Things are a bit chaotic in my apartment at the moment. There’s no hot water, so I’ve been experimenting with cold showers. This has to be better than coffee.

I played an hour and a half of tennis yesterday. I’m worried that Patrik could actually beat me on the golf. He’s seems incredibly focused there.

We are at $1.53 to the Euro now. We’re all going broke and we don’t even know it. In Martin Amis’ book, London Fields, he has a line something like, “What happens when everyone’s a thief? We hadn’t though of that.” In financial markets these days, it’s more like, What happens when everyone’s broke? Scary world.. things that are supposed to go up go down and everything else goes down as well. You can see I’m not running good.

Not too much poker lined up in next two months…. six days of big live cash, no tournaments.

Brandon

At Commerce, 34/hour rake is slowly busting everyone. Feb was a disasterous month for the poker economy… Commerce Casino and Phil Ivey got all the money and, as far we know, they already had a lot.

In the real world, $103 oil and record lows on the dollar means everyone is already poorer than they think. Everyone I know spent too much in the good times and is now losing money rapidly.

I’ve been training hard for the bet with Patrik. I’m constantly fighting minor injuries (first rotator cuff, now shin issues). I can buyout of golf for 50k if I’m injured and he can buyout of tennis for 50k, but other than that there is no injury allowance. This bet has made me realize that my body fat is quite high and I’m basically slow and out of shape. I’ve improved pretty dramatically in the past two weeks, but conditioning and speed are going to be the two main factors for the match.

Illya Trincher was telling me that he was a top ten ITF junior at one point. Benyamine was as well. The two of them have a match set for the summer and Benyamine has already lost forty pounds.

BA

I signed up awhile ago to take the Series 7 exam in LA on Feb 22. It’s a six-hour securities licensing exam and I needed to pass it to trade with Bob Bright’s firm, Bright Trading. I gave myself four days to study for this exam. I stayed in San Diego for most of this time. I thought I would fail b/c one of my best Harvard students took the exam recently and he barely passed after much more study. Then to make matters worse I was perhaps the most undisciplined I’ve ever been during a study period. It’s tedious stuff and not particualy easy to focus on, but I did a horrendous job. I might have studied 9 hours total over four days. I mean, I can’t even recount the various proscratinations. At one point, I spent four hours reading Rolling Stones magazine, including a 10000-word article on Britney Spears.

I stayed in downtown LA on Thurs night and I somehow wrote down the directions wrong to the test site in Pasadena, CA. I ended up in Encino, CA (not close), ten minutes before exam time. It was rush hour, so I got to the exam an hour and twenty minutes late. They let me take the exam but they deducted an hour and twenty minutes from my test time. I thought for sure I’d fail but halfway through I realized that I would be OK. I scored 82% correct; 70% is a pass.

Friday night I went to Madeo with Kenny and a few others, then I went to Goa with some LA friends and ran into D Williams and JR Ballende. I played the 10k LA event on Sat. I mostly played well until there were about thrity minutes remaining. At that point, I made the general comment to the table, “Is it stuffy in here?” It was of course hot and disgusting, with five hundred people crammed into a relatively small room upstairs at commerce. And I was not at my physical peak, having gone out the night before, and having consumed absurd amounts of caffeine in my mostly failed study attempt the week before. So I proceeded to come up with various justifcations for giving away my chips. On my bustout hand, I reraised a habitual raiser with 46s from the button with the intention of giving up if called. He called and the flop came 3-5-10 with one spade. I shipped it in for 1.3X the pot and he called with jacks.

Brandon

I’m going to be in LA until the end of February, at which point I’m flying to Cambridge, MA.

I’ve been playing a huge amount of tennis for my bet with Patrik but sadly I overdid it; I’m having some rotator cuff sensitivity that will sideline me for two or three weeks in tennis and probably one week in golf.

I just finished Nassim Taleb’s new book The Black Swan. I participated in a forum about topics from this book for Garp Risk Review Magazine back in April. I don’t think the book came out until early summer, so oddly most of the forum participants hadn’t read the book.

This is a fabulous book, one of the best popular econ/finance books of the last few years (another, The Misbehavior of Markets, covers similar territory and is written by a friend of Taleb’s, the legendary Benoit Mandelbrot). I was quite surprised that I liked this book becuase, for me, Taleb’s first book, Fooled by Randomness, covered overly familiar territory and used trite examples. Also I found the author’s tone a bit annoying. I was shocked that it was seen as an innovative, insightful book on the Street. If someone recommended the book to me, my opinion of them instantly went down.

How can an author improve so much on the second try? Taleb is now someone I desperately want to meet. My theory is this….
If you write a book, you do so (if you are not deluded) under the expectation that very few people will read it.
Thus at a certain point, you say, “OK, additional progress is hard fought at this point. My book is almost as good as it’s going to get. I could read this and read that and edit this and edit that. But I’m ready to finish up.”
Now possibly your 80% effort is, in the case of Fooled by Randomness, OK, and for one reason or another a lot of people happen to buy it.
You then get a big advance and a guaranteed readership (in the case of Taleb, he knows that at least 100,000 people will read his book, a staggering number is this genre).
With this guaranteed readership, the marginal investments of time now become worthwhile for you to undertake and you produce a second book that is dramatically better than the first.

I just replied to a popular post on twoplustwo about “online poker millionaires”. My post…
most people who make it don’t hold on to it.

i was reading bluff last week. there was an article about the WPT and lipscomb made some comment about the fact that wpt tournaments had made 90 poker millionaires (can’t remember exact number). it would be fun to go through and see how many of the ones who were made millionaires (meaning they didn’t have a mill before and they didn’t have a staker who took most and they didn’t have substantial debts going in), and look at how many are STILL millionaires. let me state the obvious: most poker players are sick. they’re not the best at holding onto money. the ones who aren’t gamblers spend too much when times are good. if you did the above calculation and excluded FullTilt stakes/infusions, the number would be low. below five would be my guess offhand and i haven’t look at the list of winners.

wait they actually have a link for this stuff

http://www.worldpokertour.com/Players/WPT_Poker_Made_Millionaires.aspx

maybe five is low, maybe not. not a fair test for wpt since those who tend to hold onto money are usually somewhat rational re:bankroll management and so tend not to play 10k tournaments without selling pieces or taking backers.

Brandon

Can’t remember where the last blog left off, but basically I was tilted by a huge bluff that Guy Laliberte put on me in PLO, and I immediately booked a flight out of Vegas.

I’ve mostly been hanging around my apartment. Watched the Super Bowl last Sunday. I once played neighborhood football with Eli and Peyton when I lived in New Orleans… this is my claim to fame in major athletics, as I never played organized football, scored 0 goals in my soccer career, and was a mediocre baseball player before I failed to prevent a baseball from getting past my glove and breaking my skull (left orbit bone).

I was at one point a half decent tennis player. At my best I was ranked around 150 in FLorida in the under-14s (which surprisingly is pretty good. These days I would imagine it’s even more competitive). I quit at 15 or so, and my closest friend (Will Brown, who was ranked about the same as me in the 14s) went to Nick Bolleteri Tennis Academy and ended up playing at the University of Florida after being ranked top 20 nationally in the 18s.

Now this bet with Patrik has me fired up on the tennis front.
The bet is 100k in tennis in July, 2 of 3 sets straight up, on clay, and 100k in golf, 18 hole stroke play on a fairly difficult course. Right now he’s way behind in golf (like 20 shots behind) and I’m way behind in tennis (prob 6-1, 6-2 if we played now) and he’s an infinitely better athlete. Plus he’s in shape and I’m not. I think I’m the favorite b/c if I play a lot of golf I’ll have him drawing dead there and there’s no way that I’ll be dead in the tennis if I work. Plus from what I can tell he has more money than me, so on the margin my incentives are better.

I read a short little book this week that’s hugely popular in Silicon Valley… it’s called The 4-Hour Workweek. This thing is hilarious, you have to get it. I want to meet the author. Among his views….Email and texting are the biggest waste of time in modern life. You should check your email twice a day and not in the morning, as that tends to derail you for the rest of the day. You should have a ‘to do’ list every day, but on that ‘to do’ list you should highlight two critical tasks and make sure you get those done…. this will put you ahead of the game since most people have a long list and accomplish nothing.

By the way, I haven’t mentioned it anywhere yet, but I’m co-teaching a course at Harvard this semester in applied game theory (with Andrew Woods). I designed the course and frankly I think it will be the coolest undergrad game theory course in the world. We have a few classes that hit cover stylized card games of the type found in the Mathematics of Poker (Matt Hawrilenko will be a guest in those three classes).

Brandon

1k-1k PLO. Ivey limps for 1k. I get froggy and raise to 5k on the button with Kc3c4s5s. By the way, I don’t know if froggy is a word, but Viffer has taken to using it and I like it a lot.

SB calls, Guy calls from BB, Ivey calls. Flop 4c6cJc. Check, check, check. I decide to check. Turn is Qc. Check, check, check. I bet 20k. SB folds. Guy wants to fold but has chips in his hand. I really want him to call. He calls. Ivey folds.

River is a 9c. Guy bets 30k into 60k pot. I decide that I can’t let him out for 30k.

In retrospect my line should be min-raise, call a push. Why? He can only legitimately push one hand: 8c10c. If he has this hand, he’s going to bet the turn or check and autocall when I bet. Instead he waited forever and acted like he really wanted to fold. This could have been an acting job for Ivey’s benefit with AcXc but he’s not going to 3-bet push the river with that hand. Plus my line (bet after everyone checks the turn, min-raise river after Guy min bets) really makes it look like I’m f’ing around.

If I’m going to fold to a push, I should raise to 70k (instead of a min-raise to 60k) b/c it makes it less likely that he’ll move on me.

The reason I can raise for value is that I can easily have a straight flush with my line. Plus, he can’t bluff me with a naked ten unless he calls the turn with a ten-high flush (like Tc7c) and then decides to turn that hand from a calling hand to a bluffing hand after I raise the river.

At any rate, I did the worst possible thing– I min-raised and then folded when he pushed. He had an Ac and three diamonds in his hand. In other words, he has a billion and change and just decided it was time to push. We were thinking about things a little differently.

I have a bet with Patrik…. around July 10, we are going to play golf for 100k straight up and tennis for 100k straight up. Beating Patrik in tennis might be my biggest goal in life at this point. Patrik is a first class athlete and I am very average. Right now, he beats me about 6-1 in tennis and I beat him in golf by 18 shots.

Brandon

Australia is an amazing country. I only saw Sydney and Melbourne, but I’m looking forward to checking out more. The country seems to be exceptionally well run. There’s a bit more of a community feel than in the US. While I was in Sydney, they had an amazing two-week program of events called the Sydney Festival, with every major venue including the Opera House participating. On the first night of the festival, they shut down a good portion of the city and had a huge number of free concerts taking place over ten hours across five stages.

There was a great Full Tilt party on the last night. At one point, I noticed Tony G and Niki (Kaibuxxe) abruptly leave and I knew it must be game on. Tony G has won so much lately that he’ll only play super huge and he seems to only play in good games.

So Aussie was not a great trip $-wise up to this point…. I busted from the tourney, finished marginally up in golf, down 25k in tennis prop bets (spectating) vs antonius and robert alexander and kenny, and down in the Aussie Millions TV cash game. Not sure if I wrote about the TV game in last blog but I played a bunch of crazy hands and I thought I played good to lose only 60k. AFter the game, Gus and I played HU 400-800 half plo-half NL for three or four hours and finished roughly even.

The cash game was 500-1000 plhe/plo. It was a very crazy, very very good game. Durrrr was in. And Antonius. I lost 138000. The story of the night was a monster 400,000+ pot that I lost to Niki. Niki limped. I raised with 789T, ten high dlamonds. Durrr calls. Phil Laak calls. Tony G calls. Niki reraises with weak aces. I call, Phil calls all-in with weak aces, Durrr folds, Tony G calls. Flop is 2d 5d Tc. Niki bets the pot, I raise all-in, Tony folds. It wasn’t much for Niki to call, he has aces with no draws and it holds up. Phil Laak splits the side pot.

Durrrr won big. He was supposed to go with me to Hong Kong but he missed the flight. Hong Kong is amazing. I can’t wait to go back with friends. On Wed night, I went to the Hong Kong Jockey Club races at Happey Valley b/c I heard it was a must see. It is crazy! I’ve heard the Sunday races at Sha Tin are even better. Hong Kong takes their horse racing seriously. It’s all coffee and pen and paper and race forms. I bet like $100 total but there was a huge spectator value for me.

Brandon

A fit of gambling insanity took place after the 100k Fox Sports Cash Game that took place two days ago. The Cash Game was pretty eventful for me. I lost 54,000 despite being dealt QQ, AK twice, AA twice, TT, JJ, 99 twice, AQs once. I laid down AA vs Durrrr’s set of fours to save 90k. In general I think I lost the min, though I feel like Eli Elezra might have bluff four-bet me preflop when I had queens. I felt like he was bluffing but didn’t put my remaining 85k in.

Gus and I played 400-800 heads up (half plo, half nlhe) for three hours after the cameras left and finished about even. The ring game was 600-1200 200 ante for the last three hours.

So the two days after the Cash Game I played golf with Antonius, KobyTapOut, and Robert Alexander. We played at Capitol Golf Club, the site of the Ivey matches last year. I think the club is owned by the casino, so almost no one is out there at any given time. I finished up small over the two days. It was for sure the most insane golf gambling I’ve ever seen… on the last hole of day two, KobyTapOut (Jani) lost 180k in one hole when he got a par vs Robert’s birdie. And I think he might have finished close to even on the two days. Anyway, there was just a huge amount of gambling in two days, everything from Chinese at dinner to tossing quarters to betting on the Australian (Patrik won $105,000 bettting props at tennis matches last night).

Brandon

Melbourne is not nearly as cool as Sydney, but the Crown Casino is a nice place, and it’s fun to have all the poker players in one spot. A lot of tennis players are staying here. One night Federer came to sit literally five feet away from me at Nobu. I should have just introduced myself but instead I stared in awe. Yesterday I had a tennis lesson and Carlos Moya was hitting on the court next to me.

The first day here I played golf at Capital Golf Club with the Full Tilt outing. It was a great day of golf but it was extremely hot and afterwards I realized I was probably pretty close to heat exhaustion. The next day at the gym I ran into Ivey and he talked me into going out again. We never came even remotely close to agreeing on a bet. Golf betting is not something I recommend to anyone. There are two scenarios you can get yourself into: 1) You can get into a bet where you have the worst of it, or 2) You can into a fair bet or a bet where you have the best of it, but if you win you won’t be paid or you’ll be paid far down the road. It’s not too far off to say that this applies to prop bets of all kinds.

Poker has been uneventful. I’m even including yesterday’s early bustout from the tournament. It’s a hell of a tournament. The field is very weak. The cash games here are sporadically amazing. The problem is that to get them you kind of have to hang around the poker room and the poker room is not that pleasant (plus it’s a half mile from the hotel rooms).

I’m going to hang around until early Monday. Hopefully some good cash games will go. I’m playing in the 100k buyin TV cash game tomorrow.

Brandon

I have some problems with blogging, namely I don’t like to talk about life outside poker that much, yet most of my life is outside poker, and then when I talk poker I don’t like to talk results. The quick 07 summary is that I had huge year live and a terrible year online. The live action was a lot bigger than the online. My gambling in 07 was insane… I had daily swings in live play of a half million or close to fairly often.

Beanie and I are starting up a new site at some point in 08 called Poker and Finance. www.pokerandfinance.com. I think this site is going to be pretty amazing. We’re going to bring in some very accomplished guys to write for the site.

Though I haven’t made the crossover from poker to other stuff, to some extent I’m always trying to. This year I’m going to start trading actively at my friend Bob Bright’s firm, Bright Trading (www.stocktrading.com). I’m also working hard to finish up a co-authored book on behavioral finance.

Poker has made me fairly sick with regard to taking monster bets relative to my bankroll when I think the edge is big. In 2005, the first year I ran big in poker, I lost 230k in one day in one stock at a time when my bankroll was 520k (nov 05). This year I made a million in one day in one stock in July. That was especially insane b/c my bankroll wasn’t that big in march 07; I just ran huge subsequent to that. I followed the July score with huge losses and then huge gains.

I’ll be playing a lot of big online in 08, especially the latter half of the year. I have a sweet online setup in my new apartment, and I’m ready to put in the time again to be a top player online. My online play in 07 suffered from the usual problems of overconfidence. My game selection was terrible. Also, I now believe pretty strongly that you need a dedicated online set-up to play poker seriously.

I’m in Sydney right now. This city is unbelievable; one of the three coolest cities I’ve seen. I mean it just piles strength on strength on strength. It’s like you go to the beach and you think, omg this is beautiful, then you take a look around and and the girls are amazing, like a -2 point curve on Boston or NorCal, then you stop in for lunch and have nice people introduce themselves and buy you beer.

I think www.aussiemillions.com is going to be pretty incredible. I can tell the Aussies take their gambling seriously.

One thing I’m halfway looking for is someone to work with me on trading and other stuff (writing, pokerandfinance.com, analyzing online poker games, etc.). My ex-Harvard students are ideal but they don’t want to take the career risk associated with doing random stuff for a guy who does random stuff. Shoot me an email at badams2525@gmail.com if interested. I imagine there are some twoplustwo frequenters who’d be ideal. I could conceivably partner with someone rather than hire someone. I don’t really have time to mentor so the person I’m thinking of would have to have a very heavy background in poker, finance, and econ.

Brandon

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

Here’s a major psychological difference b/w running good and running bad….
When you’re running good, you’re generally very in the moment. You’re entirely focused on the present and the future and you take very little time to reflect on your good fortune. This is a good thing to the extent that it makes it more likely that you will continue your run.
When you’re running bad, you’re focused on the past. You’re focused on your mistakes and your bad luck. You tend to look back at your path and note that changes in any number of initial conditions would have led to a more favorable outcome. All of this makes it more likely that you will make further mistakes and worsen your run.

Here’s one trade that blew up recently…
LKTJE.O CALL NETLOGIC MICROSYS $25 EXP 10/20/07 CALL NETLOGIC MICROSYS $25 EXP 10/20/07 -350 $9.701 +0.50 -$339,500.00 -$17,500.00
summary… when you write calls, you don’t want the stock to go up. i wrote a lot of calls and the stock went up huge, and these calls consitute just over half of my NETL position.

Looking at this past year, here’s the summary….
Jan/Feb/Mar. At one point, I lost 8 consec all-ins for more than 40k when I was an 80-20 fav or better when the money went in. Sometimes I’d be like 92-8. I played in very good games during this time and ran v v bad.
Apr. Good poker month.
May. Will go down as the best month in my poker life. Just silly.
June/July. Very good. Some big wins and only one huge loss. Did a bit better than breakeven in tournaments. Had a couple of big scores in the market as well.
Aug15-now. Ran terrible in both markets and poker.

Now in $ I’m right around where I was at the start of the main event.

BA

On the plus side, it’s been a lot of fun to be back in London. I’m staying in a hotel that I lived in for four months when I was a student in 1999. Some of my close friends are living here now and I’ve had time to hang with them.

London has become insanely expensive. This tournament is going to have a tough time making it. It’s just too costly for players to come here.

I ate at four nice restaurants while I was here, all of them Chinese. The best of these by far was Mr Chow. I drank too much last night for the first time in a long while (at China White with Craig Abrahams and Kenny Tran). Drinking just isn’t worth it. It really is stupid.

I’m headed to New York tomorrow and then Cambridge soon after.

Brandon

The poker has been OK. I finsihed close to the bubble in both the HORSE and PLO events. That was too much poker in four days. I’m still in the Main Event with 15000 chips. There was some horrendous play in the tournament. One guy at my table laid down a big full house in a spot where there was simply no way it was not good. Farzad Bonyadi said. “If you put a gun to my head in that spot and said, ‘if you are wrong, i’m going to shoot you’, i still would have called”.

Brandon

Brandon Adams at World Series of Poker Europe

Brandon Adams, Poker, WSOPE, World Series of Poker Europe

On Thurs night, I played in a game at Commerce with Kenny Tran, Jeff Katzenberg, Michael Chow, Bruce Parker, Dave Peat (Viffer), and a few others.

I lost one huge pot against Bruce Parker….
I flopped a set of queens on a queen three four flop w/ two hearts. There was about 4000 in pre. I bet the pot, Bruce calls. Turn is a four. Bruce checks, I bet 9000, Bruce calls. River is a five. Bruce checks, I bet about 20000, bruce goes all-in for about 20k more. I call. Quad fours.

How does Kenny make this call?
One can never be sure, but I think I’m tough to read. Kenny just comes up with it somehow, I’ll never know.
Here we go….
the game is playing super loose-passive, so i’m raising a wide variety of hands in position. this is bad for kenny as he’s one to my left. i know he will respond at some point and i’m inclined to defend if his reraise is coming from the blinds. limp limp limp, i raise to 800 with AcJc from the button. Kenny makes it 3000 from the small blind. I decide to call.
The flop is Qh6d8h. Kenny bets 3500, I call. This call will shut Kenny down for a lot of his range here given that we’re deep stack on deep stack and I have position. It’s a metagame play; I have to control the table from the last two seat positions. The turn comes a black queen. This is a better card for me than for Kenny in this spot. He checks, I bet 7000. He thinks and calls. I was messing around with my chips with my left hand and I called the flop too fast…. these were kenny’s tells in retrospect. The river is a black two. Kenny checks. I decide that he will call me so I check. He has black AK. If I bet the river, he’s going to call me and I’m going to be absolutely sick. I mean, I might have to quit poker if I get called for 20k on the end.

Brandon

Leaving LA

Brandon Adams, Kenny Tran, Viffer, Poker, High Stakes Poker

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.

Full Tilt Poker Game #3291747957: FTOPS Event #12 (23186107), Table 56 - 25/50 - No Limit Hold’em - 16:52:16 ET - 2007/08/18
Seat 1: Bausi (4,605)
Seat 2: bashpup (6,775)
Seat 3: theusual06 (9,890)
Seat 4: Brandon Adams (3,590)
Seat 5: 1zzz1 (3,629)
Seat 6: boltsva (12,315)
Seat 7: TheComeUp (4,775)
Seat 8: PickyTooth (7,717)
Seat 9: RaidenWins (3,021)
bashpup posts the small blind of 25
theusual06 posts the big blind of 50
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Brandon Adams [Qd Qs]
WhoTheHeIlFartd (Observer): This kicks ass, everyone should go t0 www.instantpokerpromo.com
Brandon Adams has 15 seconds left to act
Brandon Adams calls 50
1zzz1 folds
boltsva folds
TheComeUp folds
PickyTooth folds
RaidenWins calls 50
Bausi raises to 250
bashpup folds
theusual06 folds
Brandon Adams has 15 seconds left to act
Brandon Adams calls 200
RaidenWins calls 200
*** FLOP *** [Jh Qh 4s]
Brandon Adams has 15 seconds left to act
Brandon Adams checks
RaidenWins has 15 seconds left to act
RaidenWins checks
Bausi has 15 seconds left to act
Bausi bets 750
Brandon Adams has 15 seconds left to act
Brandon Adams raises to 3,340, and is all in
RaidenWins calls 2,771, and is all in
Bausi calls 2,590
Brandon Adams shows [Qd Qs]
RaidenWins shows [Th 8h]
Bausi shows [Ad Qc]
*** TURN *** [Jh Qh 4s] [Jd]
*** RIVER *** [Jh Qh 4s Jd] [Kh]
Brandon Adams shows a full house, Queens full of Jacks
Bausi shows two pair, Queens and Jacks
Brandon Adams wins the side pot (1,138) with a full house, Queens full of Jacks
RaidenWins shows a flush, King high
Brandon Adams wins the main pot (9,138) with a full house, Queens full of Jacks
RaidenWins stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 10,276 Main pot 9,138. Side pot 1,138. | Rake 0
Board: [Jh Qh 4s Jd Kh]
Seat 1: Bausi (button) showed [Ad Qc] and lost with two pair, Queens and Jacks
Seat 2: bashpup (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 3: theusual06 (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 4: Brandon Adams showed [Qd Qs] and won (10,276) with a full house, Queens full of Jacks
Seat 5: 1zzz1 didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 6: boltsva didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 7: TheComeUp didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 8: PickyTooth didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 9: RaidenWins showed [Th 8h] and lost with a flush, King high

I took a bad beat in the markets yesterday. I woke up to see that Japan was down >5% for the second day in a row. S+P futures were down about sixteen (despite a strong earning report from HPQ). Customers of Countrywide Bank were lining up to take out money. All told, the signs were very encouraging for someone who was extremely short the market and extremely short Countrywide in particular. Then, an hour before the open, the Fed announced a surprise cut in the discount rate, and, boom, S+P futures were up 40 points in three minutes and I figured to lose some huge amount of money.

I did in fact lose a huge amount of money, but I lost less than I might have b/c I shorted a lot more Countrywide when it hit 24 at around 10.45am. In a recent blog, SBRugby talked about how losses don’t hurt anymore. This has almost always been true for me. I’m calm in the face of losses b/c they just don’t hurt anymore. In markets, this is good because it allows you to make good bets when other people are fearful (in this case, weak shorts in Countrywide), but it’s bad because it makes it more likely that you will lose everything. I need to strike a balance here because for the first time I have a fairly serious amount of money, an amount high enough that I’d have to go to therapy or something if I blew it away.

I should have a good trip report from LA. There are some big cash games planned and the tournament should be huge.

Brandon

I’ve been running so so bad in poker and so so good in markets. How good? On Monday, Countrywide puts looked cheap to me. I bought at-the-money puts, expiring Fri, for $1 (27.5 strike, 400 contracts). It was a gamble but I thought I was ahead of the market in knowledge of CFC’s troubles. As the stock slid, I grew more confident in the position and increased the size. Today was somewhat frustrating b/c Schwab was completely frozen…. there was no way to trade after 12.30pm Eastern by phone or email. It’s hard to say what this cost me. I can’t say that I would have exited the position but I think it would have.

I think I’m down 180k on the week in poker. I feel like I’ve been playing good and running bad but it’s hard to say. I thought I had a good spot today against IDreamofJenna (200-400nl) but he killed me. Our biggest pot was jack-high flush vs ace-high flush. I flopped a pair plus flush draw on the flop, then turned the flush.

Brandon

You can take your chances against Brandon at Full Tilt Poker

I’m negotiating a heads up match with Tony G at neverwinpoker. We are chatting about it on that site. It looks like it will be a heads up 200-400 PLO match…. We’ll play until someone loses at least $120k.

A couple of thoughts….
the world is so busy these days, how do people do simple sh^t like paying the power bill and so forth? i mean i can hardly make time for it. my credit score must be terrible. also, it seems like a lot of the marketing world benefits from creating a kind of Economy of the Confused, where they sell people on sh3t that they will be too busy to think about ever again. think banana republic credit cards and time shares.

blogging is like the mass email of old, except that it’s socially acceptable. downside is that it’s there forever as some kind of permanent record of your stupidity.

there’s a 2p2 thread about lending among the scandinavians and a few others. the situation touched on there is crazy, i heard about it in vegas. why lend? what’s the upside. i seriously don’t lend and don’t stake. yet i’m owed 200k. still not sure how that happened.

Brandon

I won’t be playing too much poker for the next few days so I might as well chat about my various financial market gambles. There’s really only one person I know who has as high a risk tolerance as I do in financial markets (yes, Mike, that’s you). It’s just more fun that way and frankly I think it’s rational. As Aaron Brown points out in The Poker Face of Wall St (a must read), poker (hopefully) teaches you to think about risk intelligently and risk is usually overcompensated for in financial markets.

I tend towards biotechs b/c I have a friend who’s a master in this area. My current speculations (please buy them) are ALXN, BDSI, and TUNE (last one is not a biotech). I’m short NETL.

I’m going to wire money to FullTilt very soon. I’ve had just an unbelievable summer in live poker but I’m down 300k or so online. I’ve been a little stupid about game selection, playing while distracted, etc. I plan to change this. Also, at one point, I studied poker tracker and recently I’ve quit doing it. I’m going to try to start up again, and I’m also going to go back to my old Excel notes on player tendencies. SB, do you read this, did you bluff me on that 345 board? I think you did. SB doesn’t even need Excel notes, he just knows.

I’ve been practicing for my golf bet with Erick. I just have no athletic talent at all. It’s like I start the game all over again everyday.

Brandon

I’ll never get over this aspect of the poker world……
it’s like you’re walking out of the coffee shop and you’re thinking, ’shit, if i hadn’t gone for coffee, i’d be 55k richer.’

Most of my novel Broke didn’t actually happen, but my favorite chapter (”Staying Home”) pretty much happened. I stayed home instead of going to a tournament I had planned to go to and I lost some huge amount of money online.

BA

On Thursday, I played Kaibuxxe/RealAndyBeal in PLO and had a nice win. He kept writing things like “Oh man, I should quit, I’m playing so bad today”. At least he had self awareness going for him b/c I’ve rarely seen a high limit player play worse. He would make huge bluffs in spots where it was 100% that I’d call. I’d check-raise a KK4 flop and he’d move all-in with nothing. Obv I looked to play him again on Friday, and this time he outplayed me and destroyed me. He plays the river extremely well. I think Benyamine is the master of PLO rivers, but Kai is good. I think he’ll be around for a little while, then he’ll blow off 1mill in a day, then he’ll surface again one day. Seems like that type.

I made a huge game selection error and played savagegamble in big limit. I started playing limit (esp heads up, way back in early stars days, 2002/03/04). I played savage at 200-400 and he seemed to be making too many plays in spots where they weren’t likely to work. We kicked it up to 5-1 and then 1000-2000 and he won about 80k total. He ran good at 1k-2k, but I think he outplayed me as well. I played overly solid and he took advantage.

I’m working on some revisions to my book, Broke: A Poker Novel. It should be carried by some Barnes and Noble stores in the Fall. You can still get it on Amazon. I should write another one. My source material is so much better these days.

I regret not staying in Vegas an extra week. There were some great games last week that I could’ve played in. So, missing those games+losing 160k online=regret. That said, it was a good week on the non-poker front and staying in Vegas the extra week could have resulted in some kind of serious illness. I was not in good health after the 26hour session on Sat/Sun.

I think I’m going to start playing online a lot in about one week.

Brandon

I’m up 50k on my recent online poker stint. I lost 100k on FT and went up 150k on Stars (mostly against TheRealAndyBeal). I’ll try to get some decent hand histories up soon.

Brandon

Background…. coming back from a break, I talk for five minutes with a nice Danish guy from my table who convinces me that his primary concern is climbing up in the money (at this point there are about 140 players left and the money jumps are significant).

An hour later, he raises and I call from the BB with KsJs. The flop comes Kd6h8h. I check, he bets just over the pot, I call. The turn is a 3s. I check, he bets about the size of the pot. I have a fairly strong sense that he’s bluffing. I’m not sure enough to move in or to check with the intention of calling almost any river, but I’m pretty sure he’s weak. I call. The turn is a 9s. I check and he moves all-in for about the size of the pot. A call would leave me with 90,000 or so. I think his bet was 310,000.

So here’s the thing… I’m pretty sure he’s bluffing. That should have been overwhelmingly the most important decision variable. But…. I just couldn’t see this guy bluffing off his tournament after our conversation (and based on what I had seen from his play). My mind was fighting itself….. “surely this guy is bluffing. just look at him. but would this guy really bluff himself out of the tournament?” Ultimately I decided that the answer to that last question was “no”. I folded and he showed A9. Kenny says that after my conversation with the guy during the break, I should have leaned strongly towards a call.

Brandon

Today I’m playing The Drinking Game at Venetian. 100-200nl w/ 200 button ante, everyone must drink two bottles of wine in the first eight hours. It should be a fun game. Bob Bright and I played it once heads up. This one will be seven-handed or so.

Curious Poker Economics….. So the price of Full Tilt dollars fell to the 93-95 cent range during the Series, but has since rebounded to close to 100%. Reportedly, the price of Spearmint Rhino dollars (apparently these exist) fell to an all-time low of below 90 cents.

Yesterday was one of the craziest days of tournament poker I’ve played. I was a relentless bluffer…. my theory in this tournament is that, if you have a read, you have to commit all your chips to it. People will call off like 40% of their stack just to make sure you aren’t bluffing, but they won’t risk their tournament on it. I did make one incredibly stupid check-raise bluff on the river with q2o. I had a key double up before dinner where a guy moved in on me on the flop as a bluff. Today my table draw looks pretty good.

BA

So I took a big loss. I’ve been running too good this summer, so I was due. It wasn’t severe (in the 3-4 min buy-in range), but it was enough to hurt (a lot). The line-up was Guy, Bobby, Brian, David Kim, and Barry Greenstein. I made a pretty bad fold against Brian on one hand, but other than that I felt good about my play.

Sunday

I feel like the best strategy after a big loss is retrenchment. On Sunday, I hit some golf balls, read a bit, and bummed around.

Monday

On Monday, I went to a full day course at Bright Trading. Bob Bright is a good friend of mine and I was curious to see what his firm is about. It’s very cool stuff; I plan to open an account in August. www.stocktrading.com

Tuesday

I started with 120k and ended with 113k. I thought I would bully my way to a lot of chips but it didn’t happen. My reads were way off. I probably re-raised with nothing fourteen times and succeeded four times. In general, I think opening pots in this tourney is a far more successful stealing strategy than re-raising. Tomorrow I hope people will be more amenable to being pushed around.

After the tourney, I went for drinks with a couple of friends from NY, then played in the Venetian game until 6.30am. I had a pretty big win for the game. I was even until the last hour, then had a windfall.

Wednesday

I kind of cashed out today. I got a check from Bellagio and deposited it at Schwab, leaving only a modest amount in Vegas. I’m temporarily retiring from the big game.

BA

Main Event, The summary…. I played very tight and got down to 15k in chips. Then I moved tables, bumped it to 20k, then succeeded in running kings through aces to get to 40k. From there, I did a huge amount of betting and raising and chipped up to 120k.

BA

I’m still up decently across the three sessions. Sun night’s game was amazing, Mon night’s game was tough, and last night’s game was extremely tough. Last night, the game started with me, Brian, David Kim, and Bobby, and then late joiners were Lyle Berman, Phil Ivey, Minh Ly, and Johnny Chan. I ran good early and was up 175k or so. I probably should have left at that point but since we planned to have long sessions over the next week or so, it would have been bad form.

I lost an 80-20 all-in pot vs Ivey for 115k and that started a bad run. My head was pretty much spinning the entire six hours; I had some weird hands come up, and I played them in weird and maybe bad ways. Here’s one… I limp with 9TJK, two hearts, then two others limp behind and small blind completes. SB raises 5k more from BB, only me and Ivey call. Flop comes JTT. SB checks. I should bet here 100%, but I decide to check b/c I think Ivey will bet after two checks here. Ivey checks. Now the turn is an ace and SB bets the pot. I sensed very strongly that he had hit his hand and I folded. He claimed he had aces full. I don’t know. I felt sick about it after I folded. I just had to go with my read in that spot. In general, it’s a disgusting fold, especially with all the limpers pre-flop, since one or two of the limpers figure to have suited aces.

I played a 230k pot with Bobby where I got all-in on the turn with a straight vs his flush draw and two pair. We ran it twice and split. To end the night, I played a 185k PLO pot vs Ivey where we got all-in on a 456 (two hearts) board. We were heads up in the pot. I had limped with 4567(two clubs) and he raised the pot. I called. I should have open-mucked the hand. He bet the 456 flop…. after I check-raised, he put me in and I called. He had 7-8 and I missed the six outs.

I’m playing the charity event Thurs and then the main event on Fri.

Obviously I have very limited information on this, but I gave some thought yesterday to my ranking of the top ten overall poker players. Here’s what I came up with…..

1. Chip Reese
2. Barry Greenstein
3. Doyle Brunson
4. Phil Ivey

I think that people from the anaytical school of poker (like myself) would be inclined to rank Chip and Barry at the top, whereas people from the feel/experience school would place Ivey or Doyle at the top.

5. Johnny Chan
6. Chau Giang
7. Patrick Antonius
8. David Benyamine
9. Daniel Negreanu
10. Jennifer Harman

The three young players most likely to join this list are Rafi Amit, Brian Townsend, and Luke Neely.

The best big field NL tournament players are Phil Hellmuth and Phil Ivey.

BA

Here’s a quick summary of the summer so far…. I went to Vegas for a weekend in early May after I finished Spring teaching and I never left. I feel like I’ve been in Vegas way too long. I don’t read newspapers. I get my news from the Bally’s news ticker on the corner of Flamingo and LV Blvd. I live at The Venetian. I have not eaten in for a meal in three months. My only exercise is hitting golf balls to train for a golf prop bet vs Erick Lindgren. Results-wise, I was a big winner in cash in May and then was down marginally in June. I final-tabled the 1500 PLO rebuys and went out 6th (terrible beat for chip lead), but I’m down about 50k for tournaments (I played the HORSE and spent 30k on the 5k PLO rebuyed — I bubbled the latter).

July is off to a good start. I was a big winner last night in a 300-600 nl/plo game at Bellagio. Bobby Baldwin and I started the game at around 9pm. Brian Townsend joined at about 10.40pm. At 11.30, Rick Salomon (star of the Paris Hilton sex tape) joined for a couple of hours. Zigmund from Full Tilt (Ilari) joined at about 1pm… I don’t know how many drinks deep he was but it seemed like a huge amount. He played extremely aggressively the whole night and apparently he went totally crazy after I left (at 9am). I’m guessing he was a half million winner on the night.

Late joiners to the table included Nenad Medic, Ralph Perry, John Hanson (2nd in 50k HORSE), and Kenny Tran. When players are tired or drunk, they become easier to read based on body language and the like….. I felt like making reads was my major source of edge in the game. I think Kenny lost but it should have been a great game for him. I have incredible respect for Brian’s game (I think that in three years he’ll be one of the top ten overall poker players in the world), but in a live game I would take Kenny anyday. The reads that Kenny makes on a day in, day out basis are simply unbelievable. I have never played with anyone who reads players better than Kenny and picking up a read on him is impossible (Jason Strasser once said something like, “In my next life, I hope I’m as calm as Kenny Tran.”)

We’re going to start the game again at 7pm and I think Sammy is going to join the fun. We may kick it to 500-1000.

BA