The second half of my stay in Fresno turned out to be a lot of fun. It was divided into three parts - the main event (lasted an hour; got two pair in against a set, then got my last 10 BB in with KK vs. the mighty 72 sooted. oops!), a few business meetings that went pretty well, and hanging out with shaundeeb watching him grind 25 tables' worth of donkaments. The guy is sick for that one thing alone, but he also manages to play good while doing it, too. I wish I could do that :(

Apparently, Shaun'd been having a pretty bad downswing for a while there, but it ended in spectacular fashion - he had a 20K day or so on Saturday, then won the FTOPS HUment on Sunday while I was sweating him, for another 115 grand or so. The HU tourney was hysterical; every time we saw any of his last 3-4 opponents make a big move that made no sense, we turned to each other, said "flush draw" in unison (no cheating involved, it was just obvious), Shaun would call/raise as appropriate and the other guy's hand would be a flush draw, which all somehow missed. Then there was the first hand of the semifinal that got posted in BBV; Shaun raised nines, the other guy (an aggro HU regular) 3-bet, Shaun of course 4 bet, the other guy tanked and 5 bet shoved, Shaun snap called and, obviously, the other guy had A8/was thinking on the exact wrong level. (Flop ace; river Shaun's 4 flush.) He then said "I thought you'd fold JJ-99" in chat. Why would anyone ever fold a middle pair on the first hand of a HU SNG?

While Shaun was doing that, I was playing my own weekend donkament sessions and basically posted an 0 for 13 ITM line in non-Cake tourneys while going 3 for 3 on Cake. This made me pretty suspicious that I was playing too much Cake and not adjusting properly elsewhere, which Shaun agreed with. So, when I got back the other night, I played another half dozen donkaments. Results: three random bustouts, one bubble on Stars, one 45'th place on Stars in the 150+12 100K where, as far as I can tell, I just played my cards, and, in my one Cake tourney - the 30r 20K - a second place finish that I got because I lost a 70/30 on the final table 6 handed, chopped another 3:1 3 handed, lost *another* 3:1 heads up and then got coolered/lost a huge flip to end it. Basically, lately, I've owned Cake (both literally and metaphorically) while simultaneously getting nowhere on every other site. It's not really a surprise because I've been putting in such a high percentage of my hands on Cake lately, but it definitely looks like I need to ramp up my aggression on sites that aren't as ridiculously soft as Cake is.

One other thing - the weekend accounted for lots of pics. Most of them are probably terrible :) but will probably be posted anyway :( when Kyle has the time to sort through them. Keep an eye on Kyle's blog - it'll be funny.

After a week largely spent playing PLO (and giving an interview. brag: I get to be on NPR talking about AP/UB in a couple of weeks. watch this space), I made it to Fresno last night to hang out at Club One for the weekend.

So far, I've played one 60 dollar satellite to the 500 dollar main event thingie (that I somehow won despite not actually remembering any of it because I was jet lagged) and a celebrity bounty event in which I had a decent bounty on my head (results: got it in drawing pretty dead, whee). Despite that, I have to give a shoutout to Club One to anybody in Fresno that happens to be reading this. The place is excellently run, well maintained, has good tournament staff, and happens to be non-smoking, which, combined, makes it by far the best non-Vegas poker room I've ever been in. About the only thing I vaguely regret is not playing with the FHM model girl in the celebrity event, whom I gave a brief primer on poker since it was her first time ever playing the game (summary: "wait until you get AA-JJ, AK, then go all in".) There was also a prop bet with Shaun Deeb I was freerolling on in which I was going to make him wear something really dumb to the ME tomorrow, but getting it in drawing nearly dead put a stop to that, too. Awwwww.

I'll update with my results and bustout hand at some point tomorrow, but I definitely like it here and would recommend the room to anybody.

As is getting par for the course for me these days, the only tournaments I played all week were the Sundays just now. Results: four total bricks, one well played tourney I wound up bubbling after a couple of setups/whiffed flips, and the UB 200K (for the record, that's the only thing I play at UB now, and only because I've neglected to cash out the last couple of thousand), where I just picked up a final 2 table finish that turned out to be good to make $200 or so on the day total. Because a 15'th place finish out of 900-ish people does nothing for you even in a Sunday major, I'm once again reconfirming that I'd rather be playing MSPLO where it feels like I belong.

Every time I play the game, it feels like it'll take months for me to be anything more than > mediocre at it, but it also feels like I'm better than the competition. Most of that is because I do have a feel for the types of hands I should be playing, which, by itself, makes me better than the guys defending J622ss OOP. But PLO, especially shorthanded PLO vs. the Cake shortstacks that always want to hit and run someone starting a table, is a weird animal and constantly requires rethinking your approach if you are a NL convert*. For example, LFTV's last post, where a gigantic straight wrap/FD combo turns out to be a close fold in a 3 way pot, is not something I'd have ever thought of - although, admittedly, on Cake, I'd still get that in solely because their ranges are so much wider/they're worse.

*Oddly enough, as an FR MTT convert, I think the more loose/passive approach I take than most 6 max NL cash players would is better for MSPLO. Because it's easier to get paid off with the nuts and I very rarely get bluff raised in my games, it's better to play more hands, and the size of the pot preflop and on the flop is not a huge deal since I can still bloat it later if I want to. (Playing against a lot of shortstacks, making pot control irrelevant, works too.)

Long story short: I am playing only an hour or so of several tables per session largely out of laziness and an unwillingness to sit 250+ BB deep at a game I'm not fundamentally solid at, *but*, despite that, I'm booking decent wins even down at 1/2 and 2/4. Once I'm comfortable there, which should be soon, I plan to play more tables, partly move to FTP - there's no way I can handle > 4 shorthanded PLO tables right now and Cake doesn't have the PLO traffic for that yet anyway, so that's a must - and eventually settle in as a regular at 2/4-5/10, which is where I was at NL cash before I mostly stopped playing.

Before I get to Fresno later on, the other thing I'm doing this week is Intrade. Obama should announce his VP pick this week; after that's officially [not Clinton] and probably turns out to be [Bayh, Sebellius], I expect to have made a nice profit and begin to thoroughly handicap the GOP side of the race. For the time being, I'm strongly bullish on [Pawlenty, Eric Cantor] and think that Romney will *not* be the pick, but I need to do a lot more research before I'm comfortable doing anything but bottom feeding on the free 8-10% [not Charlie Crist] bets the market customarily leaves out there. So, while the rest of you guys are busy watching the Olympics, I'll be in Fresno and/or doing political research. Fun! (Well, okay, it is. Celebrity poker donkaments are always awesome.)