doing poorly

Things aren't going exactly as planned. I lost yesterday in the PL hold'em event about 2 hours into it. I flopped a set of 4's but got dominated by a flush on the river. Today I played the $1,500 Limit event and actually made the first break! I had over 4,000 chips about 2 hours into it and then started to run cold. I ran into KK three times in a series of 10 hands, and it tilted me. I played poorly after that and feel like I gave the chips away. Tomorrow I will play the $2,500 NL 6-handed event, hopefully it will go better.

A roomate of mine, Jason got 46th in the PL event yesterday and John Little is still in the Limit tourney with 27,000 chips. He'll start again tomorrow and will have a very realistic shot at making a final table. I'll update again tomorrow.

Quick exit

Yesterday I didn't last very long after I re-raised from the small bling with AK and a very aggressive young player moved in with AA. Since you only start with 1,500 in chips it really doesn't take long to go bust if you have a bad set up hand like that. Hopefully today will go better since I have had success with Pot Limit Hold'em in the past.

Today's event: $1,500 PL Hold'em

Moving Day

Today we woke up and moved into our new house in Henderson. It's a really nice place with a great pool/backyard area that will be perfect for grilling out and having people over. Donny got into town last night and he came over to meet a bunch of the other guys we were staying with. We had a fun night playing pool at Lurped (Marcus's) house and declined to go to the spearmint Rhino when everyone else left. Yesterday we also played all of the major Sunday tourneys and our house did pretty well. Aaron Bartley (GambleAB) got 14th on the Poker Stars 1k tourney, BelowAbove and myself got in the top 100 of the PartyPoker Million Guaranteed and the big winner of the day was PearlJammer who got 3rd on UB and 3rd on Party for a total of 95k.

Earlier today we went to the Rio and I got registered for 3 events. I am playing in the $1,500 NL tomorrow, the $1,500 PL on Wednesday, and the $2,000 NL event on July 1st. I will update on my day tomorrow after we get done, but it will probably be very late.

.........

I can't think of a title for the post because it will be very very random. Yesterday we woke up late after having a semi-quiet night here at the house when the cops only had to stop by once. Gank and a couple of his buddies had stopped by again and I went to bed early (like 2:00) before pretty much everyone else. After waking up late I went for a swim for a while and then we went to the Bellagio to play the $500 tournament again. Nate, Marcus, SamENole, and Nordberg all played in it. I busted about 5 minutes into it when my Kings ran into Marcus's Aces. No big deal, I had to kill 5 hours so I went and played some 30/60 and made about $1,000 in a fairly tough game. After a few hours there Nate, Marcus, and Nordberg had all busted and SamENole (real name: Matt Smith) was the only one left. They were down to 6 handed and it was taking FOREVER to knock someone out. Marcus, Nate, and I decided to all play some 2-5 NL while we were waiting for Matt to bust so we could go eat. I have to say that this particular game was one of the softest games I have EVER played in. I don't know if all NL games are like it but it was pretty unbelievably easy. I made a couple good hands and got max value for them, also made one spectacular bluff on Nate and ended up about $400 in 30 minutes before we quit. Matt was STILL in the tournament, so us three plus a girl named Lisa all went to Noodles to eat. I had heard great things about the food at Noodles and I wasn't disappointed. I still don't think it can compare to the Dragon Palace in Seward though.

After we finished eating, Nate and I went over to the Rio and he registered for a couple events while I had them transfer my "front money" from Lake Tahoe down to Vegas. Front Money is kind of like casino credit, I gave Harrahs in Lake Tahoe $10,000 to hold on to so that I didn't have to carry $20,000 with me to Vegas. It's just in case I got robbed or something I wouldn't lose everything I had on me. Anyways, it took them almost an hour to get all the paperwork through and get me my money. It worked out perfect though because SamENole was staying at the Rio and needed a ride to our house just as we were leaving. We got back to our house and Nick really wanted to go out for the night, even though it was already past midnight. I agreed to go and six of us all hopped in a cab and headed to the Ghostbar at the Palms. I had heard that the Ghostbar was one of the best clubs in Vegas, maybe that got my expectations to high. It was really nice and since it's 56 stories up it has the best view in town, but the whole place just was kind of mellow. We got a booth and a couple of bottles and had a pretty good time because all the guys were a lot of fun. We met a couple of nice girls from New York and the night ended up being all right. After we rounded everyone up at around 4:00 we went downstairs and since there were six of us we just took a limo home instead of a cab. I'm already wore out and it isn't even the weekend yet...

short stories from Vegas

My roommates here are really cool. I'm having a blast hanging out with them. Last night we went out to a club called Blondies in the Aladdin Hotel and had a good time. "Gank" (wsop bracelet winner Brett Jungblut) and I played Beer Pong there and went 4-0 to keep his undefeated streak alive. The bar really wasn't that great but the people and beer pong made it a lot of fun. After that we went to a restaurant at the Aladdin and ordered breakfast. Josh, another one of my roommates actually chugged a whole bowl of Ranch Dressing for $200. The picture of him tipping back the bowl while it is streaming down the side of his mouth and onto his clothes was priceless. It's a good thing he did it also because he lost the coin toss and had to pay for the meal, which was just a hair under $200. After we got home we hung out for a while and Josh had a "friend" come over who he met while he was at a gentleman's club. We hot tubbed till like 8:00 a.m. and finally crashed by 9:00. The girl was actually really nice and not a stereotypical "stripper" like you would think.

Today we woke up late and I went and picked up my car at the repair shop. I also played a $300 NL tourney on Poker Stars with Nick and Josh. We actually killed the tournament and all final tabled. I took a rough beat and made a bad play and busted in 7th, but still won about $4,000 from the tourney. This trip is going really well and I hope it can keep up. On-line Phenom "SamENole" is stopping by tonight so it will be fun to meet another great player like him.

Keep the rush

We arrived in Vegas last night and as soon as we got off the interstate my car's alternator started on fire. After that drama we got it towed and Nick came and picked Nate and I up. Nick is a really good poker player who is also from Lincoln and plays under the handle "ahhh_snap". We are staying at this unbevievable house that they rented for the wsop. It's really a beautiful neighborhood and a amazing place, to bad we only get to stay at this house for the week :)

Today we went to the Bellagio and Nate, Nick, and I all played their $500 daily tournament. I played really well and fought through a super cold streak when we were down to two tables. I ended up playing very well at a weak final table and had 85% of the chips when we got down to 3 handed. I talked the other two guys into a deal and took the lions share of the $20,000 prize pool. I ended up with $7,905 and a cool trophy. Vegas is off to a great start.

Nate plays beautifully

Nate played great poker for two days during the Main Event here at Lake Tahoe. He suffered a rough set-up and lost with KK vs. AA when they were down to 14 people and got knocked out. He rode the short stack very well for almost the whole tournament, but if he would have won that last hand, he would have had more than enough chips to make the final table. Not to get down on himself for too long he immediately won a $150 tourney on Party Poker last night for $13,000. He is looking like he will become a very very good tournament player.

Today we are leaving Tahoe and going to head to Vegas. Another friend that I know from Lincoln is already in his WSOP house so we are going to stay with him for a few days until our house is ready. Most of the other guys are coming down around the 25th, so he will have a weeks head start on them.

VEGAS baby! VEEEEGAAAAAS!!!!!

Tahoe Main Event

Shannon and Nate just started playing the $10,000 wsop circuit Main Event at noon today. I went down and checked on them and they are both at tables with some big names pros. Nate is at a table with Andy Bloch and Shannon is at a table with Daniel Negreanu. When I was down there I saw Shannon take about a 6,000 chip pot down with K7 on a KK336 board when he raised his opponent on the river. His opponent mucked his hand after calling so I have no idea what he had. I walked around and saw Dean from Michigan playing at a table with Gavin Smith. Dean got 3rd to me in the Pot Limit event and then also got 3rd yesterday in the $1,500 NL event. He asked me if I was playing and I said I wasn't because I didn't win a satelite. He said he wished he would have known because he needed a horse. (Horse: a player staked by another player in a tournament) Bad beat for me I guess, I would have loved to play the event.

I'm gonna go down to the beach and hang out for a while I think, then I'll come back and update on Shannon and Nate a little later.

On-line stuff

There are a few web pages that update on tournament results. I haven't found any with pictures yet but there may be soon.

Mine:

http://www.pokerpages.com/tournament/result14731.htm



Shannon's:

http://www.cardplayer.com/tournaments/results/3051
http://www.pokerpages.com/tournament/result14732.htm
http://www.pokerpages.com/players/profiles/71052/shannon-shorr.htm

Weird stuff

*Shannon ended up 3rd in the $1,000 NL event for 11k, see his blog for final table details

I played the $1,500 NL event today with Nate and Jon. There were 95 people in the event and 9 got paid with first place being close to 50k. I never felt really comfortable playing at any of my tables. There were always people who would shove in at any time just looking to gamble and that made it very difficult to accumulate many chips for me. I got very low stacked about 3 hours into it but got lucky and tripled up when I flopped top pair and a flush draw with J4 on a J95 board. I was up against KK and Q 10 but hit a 4 on the river to build my stack to about 7,000. I played very well for the next two hours and had my stack as high as 30,000. Then we re-drew for tables and I just couldn't seem to execute anything well. Every steal I tried got re-raised and most of the pots I won were very small. I was down to about 14,000 in chips with 13 people left when I opened from 2nd position with A 10. It folded to the BB who was a aggressive, but fairly poor player, who I had played quite a few pots with. He decided to call and we took a flop. The flop came 46A and he checked it to me. I pondered then checked behind with the intention of letting him bluff at it on the turn. The turn came a 3 and he led out 4,400. I pondered for while and studied him, I had a tell on him and thought he looked strong but I didn't go with my instincts and decided to push in. He auto-called me with A4 for a flopped 2 pair and I was out of the tournament in a disappointing 13th place. That sucked.

After that Jon busted out in 10th place for an even more disappointing bubble and we all went back up to our room. Jon was leaving in the morning so we settled up the bill and then Jon and Shannon got the idea to flip coins for the balance of what Jon had borrowed from Shannon. We are SUCH degenerates. After watching the action Nate decided he wanted in on it and flipped for like $2,000 with Jon in a best of 7 series of flips. Nate got dominated and I wanted a little action as well. I told Nate since this obviously wasn't his night that I would do one flip of one coin one time for $1,000 and he quickly agreed like the sucker he is. The stipulation was that the money had to be on the bed so we each peeled 10 $100's off and put them on the sheets. He called Tails, what a sucker, and I knew before it even hit the ground that Heads was coming. BOOM, Heads, thanks for the donation Nate!

Nate then went on the lose almost $10,000 in coin flips at one point, but got 7k back from Shannon at the end of the night. Nate felt sick, but he shouldn't have because he made almost $20,000 on-line today after busting out of the tournament.

Coin flips for thousands of dollars, God help us.

Shannon Update

I'm farily convinced that Shannon is one of the best NL hold'em players in the world. I mean that in all seriousness. After winning the first 1k NL event (he should have won) he is going into the final table tomorrow with a MONSTER chip lead in the next 1k event. He has over 80,000 chips and 2nd place is around 40,000. He will probably win it tomorrow and prove even further how great of a player he is. Two years from now he will be one of the most feared pros on the circuit.

Pot Limit Champ

I'm pretty convinced I am luckier at Pot Limit Hold'em than everyone else in the world. I just finished up the final table and played great, while also getting very lucky to never get bad beat. I ended up with over 90% of the chips when we got down to heads-up after I knocked out Dean from Michigan in 3rd place. I got pretty lucky against him when we got all our chips in the pot on a flop of 532, I had 43 and he had JJ. The Ace of diamonds hit the turn and the tournament was all but mine. I made a small deal with the other guy when we got heads-up so that I guaranteed myself at least $12,500. After about 30 minutes heads-up I finally finished him off when we got all in on a flop of 886 with my 89 dominating his A6.

After finishing all the paperwork and stuff the victory hit me and I felt really proud. They had a photographer there who took a victory picture and it will probably go up on some websites, I'll post the links when they get there. This was a great day.

Final Table Info

I have a few hours to kill before we start our final table at 4:00. I am pretty pumped about playing very well yesterday and dodging a few bullets when I could have gone broke. There is one hand in particular yesterday that I feel is one of the best hands I have played in quite sometime. It happened at the 300/600 level when we were down to 13 or 14 people left. I was in the SB for 300 chips and two players in middle position limped in for 600. Limping is usually uncommon at this stage in the tourney but at our table it seemed to be happening quite a bit. I look down at my hand and see 96 of spades and decide to call and try to hit a big flop. The BB is a very good young player who is from Michigan and plays quite a few live tournaments. He also checks his option and we see a flop 4 handed. The flop is beautiful; 8 of spades, 5 of spades, and the 4 of hearts, so I flopped a flush draw and a gut shot straight draw meaning that I have a lot of outs to hit a big hand. I decide to check instead of betting into the field so that I can see what the other players will do. It checks around and we see a free turn with 2,400 chips in the pot. The turn is a BEAUTIFUL Jack of spades giving me the flush. I decide that the best way to play this hand will be to bet it out and hopefully one of the limpers will raise me with a hand like AJ or KJ. I bet 1,800 chips and the young player in the BB calls the bet, the two limpers fold. This call kind of confuses me because I don't think he is the type of player who will call that bet with the Ace of spades, so I kind of put him on a hand like AJ with the ace of spades or the A of spades and another pair. So the dealer burns the last card and puts out a beautiful Ace of Diamonds on the river. This is my PERFECT card because it may have given him two pair and also looks like it would be a card that scares me, so if I check the river he may bluff at the pot. I do a Oscar nominated acting job and finally check it to him. I really want him to bet the end here and I don't think he could possibly check behind me in this spot. He ponders for a while and then bets 4,000 chips, which is not as large as the pot and only leaves him 4,500 more behind him. UGHHHHH.... That is not what I wanted because a bet like this is rarely a bluff, if he was bluffing he would have bet the pot. I now am pretty sure he either made two pair on the river, or also turned a flush. I study him for a little bit and and he looks way to calm to be bluffing. This is not a situation where I can fold unless I was sure he had the flush, so I start talking to him and tell him I am either thinking of raising or calling, he doesn't give me any information and I finally decide to just call the 4,000 chips. The call only leaves me with 5,000 chips left and he flips over K7 of spades for the 2nd nut flush. I lost a very big pot, but I feel like I lost the absolute minimum that I could have on that hand. After I showed him my 9 high flush he said that I played the hand very, very well and he thought that most all other players would have gone broke on that hand. It was a very good compliment from a very good player. After that hand I went on a rush and raised 4 of the next 5 pots, doubling up once and building my stack up to 19,000 when we finally got down to the final nine players. Here is what the final table looks like:

Scott Clements: Seattle, WA 36,400 chips
Dean Hamrick: East Lansing, MI 35,200
David Anderson: Seward, NE 19,000
Hans "Tuna" Lund: Dayton, NV 17,900
Dennis Ferreria: San Jose, CA 16,400
Daniel Klein: Sacramento, CA 13,000
Jon Perez: Concord, CA 11,100
Aaron Faulkner: Cordova, CA 6,200
Les Spear: Zephyr Cove, NV 4,900

Hans "Tuna" Lund is the most experienced player at the table. He made TWO final tables at the Main Event of the WSOP in the 1980's. The other player I'm worried about is Dean Hamrick who won the big pot off of me with flush over flush earlier. I feel very confident going into the final nine and will be disappointed if I don't win. I'll update soon after the Final Table is over.

Final Table

Today we all played the $500 PL hold'em event. Since I have final tabled the only Pot Limit event I ever played I had very high expectations going into the event. Late into the first hour I got to see a free flop in the BB with A2 off suit. The flop came A32 rainbow and I bet out about 1/2 the pot. One of the limpers, Keith Sexton (Mike Sexton's brother) raised my 200 chip bet 600 more. I don't see folding this hand at all so I re-raise pretty much all in. We end up getting all in on the turn after a 10 hits. I flip over my A2 and he has A3 for a better two pair.... however the poker gods realized that I couldn't get knocked out quite yet and gave me the 2 of spades on the river for a tremendous bad beat. I was off to the races after that and played aggressive, power poker, building my chip stack steadily and got to the final table which plays at 4:00 tomorrow.

I made one very good play where I had the worst hand and did not lose all my chips, I will probably update on it later but right now I need to go to bed. 1st place is 13k and I am going to get it.

$1,000 NL tourney

We all played the $1,000 NL tournamnet today after waking up around 11:00 and ordering room service. Nate got 2nd in the $200 second chance tourney last night for a cool $3,400 and he also already won his $10,000 main event seat in the first satelite we played. Other than him though, the rest of us aren't fairing so well. No one cashed in the $500 event yesterday and Nate and I busted in the $1,000 event today fairly early. I feel like I played well again with one mistake, which cost me my tournament. Shannon and Jon were still in the last time saw so we will hope they play great. I have 5% of Shannon so lets really hope he dominates.

Tonight they are opening a new club here at the Harrahs and a pretty big list of celebrities are going to be showing up. DJ AM will be the mc and I have heard that Carmen Electra and Pamela Anderson will both be in attendence. Needless to say we are going to try to get in somehow and we already talked to a couple of the tournamnet directors who said they may be able to hook something up.

Tomorrow is another $500 NL event, hopefully my luck will turn a bit.

In Tahoe

We finally made it here after about 3 more hours of driving than expected. That's alright though, the city seems really awesome and so far the whole tournament has been run very well. I have been running pretty poorly but have been very happy with my play thus far and know that I am making the right moves. I missed cashing in both of my first 2 tourneys but will hopefully do better in the next few days. I'll update more later, it's late now.

Just found out I lost $10,000

I lost over $10,000 without even playing poker. I actually lost it because I DIDN'T play any poker. A good friend of mine, Mats Iremark, took 3rd in the Poker Stars $1,000,000 guaranteed tournament for $52,000. Mats and I usually swap 20% of eatch other when we play the major sunday tournaments, so if I had not been moving out of my house on this weekend, I would have gotten 20% of his winnings.

I actually wasn't really mad at all when he told me, I'm really happy he did well and that is the 2nd final table in that tourney for our Vegas house the last two months since Jon got 2nd in it a few weeks ago.

Congrats on the score Mats, everyone can see the results on the poker stars blog www.pokerstarsblog.com

Last day

I leave tomorrow for Lake Tahoe with Nate so today is my last official day living in Nebraska. I have been really busy cleaning and getting the house ready the last few days so I haven't played any poker at all. I probably won't play any until we get to the Tahoe. I heard that it is really beautiful down there so I'm really excited to go.

The whole moving thing is starting to hit me now. I'm really anxious to step out the door and see Nebraska in my rear view mirror, but at the same time I am leaving almost everything I have known for my whole life, and this time it's not just a vacation. I won't be back to live here ever again, most likely, and I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me a little nervous.

Shannon's mom posted a quote on his blog by Henry David Thoreau - "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." Everytime I get nervous this quote replaces it with the anxious "Christmas Eve" feeling that causes butterflys in your stomach.

alright, my blog is starting to look like a mix of an ego-trip and a diary, I'll update in Tahoe.

Ouch

Just dropped $3,500 playing 50/100 for less than an hour. Ran awful and couldn't play well enough to make up for it. The nail in the coffin was when I was down to 1,000 and was heads-up with JJ vs. 67 on an 854 flop. It hurts...

Moving

It has been pretty busy around my house, we had new linoleum laid in the kitchen and recarpeted the whole house in the last two days, but I still found some time for a little poker. I played some 50/100 on FT two days ago for a couple hours, and some 30/60 last night. I was beating up on this guy at 50/100 pretty bad heads up and then another guy came a sat down. He was a much better player and I should have probably left because he was playing very well and hitting his hands. I ended up quitting a $1,500 loser and felt pretty bad about how I played at the end. Yesterday I played much better, a lot different than I have been and slowly made some money. I was much less aggressive unless I was in good position or a good spot and I hit some hands. I ended up quitting a $2,000 winner so it made up for the day before.

My Dad is driving in tonight and we are going to work on a lot of stuff around the house tomorrow before I have to leave to go to a couple different weddings. I think I am planning on leaving for Tahoe on Tuesday so I only have a few days left to get everything in order.

I had a really good talk with a friend last night for a couple hours about a lot of different things, but mainly the issues that are coming up during this transition period between college and the "real world". It was great to talk about so many different things involving the direction our lives are heading and how the choices we are making now are going to affect the paths our lives will take. Alright, enough introspective stuff I gotta get some stuff done.