I grew up in New Orleans, for a long time it sucked to be both a fan of the Saints and occasionally of LSU. But I always was. Football is just different in the South. For instance, in Minnesota the Vikings are kind of a big deal but it’s not like the city gets pissed if they lose. If LSU loses a football game everyone is miserable. I don’t know if that is bad or good but it is a fact. Watching last nights game against Mississippi State a few things seemed clear:

1. LSU might not allow 50 points all year.

2. I feared for the lives of the Mississippi State players and was actually yelling at my TV “get that damn kid out of there”.

3. If a team can score on LSU (very doubtful)  they can beat them as LSU appears offensively challenged.

4. At least for the next few weeks the under for LSU matchups seems like a decent bet.

I don’t think LSU will go undefeated but I hope they at least win next weeks game as I am flying down with my nephew. It will be his first Tiger Stadium experience, given his options locally (Gophers, yuck) I imagine he will become a lifelong Tiger fan.  I am saying it now college football needs a playoff, every year, including last year the SEC gets screwed (yes I know an SEC team won).  USC will play nobodies all year and hopefully won’t choke against someone like Cal or UCLA.  Meanwhile LSU has land mines every week, that isn’t USC’s fault but it does suck without a playoff to make the situation right.  Don’t even get me started on the Little Ten.  In case you haven’t noticed I am a bit biased.

This weekend I am heading to Wisconsin Dells for a little lazy river and poker action. On Saturday I am hoping to hook up with Mark “Poker Ho” Kroon for a little live poker or at least scam some wifi from him for some online poker. Apparently Phil Hellmuth stops by occasionally and it is not uncommon to have 5 or 6 guys playing online poker at any given time in his bar. Sounds like a great bar.

I’ve had a lot of poker stuff going on in the past week. Last Wednesday night, I played in a good 100-200nl game at Commerce. I lost 20k. I made one really terrible laydown. My mind was off…. I learned just before the game that Bank of America planned to buy a piece of Countywide. I had a massive short bet on Countrywide, so I figured to lose a huge amount on Thurs. The stock was up 25% in the aftermarket Wed.

On Thursday, I had a heads up battle against Tony G at 200-400PLO on FullTilt. I won a pretty good figure. He plays weird. He puts too much money in the pot out of position, IMO, but in fairness I cold-decked him once or twice. I played super passively and just let him string himself on. He fired two barrels as a bluff too often. Thursday night, I went out to dinner in LA with Kenny Tran, Dan Harmetz, and Kenny’s friend Casey. I always find it funny going out after a long online session (in this case, 4.5-5 hours)… basically you have to drink to avoid being totally wired. We did a decent job of that.

On Friday, I went to a charity poker tournament in San Diego that was organized by Donna Baldwin. This was an unbelievably nice event. I can’t recommend the hotel enough…..
http://www.ivyhotel.com/

The tourney structure was fast, as expected, but I had a great time chatting with Chip Reese and Howard Lederer. Phil Ivey busted early and came over to our table a bit drunk. He wanted to bet props. I took him up on it for some reason, at 10k per flop (I got 10k if it came 2/3 or 3/3 red cards, he got 10k if it came 2/3 or 3/3 black cards). I had an edge in the bet b/c I could, for example, limp with a black J-9 or go all-in with a red 2-7 (which makes for an interesting maximization problem, by the way, as you’re playing for nothing but you risk losing the prop bet option). All I can tell you is that this was the day for black. Black black black black, Brando is down 104k. If you want a “What am I doing with my life?” moment, lose 104k in props.

I guess Phil Ivey might be the world’s premier gambler at the moment. And, for the record, I do believe that whoever you’re talking about, you have to add the “add the moment” part. This is a high volatility business with some sickness thrown in. So here’s my evidence for Phil being on top now…. Kenny Tran and I see Phil at the bar (after props) and tell him that a game might go down in one of the rooms. Phil says, “I don’t have any money”. Kenny says, “Surely your credit is good around here”. This conversation continues for a bit, then Phil says, “Wait a minute, I do have money.” He had truly forgotten that he had money, but then, five minutes later, he showed up with a Ziplock bag that had $700k+ in it (mostly cranberries) and said, “You never know when things are going to go down.”

I went to bed at 2 or so on Saturday night (I had the tournament on Sunday). A game spontaneously started in one of the rooms at about 3.30am and by all reports it was a very good one. I walked in at 10am and it was down to 3 people…. Antonio Estfandiari, Phil Laak, and Nelly. As I write this, it seems crazier than it did at the time…. I mean, it was Phil, Antonio, and Nelly. Nelly is far smoother than any poker player could ever hope to be, and he’s somehow a master with chips.

I busted the Bike tournament in the second to last level. I was short-stacked and lost a 20,000 chip pot with KK.

Going into the hand I raised 2100 obviously hoping to pick up the pot right there, but in poker there usually is a snag one way or the other and the plan had to change.  Brian raised me 10k so it was discussion time; what did he have and could I out play him post flop or should I just lay it down?  At the time I figured maybe mid pair, ak, or aq so I reraise 27k to eliminate these possibilities.  He just calls so the thought process continues.  Now I think he has AA because any mid pair or AK or aq he mucks and KK I feel he would push.  The flop comes K K 4.  I pretty much ruled out most hands, I was sure I was dealing with AA so he checks and I lead out with 30k just under half the pot.  He thought about the hand for at least 10 minutes before calling (they sped up his discussion in editing) so now I really feel he has AA and he has too much invested not to see if he can hit on the turn.  The turn comes a 10, he checks, and now I fire 50k thinking he cannot call with AA any longer.  He raises me 50k and I think for a minute.  I figure out he only has 30k left and there is nothing else I could do to win the hand so I muck.  Seven deuce is a crazy game.  You must have balls of steel to play it and you cannot run into the stone cold nuts with it if you have to continue a post flop attack.

Just to tell how sick this seven deuce game is, I was at the Bellagio about two weeks later playing seven deuce again and I run in to quad kings.  How sick is that??  I did not loose nearly as much on the hand but really…what are the odds on that?

Next weeks episode there is no more seven deuce hands for me on the show but there is anther 300k still to be bluffed off by other players.  It should make for good TV.

I don’t know why I expected more than Michael Vick to be a giant liar….

- His father, absentee growing up, came back into his life once he became a football star. Star pays the rent on Dad’s condo…and as soon as the money stream dried up and the son needed a father rather than an anchor, Dad throws the son under the bus, in print.
- Mom takes no responsibility in how either of her two athlete/criminal sons grew up.
- Dozens of hangers-on claim to be his friends from way back, but obviously treat him more as a meal ticket than a friend.
- Half of his adopted home city refuses to just let him be an athlete, instead forcing him into being a public face of a centuries-old racial politic.
- The other half will cheer him on Sunday afternoon, but drop n-bombs about him behind closed doors (and in some cases, flat-out in the open).

Michael Vick has every right to be confused. But at some point, he needs to be a man of his word. All a gambler has is his word. The “I put up money for the other boys to gamble, but I didn’t take a cut” is an excuse so laughable as to taint the rest of what seemed to be a reasonable plea in court, and a heartfelt apology outside of it.

If someone could treat Michael Vick as a man, without ulterior motives, maybe he could believe his honor and his word are something worth having.

About once a month or so, Beanie or I will post a video of someone doing something very skilled and unique. We’ve had Pele, sand artists…all kinds of interesting tidbits.

This month, I’ll be posting two things I’ve stumbled across. The first is a video of an Air Force demo of the F-22 Raptor. I think this plane is interesting because a lot of it was designed at the Lockheed-Martin office I used to work at, in Eagan, Minnesota. But what’s more staggering is that this plane can do things so unique and physically demanding that there are only a couple of Air Force pilots who can do it all. The plane can literally do a stop-and-go by flipping its nose up 140 degrees, so the tail is in front of the nose…the plane slows down while the engine pushes against its forward momentum. When the plane has almost stopped (quickly), the pilot can flip the nose back over in the original direction and take off again.

This thing is INSANE.

Another great video by Bucklox. Great poker analysis.

This young kid from the south has been on a great run lately. His 2007 stats are very impressive. It looks like Shannon is going to be here for awhile. Enjoy his ventures.

My best friend has been staying with us for the weekend, we have known each other since we meet at school twenty years ago. We used to play cards together when we were young and later on in the pub and with friends in a home game. Our playing ability historically has always been pretty evenly matched.

The last time he came to visit he wanted to play a bit of online poker; he has occasionally played on the internet mostly free rolls and low level S+G’s. So we sat down at the PC with me acting as observer and advisor and he plunged into a S+G; then he very quickly plunged back out again. He had decided to call an early position raise with a weak ace against my advice, and then re-raised all in on the flop with top pair no kicker only to find himself up against top pair and top kicker. No help was forthcoming so there goes a buy in! Then he blew out of an MTT in the early stages hunting a weak flush draw. This pattern went on for a while, he wouldn’t listen to me and kept playing bad cards in poor position and didn’t last very long in any games he played (annoying, as it was my money!). Eventually he gave up when I would only allow him to play one dollar games. (Sorry got to think of the BR chap)

Thinking about the situation afterwards, I came to the conclusion that he would always struggle to take advice from me because,
a.) He thinks we are of about similar ability and there is nothing I can teach him.
b.) He hates being told what to do, as any of our teachers from school would testify.

I didn’t think I would be prepared to try another training session with him and thought that maybe he would just have to follow his own path to poker knowledge like most of us have done. Well a lot of good poker related things have happened to me since our last session most of which he is aware off and we were talking about some of my recent successes over a pint. He was very interested on some of the strategy’s I employ and seemed convinced that I could help his game, I believed he was interested enough in improving his play to give it another try.

I fired up the PC and logged into a poker site to get him started, I choose for him a full table S+G with a decent (for the internet) structure to maximize the skill factor and it quickly fills with eager players. The first few hands pass without incident then a tester, we are in mid position and face a 3X raise from UTG holding K10 suited. He looks at me and I say ‘fold’, then he looks at the cards on the screen again and retorts ‘fold?’ I nod and say ‘yes it’s a fold’. A king hits the flop and he looks at me as if I just stole his pint. He quickly changes his mind as two players get all the chips in the middle on the flop AK versus flush draw with the AK holding. I feel as if I have just won the first battle in the war to improve his play.

To be honest it’s a great table to demonstrate some solid poker fundamentals, all the poker stero types are represented Rocky Mcrock, Scandinavian ‘Gus wanna be’ Maniac, Calling All Station’s and of course everybody’s favorite ‘Captain Play Right’ who can’t go one round without slating other peoples play and loves to tell you how he just executed a squeeze (when he really just shoved with aces). Round after round is spent with me trying to convince my student it’s correct to fold suited rubbish (J 2 of hearts what’s wrong with that) from early position. I also have to work hard to get him to concentrate on the hands he is not directly involved in to learn the style of play of others at the table.

My own personal style would best be categorized as tight aggressive and naturally this is the manner of play I choose to ‘inflict’ upon my student. I tell him ‘we don’t play many hand, but when we do we play for all our chips’. Eventually we are dealt a playable hand, Pocket 10’s from mid position. Calling all stations (CAS) has called from early position so I instruct my student to raise a bit more than standard to try to get a fold. And of course our X5 raise does nothing to stop CAS doing what he does best and we take a flop, and its a good one at that for tens as its eight high. We bet pot and CAS goes into the tank and eventually calls. My pupil is worried when a K turns but I reassure him ‘remember who your in the hand with (CAS) these guys never fold and hardly ever raise’ bet ¾ pot I instruct him but fold if you get re-raised, surprise, surprise CAS calls and a low card falls on the river and both players check and we take down a biggish pot when CAS shows down A 5 for second pair on the flop (these guys never fold).

A few hands latter we pick up pocket 7’s from mid position, I instruct my student to flat call as there have been a number of limpers in front and we like volume in this spot. He again looks at me strangely but complies. Rocky Mcrock (RM) is in the BB and makes an above standard raise; this is of immediate concern because to do this we know RM needs a real hand and pretty big one at that. I explain this to my student and try to explain to him the basic math’s of this particular situation; if the raise represents less than 15% of both our own and the raisers stack and we believe the raiser has a hand big enough that if we flop our set we can stack them, then calling is the correct thing to do. We call because the math’s says we should and flop our set and stack the BB who was holding Queens on a Jack high flop.

The blinds have started to creep up and a few players have been eliminated and I begin to instruct my student to open up his/ours/whatever game and then this hand comes up. Maniac ‘Gus wanna Be’ Scandinavian (MANSCAN) has donked of most of his chips bluffing into CAS who called him down on the river with 4th pair and no spades on a 4 spade board. We have 2800 chips and are in the BB with Blinds now at 150 – 300, MANSCAN open pushes from mid position with his last 750. My student finds 8 2 of diamonds and checks the auto fold button, I reprimand him for using the auto action buttons (naughty boy! 50 lines; I will not use auto functions ever again) and get him to quickly uncheck the fold button before the action reaches him. I can feel this is going to be difficult; I have just spent many hours instructing him to fold suited junk for minimum bet and I’m now about to urge him to consider calling an all in shove with if anything even worse suited garbage. Never the less I press on, and begin to explain the hand analysis in this situation. Loose player who is desperately short stacked player, huge range of hands he could be shoving with and a very good price on the call (300 + 150 + 750 + 1200/450 = 2.6- 1 return on our money) if we fold we have 2500 back, if we call and lose we have 2050 and if we call and win we have 3700 makes this a pretty standard call. We call and our opponent tables Q-5 spades which makes us about 6-4 and confirms the call. We flop a two which is good enough to win the pot.

With four players left table captain (TC) who has been upsetting players from the beginning goes into over drive critiquing every error of judgment and bad call. His immediately to our left, just where we want him! We start picking on his blind because when you have been criticizing the way others play its hard to start pushing with junk, yeah free money! We raise his blind once, then twice and then the third time he re-raises us all-in and types in the chat box ‘get off my blind donkey’. I advise to fold (after a fake dwell up of course) because we know two things,

a.) He has a hand.
b.) We don’t.

Inadvertently he has opened another door for us, when TC makes the warning comment he now believes he has warned us off and that we will only raise with a real hand from this point. Of course I advise my student to go into steal overdrive when its TC’s big blind and we rob him like crazy. The fourth time we raise his blind in a row we have a hand, pockets jacks and eliminate TC when he fails to connect with his ace rag and we take him out.
The game plays out and we use our big stack to pressure the other players and take an easy heads up victory using our chip advantage. I really enjoyed trying to pass on some of my own experience but I’m not up to standards of some of the great online pro’s so don’t worry about me starting up my own training site guys!. I feel like I have learned quite a bit from mentoring another less experienced player and it has given me renewed confidence in my own game.

Note: This was not one S+G it’s an amalgam of about 3 or 4 it just reads better this way.

Dewey is rarely mentioned when people are talking about the “legends” of the game, but this man was there when poker wasn’t the most popular game in town. His career as a teacher took a back seat to high stakes golf and championship poker when the $35 dollar a day job wasn’t paying the bills.

A couple of years ago, some underground bookies from Detroit got their mitts on a University of Toledo running back named Scooter McDougle. Scooter took some money and tried to recruit a few teammates (including current NFL QB Bruce Gradkowski) to shave points. Vegas and BetFair noticed unusual action on a low-profile game like Huggy Bear tooling around Provo, Utah. Since then, the FBI has been chasing “he said, he said” and bizarre claims from nearly everyone involved.

ESPN.com just published a very good encapsulation, other than letting McDougle’s claims off a little light, of the events as we know them…if you want to know how NOT to try and fix games and bet college football, read on.

It seems lately that online poker players have a win at any cost mentality. Chris Savage is one of the original legends of online poker and his views should not be overlooked. Great read from one of poker’s “goodguys”.

It sounds like Bodog, one of my favorite sites (and Beanie’s, and many others) got railroaded a little bit. Someone filed a patent infringement suit in the state of Washington against Bodog, I’m sure with the knowledge that Washington is one of the most hostile anti-online gambling states in the country. Bodog management is nervous, understandably, about setting foot in the U.S. to avoid the arrests that plagued folks from BetOnSports and other sites. So the dude suing, whether or not he actually had a case, won by default.

Part of the almost $49 million judgment including rights to use Bodog.com. Bodog has set up a NewBodog.com site on short notice to try to keep business going, but there will be thousands of links and search engines that need updated, quickly.

What a mess.

NBA, NFL, MLB has had its share of gambling drama, but tennis? There is big money to be had in sports betting, so I Imagine we will never see an end to the scandals.

The rumors of Oren “H@llinggol” Halling suicide looks to be fake. After hearing rumblings on sites such as 2 + 2 and PocketFives it looks like the cash king is doing alright.

George Holtz is a 17yr old kid from New Jersey who has found a way to make the iPhone available to other networks aside from just AT&T. He’s posted the instructions on his blog and is even selling a few unblocked phones on eBay for around $2,000.