I haven’t been playing much poker lately so I’ve decided to write up a very old story of mine. Most schools Proms are some time around mid or early May and perhaps the younger readers are wondering how they can make theirs truly memorable. Well let me tell you kids one way to go about that.

Way back around February 2003 when I was 18 and full of potential some friends and I were hanging around my basement playing poker. We played 5 card draw back in those days, as the hold’em phenomenon had yet to really take hold. We got on the subject of senior pranks, and why nobody ever seems to do good ones anymore. Sure we had created a catapult to launch flower bombs (napkins filled with flour that explode in a cloud of white dust on impact) from across the street onto people leaving the winter ball, but that had barely been effective and little stir had been created. Whatever happened to those classic senior pranks like spiking the punch, streaking the prom, or stabbing the principal in the leg? After much discussion we decided whichever guy in our group didn’t get a date to prom would have to run through prom wearing only a Speedo and a mask, screaming his head off the whole way. If possible, he should be wearing a cowboy hat.

A few months later prom began drawing very near. I suddenly came down with a severe case of mono and was exhausted and bed ridden for the better part of two weeks. This happened in the weeks leading up to prom, and with my illness I decided there’d be no point in getting a date if I was going to spend all night saying “Whoa, don’t touch me, you wanna get sick with this shit? Go dance with someone else.” My friends remembered the agreement and began hassling me about whether I was going to follow through as promised.
“You gonna do it Tony? You gonna follow through?”
“Fuck yea I’m doing this. We’re gonna make our prom a night to remember.”

I told my parents one night I’d be needing a suit and tie for the prom, but that a tux wouldn’t be necessary.
“Oh, you’re going to prom? Do you have a date?”
“No. I’m just going to run through prom in a Speedo and mask while screaming” I answered flatly and with no trace of sarcasm.
“Heh, sure you will.”
Take note people; full disclosure can help prevent future liability. I told my parents as straight forward as I could, and whether they chose to believe me or not was up to them. Honesty for the win.

Leading up to prom night I bought a ticket and began inquiring about attaining a Speedo. Sure I could buy one, but why waste the money on something I’d never use again? My friend Ben who lived next door said his brother had one he never uses I could borrow for the night. I tried the Speedo on once before the night of, and while standing before the mirror only had only one thought going through my mind; “Man, this shit looks gay.” The tag on it itched something awful. A friend of mine had a rubber copy of the mask from the movie “The Mask” with Jim Carrey that I’d be wearing over my face.

The night of prom I went out to dinner with a group of friends and their dates. Since I was going stag and intending to make an ass of myself later that night I decided to make a full go of it and make everyone’s dinner as awkward, uncomfortable, and hilarious as possible. I’d bother friends in front of their date and say things like
“Hey Steve, whattya think of that waitress? Huh? Huh? Allllllllllllllllllllllrite! You know what I’m saying” and
“Hey Cagle, remember that time we were at Wendy’s and you stole some of Herk’s soup then poured it down his back and he screams out in the middle of the restaurant ‘YOU FUCKING FAAAAAAAAAAG CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGZ!!!’?”
Needless to say none of the girls there thought I didn’t get a date based on my mono.

We arrived at the prom around 9pm. The prom was laid out in three sections. There was the main entrance room that had snacks, punch, and a number of tables where people sat around chatting plus a photo boot. Then there was a small tunnel leading into the dance room which was perhaps ten feet wide and decorated with various glitter and pastel trimmings. Lastly there was the dance room which also had some tables but was mostly a large open space filled with people and a DJ booth. On the far side of the main entrance room way across from the tunnel was where I’d have to change into the Speedo concealed in my pocket.

The hour and a half leading up to my stunt was mostly filled with people coming up and asking
“Are ya gonna do it Tony? Are ya gonna do it? You’re not gonna pussy out are ya?”
“I’m not the pussying out type.”
I took some friends and mapped out a plan. There was a door leading down a hallway and into a parking lot at the far back end of the dance room. I’d go into the bathroom, get someone to watch my clothes then run out through the main room yelling as loud as possible, book through the tunnel, then head for the dance floor where I’d whip out some badass John Travolta like moves then run as fast as I could for the exit, get to my friends SUV, and change into my normal clothes. Nobody would ever be the wiser. I told a group of friends that they’d have to be manning the tunnel when I went into the bathroom and make sure they created a blockade to prevent a swarm of people from coming through as I tried to make my way through it, since getting caught up might give a chance for security to catch up with me. When they saw me coming they were to get out of the way then applaud my sick dance moves on the floor.

I entered the bathroom some time around 10:30pm. I told everyone in there what my intentions were and that I’d be needing a guard for my clothing. It turned out this was damn near impossible to find. Everyone wanted to see the mayhem created by the streaking, so it took nearly 15 minutes to find someone willing to take care of the clothes aspect. I went into a stall, took all my clothes off, and changed into the Speedo. I stepped out to the applause and laughter of those watching then donned the mask. I wish to this day I had the sense of mind to say something both dramatic and hilariously lame like “It’s go time!”

I burst out of the bathroom at full sprint and yelling “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!!!” at maximum volume and cut between tables and people towards the tunnel.
“OH MY GOD!” I heard one girl scream
“FUCK YEA!” shouted another guy. As I made my way towards the tunnel I realized my friends had completely failed to block it off and there was a mass of people making their way through it.
“EXCUSE ME!” I yelled as I slid between people while trying not to barrel anyone over. I saw my friends waiting at the end of the tunnel yelling and clapping. As I entered the dance room I suddenly realized I was in over my head and instead of busting out sick dance moves decided to high step it like an NFL player about to make an easy touchdown towards the door, making sure to run directly in front of the camera they had set up to film the dance. I never did find out if it was on or got any footage of the incident. I broke through the door into the hallway then ran through the deserted corridor until I hit the doors leading outside to the surprisingly cold May air. I made it over to my friend’s car which we’d left open for me and jumped inside with nobody noticing outside one limo driver who started shouting random shit at me. I sat there in the car, cold, wearing a Speedo with an itchy tag, and waited for my clothes. A half hour later I was still waiting. After waiting so long I decided to just change into my friend’s clothes, though they made for an awkward fit seeing as I was 6’1” 195 and he was 5’5” 140ish. Security sent a car out through the parking lot to search for me but seeing as I was in a mask during the streaking and now had clothes on they could never tell it was me in the car.

An hour after I’d sprinted through prom my friends finally came out and jumped in the car with me.
“Where’s my clothes? Whose got em? I’m in Boyer’s clothes and this shit is way too small.”
“They got em man. That place went berserk. They ran around yelling things into their walkie talkies like ‘We got a streaker! We got a streaker! Search the building!’ It was like the Gestapo out to find you. As soon as you left the bathroom some teacher went in there and grabbed your clothes immediately.”
“FUCK! Do you have any idea how itchy the tag on this Speedo is!?”
“I’m sure you’ll get em back. Come on, let’s go to the hotel.”

By the time we reached the hotel some time around midnight the mono was catching up with me. I fell asleep on one of the beds at around 12:30am while most people hung out or went down to the pool. My friend Boyer drove me home around 1:30am and I immediately hit my bed and went out cold.

Sunday passed uneventfully as I was still feeling tired and a little sick. Come Monday morning I ended up rocking up to school a bit late since I was still a bit sick and needed more sleep. I arrived during the last 10 minutes or so of one class and my friends were all wild eyed with excitement.
“Dude Tony, the principals are looking for you! They know it was you, they came in here before.”
“Well my next class should certainly be interesting then.”

Next period was Asian studies with my favorite teacher Mr. Colucci. He was one of those bright and fun teachers who got the content through really well but still had a great sense of humor about the whole experience. Five minutes into the class one of the grade level principals came to the door asking for me to come down to the main office. Mr. Colucci looked at me confused, as I wasn’t the type to normally get in trouble. As we made our way down to the office I made sure to immediately ask “Have you guys got my clothes?”

I was brought into the office of the much feared principal Radloffe, or as he was affectionately known to much of the student body ‘Osama bin Radloffe’. He sat me down and looked at me with befuddlement. Seated next to him was a box containing my clothes.

“Well George (legal name in formal matters)…it seems you had quite the prom night.”
“Yes sir, yes I did.”
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to suspend you for this.”
“What? Seriously? This wasn’t even in school and I wasn’t fully nude or anything. What exactly did I do to deserve suspension?”
“You disrupted a school activity. Prom is planned by the junior committee and is a formal school event. Now I don’t know if you were trying to be ‘The Mask’ or something, but your behavior was entirely inappropriate.”
“Really? Even though I had the Speedo on?”
“Yes. You know we had a guy who pulled a similar stunt when I was a senior but he full on mooned the prom. The police ended up arresting him and he got expelled.”
“Wow.”
“That’s right. So go home for the rest of the day and you’re suspended for all of tomorrow. Take your clothes with you.”

I walked back to the class with my box of clothes. Mr. Colucci greeted me with
“What was that all about Tony?”
“Ah well. Was anyone at prom when that guy ran through it in a Speedo while screaming?”
“THAT WAS YOU??” several people blurted.
“Yea, so I’m suspended for the rest of the day and tomorrow. So I have to go. See ya on Wednesday!”
As I left the room the class literally applauded like one of those heart warming moments you see in the movies. It was very touching I assure you.

When I got home I called my parents and told them what happened. The school had called them as well so they already knew. When they got home they sat me down to talk about it.
“I can’t believe you did that. You know there will be some punishment here right?”
“You can’t. I told you what I was going to do and neither of you tried to stop me. How can you justify punishing me? Nobody objected.”
“We thought you were joking.”
“Sorry, but I told you in a serious manner, on multiple occasions. I can’t accept punishment here.”
“We’ll talk about this more later.”
We never did. I was never much of a trouble making kid in high school and what could my parents really do here? I’d never been suspended before and this time I told them exactly what I was going to do before hand and they both just smiled and nodded. They were stuck. These days they bring that story up around family members and laugh about it.

The next day I slept in until noon. I played a bit of online poker for a few hours, then went outside and practiced my 9 iron chip shots for a couple hours in the perfect weather, it was truly a great day. It was the last month of my senior year so therefore nothing I missed in school was relevant and there was no make up work. When I returned to school on Wednesday I got to enjoy roughly 15 minutes of fame.

And so children, the moral of the story is as follows; do whatever the hell you feel like and never worry about the consequences.

The End

The ‘people I don’t know’ blog entry created a bit of a controversy. Someone decided to link it over at P5’s and given my description of most live pros I was branded a hater and egomaniac by some, which you can read about here: http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/7/Bond18-on-playing-live-players-_2800_funny-stuff_2900_-2781881
As the first reply put it “I think Bond 18 has a lil sugar in his tank, never has much good to say about people, ill lay odds that no one has a bigger ego than his....”
I’d already been wondering lately if I’d become hyper critical or whether my descriptions were fair but when I look back at the post I don’t think I’m out of line. I’m fully willing to admit when I think people are better than me, but I’m also willing to say when people play bad. Inevitably, I end up coming down on the side that many online players play well, and many live players play poorly. The online vs live player debate has been raging for a couple years now, ever since online players began filling out the player fields in major live tournaments with a totally different playing style.

The basic way to sum up the online players side of the argument is as follows; the guys who cut their teeth online can go into live tournaments and be very profitable at the highest levels. Meanwhile there is a very short list of live players who would be profitable at high stakes online tournaments. Some reading this might think that’s ludicrous, especially since the highest buy ins live are 10-50 times the stakes online. However, it’s simply the truth of the matter. More and more online players are being backed for the highest live tournaments because serious backers like Bax and Sheets know how massively +EV they are in those fields. Most live players have a few recurring and consistent leaks: they limp too much, they call out of position way too much, and most of all they fail to understand stack sizes and what that limits them too. You see live pros like Hellmuth raise/folding a 6.5 BB stack, you see David Pham calling reraises for 1/3rd of his stack with suited connectors hoping to connect big on the flop, you see Scotty Nguyen changing the size of his raise with the strength of his hand with near 100% consistency. I’ve got leaks, I’ve got more leaks than I could possibly count, but none of them are as huge or as glaring as the ones I see every time I sit down with 95% of name live pros.

At this point in poker, live pros are at a disadvantage. Online players put in more volume in a day than they do in a month. We network with more talented poker minds, talk more strategy, use more tools to figure out equity, and play so many more hands. Also, because live poker has such huge variance and each tournament takes up a full day or more of a live player’s time, I often see them more emotionally involved. Emotion is a weakness in poker, which isn’t to say you shouldn’t care at all, but when you play you can’t let your emotions interfere with your decision making.

I think a lot of the animosity and competition that’s developed between the two groups is somewhat inevitable. Live pros feel like online pros are disrespectful. If a live pro has spent 10-40 years playing poker and some 22 year old kid rocks up and talks like they’re all clueless, how could they not be insulted? Meanwhile online pros see live pros getting all the camera time, invites to easy tournaments with tons of overlay, and corporate sponsorships that are sick free money, despite the live players being considerably worse at doing the same thing they do. That’s kind of like being coworkers with someone who gets all the promotions, attention, and higher pay despite being way worse at his job than you are. Who wouldn’t feel shafted?

In order for there to ever be a balance, online players will have to learn how to be marketable, likable, and keep dominating the live scene. For live players to adapt they need to understand the threat online players pose and take steps to make themselves better fundamental players with a fuller understanding of the math behind the game. TV makes the game look glamorous and fast paced. If you believe what TV tells you poker is a game of incredible reads, huge dramatic shoves, and using tells to make awesome plays. That’s simply not the case. Poker is a game of math, where despite there being an enormous amount of variables there are some things that the math makes absolute. Calling a reraise for 1/3rd of your stack with 76s will always be –EV, no matter how sick your ability to read people.

If poker stays popular long enough, there will eventually be no such thing as the ‘live pro’ and ‘online pro’. The live pros who don’t adapt will eventually be phased out and lose enough money to the point they can’t keep playing. Those who do adapt will often do so using a computer, and the line between online and live will blur. Online players will continue to surge into the live scene and some will spend enough time there that they no longer label themselves as one or the other.

Lastly, I don’t see the problem in being vocal about people’s leaks. I wouldn’t hate solely for the sake of being rude or insulting, but if people play bad or behave poorly on the table I think it’s total bullshit for me to hold my tongue out of politeness. I would never berate anyone on the table who didn’t really bring it on themselves (actually, I still haven’t done it, though I’ve made a smart ass comment here and there to someone who was being rude to another player or dealer) but I’d also never lie or play nice for the sake of being ‘PC’. People who insist everything be PC are the kind of two faced pretentious douche bags who never have the balls to say what they think or mean, and would rather play nice than have an honest conversation with someone.

If a person I considered a friend or acquaintance came to me and said “Let me tell you about this hand…” and I think they played it terrible, I’m going to tell them so, and I’m going to tell them why. Saying something like “well that’s not quite how I would have played it buddy, but to each his own” is the kind of useless shit advice that nobody will learn anything from. I don’t tell someone they played a hand poorly to make them feel bad, I tell them so they learn. I remember when Ajunglen started coaching me; I’d had some people look over my play before, but I never quite understood how massive the mistakes I was making were until he told me things like “that hand was a total disaster and here’s why…” It took honesty like that for me to ever have it sink in that what I was doing was not only not optimal, but a mistake on a huge margin. Accepting the mistakes you make and seeking out how to change them is imperative to your development as a player, and having an ego about your game is useless.

I will state, at this point, despite my ‘reputation’, ranking, the articles I’ve written, or the time I’ve put into this game I highly doubt I’m among the top 100 tournament players online. There are so many players who simply don’t put in the volume yet do it better and cleaner than I do. Almost everyone I spend serious time talking poker with (including every person in the ‘people I know’ entry) is better than I am, either by a little or a lot.

The reason most people think I’m good is because I’m able to write strategy in a way that seems like both quality advice and is still understandable. This doesn’t mean I have a greater comprehension of the strategy I write about than those around me, it simply means that the only real edge I have over my contemporaries is the ability to be eloquent, and that’s not exactly a mandatory skill in the poker world. The fact is, I’m an above average player who has the robot like ability to put in enormous volume without having a mental breakdown but who still has considerable spew problems, patience problems, and major leaks in his deep stack game. Admitting this though, gives me a chance to rectify the problem, and if you can’t admit your faults as a player by behaving honestly, you might never get the same opportunity.

Now that the around the world schedule has been finalized I’ve had to go through the process of creating arrangements for everything outside just playing the poker. The flights are now all booked and paid for, and the Vegas house is booked in as well. The flights ended up being very reasonable, totaling about $3000 AUD each including taxes. Now I have to call hotels in Venice, Paris and Barcelona and after that all logistical issues of the trip are solved. I’m going to get out and get one of those Ipod’s that can play movies since the airlines have a very careful screening process to select the man with the worst taste in the world who will have the job of deciding which films air on the flight.

I’m going to start easing off the online volume a little bit leading up to the trip so I’ll feel pretty fresh. I’m not running quite as incredible as I was before (winning nine of ten coin flips, never losing a 70/30, always finding a bigger over pair) I’ve still been able to have a pretty successful week. Monday I won the Bodog winners choice package for $12,000, then the Tilt $50 rebuys the next day for $5,400, then the UB Aruba package the next day, which is likely about $10,000. I’m not sure, I haven’t really bothered to look into it since it’s so far off and UB likes to provide as little information as possible in their tournament lobbies.

Live poker is difficult in a much different way than online poker. Compared to the players in the high stakes tournaments online, the competition is often considerably softer and full of fundamental leaks. However, live tournaments last for days and require an enormous amount of focus for hours after hours and days after days if you go deep. They also require a pretty massive shift in strategy and needing to adjust to vastly different ranges than you’re used to. The variance is also enormous on a scale that can completely do an online players head in since you can’t just jack up the volume by firing up more tables or putting in more hours to even it out. Factor in all the distractions of a live tournament; people going partying, media, massive first place pay day, travel complications, language barriers, and jet lag and you have a whole different kind of poker. Just to get an idea of how much variance is involved in live poker, in the upcoming trip I’ll be playing roughly 50 tournaments in about 3 months time. That’s the equivalent of only 3 days of my online tournament volume. Factor in that most of the WSOP tournaments I’ll be playing in will have massive fields and the potential for a massive downswing is quite realistic.

Let’s not keep Timex up at night with that thought though.

The blog entry I made about the poker players around me was polite and complimentary, and I’d really hate to get in the habit of that. Today I’d like to put down a list of name players I’ve run into; how they play, what kid of personality they are, and any other anecdotes from my experiences with them.

Scotty Nguyen: Scotty is just the most fun you’ll ever have at the table. He’s pretty much the best ambassador for poker ever. Highly outgoing, friendly, and often drunk with a laugh that can be heard for miles. I used to think Scotty was the ultimate poker playing machine until I actually played him. Unfortunately, Scotty has absolutely atrocious pre flop leaks and tends to make his raise size based on the strength of his hand with way too much consistency. He also slow plays in some pretty absurd spots, which I found out the hard way. Still, of all the pros I’ve played with, Scotty is my favorite to see across the table.

Phil Gordon: Over at 2+2 Phil Gordon is considered the anti Christ. When I played with him in a WSOP prelim event I ended up being seated directly on his left. We struck up a conversation about my suit and then about Australia, and he seemed like a really nice guy who was perhaps misunderstood. Then he made a mistake where he flat called a crazy aggressive guys raise, I shoved as a squeeze knowing the psycho would isolate and Phil would fold. I showed up with AJ, the psycho with QJ, and Phil had folded AQ, which would have won. Phil lost his shit. “You guys are crazy! That’s just stupid! That’s suicidal! What are you doing?!?!?!” Phil spent the next 45 minutes complaining about this almost nonstop, until online player ‘Mr.Timcaum’ sitting across the table finally said “Are you STILL complaining about that hand Phil!?” When he busted out he asked if he could have email to invite me to his 4th of July party, which I gave him. I never got the invite. Opportunity to get drunk for free and behave like asshole; lost.

Chris Moneymaker: Chris just looks exhausted. When playing with him I just get the sense that he’s a little over it all. I watched him stack off to Pearljammer in the most “LOL I MUST NOT FOLD ACES EVEN THOUGH HE OBVIOUSLY HAS IT!” spot ever. I remember seeing him wander around Star City casino by himself in Sydney back in December late at night. I kind of wanted to go bug him and be like “Wow! Chris Moneymaker! You made all this possible!” but I decided to let him be.

Amnon Fillipi: Or however you spell it, I’m sure as hell not bothering to look it up. Amnon seems to think he can play 75% of hands in hold’em, no matter his position, the amount of the reraise, who the player is, or what the stack depths are. Folding is a sin, and Amnon is a pious man.

Ted Forrest: I used to think Forrest was a very good player since he’d been around for over a decade and seemed to do real well at tournaments. Then I played with him in the WSOP 5k 6 max event. I still think he’s a… very nice guy. Forrest tends to call way too much pre flop and make way too many spewy bluffs post flop.

Erik Seidel: I remember almost nothing about playing with Seidel in regards to his playing style. I remember him being a very polite and quiet man, who I witnessed play some hand poorly and then watched in amazement as the guy he sucked out viciously berated him. How do you berate Erik Seidel?

Kathy Leibert: I played with Kathy in some such hold’em event in last years WSOP. I remember she played this absolutely retarded hand where she bet everything but one green 25 chip, which the other guy thought was an all in, which she insisted it wasn’t, which he questioned as to the purpose, which she took super fucking personally and resulted in the whole table arguing and the floor getting called while I stood above the table rambling “Jesus Christ live poker is so fucking stupid, this is just ridiculous” to anyone who’d listen to me.

Kenna James: A super nice guy who is fun to have on the table if you don’t mind the feeling that someone turned a radio to max volume then threw it in the middle of the table to sit there and insisted nobody turn it off. I only played limit with Kenna, and his limit game was way too loose and pretty disastrous, but then so is mine.

Phil Hellmuth: I played with Phil the day after he won his 11th bracelet. He was super smug and happy, and walked around the table introducing himself to each player with a hand shake with a big grin on his face. He then proceeded to play the most limp/call/fold happy poker I’ve ever seen. I’ve criticized Phil’s play a lot, and having played with him he didn’t do anything to change that image. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’d sooner light my cigars with 100 dollar bills than back Hellmuth in a 20 dollar tournament online.

Jon-Robert Bellande: Massive value in the majority of poker tournaments. There’s a reason there’s a ton of rumors about this guy being broke.

Joe Hachem: Last I put in serious hours in a tournament with Hachem he played better than I thought he would. His pre flop game at mid sized stacks was pretty solid, and he was capable of aggressive pre flop 3 bet/folds. Still, if you watch some of his footage on TV he has the tendency to see too many flops out of position and make the most hilariously obvious value bets. Joe is a real nice guy in real life and handles the celebrity factor very well. I’ve been talking to him a few times in Australia and random people will come up and blurt “Hey wow you’re that poker guy arentchya!?” and he’s always been receptive. He has the strange habit of talking like he runs bad, which I think we all know can’t be true.

Jeff Lisandro: Is a pretty quiet guy on the table. He pulled the most absurd float out of position against me with Q high, but then didn’t even bluff at it after I checked back the turn and the river blanked. He has the tendency to do a lot of acting with his big hands and like so many of the other live pros I’ve mentioned plays way too loose out of position. People have the most amazing tendency to just throw chips at him like the fucking things were on fire.

Evelyn Ng: Semi-berated me when I moved all in with QQ, she called, and I said “I have a pair” about half a second before I tabled my queens. She claimed it was kind of a slowroll, and I later claimed that she was kind of a bitch. Then I played with her again in another tournament and she gave me a free cookie from the bag she had with her, so my opinion of her has changed. When I played with her I was so terrible I have zero business describing the quality of her play and I really don’t remember it.

Barry Greenstein: Seemed to play very well when I played with him in the WSOP 5k mixed event, outside one limit hand that he played awful preflop that he later won. The guy who ran the second nuts into his nuts as a result of the hand spent the next 5 minutes berating Barry, who didn’t come anywhere close to losing his cool.

David Grey: The worlds single biggest nit. I’m told he once raised kings pre flop. He was likely drunk.

Hevad Khan: Is one of the nicest and most modest guys I’ve met in poker. All anyone talks to him about is how different he is in person compared to his TV persona. I played with him only briefly, and he tried to spew into Adanthar but ended up sucking out in one hand, but other than that his game seemed solid.

Chad Brown: Actually seemed like a nice guy when I played with him, and not bad at poker either. I know he’s kind of a psycho given the Aaronbeen incident (Aaronbeen told his girlfriend Vanessa Russo she played a hand terrible after she called some guy an idiot on the table and Brown lost his shit and threatened to kick his ass in the hallway of the Rio) so I guess he remembered his medication that morning.

Shannon Elizabeth: An evil bitch and a horrible poker player. That’s about all.

Lee Nelson: The best live tournament pro I’ve seen in action. He’s very aggressive, fully understands ranges, and knows how to adjust to live players expectations really well. He’s also as classy as they come in the poker industry. One amusing detail about Lee is that he won’t play any poker in the United States despite originally being an American (he now lives in New Zealand.)

Jeff Shulman: I remember him getting a ton of chips in a NL tournament then spewing them off in horrible fashion, though I don’t remember any specific hands. More amusing though is that I remember Brandon Adams coming up to him before Brandon had ever done anything in the poker world with a book in his hand. He reached it out to offer to Jeff, who looked at him confused
”What’s this?”
”It’s a book. It’s for you. Let me know what you think.”
Brandon had written a poker novel about his experiences and politely handed it to Jeff, then walked off. When Jeff later busted his book was sitting on the floor and as he stood up to leave the player next to him picked it up and said “Don’t you want your book?”
”Psssh, no!” he replied and walked off. The other guy kept it.

Humberto Brenes: A massive nit who bases the size of his raise on the strength of his hand. He spent his time singing whatever Spanish music he had on his CD player into my right ear while he folded hand after hand after…

Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott: Is pretty much an asshole who spends 100% of his free time scrounging around the casinos for women to hit on in the sleaziest manner possible. He has the subtlety and charm of a massive fart at a formal dinner.

Roland De Wolfe: I didn’t get to see him play much but I got to watch him berate Kwob20 after he sucked out with a flush draw that he check shoved the flop with in a totally standard spot during a Bellagio $2,500 event (outside Kwob’s terrible pre flop call, but the flop was standard.)

Toto Leonidas: Seems to think you can bluff people in limit. Every hand. For those of you who haven’t played limit, that’s throwing money away faster than betting on Gary Coleman vs Mike Tyson at even money.


That’s all I can remember for now. Hopefully they’ll be some more good ones after this trip, which has changed matter of fact. It turns out going to LAPT Costa Rica was a logistical nightmare, so I’ve replaced it with WPT Barcelona. I’m finishing the booking tomorrow morning with the travel agency and the new (and likely final, no seriously this time) itinerary looks like this:
April 30, leave Melbourne to Venice. Stopovers in Bangkok and Frankfurt.
May 3-10, Party Poker Million Cruise.
May 11 depart Venice for Paris, stopover in Zurich.
May 11-19 Grand Prix de Paris
May 19 depart Paris for Barcelona, stopover in Zurich.
May 19-28 WPT Barcelona
May 28 depart Barcelona for Las Vegas, stopover in Philadelphia
May 28-June 27 WSOP of poker
June 27 depart Las Vegas for Milwaukee
June 27-30 see friends and family in Wisconsin
June 30 depart Milwaukee for Las Vegas
June 30-July 18 WSOP and Bellagio Cup III
July 18 depart Las Vegas for Fresno
July 18-21 Hang out in Fresno and bother Kyle at work in his cardroom
July 21 depart Fresno for Melbourne, stopovers in LA and Sydney
July 23 Arrive Melbourne Australia. Kill self.

I have very little clever on my mind to write about today. There was a request in the comments about getting more HH links up, so I think this might be a good time to put a bunch of quality HH links in one place. So here’s some more:

Tilt $30 rebuy win
http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HA121755/Tilt%2030r%20win%20master/8550

Tilt $109 6-max win
http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HA121754/Full%20Tilt%20109%206X%20win/8550

Tilt Winners Choice win
http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HA120884/Winners%20choice%20win/8550

Stars 50/50 3rd
http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HA119914/Stars%2050-50%203rd/8550

Stars $109 FO win
http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HA118833/100%20Stars%20FO%20Win/8550

Tilt 100r 6-max win
http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HA117689/100r%206%20max%20win%20master/8550

You might have to copy/paste those into your browser to view them. As I’ve said before you don’t actually have to purchase a membership, just need to create a log in to view them. I’m willing to answer any questions you guys come up with, but sifting through can be a little slow so might take me a couple days to have a look at them all.

Outside this my girlfriend and I were looking into perhaps buying an apartment before I leave on the trip. We’re not really sure. Either way I’ve decided for the next month to go absurdly balls out with volume and start putting in 9-12 hour days (my current ones are normally around 7) and see just how much money I can work up towards making that a reality.