Me and a couple of guys I know decided to hit up a very nice dinner the night before last. I met up with “ActionJeff“, 2007 WSOP Main Event Final Tablist “RainKhan“, 2007 Aussie Millions runner-up “gobboboy”, #1 UltimateBet blackjack leader board better Shaun *censored* Deeb, and Skier5. We went to some upscale Michelin star rated or whatever restaurant called “The Capital”. It was sort of funny going there because we had three waiters for our one table and we were by far the youngest and most underdressed people there. It wasn’t awkward at all, we just pretended we owned the place, lol! Shaun speaks rather loud and tells a lot of funny jokes followed up by a hilarious laugh that I can’t get enough of. RainKhan also threw in tons of fun and humor with one of the waitresses. Overall, all of those guys are great and we had loads of fun with tons of champagne, wine, and like 6 or 7 courses. Afterwards we hit a bar and I called it an early night and went home to the new wife.

Well, I honestly thought I had a shot at going real deep last night in WCOOP Event #19: The $530 PLO. I got like 130’th or somewhere around there out of a little over 1,000 players. I was absolutely card dead for the last 2 ½ hours I was in the tournament. I got really shortstacked and doubled up when I hit a set of aces. Five minutes after that I took a horrendous beat unfortunately to triple up my stack which would put me in excellent position to go very deep. Here’s the hand of death: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1530598 . So that was that and I look forward to the WCOOP Main Event tomorrow.

I decided to skip the $5k HORSE and the $1k LHE WCOOP Events tonight because Game 1 of the NHL Season kicked off today right here in London. The 2006-2007 Stanley Cup Champions, the Anaheim Ducks faced off against the L.A. Kings in a premier game to kick off the 2007-2008 Season. Depending on how long you have been following my blog, I became a very big NHL fan last year and is the only sport I bet on besides a rare NFL game. I absolutely love the action in ice hockey games and frequently go to Tampa Bay Lightning games which is about a 1 hour drive from Orlando. The tickets were sold out more than a few days in advance, so I had to look on Craigslist to find some for me and Anita. I arranged to meet a guy to buy the tickets right before the game. He wasn’t at our meeting place and when I called him he said he had already sold the tickets!?!?!? WTF!!! I was pissed so we had to find a scalper. Well, we go over to a couple scalpers and then this undercover agent guy pulls out a badge and makes the scalper that we were about to buy from to give them to us for free because he wasn’t allowed to sell them! SWEET! So we got seats to the sold out hockey game for free! LOL.

We leave London tomorrow afternoon on the train to Amsterdam tomorrow for three days. After that, we will be in Prague for three days. Then it will be time for EPT Baden in Austria. We plan on doing a lot of sightseeing in Amsterdam. I’ve heard it’s great there and we should definitely have a good time.

Today I played in the WPT tournament here in Turks and Caicos. I must say this place is gorgeous! It very well could be the best beach I have ever stepped foot on. I hope they keep it on the map for next year because I’m definitely coming back.

About 2 hours into the tournament I looked down at the 8 5 off suit in the big blind. The blinds were 100 200 and the 2 hole had brought it in for 400. 2 callers behind I decided to take a flop for 200 more with the old 8 high. The raiser happened to be Lou White CEO of Pokertek. By the way, Pokertek is the company that makes the fully automated poker tables. The company is doing rather well with over 130 of their tables up and running in casinos all over the world. For those of you that have never played on them you will be surprised by their easy to use system and how incredibly efficient they are. However, those tables are only about half as cool as their “heads up” challenge tables, which will be coming soon to a bar near you. For a $2 entry you can sit at the bar and play a real heads up match on an actual WSOP edition fully automated table.

Ok, talk about going off on a tangent…back to the hand. Actually I’d rather not talk about the hand at all, lol! I NEVER WIN!!! The flop comes 3 4 7 rainbow. I have a gutter for the nuts. I didn’t think anyone really connected especially the original raiser considering he had opened in the 2 hole! He could have had an over pair but I thought to myself I could definitely get him off the over pair with that flop (maybe not on the flop bet but definitely w the turn and who knows maybe even the river). I bet 1300. Lou (2 hole) calls. Others fold. The turn is a J. I like that card. By making a decent bet here I am definitely representing 2 pair or better. I bet 3400. He calls. Now I’m thinking if there was ever a time in my life that I needed a sexy little 6, this would b that time. But we all know I’m not that guy…a tenball on the river. At this point I had put him on an over pair and just knew that he would fold if I moved in and that is exactly what I did. About 10 seconds later I heard what was maybe the two grossest words in poker (when you have an 8 high especially), “I call.” He turned over the 5 6 off suit for the second nuts and that was the end of Antonio. The river bet was 17k by the way ( a rather significant bet). Although everyone told me I was a donkey (which I probably was) I still defend my play. Unless he had a straight, which I could never put him on that he was folding almost anything but a set. oh well….that’s the end of that now I get to enjoy this incredible island.

Antonio

Favorites in the top 25 of college football went 7-13-1 yesterday, including 8 losses outright. In the top 10, it was even worse (1-7-1, with #6 Cal being a road dog against #11 Oregon). Pretty unbelievable, and a definite rarity…but an excellent example of my #1 Rule of Betting College Football (we’ll probably talk about Rules #2 and #3 in the next week or so):

College Football Rule #1: Bet the underdogs

I’m not saying to do anything rash or over-the-top, like betting every underdog. My Absolute #1 Rule of Sports Betting is to be selective. People who play the board go broke. But if you can’t make up your mind between a couple of different plays, the Underdog play should be your tiebreaker. Every time. Amarillo Slim says that any good bettor could make a living just playing ‘dogs, and I believe him.

It was also a fun day for other sports action, even the stuff I wouldn’t bet on. My beloved Chicago Cubs won the NL Central on Friday, a great birthday present for me…and followed it up with a national game on Fox where they shutout the Reds for a second day in a row. With a couple extra days rest to let any tiebreakers play out, their rotation should be set, bullpen rested, and the offense is hitting better than they did all year. Taking any Cub action would violate several rules of sports betting that I have, but as a fan, I’m very optimistic.

To close the night out, anyone who was lucky enough to see the Pavlik/Taylor fight (and the brilliant Berto/Estrada undercard) on HBO saw two of the best fights you’ll see this year. Find it on a replay, if you can.

I am a bit messed up with time… i just remember lots of fun stuff
happening the last week or so… first off… antonio lost to me in a
poker hand about 8k… that was about as good a start as it gets….

more later….

Every year I get very excited for the World Championship of Online Poker at Pokerstars. It feels just like the WSOP, but for online players. One of the first few events, I managed to get 8’th place. I was chip leader with 40 people left all the way down to about 12 people left. To be quite honest with you, with about 15 people left, I started playing very antsy. I wasn’t patient at all, and aborted the initial general game plan that had got me that far. That said, I didn’t necessarily play bad, I just got blind steal crazy and was playing much higher variance, hence with 12 people left, I was chip leader and did a coin flip on the flop for a 1.2 million chip pot against the second chip leader. Shortly thereafter, I got knocked out of the tournament on a bad beat.

Anita and I have done a lot of things in London so far, as London has a lot of stuff to do. We went to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Regents Park and rented a romantic row boat, took a day trip by train to the royal residence of the Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, took an informative tour of the Houses of Parliament, saw the mighty clock - Big Ben, and took a tour of the Tower of London where King Henry VIII murdered his wives. We still have to see Buckingham Palace which we will do the day after tomorrow.

The day before Day 1A, Anita, Action Jeff, and myself headed to the Pokerstars Pre-Party for the EPT Event. It was a cruise down the river with a free bar and all the players, so of course we’re in! lol. As soon as I got on the boat, Daniel Negreanu spotted me and we sparked up a conversation. We ended up talking almost the entire time. After the party, Action Jeff, Daniel Negreanu, Anita, and I caught a cab back to the hotel. We decided to hit up the bar and lounge in the lobby of the hotel for drinks and ended up hanging out most of the rest of the night while engaged in very deep level/deep thought poker talk. Daniel, Jeff, and I all have very different ways of playing and I’m sure all of us learned a lot from each other throughout the conversation.

I busted out of EPT London yesterday. I just can’t seem to even make Day 2 of these large buy-in live tournaments. I don’t believe it’s my fault either really. Yesterday I played six out of the eight levels in the day, and each level was an hour. I had AA once, KK twice, JJ twice, AK three times, AQ two times, and TT once. I won with KK and JJ once each stealing the blinds, every other premium hand found some way for me to lose the pot. The final blow came with my KK vs. 77 all in preflop and he hit the flop with 997 board.

I’m playing the 6 max No Limit WCOOP Event as I’m writing this and hopefully I can win one of the WCOOPs by the end of the series. Something just as good as that would be to get deep in EPT Baden in three weeks. Other than all these tournaments, I’ve been putting in about 2,000 hands a day and definitely putting down some strong results.

Hey guys. I’m in Miami. I just arrived yesterday. Had a beautiful dinner at Prime 112 (one of my all-time favorite steakhouses) and then played cards ‘til the wee hours of the night at Michael’s crib, which I might add is not too shabby. It’s right on the water, and who knows how many gazillions square feet it is! My favorite moment yesterday was when Phil and I took out the jet skies and cruised around all over Miami. It was AWESOME! Now I’m getting ready to leave for Turks and Caicos.  Just wanted you all to know about a contest we are having for I Bet You.

Log on to www.mojohd.com for a chance to win an all expense paid trip for you and a guest to visit the set of “I Bet You” (Phil and I’s TV show) in Los Angeles for 4 days and 3 nights.

Support the show, and potentially win a free trip! Tell your friends!

Antonio

This was an interesting week in Fantasy Football.  Let me refresh some of you who may not know about my bet with Taylor.  We are playing Heads Up where we pick 3 teams, and it is winner take all each week for $1,000.  While I baited Taylor into the bet neither of us really has a monstrous edge because of what happened this week.  For him Brian Westbrook went off and by the 3pm games (CST) I was down 80 points.  Virtually everything went his way.  Then the afternoon games came and virtually everything went my way.  When it was all said and done my kickers and defenses really outperformed his and I won by a whopping 5 points.  The scores were like 360 to 355.  I do have to figure out how to do this without it intruding on my family with LSU playing on Saturday, Fantasy Football on Sunday and the Saints on Monday night I likely owe my wife a little alone time.

After my bad call I decided to visit www.cardrunners.com to brush up on my No Limit Hold em.  In order I would say my skills are best at tournament poker>>>>then limit poker, most forms>>>>No Limit and Pot Limit poker.  I am proficient at all but I am more profitable at the first two.  Some of the reason is because the first two actually reward you for playing like an idiot at times.  After watching a couple of videos I fixed a few leaks and I am up about 5k in the last 2 days playing mostly 5-10 NL on Bodog.  The change has been dramatic, I have been able to reduce my decisions to where I am reacting less to people’s plays and they are reacting more to mine. 

I think our trading partners are wanting serious compensation for what our online gaming ban cost them. The European Union are in discussions with our government for how much money we will provide them for what they may have lost.

Marc Karum discusses how loose preflop play can make you a lot of cash if you understand your opponents. He has been a very successful player and shows us how to manipulate players who overvalue there hands in most situations.

Humberto Brenes is a decent player, he is essentially a nit. Certainly though he has some ability, though that ability gets overlooked when all that people can see is that silly “chark”. By all accounts Humberto is a very nice guy but I think he needs to give that act a rest.

Hevad Khan is an interesting case study as well, you could see that in the beginning Hevad was very spontaneous with his little celebrations and such. Now of course it is very put on, somewhere down the line Hevad realized that acting like an idiot gets you TV time. The only thing about that is, it is the wrong kind of coverage. I was there last year when a guy was thinking about clocking Humberto after Humberto sucked out on him and did the chark routine.

They aren’t creative and they aren’t funny and Poker Stars should be ashamed for rewarding them for being silly on TV.

Pretty funny stuff. This guy is an attention whore and ceased to be relevant about 15 years ago. Why does poker attract all of these people?

True or not it has to be a horrible situation for the lady. Her family loses her in a bet to a carpenter and she is whisked away. Talk about a bad beat.

You may not think this applies to poker but you are wrong. If you are bluffing you are selling, if they are bluffing you are either buying what they are selling or not. If there is one thing I know a lot about it is sales and when you recognize where you are in the buy and sell equation in a poker game you have half of it figured out. The other half you will need to flop the nuts for.

I’ve heard many stories of Sam and his confrontations with people at the table, but Todd Brunson shows us a side of this veteran most don’t see. It looks like he isn’t afraid to put it all on the line when he thinks he has the best of it.

I’m not speaking for Beanie, presenting an official statement for AlwaysBluff, or anything like that…I just think this is a good idea.

This afternoon, on XM Radio’s new channel devoted to the U.S. Presidential campaign (less than 14 months left to go!), I heard the communications director for Zogby, the leading polling organization, make an interesting point about the younger and tech-driven demographic. Zogby’s infrastructure works with people who have traditional “landline” phones. They share the phone company’s database, to ensure that a random sampling is spread across all relevant demographics. Companies like Zogby do not have similar accessibility to people who only have cell phones or use Voice-over-Internet services like Vonage, Skype or phone service bundled over cable modem.

This means that the technically savvy masses of Internet users (and most likely, gamblers) are not in a position to have their voices heard. Voting and calling your representatives are important actions for all of us to take to make sure the issues and freedoms important to you are protected. Being part of a polling body, however, does more proactively than potentially anything else we can do. The next-generation of polling will involve samplings from databases of registered Internet users, who will be sent periodic E-mails. It’s very likely that you will rarely be selected, like for Jury Duty or similar tasks. But when you are called upon, your voice will be heard. You can play an important role in telling our political engine what you want.

Please consider registering today for Zogby and other polling groups’ interactive services.