way around to the bb. He sighs, and asks me for a chip count. I tell him I have about 900 and probably have him covered. He sighs again as he counts his chips and realizes he has around 700. He asks me again how many chips I have and I tell him I have him covered. He sighs for the third time and says “Ok I guess I call.” I flip up my 9s and he rolls over AA. I was in shock. I don’t know if I was more upset than I was in just complete shock. I asked him what the fuck he was thinking for and he said “you don’t know man, I’ve lost so many times with aces, when I first looked down at them, I wanted to fold.” Then when Matt kept pressing him about why he thought about it for a full minute, he said “sorry I didn’t know I couldn’t take time to think.” Earlier in the tournament, one of the best players in our game was shoved on by Matt post flop on a Q76r flop. He thought for a while and after much deliberation called with one player behind him who quickly folded. He flipped up QQ and when found out that Matt had air, he laughed in his face, started berating him, and danced around like a jerk. This kid is ranked top 30 in the country in Chess, is a very disciplined, and mild-mannered kid, but lately bad table manners seem to be the cool thing to do. It’s unfortunate because when the tournament first starts, people are all laughing and having a great time, but as soon as the first bad beat is put on someone, the bitching begins. I’m even guilty of this. I’m someone who never bitches about bad beats but in the SSOP event I won the other day, I lost a big pot to a bad beat on the river that I paid off and when I saw his hand, I said “yeah, you got there.” Oh well, I just hope this trend doesn’t continue.

I finally registered for all my classes at Tunxis today. Now I just have to get all my books and a student ID. I’m very relieved to finally get it done because I’m going to Miami, FL Monday-Thursday and had to get it done before then. My mom and I are going to go down to visit my sister. I haven’t seen her in a long time so I’m looking forward to it. Not to mention it’ll be nice to experience consistent beautiful weather considering the past week here in CT it’s been thunderstorm city. Hopefully my sister and I won’t get into too much trouble ; )

It’s 2am and I’m considering driving back up to Turning Stone tomorrow and staying for a couple days. But if I do, I’ll miss out on a Maroon 5/Counting Crows Concert, SSOP event, and very big/juicy home game tourney at my friend’s sister’s house. So I’m not sure. I’ll figure it out when I wake up. And yes I did pop my live poker cherry couple weeks ago at Turning Stone. I’ll save that TR for another time.

The last thing I want to mention before I fall asleep typing this is I was talking to a couple of my non-poker playing friends the other day and we got to talking about me paying my rent with money I profited from poker and they don’t believe in me. They just think I’m a degenerate gambler who if I go on a cold streak, will be out on the streets. I can’t tell you how much that motivates me. The more people who doubt me, the more I’m motivated to go out and prove all of them wrong. Although, not all of my non-poker playing friends think I won’t succeed. After all, I did get a significant amount of votes for “Most Likely To Succeed” in High School. lol

Peace

—–Don—–