A couple of years ago, there was a big scandal with a couple of New Jersey cops and former NHL player Rick Tocchet (who must have known these guys from playing for the Philadelphia Flyers) running a book operation. At the time, Tocchet’s boss was a guy named Wayne Gretzky…maybe you’ve heard of him. Sports icon. Perhaps the greatest player in any team sport, ever. The Great One. Wayne was, and still is, coaching the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes now, and Tocchet was the assistant coach.

Anyway, when the gambling ring got busted, only one celebrity name came out as to having placed action: Janet Jones, former model and actress, and wife of…Wayne Gretzky. The Great One’s reputation took a pretty solid hit, even though nobody accused him of anything, just because it was revealed what a degenerate gambler his wife is. She made TONS of bets, including really silly stuff like Super Bowl coin flip props (anyone who puts action on a coin flip, paying a vig, should immediately head to rehab…Do Not Pass Go).

The bottom line is there would be NOTHING smarter of Janet Jones Gretzky to do than to lay super-low for awhile, especially when it comes to gambling. I obviously don’t knock putting a little side action down on anything, but when you’re connected how she’s connected to a sport with a tenuous hold on the American sports market, you can’t just do whatever the hell you want.

So, what do I see when I turn on the High Stakes Golf action on ESPN? Along side Doyle, Dewey Tomko, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu…partnering with Vince Van Patten…Janet Jones Gretzky. She repays everyone’s forgiveness by anteing up $125k in one of the bigger gambling props ever put on TV.

Wayne Gretzky is a small-town Canadian kid who happened to play a game better than anyone before, and likely anyone since. I don’t care how hot she was, and how much of a MILF she may be now…nobody deserves that kind of disloyalty. Yuck.

I’ve been travelling around a lot. I’ve been in LA and Vegas a lot in the past month, playing a lot of poker. It turns out that I’m a bad blogger…. the more interesting my experiences, the more I think, “Am I really going to put that in a blog?” So the whole thing just doesn’t work out. But I’ll keep at it.

I played this pot on Saturday….
Full Tilt Poker Game #3991315183: Table Pantheon (6 max) - $200/$400 - Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 5:29:00 ET - 2007/10/28
Seat 1: Luck123 ($8,000)
Seat 3: Gus Hansen ($62,587)
Seat 4: David Benyamine ($135,351.50)
Seat 5: Brandon Adams ($48,437)
Seat 6: pokerinvestcouk ($32,996)
Gus Hansen has 5 seconds left to act
Gus Hansen posts the small blind of $200
David Benyamine posts the big blind of $400
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Brandon Adams raises to $1,400
pokerinvestcouk has 15 seconds left to act
pokerinvestcouk calls $1,400
Gus Hansen calls $1,200
David Benyamine calls $1,000
*** FLOP *** [2s 5c 4c]
Gus Hansen has 15 seconds left to act
Gus Hansen bets $5,600
David Benyamine calls $5,600
Brandon Adams has 15 seconds left to act
Brandon Adams raises to $28,000
pokerinvestcouk folds
Gus Hansen has 15 seconds left to act
Gus Hansen calls $22,400
David Benyamine raises to $88,800
Brandon Adams calls $19,037, and is all in
Gus Hansen: ups
Gus Hansen has 15 seconds left to act
Luck123: i dont know him, who do you think he is ?
Gus Hansen calls $33,187, and is all in
David Benyamine shows [Kd 4s Kc 4d]
Brandon Adams shows [5h 7s 3s 6s]
Gus Hansen shows [6h Tc 3h 7d]
Uncalled bet of $27,613 returned to David Benyamine
*** TURN *** [2s 5c 4c] [5d]
*** RIVER *** [2s 5c 4c 5d] [8s]
David Benyamine shows a full house, Fours full of Fives
Gus Hansen shows a straight, Eight high
David Benyamine wins the side pot ($28,300) with a full house, Fours full of Fives
Brandon Adams shows a straight, Eight high
David Benyamine wins the main pot ($146,709) with a full house, Fours full of Fives
Gus Hansen is sitting out
Brandon Adams is sitting out
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $175,011 Main pot $146,711. Side pot $28,300. | Rake $2
Board: [2s 5c 4c 5d 8s]
Seat 1: Luck123 is sitting out
Seat 3: Gus Hansen (small blind) showed [6h Tc 3h 7d] and lost with a straight, Eight high
Seat 4: David Benyamine (big blind) showed [Kd 4s Kc 4d] and won ($175,009) with a full house, Fours full of Fives
Seat 5: Brandon Adams showed [5h 7s 3s 6s] and lost with a straight, Eight high
Seat 6: pokerinvestcouk (button) folded on the Flop

In other news, Viffer (Dave Peat) played for 77 hours straight (in the same seat, no significant breaks) at Commerce recently. By the way, for those who don’t know, he’s one hell of a live poker player when he’s on. I think he even managed to book a win on that marathon session. One of the overlooked arguments for booking a win and going to sleep after, say, 16 hours, is that if you keep going, you will often find yourself in the situation of, “Shit, i’ve been playing for thirty hours, but this game is too good to quit. No way I can leave.” And next thing you know you’re 77 hours deep.

I think Gus has been winning a decent bit on FT lately. One thing that (sometimes) seems to work out for him is, if his hand has any value at all, he’s going to see it through. I mean he’s not folding away much of his equity.

BA

Tonight my wife went out with a friend for drinks, she suggested that to pass the time my girls and I could go shopping for my youngest daughters birthday party supplies.  When I told my girls this their eyes lit up.  They know I am a sucker.  If it was a fight they would have stopped it.  Here were some of the lines:

“What is a party without balloons?”, certainly that is hard to argue.

“We need gift bags”, reasonable.

“We need things for our gift bags”, they have me here.

“Bratz bubbles, Tiaras and charm bracelets”, OK, so now I am starting to feel it.

“We have to get pirate party favors for the boys”, you have to be kidding me.

“Stickers”, I have to admit, I still like stickers.

In the end the only thing I think I said no to was, well, nothing that I can recall.  I really don’t think my kids are spoiled but tonight would not have been a good time to judge me on that one.

Get paid to play at UltimateBet by getting max comps, read below.

A very long time ago in a far away land I used to do some consulting work for UltimateBet.  Those were the heyday’s of online poker, all of the things everyone has come to expect with online poker didn’t exist in those days.  There are 2 things though that make a difference to players today, resizable tables (so you can play multiple tables and see them all) and saving hand histories to disk (so you can import them into a tracking system that will help you analyze your play).  If you want to be good at online poker these are important.  For various reasons UB was late to the party on some of these but not any longer.  I have long contended that UB’s software is the best out there, I believe totally but certainly on speed.  UB is the fastest and cleanest interface there is which is partly why they didn’t want additional things to slow down their client.

One thing most people don’t think of when it comes to resizable tables is going bigger.  I usually only play 1 or 2 games so I tend to bring the tables to full screen.  If I am playing bigger stakes it allows me to focus, not to mention that my monitor is not a computer monitor, it is a television and it is not as close to me as a computer monitor would be.  At full screen the UB tables are super clear and the action stayed fast.

I know that Brandon was writing an article on Poker Prospector from Poker Academy.  Both of us have been using it lately, it is the evolution of Poker Tracker.  The imports work like a charm and the data you can access is unbelievable.  Adding the UB Hand History file was a snap and UB even gives you instructions on how to do it.

I am likely going to be writing an article soon on comps from UB but if you don’t have an UltimateBet account this may be a good time to get one.  Signing up through this link gets you 30% of your rake back (similar to casino comps). 

If you have checked out the site for a while you will have noticed a lot of changes.  Unfortunately some of those changes had our blogs down for a few days so with everyone’s help I am hoping to get back into the blogging groove in a big way.  We still have some dust with the new construction but overall things are very close to what they are going to be long term. 

Last week was awful in so many ways, first of all I was sick, which made everything seem tons worse than normal.  Secondly I found myself handling a ton of non productive things.  I had a meeting in Florida with Brandon (Adams) and some of his business partners.  I go to a lot of meetings but this was one impressive group of people who are looking to do some big business in the Mixed Martial Arts world and additionally in Poker.  I have to admit, what little I saw was impressive and as more details come out I will keep you guys posted.

Overall though my life has gone through a significant simplification process, sometimes when I bite of more than I can chew it is just time to purge and that process is over and I have a lot of clarity because of it.  Which of course makes me want to play a ton of poker, so you can expect to see me at the Limit Tables on most sites this week; hopefully my clear head will help my game.  I am going back to limit because that is where my sweet spot is, I need a decent run and in the past my best runs come in limit holdem.  Did you know there are more losing players playing limit holdem than in no limit holdem.  I am basing it on the data I have run but it seems pretty apparent that when fish realize they can’t play anything like a jackass they run to limit poker where they lose their money slower.

Personally I left Florida and on the same day I caught a flight to Chicago to go see Wicked with my wife.  It is our 12^th wedding anniversary today and I just wanted her to have my full attention so I left my computer in my suitcase and I left my cell phone off.  I am not a huge fan of Chicago; it just always feels so tense when I am there.  It is really not any different from all of the other mega cities in that way, I am not sure if it is the constant traffic or the merging of so many cultures but in Chicago it isn’t a good mix, at least that was my opinion.  On Friday we got in late and I was wiped out from flying all day so we just went to Geno’s East for some deep dish and got to sleep pretty early (though I did stay up later than I should have watching Blow with Johnny Depp, man, that is still a good movie).  The next morning was a whirlwind because my wife forgot the tickets at home.  Between the concierge at the Sheraton and the ticket office at the Oriental Theater we did get something worked out and both of them helped us tremendously.  Before the show we ate at Morton’s, my wife picked an Italian place initially but I pushed for Morton’s.  Morton’s is not a homerun but it is a solid triple and after a week of being sick and dealing with a lot of little things I didn’t need a homerun, I needed a guarantee and Morton’s delivered.

The play was phenomenal and I have spent most of the evening listening to the soundtrack with my daughters.  After seeing the play I may fly them to either New York or Chicago to see it, it is just too good for them to miss. 

I feel like I could sleep for a week and I might just do it.  I don’t have a lot planned for this week so I am going to take it pretty easy and play a lot of poker.  Just for some fun I will let you guys know.  Tonight I played a mix of 15-30 and 30-60 limit, 2-3 tables at a time, I think I ended down about $600, which is not a huge loss.  I am going to try and not get buried while finding my groove and once I am there I will play as much as possible.  I am hoping for a nice 20-30k run to end the year.  Recently I ran up close to that amount but gave most of it back playing live and then ran bad for about a week online.  But that was playing No Limit.  Middle Limit-Limit Holdem is my bread and butter and I expect I will do well with the clarity I have at the moment.

Wish me luck.

The day after I busted out of EPT Baden, I started off playing 25/50 PLO and NL on Stars and ended up losing about $25,000 to start the day. I went out to a spa to get a massage. If you know me, you know I love me some massages! Lol. Baden is well known as a “Spa Town” so they have very good massages for very competitive rates. Massages usually cost anywhere from $100-150/hour back home, but here it cost me 45 Euros which was only about $65!

Later that night, Ansky, Hevad “Rainkhan” Khan, Anita, and I went out to “El Greco”, a nice Greek restaurant right around the corner from Casino Baden. We did the usual, which was talking about a lot of poker stuff and joking around. After dinner, we decided to go check out the live cash games. I decided to start off playing 20/40 No-Limit Hold ‘em while I was waiting for a seat in a juicier 20/40 Pot-Limit Omaha game. I started off the session stuck in NL, but when a seat opened over in the PLO game, I was able to make a comeback and book a win. The next afternoon, I went down to the casino again and was on the waiting list for hours for the 20/40 PLO and 20/40 NL games. Waiting such a long time for a seat didn’t make me feel quite as good about playing, and I probably should have gone home and taken a nap or just played online. When I don’t feel like playing, even if I get my money in with the nuts, it just doesn’t seem like I do very well, and I‘m not sure why. I’ve been focusing a lot lately in the past month or so on fixing this as much as possible, because I used to put in 12 hour average long sessions day after day after day, every day of the month almost, unless I had something important to do. Thomas Wahlroos was on my left, and the guy I busted out of the EPT with my AK to his JT was sitting across from me and to the right. Thomas Wahlroos was doing a little bit of straddling as well as some other people at the table, making the game play a little extra aggressive, and larger. I had about $8k in front of me; Thomas had the same, and the guy I busted out of the tournament that we’ll call “Euro John Doe” had about $15-20k when the following hand happened:

Two people limped in early position, and I decided to limp in middle position with As6s9c9d. A decent pair with a nut flush and weird straight possibility is a good hand to limp with after a couple of limps. Thomas limped in behind me; another guy limped behind him, Euro John Doe completed in the SB, and the Big Blind checked. Flop was complete gin for me…it almost doesn’t get any better than this flop. The flop was 5s 7s 8c, giving me the nut straight, with a redraw to the nut flush draw. I sensed at least one of the other six people in this pot besides me had to have hit this sort of flop texture. It checks to the guy on my right, who bets 400Euro, I casually throw in a 500Euro bill, as I’m not scared of slow playing this as long as the board doesn’t pair which will be fairly easy to get away from if it does. I want to try and let a worse flush draw peel and let us both hit. I have two nines in my hand, so I have blockers to the bigger straights. I also believe that by me casually smooth calling a flop bet, it will encourage some action from Thomas or the other guy behind him, or even better if one of the guys that already checked, sense weakness and check-raise. In my opinion, I played this hand absolutely perfect and thought it out extremely well and clear. Thomas seemed like he was going to raise, but ended up just calling 400Euro as well. Euro John Doe in the small blind stutters for a few seconds and decides to raise to 2500Euro. At this point, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to fold for another 4000Euro, so I’m glad that I’m probably going to end up raking in a huge pot while extracting max value from everybody. Everybody folds to me and I obviously re-pot it and put all my money in. Thomas is a little visually upset but folds after a few seconds, Euro John Doe takes five seconds and calls. At this point, I’m basically just worried about the board pairing, as I don’t think Euro John Doe has my same straight which is the current nuts, since he took an extra 5 seconds to call, as well that I have two of the four 9’s in the deck, making it less likely he has one of the remaining two. The turn bricks off some low red card like the 3d, and the river comes out the 9h. Euro John Doe says something to the effect “Oh, look, the nuts“, and throws over a red JT88 for top set and a gutshot which spiked on the river. Thomas shares with the table that he had the case-fourth 9 in the deck, as well as middle set of 77. With the hand that Thomas told the table he folded, the percentages of this guy winning the pot from me obviously decreased a substantial amount giving Euro John Doe One 7, One 8, One 9, and Three 5’s left in the deck to catch. Of course he has a redraw to pair the turn card on the river also. Generally, getting a set without even a flush draw all-in on a straight board in an unraised pot with seven players to the flop usually isn’t a good play. With all that said, that’s just PLO for you, flop the nuts, have a nut re-draw, and you can STILL easily get beat, it’s a sick, sick, sick game.

The last full day that we were in Baden, we decided to go to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp near Linz and Gusen, which we had to change trains three times to get there. Although it was a 2 hour trip each way, I felt it was very important to see one of the Concentration Camps that is such a big part of history and especially World War II. I don’t know when I’m going to be in Europe again after this long trip is over, but I felt like I should see one of Nazi camps where many people were murdered and tortured that played such a large role in history. Although it was a large concentration camp, not many people were visiting that day. Standing in the gas chamber and next to the very same ovens which tortured and murdered so many innocent people 65 years ago was definitely an experience. The gas chamber resembled a locker room shower with tile floor and walls. The ovens were long and narrow, and you can see how they were just large enough to slide a person into them while lying down. These rooms were underground and dark, and with only Anita there with me, it was awfully creepy to be there. The U.S. Army ended up liberating the Mauthausen concentration camp a little bit before World War II ended.

I just finished writing the last two blogs as well as this one all in the past two hours. Today, Anita and I are on a train heading to Venice, Italy. We’re going to Venice, Pisa, Florence, and Rome to hang out and do some touristy stuff while vacationing. Everybody that I have talked to who has been to Italy loves it and says I’ll have a wonderful time, and I have no reason not to believe that. So far it’s been a pretty uneventful and long train ride. Let me note that the scenery today has been extraordinarily beautiful passing through the high mountains of Austria with all the trees and plants changing colors since we’re in Fall season now. I can’t wait to get my Italian food grub on!

In my college days, I worked for a couple of years at the deli in the basement of one of the dorms. We served sandwiches and pizzas, and there was a common area with some tables and chairs, a jukebox, a couple of arcade games, and two 7′ pool tables, known to most good players as “bar boxes”. It was a place for us to hang out, and for me to make minimum wage playing pool with friends and strangers during slow times. One of my friends during that time was a guy named Pete, an electrical engineering major two years ahead of me. Pete came from money, and during the times he wasn’t outwardly flaunting it (flying the girl-of-the-semester to a resort in Cancun for spring break when the rest of us were piling 8 in a van down to Daytona, or in my case, working two jobs), he still wasn’t doing much to hide it. He had a mid-line Meucci cue in a hard leather case when the rest of us were schlepping our $30 Dufferins or Vikings in a soft pouch. Pete was charming, fun, and an entertaining guy to hang out with. He also liked
to gamble.

One night, a few people were hanging out with me in deli after closing time at 10 PM. Pete suggested we play a couple of racks of 9-ball at $5 a game. That was fine with me, as I knew I was probably a ball better than he was, and I certainly knew how the tables played better than anyone. After I won 5 of the first 6, he bumped it to $10/game to try to recoup his $20. I won the next 3, and he bumped it to $25/game. At 19, I don’t think I’d ever played for $25/game before…but I won the next three at those stakes, to be up a total of $125. I didn’t know that the condition called “tilt” had a name, but I saw it on his face and posture. His girlfriend Annie saw it too, and asked Pete to slow down a little.

No dice. “$50,” he said, and I won two more. This was quite the rush I was on…he and I both knew that I wasn’t THIS much better than he was, but there’s nights when you’re in dead stroke and the pocket looks like the mouth of a cave. Pete kept doubling up, trying to catch up. After $100/game, I was up $400. After one at $300, it was $700. $500/game, $900/game, $1500/game…it was nuts. Pete was frothing, Annie offered to do ANYTHING if he’d pay me off and go home with her, and I went to take a leak wondering when he was going to let me in on the joke and dig out a wad of Monopoly money or something, and how badly getting stiffed would fuck up our friendship.

After a few more games (he won one game out of four at $1500 per), I unscrewed my cue. It was 1 AM, I had a class in 7 hours, and since I knew this was completely surreal, I wanted to end it. I said, “Pete, you’re my friend, and I don’t like where this is going. You can pay me $1000 right now and I’ll buy the drinks the next time we go out.” Big mistake. HUGE. I had turned my engine off the moment the sentence left my mouth. Pete knew I was done, and more importantly, that I wouldn’t walk out the door. “Paul, what do I owe you, five grand? C’mon, let’s play a set for four.” He won the set by a couple of games, won a few more games at $200 per, and paid me off for the rest. It was 3 AM. I turned off the lights and locked the door behind us, leaving the keys in a drop box for the lunch crew the next morning.

We walked back to a couple of blocks back to our apartment building (he lived two floors below me) in silence.

Apart from the gambling lesson, I took one other thing from that night with me. Our friendship was never the same, but I used the $300 I won to buy my Meucci HOF-1 cue, 19.5 oz, 13mm pro-taper shaft. It’s a thing of beauty that I still have nearly 20 years later.

Lets see it has been rough and non profitable on the tournament circuit over the last couple of months.  I have been concentrating on tournaments and not what I like best witch is big cash games. I think I need to mix them up a little more.

The Bicycle Club - out first day (lost with AK and beat by AK)

Biloxi-out first day-(AK beat my pocket Queens all in pre flop)Board 65AKJ

Borgata-out first day in the last 30 minutes (9s6s beat my AA all in on flop he had 8 outs) Board 78J75

Turks and Cacaos-out third day 18th place (beat by three outer on the river) Board 448J4

Aruba-out first day-(quad deuces beat my top two AQ) Board 2AQ29

If I was to write a book about tournament poker it would be named live or die by AK.I think in most tournaments you have to beat AK and win with AK on a regular basis or you have no shot at winning the tournament.

Now I am off to Las Vegas for the poker bowl. This event is a new concept for poker. This is a televised team sport airing seven episodes on Fox Sports in early January. My team is me, Fred Goldberg, Eric Calejais, Paul Wolfe, Greg Muller, and Kyle Wilson.

Three Americans and Three Canadians. I and Fred Goldberg bought the franchise. We are officially the Atlanta Ace’s. The web site is www.pokerbowl.com if anyone is looking for more details.

I will be in Vegas for at least seven days. I heard there are going to be some big cash games at the Venetian and Bellagio.  I am so excited I am getting burnt out on these tournament bad beats I know I am going to hit one of these 10k events soon but some times I think these tournaments are more like dice than chess.

I love Vegas!!!!!! VIP tables at the clubs, VIP dining at the best restaurants, limos. The poker life is defiantly great life in Vegas. I will blog full update of trip, parties, win and loses, from my vacation after I leave Vegas.

Antonio Salorio

When I made this site the point was to be different from sites that aren’t fun.  Well cheating scandals aren’t fun and in the good majority of cases they also aren’t true.  Whether the one with Absolute is true or not I think has mostly been decided.  Perception is reality in this world and they have a real problem.  But that has been covered.  So I thought I would give an opinion on a few side matters.

I am hearing a lot of people say “if they regulated online poker this wouldn’t happen”.  This is foolish at worst and at best a pipedream.  This won’t be the thing that causes regulation; this is just fuel for our enemies.  Let’s remember that online gambling has few friends.  The friends we do have right now have to defend themselves against the “click your mouse and lose your house people”.  It is sort of like having a wish and then living a life like that wish came true.  Or maybe a better example would be buying a lottery ticket and immediately going out and buying a Ferrari. 

People won’t leave poker because of this.  They might leave Absolute Poker because of this (though that doesn’t appear to be true, I signed on 2 nights ago and they had 5 5-10 NL games going) but they aren’t done with online poker.  All things like this do is make losers lose less and leave.  Is that bad? It certainly is but it isn’t the end of the world.  It does mean that the games will get harder (as if they hadn’t already) and more pros will need to get real jobs.  When you hear that someone is leaving online poker because of this I would put it at about .0001% is about this scandal.  It just makes the decision easier if someone is losing or not winning as much as they used to win.

This isn’t even the only time this particular thing happened.  Planet Poker and Paradise Poker both were hit by scandals, Planet Poker never recovered and Paradise Poker barely hung on.  Security was the issue in both of those cases and ultimately I think that will be the culprit here as well.

There is good news and I would argue great news.  These cheaters were caught and many cheaters online are being caught.  As disheartening as this may seem it is actually a good thing, when was the last time you heard of someone being caught in a casino cheating at poker.  Certainly it has happened but it is rare.  Does that mean that no one is cheating playing live poker? Hardly.  Online poker is nothing more than a lot of data, the more data the better and accurate information.  So while it may appear that all of these scandals are bad in reality it is just proving one thing.  Online cheaters can be caught and dealt with.  So if there is a bright side to all of this that might be it. 

When I was just warming up to the crowd at Speeds’ pool hall (I don’t think I’d met Prof. James Acquaintance yet), I spent a good bit of sitting at the bar, letting my eye drift around the room to see what was going on and developing a huge crush on a waitress named Lisa. There will definitely be more on her in another blog, sometime. One night, over in the far corner, I saw a guy buried in the Sports section of the Dallas Times Herald, glancing from time to time at a biker-looking guy playing 9-ball with a midget. Well, at first I thought he was a midget. He reminded me a lot of my friends and I learning how to play pool in my basement as grade schoolers, a 57″ cue being 4 inches too long to comfortably handle, unable to make a proper stance without standing on the balls of your feet.

Eventually, the biker departed for the electronic dart boards. The midget got a dollar bill from the guy reading the paper and came across the room to feed the jukebox. As he came closer, the midget morphed into a short 14-year-old (I didn’t know he was 14 at the time, he looked younger). Finding just the right music proved to be a time-consuming chore: the jukebox not only had both country and western, but Skynyrd too…so many choices! While the kid was flipping back and forth, I motioned Tom the bartender over and asked who the guy in the corner was.

“Oh, that’s Big J. He takes some book and other action. Can’t play anything but 9-ball, and is too smart to try otherwise.”

“Lemme guess…the kid’s Little J?”

Tom laughed a big belly laugh (he didn’t have another kind), and replied “You got it!”

I can’t claim to be any great paragon of virtue when it comes to gambling or being where I probably wasn’t supposed to. I used to go with my great uncle to the track when I was a kid…he worked the windows and cage at Arlington Park and Mayfair, and used to let me go back there with him from time to time. I remember explaining to all my friends in junior high what the “6 1/2 - 6″ and “+140″ meant after each baseball game in the newspaper. And I didn’t have a problem taking lawnmowing money from high school guys in their basements on Friday nights.

But I was momentarily repulsed by the idea of letting a 14-year-old hang out in a pool hall. I mean, there wasn’t anything dangerous or nefarious about the place. I don’t remember ever seeing a drug deal or a fight. But c’mon! It’s a pool hall! Drinking, smoking, gambling!

As the evening wore on, I thought of all the kids I knew that didn’t have any father-son time at all in their teenage years. For Little J, it was “Take Your Son To Work Day”, all year long. Could be worse.

We just finished up day 2 of shooting for episode 6 of I BET YOU. We are ALMOST half way done with season 2. Seven more episodes and we are FINITO. For this episode we went camping and bet on whom is a better camper via various bets ranging from mountain climbing to fishing to making a fire and so on. We bet on anything and everything that had to do with the outdoors.

A few of our crazier bets

 Rock climbing…one was BLINDFOLDED rock climbing. I kid you not we went up a SERIOUS cliff with zero visibility. We were roped in incase we fell but nonetheless we did shoot up without VISION! You will have to tune in to see who won.

Axe throwing…this was really fun. I always wanted to chug an axe at something and this was my way of fulfilling that desire.

Fishing…now this sounds really boring but I assure you it was just the opposite. Whoever lost had to EAT a live worm. It would be safe to say that Phil and I were MOTIVATED to catch the first fish.  It won’t take much to figure out who lost this one…and yes the loser ponied up and ATE a live worm.

I literally just got back to my room. Just finished up what may have been the MOST enjoyable shower of my life. It’s amazing we don’t appreciate technology as much as we should. Being in the woods for a couple of days I forgot how satisfying it was to turn on a sink and have water pour out…how about room service?! What a SERIOUS luxury. Oh and in your room t here is ZERO chance of getting poison oak or poison ivy (which I am REALLY hoping I didn’t get). We were rummaging through so much wilderness i’m a little nervous.

All in all I LOVE the outdoors. I love sleeping in the middle of the wilderness…looking at the stars…being at one with earth. One thing I forgot to mention-this was not the kind of camping where you drive up pick your spot and CAMP…this was park your car on the road hike about 2 miles until you FIND a place to crash. Lucky for us one of the crew guys (Spencer) was a regular in these woods and new just the perfect spot. No running water…no showers…no store to buy wood or food…just US and EARTH. It was unreal.

We have a 2 day break before filming resumes for episode 8. That gives me 2 nights to find out what Knoxville nightlife is all about!!! Watch out Tennessee here I come!

Antonio

Day 2 of EPT Baden:

I ended up drawing a pretty sweet first table on Day 2. There was a girl in the 8 seat (Day 2 was 8 handed or less the entire day) who didn’t even know how to really play poker, I’m pretty sure. She was giggling and just being a loose monkey pre-flop who was maybe the easiest opponent ever to read I’ve encountered in my life. There was one guy from Spain on my immediate left that came into Day 2 with a top 5 chip count stack who tried to string bet twice and didn’t know what was wrong with it and ended up making some other brutally bad plays. My goal was going to be to mooch off of his stack the entire day. There were three other guys at the table who looked like they had a semi-clue, but were probably easily exploitable. The blinds were 200/400 with a 50 ante and my stack was only 9200, so I knew I was going to have to be aggressive as I didn’t want my stack to dwindle down too much. My table was perfect for this and I really outmaneuvered and outplayed them. I raised J3o, Q8o, JJ, K5s, and ATo in the first two rounds of the day and won every single pot without a showdown putting me up to about 14k or so. The blinds went up to 300/600 with a 75 ante when the following hand came along about an hour and a half into the day. I casually raised to 1700 from middle position with the good ol’ AK of clubs, and a guy who had been losing pots left and right shoved over the top for about 11k, I of course insta-called and his JTs didn’t fare well after I flopped trip Aces. What I didn’t know at this time, was how he was going to get me back for busting him from the tournament (read my next blog about a 20/40/80 PLO cash game hand against him). I was excited to bust somebody and almost double up, but unfortunately, that was the final straw for the table as one of the tournament directors had the table break as I collected the chips from that pot.

I drew a seat at a table where there was a bunch of younger, European guys with huge stacks. Almost every single hand on this table was raised, and re-raised. They were acting like total animals, but unfortunately, I just never hit a flop when I saw one, and with their pure aggression and being the calling stations that they were, I had no choice but to fold a lot. I finally got TT all-in preflop with a stack enough for only 7 more rounds at 500/1k-100 ante blinds, and I failed to improve against KK. The play at this table was truly horrible, as one time two guys got KT and K8s all-in pre-flop after going 5 bets and raises! I was very disheartened to bust as I felt if I just had a few more chips, I could’ve really taken this table for a ride if received the slightest bit of help. That was that though, and I was very disappointed and out of the tournament in 88th place.

I ran into Timex and Ansky who both busted out on Day 1 before I got my taxi. We chatted a bit, and Ansky and I decided to make plans for the next day to hang out. I played a little bit online when I got back to the hotel and managed to put down a $32,000 winning session after being stuck about $30,000. That made my night’s sleep just a little bit better. I know a few high stakes players who quit after losing two or three buy-ins. They think that some sort of stop-loss is going to help their results in the long run. I feel like this is some of the most foolish thinking out there. As long as you are sure you are playing your best and still have an edge against your opponent(s), not tilting or spewing, and not tired or hungry, there’s no reason why you should ever quit a game. I’ve heard these guys talk about stopping after they lose a couple buy-ins all the time. There’s really no point in this. All the variance in poker is random and probability based. Just because you received three bad beats in a row, DOES NOT make it’s more likely you’re going to receive a fourth bad beat in a row any more than the next day. If you’re tilting and angry, that’s one thing, but just because for the simple fact that you lose a couple buy-ins doesn’t mean you should quit. It’s amazing how some seemingly intelligent people do this and think it’s right, when they aren’t thinking logically at all. They might as well call up Ms. Cleo and try to get some psychic powers so they can find out which days they won’t get any bad beats.

The WCOOP Main Event was scheduled for the night that we were traveling to Amsterdam. We jumped off the train in Amsterdam, ran to a taxi, told the taxi to speed through the city for an extra tip, took my laptop out in the taxi, ran into the hotel with my laptop that we were checking into, and frantically tried to get connected to the internet to register for the WCOOP Main Event. Our train was running a little late, so it was nip and tuck to be able to register in time for it. With exactly three minutes to spare, I was registered, hah. All that basically was for nothing. I made it semi-deep, but not quite to the money and busted about 600’th when a guy slowrolled me for a good 50 seconds or so going into his time bank with KK preflop when I only had about 20xbbs lol. I was yelling at the computer for him to call, because I swore I was good since he was taking so long, then he called and it showed his hand, and I’m like “oh, that sucks, what an asshole”.

Anyways, while Anita and I were in Amsterdam, we saw Anne Frank’s house, Van Gogh museum (awesome), the Rijksmuseum, strolled through the infamous “Red Light District“ with all the window hookers and coffee shops, and took a canal cruise. The Red Light District is probably just as you picture it. A long street going both ways on each side of a river with tons of windows with red neon lights on them with scantily clad dressed women with bars and Amsterdam’s “special” coffee shops in between. All the days we were there, we walked down the street from our hotel to this bar with the most awesome pancakes ever that you can put fruit and sugar on. They were delicious and are cooked a certain way that they aren’t anything like American pancakes.

We didn’t have much time to linger around, we were on a schedule on the way to Austria so I could make EPT Baden. After spending a few days in Amsterdam, we took a train to Prague in Czech Republic. I have to say that Prague is sort of a creepy city at night time in some parts. I know muggings and theft are higher in Czech Republic than a lot of the Western European cities. Also, some of the people are just a little weird and sketchy to be honest, in my opinion. We were fortunate to find a taxi at about midnight outside of the train station to take us to the hotel, although it was a pretty decent rip-off. Czech taxi drivers are notorious rip-off artists. However, without any other taxis in sight, and it being late, we had no other choice except to be ripped off for an extra $10 to get to the hotel with all our luggage. We stayed in Prague for a couple days and saw Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square, and saw a fantastic Classical Concert playing hometown pieces from various musicians who played in Prague such as Beethoven and Bach.

Anita and I arrived in Baden, Austria the day before the EPT Tournament there and just relaxed for a while.

Day 1 of EPT Baden:

I had lunch with “Timex”, “Choppy”, and “Ansky” right before the EPT started. My starting table was not the best, but was not quite as bad as my EPT London starting table….meaning more than three people were raising pre-flop. The notable players at the table were Jeff Lisandro (who I’ve played multiple times live in cash games and two different tournaments), Ram Vaswani (who I’ve played some 100/200NL with), and some alleged euro pro named Pascal Perraut or something like that directly to my right. The entire tournament including Day 1, I was getting absolutely nothing, I had KK one time and only picked up 2k in chips or so from Lisandro. I was so focused in this tournament, and I felt like if I wasn’t so “honed in” to the table, I would’ve made a couple missteps and bluffed in wrong spots or tried to value bet when they had nothing instead check-calling and picking off their bluffs. I only flopped top pair one time and lost with it when I had to fold on the turn and never really had any other hands. Times like this call for the art of finesse to focus on timing certain plays for the right spots at the right time in order to stay alive. I worked my 10k starting stack up to 14k at two points during the day, and was down to 5500 twice, but ended up finishing the day with less than my original starting stack at a disappointing 9200.

One of the rugby guys grew up in South Dakota. Let’s call him Jack. Jack’s a very unique individual. One of his talents is that he’s one of the best storytellers I’ve ever met. Which is good, because he has lots of great stories to tell. He grew up working in the slaughterhouses and had us in stitches one night as he described how he worked his way up from the entry-level job of cleaning up the spilled entrails of the cows to the vaunted position of head killer. At one point he was testifying in three murder trials at the same time. During the Spilotro reign of terror, Jack and some of his homeboys were dealing in some merchandise that was on the Spilotro family menu and Tony wanted in. Tony and a few of his henchmen set up a meeting with Jack and a few of his crazed-looking buddies. Tony basically told them he was in for half the profits with none of the expenses. Jack told him to take a hike. Tony’s requisite threats were met with the following response: “You see these two guys. There’s 20 more just like them. They all just got back from Vietnam and they’re looking for another war!”  Tony re-evaluated his position and decided to find some other partners. Jack and his brother, let’s call him Will, were as wild and crazy as anyone. One day we learned where they got it from when their father came for a visit. Will had killed a guy in a bar fight and went to prison in Carson City. He had just gotten out at the time the rugby club was staging a major tournament. Will volunteered to help in the concession stand. The tournament director was a bit of a nerdy guy. He noticed Will working the stand and became concerned. He questioned the wisdom of letting Will handle the club’s money. Unfortunately, he voiced his concerns within earshot of the father. “Hey,” the father said gruffly, “My son’s a killer, not a thief!”

After a week of being in Turks and Caicos it was time to return home. The great thing about flying private is you leave when you want to leave not when the airline tells you that you have to leave! Thank you Mr. Kelly for sending us home on your jet…oh wait… shall I say…NO…! On the ride home from Turks I lost 30k playing 4 handed with Jennifer Tilly, Phil Laak, and Richard Kelly. Right before we touched ground in Vegas I played a Q 2 of clubs like a total tool and gifted Jennifer 18k I think; so gross! Losing hurt, but losing to Phil’s GIRLFRIEND really stung. I never win.

Back in Vegas: I love Vegas. I really do. I miss it when I am not there. I used to think I could never live there, but now that I do I really cannot imagine living anywhere else. It felt so good to be back home. My pad is about 94% done at this point, right on the strip with a beautiful view. I’m really stoked at this point; and my roommate…what a piece of work. Walter (aka as Scooby) is a MACHINE with the ladies. I have never ever seen anyone with his powers. His job is to get girls to go to Tao! His parties are out of this world. Total side note there…just thinking of some Scooby stories I wish I could share with you all, but cannot!

Right now I am sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for Phil to land and then we are on the same flight to Knoxville to shoot episode 6 of I BET YOU season 2. I love doing the show because it forces Phil to hang out with me. He is so big time nowadays it’s hard to get any quality time.

This week I discovered a restaurant in Vegas that is to die for. It’s on the 36^th floor of the Venetian and it is called Paiza. It’s the best Chinese in Vegas. There’s only one problem. You have to be a huge player to get into this place. My buddy, Z, was in town all week getting poker lessons and he took me and the Scoob there almost every day. I think between the 3 of us we must have had 15 orders of duck in 5 days.

Last night I went to the boxing fight in Vegas. I don’t even know the names of the guys fighting, but it sure was entertaining. It’s so sick these two guys are just put in the ring and they knock each other over and over until one of them cracks. I think one punch from these guys and my ass would be dead. Thank you, Bruce Parker, for the tickets.

I think that is all for now folks. More to come; Phil and I are going camping for I BET You. Can you imagine Phil Laak and I in the woods setting up tents, BBQ-ing, and chopping? It will be rather interesting.

Antonio