Italian Vegas

A bit of a plug/review of Tri’s new book. If you’re not aware Tri co-wrote the $1,800 NL book last year with CTS. His new book has a much more affordable pricetag, coming in at under $400 making it affordable for an NL player that wants to pick up PLO.

Been playing a bunch of PLO recently, for a few reasons… I had a 25bi downswing at NL, one of my current housemates is a mid-stakes PLO player so getting railed is awesome, and SlowHabit sent me a pre-release copy of his new PLO book.

I would definitely go ahead and recommend it to any small to midstakes PLO players, or NL players looking to take a serious crack at PLO. You can pre-order it for a discount price of $250 at DailyVariance now.

The book doesn’t teach the basics of PLO and it doesn’t really intend to. So if you’re still calling your stack off for chops with AA67 on a 4TJQK board or cold-calling preflop with 66TK then you’ve got some work to do before picking it up. I’d heavily recommend watching the 2×6 series on DC and also checking out DJ Sensei’s fantastic new PLO Dojo series.

First poker related post in a while, will probably do more Asia trip report stuff soon just can’t really be assed at the moment…

It’s been going real well so far… I’m mainly playing $100plo on FTP… people play BAD and I’m running like Jesus.
I have to say that I’m finding the virtual game really interesting. It’s a much more complex than NL but at the same time at the small stakes I feel like it’s pretty simple to beat the virtual online gamess. At the mid-stakes I’m sure it’ll get a lot more complex. Hell I probably don’t even ‘get’ most of the fre online game yet.

The purpose of the book is to illustrate the more complex intricacies of PLO in a straight-forward understandable way. It serves as a great eye-opener to the way the virtual game should be played, it’s certainly given me multiple ‘lightbulb’ moments and I’m only 1/3 of the way through so far.

Another thing that quickly becomes evident when you start playing PLO is that it’s very important to know you’re hands equity against villain’s likely hand at each stage of the hand or you will be making huge mistakes. PLO revolves much more around equity than NL and the book teaches you a ton of the important spots where you need to know your equity in order to make good decisions.

What a month! I’m absolutely convinced that March is trying to drive me mad. I have spent most of March sick as a dog, under the influence of over-the-counter medicines, unlucky and completely card-dead. As such, I have not been able to do well at the tables, which has caused a notable dent to my bankroll.

After all, a person can do well at the tables even though he or she is sick, so long as they catch hands that hold up; or if a person is having a card-dead kind of day, a good poker player should always be able to fall back on his or her skills and table presence to balance out the lack of hands. However, to be foggy headed and sickly looking at a poker table while being totally unlucky and utterly devoid of hands to play is hardly a recipe for success. Any halfway decent card player will quickly catch on to the fact that it is not your day, and move in for the kill!!

Well, no sense in crying over spilt milk I guess. As the month draws to an end, I have begun picking up the pieces and am preparing myself for what I hope to be a much better second quarter. Of course, given that I believe that March 2009 will go down in recent memory as a very costly month for me, the irony that the dawn of my salvation falls on a date known as “April Fool’s Day,” is not lost on me in the least.

For several weeks now, I have been struggling with illnesses. During the Presidents’ Day weekend, I struggled with a sinus infection that cost me my ability to think straight and play well. Then, last week (first week of March) I got hit with the flu. Since I had not fully recovered from the sinus infection, the flu was able to reek havoc on my body and I ended up with sever bronchitis. Of course, undeterred I rolled out of bed to give the most recent ladies’ event at The Bike a try (Sunday, March 8, 2009).

Needless to say both the tourney and my play were very disappointing, although I was able to survive 3/4 of the field on the shortstack while being completely card dead. With only 102 entrants and a 130 buy-in, the purse was limp to say the least and I was feeling under-the-weather and totally hopped up on Sudafed and Caffeine. Looking back, I either should have got back in my car and gone home or I should have used my time and effort to play satellites towards the multi-rebuy event that was set for later that evening. But no, I decided that since I wasn’t feeling well and since I planned to work on Monday it was best to play the ladies’ event which was only expected to run 5-6 hours. However, I was wrong. Not only did I bust out after 5 hours and just 27 players left (by loosing two back-to-back pre-flop all-ins w/ JJ to KQ off), by the time I got home, I found myself sicker than ever.

While I normally don’t care for on-line play (because the Bush laws have made it so difficult to deposit and withdraw money and the field has just become insanely flooded with both Fish and little geniuses), I’ve spent much of my sick-in-bed time over the last week playing on PokerStars…using $10 that Johan sent to me to play cheap little STT and MTT donkaments for entertainment. Of course at these micro limits one really isn’t playing one’s best, but I’m happy to report that I’ve continued to build upon the gifted dime and have a pretty decent bankroll, cashing in an average of 3 out of 5 game onlines a day. I was able to return Johan’s $10 and I even sent him about $30 more, just by playing micro stake virtual online gamess – winning small cashes here and there.

Now, here I am having a pretty tumultuous weekend, but getting ready to go to The Bike to work the satellites for tomorrow’s NLH $500 buy-in tournament. I’m still not 100%…actually I don’t know that I’m at 50% yet, but life hasn’t stopped while I’ve been sick. So, for the third time I’m going to play while under the influence of OTC medications. On a high note, my confidence has returned as a result of my success on-line, so I’m hoping I will be able to convert this small time success into big-time winnings in live play. And I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough whether or not playing on-line helps or hurts my online game.

Wish me luck…

Just got a free membership there through that free poker training site. I’m guessing a ton of you guys have CR memberships… could you recommend me the best mid-stakes NL videos to watch? So far on my list is all of the Nute and CTS vids…

Oh yea and this is my 200th post so here are some pics of hot asian chicks… Ding!

The 2nd episode of S5 of High Stakes Poker aired last night and wound up with an amazing hand again featuring Durrr and Main Event champion Peter Eastgate. It’s definately top 3 greatest televised plays I’ve seen. Durrr is so fucking sick.

Check out Barry Greenstein’s analysis of the hand on PokerRoad.

It’s pretty important to note that they’re deepstacked. The blinds are $400-800 with a $200 ante, Durrr/Eastgate both have roughly $500k stacks and Greenstein has just over $200k. Skip to 4:30 to go straight there.

Getting pretty into meditation and Buddhism while I’m across here (Thailand is 90% Buddhist faith). It’s always something I’ve been interested in but am giving meditation a proper go at the moment and am really excited about the prospects of it. In a nutshell meditation helps make your mind more calm, peaceful and focussed by spending a short period of time each day processing your thoughts. It helps you break past your conditioning and get more in line with your true self and values. Apparently it takes a lot of time and patience (we’re talking years) to see the best effects of it, but even after a week I’m seeing some great results which is really cool. If you’re interested I’d recommend Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck.

Went to a beach party at the Ska Bar a few days back. It’s a really cool bar right on the edge of Kata beach, they had loads of live bands playing Ska, Thai and Reggae music. Was really good, even when the tide rose and the sea began to invade the party J Been hitting up the beach a lot recently. Beach football rules… trying to keep the ball in the air with like 2-3 people is wicked fun and we’ve got loads better at it! Also trying to run every couple of days which is going decent so far.

Finally a shout out to my friend Rob, if you like comic books definitely check out The Pen. It’s his first project since leaving work a couple of months ago to focus on comic book writing. I’d describe it as influenced by The Wire/Oz/The Shield/24 style TV. Really enjoyed the first few issues.

So anyways seeing as I can’t talk about the kerds I guess I’ll ramble about other shit that’s been going on…

Sunrise = ZzZZzztime. Will post again probably just after Malaysia. Will signoff with an awesome sunset pic from our rooftop…

More Prodigy because their new album just RULES. Should fly into London a day before they play to a sellout crowd at the new Wembley stadium, will be so sick. Standing tickets are sold out, verrrrrry tempted to grab some from Ebay.

Actually, this is a pretty solid story… I crashed my motorbike about a week ago in the most spastic way ever. We were parked just off the street at the post office and pulling out on to a busy road. Actually, I’ll say at this point in my defence I was SUPER hungover, but anyways… Some Thai chicks pulled up behind me on a bike giving me some cheeky Thai chat. I figure I’ll take off pretty quick to let them in my space not having noticed that a post office van pulled in in front of me… jammed the throttle and melted it into the now parked van The 2 chicks came over to see if I was ok, was fine just a bit shocked that I’d actually managed to do something so retarded. Picked myself and the bike back up and decided to get the fuck out of these before the dude who drove the postvan got back to see his headlights smashed out all over the tarmac.

Went for a massage at a place down the road earlier… was really chilled and the girls that work there are real friendly I got a full body Thai massage which lasted an hour! Definately going to get more and try out the different types they have. Massages FTW! Gotta make the most of it across here, in the UK the same thing costs over 10x the price!

When I got back to the house I inspected the damage. Just grazes and what turned out to be huge bruises on my arms/legs and fragments of the plastic from his headlights and chips of paint stuck all up my arm. The bike was a little worse for wear, smashed one of the mirrors, bent the number plate and cracked some of the front of the bike but still drove ok. Was a bit stressed that I might get ripped off and get charged a lot of money for repairs if I took it back to the bike rental guy, so took it to a nearby garage instead. The guys there sorted it out in like 15mins, new mirrors, touched up all of the scrapes on it and glued the front… all for a tenner. Sweet! They advised me to take it back to the rental dude at 7-8pm when it’s a bit dark and he shouldn’t notice the difference lol. Legends.

Peace.

Really it’s just work, work, work at the moment though, 9-10 hours/day to put the time in now so I can chill in a couple of weeks. We need to do a Visa run before the 18th, will probably head to Malaysia for a couple of days in around a weeks time. Then Ryan and Alwyn, a couple of my friends from work are headed over on the 19th and we’ll start hitting up all of the tourist stuff. Rough list includes… drunken antics at Patong, day trip to Phi Phi Island, Phuket Zoo (they have MONKEYS ON BIKES!), bike ride up to the Big Buddha, Jet Skiing, BBQ at the house and maybe some diving. Craig/Andy/I have got the house ’til the 15th of April but I might head to Bangkok a week earlier for a few days with Ryan/Alwyn, then to Hong Kong around the 10th for a week before flying back to Edinburgh. I definitely don’t feel like going home, I’d give evens odds on my flying off somewhere else within a month of getting back to the UK :S

What is up! Took the day off today, just finished up watching Old School and having a couple of beers with the boys. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been working a ton, so not a huge deal to blog about. Probably a good thing I can’t blog about it or I’d be whining like a bitch on a daily basis on here! We’ve got set up nicely at the house with additional TFT monitors now occupying the dining room table, iPod dock, fans, etc. Will take some pics at some point, next time the house gets cleaned… oh yea, we have a maid lol.