L.A., Paris, Vegas

In an ideal world I'd tell you that I'm on some wonderful poker tournament tour, but that's not true.

However, I'm on my fourth day of a great family vacation, which is actually better than a poker tour. My immediate family is spread out on the west coast so we don't see each other as often as we'd like and we're taking advantage of my mom's airline miles to visit France.

But enough about that.

When I get back to the States next week, I'm heading straight to Vegas to celebrate my birthday over Memorial Day Weekend. Once that's over, I'll jump into the 1k WSOP Stimulus Event on Monday. I'm basing my stay in Vegas pretty much solely on that event. If I make a decent cash in the tournament, I'll continue to stay in Vegas and play some more small buy-in events and cash games every day.

The truth is I've been getting low on my bankroll. What started as poor bankroll management turned into running bad and playing bad. I'm hoping that some time in Vegas can kick-start me in addition to clearing my mind here in Paris. If June goes badly I might consider looking into working a normal job again in sports and/or writing.

Basically I'm gonna get my partying out of the way Memorial Day weekend and then buckle down for grinding the rest of the month until I'm comfortable again, which would take at least two months of winning. I've been actually winning more in sports than poker.

I started to put together some wins last week, which was nice because I wanted to have some decent money heading to Vegas next week. Then I decided to get one last session in on Sunday. I had two options (1) Hollywood Park, which was a great game as reported to me by a reliable source or (2) a big home game in Brentwood.

I decided to check out the home game first and if it wasn't good I would head to HP. I got there and three tables were full: a 5/10, a 10/25 and a 25/25. I jumped into the 5/10 game and immediately went up 1k within about 15 minutes. My first hand I raised with KcJc and flopped the nut straight. All the home games in L.A. usually have 2-3 cute girls walking around in bikinis or short skirts or even topless. This game had about 15 girls walking around in bikinis. I'd be lying if I said I didn't lose my focus. There weren't even that many good players but I just bled chips away in a game where there were constant blind raises and overbets. Long story short: I ended up dropping $3500 in a game where I was up $1300 at one time and I completely erased my previous three sessions of profit.

As for the home game, it was juicier for players that have bigger bankrolls than myself. Jamie Gold showed up to play in the 25/25 game and one of my boys told me that they had a $100k pot in that game. Pretty sick.

I'm still regretting going to that game though and I'm desperately trying to make some money betting on sports while here in Paris. I'm up about $1900 this week, here's the reason why:
Today I have:

Cardinals -1.5
Parlay: Red Sox, Mets, Cardinals -1.5
Parlay: Cardinals -1.5, SF Giants -1.5

It's funny... I don't blog nearly as much as I should, then everytime I do I have so much to write.

I'll save some for later. Hope everyone is doing well.

four years.

Current Playlist

Here's the songs I just burned to a CD to listen to in the whip...



I might be the hottest sports bettor in America right now.

If you looked at my picks yesterday, they all hit. Today I hit 2/2 bets and a four-team parlay.


Last night I played a long home game session in Hollywood at a new game at the W condos...a few B list celebs there like Mekhi Phifer, Chris Millz and Omar Gooding. I won $800 in about nine hours. Game was good but not incredible...

...however, today I was card dead for two hours at Hollywood Park until they told me I was next to go to the main game and I was to take one last hand on the button.

I look down at two red aces. I raise to $45 and get two callers.

Flop: AQ3, two clubs. We all check the flop (mistake #1).

The turn is another rag club and they both check to me. I bet $90. First guy folds. Second guy thinks for a while, checks his cards again and calls the $90.

River: king of spades. Guy checks to me and I bet $200 for value (mistake #2). He thinks for a minute and says "raise." He min-raises me and I call, basically knowing I'm making a bad call (mistake #3). He turns over AcTc. F#ck.

About to go on a date at Sherman Oaks Galleria, then I might head out to a club or something. Feel like I need to celebrate all this sports bet winning.

Let's get it.

4 years.

Ran Good for a Day...

...and it felt fantastic.

Check out these bets (click image to enlarge):


I meant to hedge the Lakers/Jazz bet because it was the sixth leg of my parlay and all five were in the books, but I didn't get it in before the game started. So the Lakers took a 12 point lead into halftime and I decided to hedge it at halftime, Jazz -0.5. This actually worked much better because it gave me a huge window to win both the parlay and second bet. As long as the Lakers won by 6-11 points, I win both bets and they did it. I also got lucky as fuck with the Giants, who managed a homerun in the 9th inning to send the game into extra innings.

During the day I was playing the 300-500 buy-in game at Hollywood Park. This is a $5/5 blind game and for some reason it tends to suck but I've recently been playing lower because of my losing. Anyways I played tight as fuck partially due to myself trying to play tight and partially due to never getting anything. I ended up losing $500 in this game when it broke. Somehow the donks are just dominating this game recently.

I put my name on the list for the $200 game and decided to jump into the $500 minimum buy-in game because it was soft and ended up winning in that game too, after realizing all my sports picks had hit and feeling lucky.

Been running shitty for about two months so the change is nice. At least while it lasts. Now it's 6:50 a.m. and I'm about to crash if I can figure out what to do with all this clean laundry on my bed.

Here are my picks for today if anyone wants to ride with me:


P.S. I didn't go with Halladay last week and he was a beast, throwing a shutout. Doh!
4 years.

Follow him to the promise land

I really like Roy Halladay and the Phils today against the Giants in San Fran. I took the Phils -1.5. The Giants have been struggling and put up zero runs yesterday against the Cards. Halladay is 4-0 with a 0.82 ERA.

Heading to Hollywood Park.

4 years.

Baseball Bets

Made a shitload of baseball bets today... To the last guy who bet 2k, don't bet 2k on these games, I don't love them like I loved the Jazz. But here's a head's up, there's a guy on the covers forum that has started the baseball season on fire, so I've gone with all of his picks today and the Phillies pick is my own. The link to the guy's picks are here. Thanks to V for the tip.

Today's picks:
Diamondbacks ML
Giants ML
White Sox ML
Red Sox -1.5 (cancelled - rain)
Twins ML
Brewers/Nats over 9
Phillies -1.5 (this is my big bet)

and this parlay:
Phils
Cards
Yanks
Red Sox (cancelled - rain)
Mariners

I'll revisit this and highlight the ones I won/lost.

Gonna go play at HP today also. Had a disaster date last night.

peace.

Pick of the Day

I love the Jazz -7.5 at Golden State tonight.

Poker has been going better. I've tightened up and tried to stop bluffing as much but it's so hard not to. Just playing less hands in general. Boring but gotta do it until I get back into my zone.

4 years..

Dealing with Bullshit: 101

The following is an AIM conversation I had with my "bookie" after I had texted him requesting my payout for the week:

xxx620 (11:58:38 AM): yo
xxx620 (11:59:14 AM): you should text your boy xxx. he owes me money and some of that money he owes me is what i owe you
ME (12:48:04 PM): yo man.. do you realize how unethical this is on several levels?
ME (12:48:24 PM): i understand it sucks that he owes you, but i have people that owe me money and i'm not gonna tell you that once i get paid, you get paid
xxx620 (12:50:57 PM): i don't have any money. i had to spot him 2 weeks ago for not paying
ME (12:51:23 PM): so you have no one backing you?
xxx620 (12:51:30 PM): everyone else pays on time and i can pay the winners, that's how its supposed to be
xxx620 (12:52:39 PM): i've already had to take out my savings because ppl have jipped me before. i'm supposed to get a check in the mail for a few hundred bucks so if its there i'll cash it and pay you the rest tomorrow
xxx620 (12:53:07 PM): i'm sorry about this and i try to make everyone happy but its hard when ppl don't pay me for 2 weeks and i owe ppl.
ME (12:54:24 PM): i dunno i assumed you were working under someone and had a plan worked out, that's how a lot of bookies do it. i mean what happens if you get hit hard and everyone has a good week?

...and that's when he completely stops replying.

Just to educate you guys in the world of professional gambling, the way a lot of bookies and their "affiliates" work is this (and this is based on my rough understanding):

If you can book all your clients wins/losses, you get the full profit.

If you can't, you can make a deal with the bookie over you that he covers the losses and you get 10-20% of the profits, assuming you are making a profit. If this is the deal you have worked out and you have a week where you lose to your clients, you don't start making your 10% again until your clients have started losing again and you're making a profit again for your book.

Apparently the guy I'm dealing with has nothing of the sort and is running a bullshit operation.

Not only that, but according to my short convo with him, he wants me to track down the money that my friend owes him as if that's my job. This is where I have a big problem with the way he's handling the situation.

He should never be revealing how much someone else owes him or how long they have owed him, I don't care if it's my brother or whatever, it's supposed to be private.

This concerns me greatly because if this guy has a week where all of his clients win, he's going to be assed out. I mean, even if he has a week where his clients end up + more than he can cover, what is he going to do?

You can guess what my next move is.