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Home Sweet Home

I got back late last night after about 17 hours of travel from Barcelona, it wasn't to bad though. I sat next to a pretty interesting girl from Atlanta to Omaha who had just graduated college as well so we talked for a bit. The trip was a success in my book and I am very happy with the results, even if I feel I could have made quite a few less mistakes.

Things around Seward will be kind of hectic for the next few days. We are replacing the linoliumum in my kitchen today, my dad is coming down on Friday to help fix up some things, I'm packing and moving a lot of my stuff to Kearney, and I also have three friends who are getting married this weekend.... I don't think I will have much time for poker until I leave for Tahoe on the 7th.

Alright, I had better get to work.

oh yea, I'll get some pics from Barcelona downloaded and post them in the next couple days.

Million Guaranteed

Instead of going to the casino today I decided to lounge around my hotel, swim in the pool, and play the Million Guaranteed on Party Poker. Bad Choice.... I didn't hit a set even though I saw flops with 8 pocket pairs in the first 3 levels. I had a pretty tough table and couldn't really get much started. I was down to about 3,500 from my original starting stack of 5,000 when the following hand came up. The blinds were 50/100 and a player in 3rd position who wasn't very good raised to 275. This player had been limping and folding a lot, or raising and making huge over bets on the flop. I decided to call and see the flop with 99, one other player directly behind me called as well. The flop came 246 with two spades and the original raiser bet 800 into a pot of 975. I was going to fold after thinking about it, but my gut told me that he didn't have a bigger pair then me and was just making a continuation bet. I was pretty sure that the player beind me also didn't have 10 10 or better, so I went with my gut and send my whole stack of 3,300 for a 2,500 chip raise. The player behind me folds and the early position raiser calls INSTANTLY. That's not a good sign I think and expect him to flip over AA, but instead he flips over 85 off suit for a double gut shot straight draw. This is a fantastic situation for me because I am over a 65% favorite in the hand, but Party Poker wastes no time and turns a 7 to give my opponent the mortal nuts. That is really not the play I expected someone to make in one of the internet's biggest tournaments, but that is poker and I'll suffer much worse beats than that.

I am in Barcelona for two more nights then fly back to the states on Monday. Shannon already flew home and Adam caught a train to Madrid so I'm here all alone and travel isn't nearly as fun when you don't have any friends or family to share it with. I walked around the city today and did some "inner reflection" on the path my life seems to be taking, so I guess being alone has it's upsides. I think I will go to the casino tomorrow and play the 300 euro NL event and then be done with poker for the rest of the trip.

Airball

After playing so well in the first two events I entered here in Barcelona, I think I was a little to cocky going into the 1,000 euro NL event that we played last night. We started with 5,000 chips and my table was very tight so I was playing a lot of pots and winning most of the smaller ones that nobody wanted early. I quickly built my stack up to 6,000 when I think I made a play that was an unnecessary risk at the time. It was right at the end of the first level and a very good young Swedish player made in 260 (big blind 40) after five of us limped. I was in late position with A3 off suit and when the first 3 limpers called I decided to also take the flop and try to hit a big hand. My first mistake was probably playing such a weak hand, you really cannot flop a very powerful hand with A3 unless it comes 245, of 33X, or maybe A3X but that is even very susceptible. So we all take the flop and there is about 1,300 chips in the pot and it comes QJ8 all clubs. I have the Ace of cubs for the nut flush draw and check it when it comes to me. It checks around to Little Molly (the Swedish raiser) and he bets 1,200 into the pot. That's when I make my second mistake by not realizing the strength of this bet. He bet about 1/4 of his remaining chips into the pot and is much less likely to fold now then if he had bet smaller. The action folds around to me and I think for a minute then raise it to 5,000. There was my third mistake because making a play like that tells him that I can only have a couple different hands: 1) the nut flush draw with the Ace of clubs (most likely), or 2) a already made lower flush (like 7 high or something. Molly really doesn't think that long before sticking his stack in the middle and flipping over 9 10 of diamonds for the nut straight. I still have 9 outs in the deck but the 2 of spades hits the turn and the 2 of hearts on the river means that I am crippled and down to under 1,000 chips. This "semi-bluff" would be an okay play under slightly different circumstances but given all the information I had it was not the right play at this time. I failed to successfully evaluate the situation and paid the price. Another lesson that I pick up at a costly price.

Shannon played well but bubbled in 22nd place and didn't get paid. He flys out today and Adam and I have to find a different hotel because this one is sold out for tonight. There is satellite tournament tonight to the 2,000 euro buy in tomorrow and we will probably play in that at 6:00. Spain is still awesome.

Horses, Swedes, and some poker

Barcelona is insane. It is common to walk past a bar at 4:00 a.m. on a tuesday night and see a 200 spainiards dancing the night away. I'm having a blast just being over here with a couple friends and meeting some new ones as well. Last night we went out with a large group of Swedish guys and found a really nice club that was very high class and insanely busy for a tuesday night. Before we took off for the bar though we were in the casino playing some poker and a couple of the Swedish guys came over to us and said that there friends were up stairs playing "the horses" and we would all meet there before going out for the night. Shannon and Adam also had no idea what they meant when they said "playing the horses" because we were pretty sure that there was no simulcast racing or any satelite links in the casino to bet through, so we curiously walked upstairs to see what was going on. It turns out that there was a game in the casino that actually had fake mechanical horses run around a track and you could bet on which one was going to win. It was all automated and looked like an original Nintendo game on the screen and had a large glass covered track where the horses actually ran around. It was insanely fun and the casino staff had to repeatedly tell us to keep it down because it was disturbing the other customers when we yelled "COME ON FOUR, CATCH UP...... YESSSSS..... NOOOOOOOO..... UNBELIEVABLE!!!!" It was quite a site to see half our group high fiveing and huggin while the other ones had there head in there hands or were ripping up tickets in disgust. So that started our night off well. After that we left and went to the Movodo Club that I mentioned before where we met up with some other Swedes. As soon as we got there we met a whole group of Americans who were in Spain for a "Semester abroad" and came to Barcelona for a few days. They were pretty cool and the whole experience was a blast until the very end. After we had gone through a good ammount of alcohol a couple of the Swedish guys started to get into it with each other and eventually got into a fist fight. Security had to come over and break them up and I tried to help hold one of the guys back, but it kind of runied the good vibe that our group had going. After that a few of the other Swedes who weren't fighting went with Shannon, Adam, Myself and another American we met named Tim over to the strip of beach bars right along the docks. We had a very good time except that eveyone kept thinking that it was there turn to buy drinks and we ended up with way more shots per person than is recomended in "drinking by the numbers". Rather than let good liquid go to waste we each did our fair share and the night started to blur together from there on. We did try to go to another club in a different part of the city, but by the time we got there around 5:30 it was almost closed. It was a really shady area at that hour and I do remember trying to have a conversation in spainsh with a homeless guy who wanted a cigarette. I also offered a guy 20 euro for the 3 beers left on the six-pack that he was carrying, but eventually haggled it down to three euro... I think... and I also talked to a Jamacian prostitute for a few minutes. It may sound kind of weird but whenever I meet hookers I always wonder how they got into the position they are in. It's a really sad situation and I feel bad for them most of the time. Anyways, we made it back to our hotel just fine and woke up this morning with more than slight hang overs. I've vowed to never drink again, but might find it difficult because I also vowed to party with Swedes every chance I get.

Poker wise the week has been successful for all of us. Shannon played today and won his first match against a tight Latvian player that Adam nicknamed "The Terminator". Then he went on to play a very young, and talented, Spanish guy whom he had all-in at one point in the match, but eventaully the Spaniard came back. Shannon then got a bad break when he had his pocket 10's ran into his opponents pocket Jacks. Unfortunatly no 10 came up and Shannon got knocked out, but still pocketed $5,000 euros for making it to the final 16. Adam has been killing every cash game he has played and I have been running well in the tournaments so the week has been very profitable so far for all of us. Tomorrow is a $1,000 NL Hold'em tourney that we will play in and in 3 days there will be a $2,000 tournament. Hopefully things keep going well and we have some more success before the series ends. Tomorrow we are actually going to be tourists during the day and go see some sights in Barcelona before heading to the Casino for the tournament at 6:00.

I'm happy

We just got back from the casino, it's 5:42 a.m. here, but it's good we are back so late because that means one of us did really well. Tonight was the 300 euro buy in Pot-Limit Hold'em event and Adam Geyer and I both played in it. Adam got unlucky in a couple hands at got about 42nd out of 167 people. I won a few races and played very well and this time I didn't miss the final table. I got to the final table about 5th in chips and got very lucky to catch KK and AA at the final table, getting action on both. The AA was quite a hand because I re-raised a guy who had almost as many chips as me and he eventually called with 22. The flop came J 7 2 and I the room gasped in shock.... The turn came a 10 and I stood up, about to concede the hand but the room erupted when the A of hearts hit the river and Shannon and Adam both comment on how much of a suck-out and luck sack I was. I think I played very well at the final table with a couple hands where I made questionable plays but stayed alive. It got down to 5 handed and I was really wanting to chop the tourney and take about 7k euro down instead on getting 5th for 1,900, but one crazy German guy did not want to chop so we played on. We eventually got down to 3 people and I chopped with two Swedes who were both very good players. I took and even $10,000 euros (almost $13,000 U.S. dollars) for a hypothetical 2nd place finish and was very happy. First place would have paid $18,800 but 2nd would have only been $9,400 so I feel like it was a good deal to make. Tomorrow is the 300 euro Limit tourney, so hopefully I can do well in it again and keep the streak of good tourneys alive. Spain is awesome.

Here is a list of the results from last nights tourney, when they update later they will list tonight's as well: http://www.pokerpages.com/tournament/result14901.htm

Oh, by the way Shannon made quick work of his first round opponent and beat him in 10 hands! It was one of the fastest matches in tournament history, tomorrow he plays a dangerous German player who beat Marcel Luske in the first round. You can check his blog for more info :)

close to a good day

I played last night and won exactly 540 euro in the 20/40 limit tables, which was also exactly the buy in for tonights tournament. In tonights tourney I played extreemly well but got pretty unlucky when we got down to the final two tables. I lost a 40k pot (average stack 25k) with K 10 vs. Q 10 all-in pre flop and then the same guy later called my all in with 9 10 for over 1/2 his stack unfortunatly I had 96 and bubbled in 11th place right before the final table. First place would have been over $30k euro and 11th was only 1,400.... it feels like I lost even though I made a little money.

Barcelona has been a blast so far and I have met a lot of really cool guys who are also great players. Tomorrow we are going to go to the beach and then Shannon has his first Heads-Up match at 5:00 against a Spainiard that we don't know. If he wins he will probably play Marcel Luske in the 2nd round, possibly Surinder Sunar in the 3rd, and maybe Noah Boekken in the 4th round. That would be a redicliously tough run, but he's a great player and will be a favorite over almost anyone he plays.

Ship the Ca$h

It's 9:00 a.m. here and I just finished a +$6,500 session on 30/60 on Full Tilt. I ran well, played well, and couldn't stop even though I desperatly need some sleep. We have to check out of our hotel in a couple hours and find a new one..... it isn't gonna be easy in this state. Breakfast is being served downstairs so I better go eat something to energize and get me through the next 5 hours. I LOVE SPAIN!

Spain = sweet

So we go to the casino today and found out that the main event (2,500 Heads Up event) was sold out and the only way to get in was to win the Super satellite tonight. That wasn't such a big deal to me since I wasn't sure if I was going to play in it anyway, but Shannon was pretty worked up about it because he really wanted to play it. Fortunately Shannon won the satellite tonight and got his seat in the Main Event, so everything worked out as planned :) I busted out of the satellite in the 2nd hour but went over and beat up the live games for +900 euro over about 4 hours. It was good to log a winning session since I was feeling kind of down because I lost 1k yesterday in the same game. The game is ridiculously soft and there is no reason the I shouldn't beat it for a large profit every night as long as I run average. The only downfall of playing live is the HUGE rake that the casino takes from every pot. They rake 5 euro for the first 100, 10 euro if the pot hits 300, and 15 euro!!! If it hits 500. That is pretty ridiculous, but the games are SO EASY that it is hard to pass up. There is a 1k buy-in tourney tomorrow that Shannon and I will play, so hopefully one of us wins and the other takes 2nd :) I'll update more later after we become millionaires (euro wise ;)

Barcelona

Shannon and I just got done with a quick 6 hour nap after our we found a hotel here in Barcelona. The great news is that the hotel is 3 blocks from the Casino, 4 blocks from the beach, and a very affordably priced 4 star hotel. The bad news is that they only have availability for tonight and tomorrow. So far Spain is really beautiful, but the city is kind of hazy/smogy. We just woke up and after Shannon showers we are going to go find a authentic Spanish "restaurante" and get some food in us before going over to the casino.

We both busted up the on-line games in the ATL airport while we waited for our connecting flight, so the trip is already off to a great start. Shannon is just killing the 3/6 NL short handed games and it is starting to make me think that I should work on my NL cash games since there seems to be so much positive EV for anyone with a brain. Right now I'm watching a LIVE bull fight on TV, haha. I want to find one in Barcelona that we can go watch, but don't know if we will have time.

A-Town Down

Just touched down in Atlanta, met up with Shannon and hopped on the internet. We just heard that we have to switch gates all the way across the concorse, so we have to walk over there quick. Later

Roller Coaster, Spain tomorrow

I had a roller coaster session yesterday playing 30/60 on Full Tilt. I started up winning about $1,000 then went card dead for a while, went on tilt, and made several bad call downs and found my self down 2k from the start. At that point one of the rail birds really started ripping into me trying to get in my head and telling me how awful I was and how he knew that I was going to lose all of my money because I was "Such a terrible player". Evidently this guy was really mad at me for whipping him pretty bad at 10/20 a few weeks ago, but I don't really remember him. Anyways, I rebought at the table, caught a heater and started running people over. I quit the table a $700 winner, not a big score but it felt really good since I was down 2k and felt even better to shut up the hater.

Tomorrow I leave for Barcelona and am meeting Shannon in Atlanta so we can catch the same flight. I'm not sure if I want to cough up the $2,500 to buy into the Heads Up event, even though my heads up game is rediculiously good right now. I'm only taking 4k with me and want to play several of the smaller events as well. I also want to get into some of the limti cash games that they will be running. If I can runn well in them then maybe I'll buy into the main event, but we will have to see. I am really just excited to get to see Spain and Barcelona should be absolutely beautiful this time of year. I'll update the blog upon arrival. Wish me luck :)

The Majors

Sunday is game day for poker players and I got my laptop back just in time. I actually had to call my friend Alex as I was driving back from Lincoln and have him register me in all the big ones so that I didn't miss the start. I played really really well with the exception of a couple of hands that I could have defiantly laid down. I was doing great on stars as we were approaching the money but then had another big stack push on me when I had QQ only to show me AJ, an Ace on the river crippled me instead of launching me close to 100k in chips. I busted out shortly later. On Full Tilt I got my money all-in on the turn with the nut flush, but a guy filled up on the river and busted me pretty early in it. I played very well on Party but went card dead by the time we got down to 200 people. I eventually tried to re-steal with AJ, but the BB woke up with AQ and called me, a pretty bad play I feel on his part given the situation. But that ended it for me and I showed a net Sunday loss for the first time in a month. :( Spain in three days and I have to get my affairs in line before takeoff. I'll update upon arrival if I don't post again before that.

Bad beat

I took a ridiculous bad beat yesterday when I woke up and found that my $3,000, less than one year old computer decided to crash on me. Normally I am very tech savvy and can fix about any software problems that may arise but the problem this time seemed to be in the hardware, particularly in the hard-drive. That is kind of unfixable so I stopped for a moment, prayed briefly thanking God that I decided to get the 3 year warranty on it, and ran it into the "Geek Squad" at Best Buy. The guy seemed to think that it was the hard drive as well and said he would do the diagnostics tests and if necessary replace one of the hard drives. Yes my bad boy has dual hard drives and only the NERDIEST of computer geeks would brag about it or even point it out.

So 2 hours into the day and my whole day is shot. Seriously, without a computer I feel naked, I have no idea what to do. I really spend an average of 4-7 hours a day on-line I would guess and to not have internet access makes me feel like Coronal Sanders without a deep fat friar. Oh well, hopefully I will hear from them today.

I did get a chance to hop on my roommates computer for about 2 hours and log some much needed poker time. I played on Full Tilt for about 90 minutes and ran STUPIDLY good at one 15/30 for a $1,300 rush. I knew it was gonna be good when my first two hands were QQ and AA. I really want to start trying to qualify for the Main Event on Full Tilt right now but it's really hard to commandeer someone's computer for 6 hours while I play a multi. I'll get around to it.

In other news I put some cash in my safety deposit box today only to find that my passport was not in there. That means that I never returned it after Vienna and it lies somewhere in my room. I have 5 days before Barcelona to find it, wish me luck...

Kansas City

Kansas City was really fun, we left on monday and spent two nights at the Harrahs on the Missouri River. We got to catch a Royals game, which they won suprisingly enough, got to play a round of golf at the Shoal Creek Golf course, and spent a tuesday night bar hopping at the historic West Port in downtown KC.

Some highlights of the trip included having a conversations with Indians left fielder Jason Micheals midway through the 6th inning, watching some pedestrians jay-walk at 2:30 a.m. while our cab driver swerved towards them to "teach them a lesson", and rolling hot at the craps table for 20 minutes essentially getting myself back to even for the night. The trip was an overall success and I'll definatly miss these guys a ton when we part ways for good this summer.

Finished and done

Well graduation was very successful, I didn't even trip when crossing the stage. I got to graduate with almost all of my closest friends, had my family there, and really couldn't have asked for a better day. It feels really odd to finally be done with something I had been putting off for so long. I feel like I just lost a five year battle against my defiance of Concordia and the whole education system, but I made my Mom and Dad very happy and that is what means the most to me. A few of my friends said that they would have laid odds that I would never get my diploma and I actually would have had to agree with them 6 months ago. But when I started working through all my classes and actually realized it might be possible to achieve a college degree, I felt a deep feeling of accomplishment that I had only really felt a few times before in my life. I'm glad that I ended up doing it, that's the point I'm trying to get across I guess :)

I'm going to play all the Sunday majors on-line today and then tomorrow morning my friends and I are heading to Kansas City for a couple days to watch two Royals games. I know that Royals are AWFUL, but we are staying at the Harrahs down there and I'm sure we will have a great time regardless of if they win or lose.

Graduation

We are about to go to our graduation rehearsal and then have to sit through a student loan presentation for about an hour. My family is coming down tonight and we are going to go eat at the Hu Hot in Lincoln. Hu Hot is one of those Mongolian grill restaurants where they prepare the food in front of you on a huge round grill. It's really good food and pretty reasonably priced. Tomorrow morning at 8:00 I will officially be a college graduate.

Running g00t

Just finished about a 3 hour, 2k seesion at the 30/60 tables on Pac. The week is going well, already eclipsing the 7k mark in just three days. My roomates and I are going to Lincoln tonight to celebrate all of us being done with school forever. It feels good

Oh also, I am almost certain that I will be going to Barcelona with Shannon and maybe Jon in a couple weeks for a big heads-up tournament that is going on. It should be a blast. I'll give more details later.

Final final

I am about to take the last final of my undergrad career here at Conocordia. It will be a relief to get it over with and an even bigger relief when I find out that I have all my credits and can walk across the stage on Saturday and get my diploma.

Yesterday was a good poker day, I ran fairly well, but got cold decked for most of the afternoon and night. I ended up showing a very good day profit wise, but think that it could be even better. I played everything from 10/20 6 handed to 50/100 heads-up and made money in all three sessions that I played, so that was good. So far in 2006 I am very happy with where I am at. I have not really got to play all that much yet but am showing much higher profits at this point of the year than I was last year at this time. Hopefully it keeps up as I get into the full swing of the grind starting next week.

Throwing Airballs

Well, yesterday was a great day for my buddy Jon and his $90,700 score on Poker Stars. Unfortunately for me it wasn't quite so good. I missed cashing in the Stars $530, Party $374, Stars 2nd chance $215, FullTilt $215, BoDog $109, and Pac $65. The worst moment of my day was defiantly when I made a very stupid move on Party right as we were getting to the money. I had about 17k in chips and the average stack was about 22k. I get Q7 off in the SB and it folds around to the button who opens the pot for 4k (Blinds 800/1600). The button has about 20k in chips and I think that if I push he will be forced to fold most all hands ESPECIALLY on the bubble, so I send my 17k and he insta calls me with KK. I end up getting 401st place and the top 400 cashed, so I basically just threw away $500 that I would have been guaranteed to win if I just fold the hand. Not the greatest move I have ever made.

They day wasn't a total loss though, Mats talked me into playing a $215 Heads-Up tourney on Stars just a few minutes before it started. I have never played a HU tourney, but feel like I am a very difficult person to play heads-up so I decided to give it a shot. Mats and I agreed to swap 1/3 of each other, kind of a standard deal we have, and we both cruised through the first round. 128 people started the tournament, so after the first round we were down to 64 and I was set up against a fairly well known young player who writes for cardrunners.com. We played for quite a while and I slowly chipped away playing small pots and waiting for trapping opportunities. I outdrew him when he was very short stacked on the last hand and instead of getting mad he said "gg, you deserved it" I couldn't tell if he was serious or sarcastic, but then he said "I have never felt so outplayed heads-up in my life". I was almost taken aback for a minute because that is a really amazing compliment from a very, very good player. Just to make sure he wasn't messing with me, I asked if he was serious and he said that he was and then started asking me questions about my game, if I was a pro, ect... It was really cool and gave me a lot of confidence going into my next match. I really made pretty short work of my next guy and was in the final 16 before I knew it, oh, Mats cruised into the final 16 as well. My next match was against a really aggressive player, and I didn't realize the match had started until a few minutes after it did, and I got to my table already down 3:2 in chips from being blinded off. I fought back very well though and had my opponent at a 3:1 chip disadvantage after about 20 minutes. Then he won a coinflip to pull back even and I made two semi-bluffs that didn't get there when he had big enough hands to call, and I got busted out in the final 16, which still payed $500. Mats won again, and again, and in the final 4 he was playing a very exceptional young player that we both met in Vienna at the Austrian poker championships. They really had an epic battle going back and forth but eventually Mats wore him down and took the spot in the final. It turns out that the same guy who knocked me out was also the same guy who Mats was playing in the final, but they agreed to chop the prize money and each took $6,144, 1/3 of that being mine :) Mats also cashed for 1k in the big Stars tourney, which I had 1/3 of as well.

So overall after airballing all those tourneys I still showed a profit of over $1,000 mainly because Mats is the man.