Successful Bluffs: 3
Now when I say bluffs, these weren’t real bluffs. They were more like, raise with 5s 6s, big blind call. Flop A-Q-J, he checks, I bet small. I have yet to attempt any significant bluffs yet.
The gift: Player raises to 6,000 and I call with AA in the cut off seat- Hoff calls from SB. Flop 9h 6d 4h. Raiser bets 12,000. I raise to 28,000, Hoff folds. Raiser says, “Looks like one of your junk flops Danny, did you hit one on me.”
He thinks a little longer before going all in. I call the 74,100 raise. He turns over… A Q with no heart. So I doubled up as a 99.7% favorite. I’m ok with that.
To end the night I played a pot with Hashem. He made it 5500 and I called with KK. The flop was K-Q-2 rainbow. Joe bet 10,000 I called. Turn 10. Joe checked, I bet 10,000 he called. He then checked in the dark. The river was the Ad bringing a back door flush draw as well. I checked, and lost to Joe’s QJ.
Another similar hand. I raised with KQ, Hoff called and Ming called from the BB. Flop Kc-8h-8s rainbow. Ming checked, I checked, Bobby bet the pot. Ming folded, I called. Turn 6h, I checked, he checked. River 9h. I checked, Bobby bet half the pot. I called and lost to a straight flush.
That’s the kind of gambling I’ve been doing and I’m ok with it. I don’t mind giving free cards against long shot draws, meanwhile, looking to pick off bluffs, while at the same time minimizing my losses when I’m beat.
Losing those hands doesn’t bother me at all. I’m back to playing optimal deep stack poker and am confident right now it’s hard to put into words. My game right now is rock solid and I’m going to be really tough to beat.
I’ll be adjusting to my table tomorrow, but my overall mind set will be similar to the way it’s been the past two days. I’m going to continue to look for others to blow…
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Before we get to the tournament I want to start at the beginning and give you all the necessary background information.
It was Chris Porter’s (of Poker Royalty) birthday and James Sullivan (of Poker Royalty) decided to throw him a surprise party. I had the night open so I figured I would stop in for a little while since I was planning on flying to Foxwoods in the morning.
Well, the party was kind of fun. I’d never played “Beer Pong” before and I was getting into it. All these dues were throwing over hand, and I just know that can’t be the best way to go. I think you get much better trajectory when you throw underhand.
Anyway, the party moved over to Cherry, the club at Red Rock. It was the first time I’d ever been inside the club and I liked the vibe there. It was pretty cool.
Before I knew it, it was 3:30am. Yikes, so much for an early flight!
My assistant Patty was at the house at, like, 8:30am to wake me up. Instead of that, though, I asked here if there was maybe a later flight she could book me on. She found one leaving at 2:15pm which gave me a chance to get some more Z’s.
At noon, she tried waking me up again. “Hey Patty, how about that red eye flight, whaddya think?” She’d already gone through the trouble of changing my flight and car transportation and know I was changing it again.
Thing is, I knew that E-DOG was on the Jet Blue flight at 11:55pm arriving in Boston at 7:54am. That would give us just enough time to make the tournament that starts at 10:00am. Why they start at 10:00am I’ll never understand. Possibly to make it more difficult for west coast players since they’d effectively be playing with a 7:00am start time. Poker player brains don’t generally function before noon!
To save some time, we all carried our bags on the plane. You know what that means, no shampoo or liquids of any kind. Bummer.
When I got on the plane I felt totally cramped. I generally fly first class which is a little more roomy than coach. Jet Blue doesn’t have first class and the plane was totally full. I have lower back pain sometimes and knew this was going to be a miserable flight.
They have TV though! Pretty neat feature, with 30 channels to choose from. I ended up watching a lot of MTV and VH1.
We arrived on time and hopped into a limo. This limo driver made my old driver Gord Andretti look like he was standing still. Wow, he got us from Boston to Foxwoods in 1:13. We were told that it was normally a two hour drive. Nice!
When we got their, our rooms weren’t ready so we went ahead and started playing immediately… on no sleep whatsoever.
It didn’t worry me for some reason? I remember back in 1997 when I was just starting to come on the season that I played tired for days in Foxwoods and it worked out well. A 20 hour $20-$40 hold’em session followed immediately by playing in the $100 limit hold’em tournament. I won it.
The next day, I played in the $1500 limit hold’em tournament… and won that too!
In some ways, I think being a little tired on day one helps me relax and not get so antsy. I didn’t realize, though, that we were scheduled to play for 15 hours! That’s absurd and a little much. I desperately hope that the WPT will soon be able to run events across the world with the same rules. It would make things so much easier on everybody, but I understand that it’s difficult to implement. Playing 15 hours on day one, then 13 on day two, is just too much and it’s clearly unfair to the older players. It starts to become more of a test of stamina than it does a test of skill.
Realizing the dinner break was at 5:30pm, I decided that I’d need to get some rest if I was going to be able to function later in the evening. With about $43,000 in chips, I skipped the $200-$400 level and got in a two hour power nap. It was a very difficult decision for me as I’ve NEVER done anything like that before. I’m pretty anal about being at the table for EVERY hand, so this was a tough decision for me. I know it was the right one.
Ok, so I promised some poker content, here are a few hands that were highlights for me on the day:
I decided to really mix up my play a lot in the early stages, and lowered my raises even more the normal. I was making the min raise, or what I like to call the “nuisance raise.” Not always, but most of the time.
My starting table was ridiculously tough, but that often helps me try harder: Joe Cassidy, Nick Schulman, Mimi Tran, and about three other tough internet pros that you probably don’t know, but play very well.
I busted a short stacked player in the following hand: I raise to $200 with Ad Qc and the SB calls. The flop: Kc 9c 5c. He checked to me and I bet 200. He quickly raised me to 1000- I called.
The turn: 4c. He checked to me. I looked over at his chips and saw that he had about 2150 left. I bet 500 and he called. The river was the 10c, he checked, and I bet his last chips. Why did I play the hand that way? Well, you’ll have to wait for the Card Player article to find out.
Later, Mimi Tran made it 600 to go and I called in position with KK. The flop came Ks 10s 3c. Mimi bet 600 and I just called. The turn was the Jd, and Mimi bet 1200.
I hated that card for several reasons: 1) It might have just beat me, and 2) it may have just killed my action.
I just called the turn bet. The river was the 2h. Mimi bet out 2500 and it clearly wasn’t a bluff. I had a real dilemma here, frankly, if I re-raise and she moves me all in I’d be forced to lay it down. If I just call, I could be giving up value and not maximizing the hand.
I raised her 3700 more and she called. As she mucked her hand she claimed a set on the flop. Doh! That Jd was a bad card for the trap.
Despite being exhausted, I had great patience all day. In one hand, I re-raised a player with QQ. Another player re-raised and I mucked quickly. Historically, when I’m laying down QQ that usually bodes well for me in the tournament.
During the day I was never in jeopardy. I floated between 25,000 and 50,000. Near the end of the night, though, a dead run of cards had me down to 20,000 with 600-1200 blinds. Luckily, I hit KQ on a KQQ flop and got paid off by KJ.
With about 15 minutes left to play for the evening I noticed that it might end on my small blind. I was vocal in trying to move the game along so that I could hopefully play my button and a few more hands.
Well, the last hand of the night was me on the button and it was… AA! A late position player made it 4500. He was a young, internet looking kid and I was pretty sure that if I came over the top of him he’d lay it down. In fact, i didn’t re-raise any other hand all day outside of the QQ that I ended up laying down.
I got back to playing more like I did in 2004, calling almost exclusively and lowering my raises. Anyway, the big blind also called. The flop was 10d 9d 3s. They both checked to me and I bet out 5000 which left me with 20,200.
The big blind, a WPT champion, check-raised me to 15,000 and the original raiser folded. I obviously went all in and he called. I was slightly worried about his big draw, but was relieved, no shocked to see how good of a spot I was in.. He had A-3! Sweet! Double up on the last hand and now I’m at 67,600.
Playing tired… but playing good. Less than 200 of 600+ players remain and I’m liking my chances. Anyways, I should be in bed! Night all…
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Tonight the plan is to sweat the hockey games over at E-DOG’s place. I did my homework this morning and liked a few games on the schedule. I’ve had a pretty good start to the season going 7-5-0 betting predominantly underdogs. In fact, I’m +5.6 units betting 1 unit per game. It’s a lot of fum for me.
Before I go do that I have one last thing to do for Rob & Amber and their reality show. That shouldn’t take too long.
What else… well, just more vegging really. I’ve been catching up on some reading, finished season 3 of 24 (Oh my it was awesome!!!), and have been playing some video games. All that, and watching a few games on TV.
Man, the Raptors are fun to watch! They push the ball like crazy and that Chris Bosh ain’t too shabby.
As for poker, I haven’t played very much recently and I’m ok with that. I wanted to really clear my head before flying out to Foxwoods on the 11th for the main event there.
In December, I’ll likely be playing tons of poker both in the tournaments and in the cash games. Then January is always a busy month as well so there will be plenty of poker on the horizon.
In the meantime, I’m having fun without ever having to leave the house!
Oh, if you guys are curious who I’m betting on tonight’s games, I have the following on the slate for this evening:
11/09/06 Boston/Toronto U 6 +1.03
11/09/06 Darcy Tucker U 0.5 +1.24
11/09/06 Washington +1.66
11/09/06 New Jersey/Chicago U 5.5 -1.21
11/09/06 Washington O 3 +1.08
11/09/06 Chicago U 2 -1.18
11/09/06 Phoenix +1.75
All bets include OT unless otherwise stated.]]>
Running the WSOP is an extremely difficult task, but the people that will be in charge of running the 2007 WSOP are extremely competent and dedicated to making sure that it’s an even bigger success than the 2006 WSOP.
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Later that night a group of us went to dinner at Agave, across from Red Rock, and then headed over to Red Rock to watch Borat. I have always been a huge fan of Da Ali G show and think the HBO show was brilliant.
While I really enjoyed the movie, I felt like the HBO show was better. Many of the funny things Borat does, the real stuff, goes into great detail in Da Ali G show, but those same type of bits seemed to be cut short in the movie.
Early on in the film, when Borat is supposedly in Kazakhstan I thought I recognized the language being spoken. Then I realized, dude, that’s Romania! They were speaking Romanian! I thought that was pretty neat.
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On Saturday night I spent the entire night on the couch watching the hockey games. I had a fantasy pool night which is always a ton of fun. I actually monitor a ticker in the NHL Forum at FCP.
New in the forum there, I’ve also decided to make my hockey bets public. I’m not actually betting any money on the games at all, but started with a “fun” $10,000 bankroll and bet $500 a game. I had a big night on Saturday hitting the Maple Leafs +2.52 as well as a gimme prop bet of U 0.5 points for Maxim Afinegonov +2.70. I have my bankroll up to $11,670 right now. To check out past bets and future bets go to the NHL Forum.
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I watched another movie that I had in my collection. Actually, Lori and I were planning on watching a movie so I picked six DVD’s, she narrowed them down to two, then I picked. We had King of New York, Inside Man, Pearl Harbor, Hotel Rwanda, The Saint, and Broken Flowers.
Lori narrowed it down to Inside Man and Pearl Harbor. I bought that movie years ago so I figured, let’s go with Pearl Harbor. A loooooong movie with two disks.
I liked the movie. I thought Ben Affleck was really good in that role. In general, I think he is much better suited to those types of roles rather than comedy and the like.
Anyway, it’s a pretty powerful film. I also watched the extras. They showed some of the real survivors talking about that day. It was touching.
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What else… oh yeah, video games! I’ve been getting back into my other passion. For my last birthday Lori bought me Dance Dance Revolution and the game pad to go with it. I was instantly addicted. I look like a complete buffoon doing it, but I danced on that think for over two straight hours. I was sweating like an absolute pig! It’s actually a decent workout. The next day, and even know for that matter, my calves are destroyed.
After I got tired of that, I decided to try out a game called Grand Theft Auto III… this game is for kids??? Wow, that’s pretty scary, lol. The game was a lot of fun, but I have to say, I just wouldn’t be comfortable having kids playing it. The game is pretty raw. Hookers, killing cops, etc.
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Oh man, I almost forgot! I actually played at the Bellagio since my last blog. Here is a little rundown:
The game was $2000-$4000 mixed games. Hold’em, Omaha H/L, Razz, Stud, Stud 8 or better, Stud H/L Regular, Pot Limit Omaha, 2-7 triple draw. The lineup looked like:
Me, Patrik Antonious, Ralph Perry, Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harman, Eli Elezra, and Ted Forrest.
I shot out ahead for most of the night despite missing one bet on the very first hand, and then missing a check a few hands later, both against Doyle. In Omaha 8 or better, I checked heads up against Doyle with AK26 on a board of A 3 7 J 9 with three diamonds. I had Aces with a King kicker and a 2-6 low. When Doyle checked I should have value bet it because he turned over an AQ58. Had him beat both ways and he would have called. $4000 down the drain.
That same round I played another pot with Doyle. This time it was a multi-way pot and I was on the button with 9-J-Q-K with the Kc Jc. The flop was pretty big for me: 9c 10s 4c. Doyle bet the flop and I raised it. Everyone else folded. The turn came the 3c and Doyle led out- I just called.
The river came the Jd and Doyle checked. I should have checked based on the way Doyle played it. Instead, I bet, got raised, and paid it off. He had Ac 2c.
I lost a few hands with the second nuts on the evening. Nevertheless, I found myself ahead about $80,000 after four hours of play thanks to a monster triple draw pot that I stole:
Patrik raised, Doyle re-raised, Eli called, and I defended my blind with 3-4-6-7-7 (not a good play by the way). Eli drew 3?? I drew one, Patrik two, and Doyle one.
On the first draw I caught a 9 which is actually what I was hoping to catch, a 9 or an 8. With so many low cards out I figured that it would be tough for anyone to make a hand. We all checked in the dark to Doyle who bet. Eli called, I raised, Patrik re-raised, Doyle folded, Eli called, I re-raised, Patrik re-raised Eli called and I called.
Eli took two??? Gamble gamble, lol! I stood pat hoping that Patrik would break his hand- he didn’t. Eli checked, I checked, Patrik bet, and Eli called. I wasn’t going to call. It was pretty clear that Patrik had me beat. However, I didn’t think he made a 7. I put him on a rough 8 based on the way the hand played out.
So, I decided to make a play for the pot, check-raising it to $8000. It was the last chip I planned on putting in the pot and my goal was to knock Patrik out while going heads up against Eli who was obviously still drawing. Patrik thought for a year and a half before finally letting go the best hand.
Eli called… and drew 2 more!!! LOL, gamble, gamble, Eli. He missed his hand, and I took it down with a 9-7.
Eli got me in a later triple draw hand, though, when short handed he made a big hand against me. On the button I had 2-3-4-5. Eli stood pat on the first draw out of the big blind. On the second draw I caught the 6h. So naturally, I was hoping to catch a “three across heart.” If you aren’t a squeezer, a three across means that when you look at the side of the card you