by john | Dec 7, 2009 | Uncategorized
All my plans are subject to change at any time due to drunkenness, the wife’s disposition or me getting distracted by shiny objects. But I think this is roughly where you’ll be able to find me at most points over the weekend.
Thursday – I land 11-something AM. I’ll head over to the MGM, check in, grab lunch and be around the poker room there or at the Excalibur until Suzy gets in that afternoon. Then I plan to test the elasticity of the MGM mattresses with my wife for a couple of hours (in married-speak this most likely means a nap) and then head over to the IP. I’ll be at the Geisha Bar around 8PM. At that point I’ll drink like a college kid and generally make an ass out of myself.
Friday – After sleeping in, I’m gonna do the Neon Museum tour at 2PM. Then some mixed games at the MGM until it’s time to head over to Green Valley Ranch for the Steel Panther concert.
Saturday – After all three members of Team Gambling Tales final table the blogger event, locking up our massive last longer bet thanks to the Luckbox and PokerStars, we’ll do a nice sushi dinner somewhere. Then I think it might be time to bust Waffle’s Vegas Strip club cherry. Suzy and Jim the Knife are also LV strip club virgins, so who’s with me?
Sunday – gamble, rinse, repeat. There will be mimosas and Pai Gow early in the day, probably poker later.
Monday – get up, fly home
Tuesday – begin planning the next trip.
If you’re really interested in where I am at any given time, I’ll try to keep it updated via Twitter. See you soon!
by john | Nov 11, 2009 | Uncategorized
Because sometimes it’s all just a slimy mess around here. And the last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic. Since I got back from West Virginia, I’ve spent a few days in Atlanta, presented a seminar at a church construction trade show, lost $15 in a home game, won a poetry contest, and become (along with Special K) a real live podcaster.
Yeah, Special K and I are launching the Gambling Tales Podcast, which we’re tagging as the best in lies and legends about gambling and gamblers. Our first episode should be up on iTunes any day now, and features the inimitable BadBlood telling one of the few bad beat stories that I’ll listen to without charging the teller $1.
Speaking of bad beats, there were certainly a few laid down at the WSOP final table, more than one by our young champion Joe Cada. I think the kid will be a fine ambassador for poker, and I like the fact that his backing arrangements were all out in the open. It does the game no good for it to be a big secret that people are backed in poker tournaments, it makes things look even more shady than they really are.
I watched a little of the coverage, and thought that ESPN did a better job this year than last year. At least we got to see more than two hands of heads-up play! I did love the way they captured Ivey’s nonchalant response to the 3-outer that Moon laid on him to send him to the rail. Ivey got his money in with the best of it, and that’s all you can do as a poker pro – get your money in ahead and deal with the cards as they fall.
by john | Oct 26, 2009 | Uncategorized
So after spending 18 hours over 2 1/2 days to book a loss of $85 playing Hold’em this weekend in wild and wonderful West Virginia, I decided to throw caution and the remainder of my bankroll to the winds and take a shot at the recently opened 2/5 PLO game.
This is not recommended practice for someone with less than $500 in his pocket. Just sayin’.
But I took a shot for a couple of reasons. 1) I really wanted to play some Omaha, and it was the only game running, and it was atypical that they spread PLO in that casino, as they typically only spread 2/5 NLO, with an uncapped buy-in and a ton of $1,000 preflop raises. Maybe someday.
2) I thought that even with my mediocre skill in PLO, that I quite possibly had an edge over most of the players. While my home game is a haven for bad play on my part on that of others, the lessons in PLO I’ve picked up at Lee Jones’ place and Bad Blood’s joint this year put me in a position to, in my mind, have an edge over the self-taught gamblers who were more prone to play uncoordinated hands.
So I sat down with $200, by several hundred bucks the shortest stack, and proceeded to fold almost every hand for the first orbit. I picked up AAKx single-suited in early position and raised pot after most of the orbit had gone past, and saw a three-way flop. I flopped an ace, bet the pot, and took it down uncontested. I then proceeded to see a LOT of aces over the rest of the evening. I played for about an hour and a half, losing only those pots where I limped in and folded the flop, and cashed out up $450 to go to dinner.
There was a seat open in the same game when I got back from dinner, and it was to the immediate left of the player voted most likely to raise pot preflop, so I took that gladly, and put another $200 on the table. I bounced up and down a little until I got into a big mess where I flopped middle set on an A-J-8 board and called a big bet on the river by the guy who limped with his single-suited aces. I don’t like limping with Aces in early position, which is what he did, but it worked out for him to the tune of half my stack. From there I dwindled to about $125 when I decided to hit nothing but the nuts for the next two hours. I flopped nut straights that held, top sets that improved, and finally busted most of the rest of the table by running disgustingly hot.
We were three-handed when I dropped the ultimate cooler hand on the guy to my right. I had the button and limped blind, because there wasn’t really anything I wouldn’t play three-handed. He potted from the big blind and I looked down to find Ah-Ad-5h-x. I repotted, the small blind got out of the way, and BB called. Flop comes down Ax-Qh-9h, and bells are ringing in my head. But that might have been because I was in the middle of a massage as well as flopping the nuts with a nut flush redraw. He checks, I pot, he calls, and I’m confused. He’s shown a lot of restraint, and usually folds when I fire the flop bet unless he has a monster. So I re-check my cards, and yup, I’m ahead.
The turn brings the 4h, and he checks again. I pot again, and he calls again. Now I’m totally confused, because I’m pretty sure I’ve got a lock on the hand (barring quads), and this isn’t a guy to call off his chips when he’s way behind. But the river doesn’t pair the board, so with no quads there I have the nuts, he bets, I move all in, he calls and I double up after he shows Q-Q-Kh-Jh for the second nuts all the way around. Serious cooler on his part, and he was a little pissed at himself for not giving me credit for the nuts.
Eventually I ran it all up to a little over a grand, then gave a little away on a hand I should have gotten away from. I filled up on the river on a board of 7-10-4-8-7 with sevens full of eights, but called a value bet from the straight flush who tabled 5s-6s. No way I should have called there with the 6th nuts, so I only played a couple more hands and racked up. Certainly my biggest casino win in a long time, and it went a long way to erasing what had been a horrible run so far this year.
If any of you have ever played in my home game, then you’ve met Nate. Nate was the crazy old guy that chased everything in the world, and stacked your ass when he got there. I’m still not sure if Nate was the worst poker player in the world, or the best, but he was as gracious in losing as he was in winning. Nate passed away last Thursday night after a sudden heart failure at the age of 81 or 82. He was one of the kindest souls I’ve ever met, on the felt or off, and he will be missed. Somewhere, there’s a card game where Nate just hit a two-outer and tilted Jesus, I can tell.
by john | Jul 30, 2009 | Uncategorized
So after posting 45 segments of a novel online and updating my website with multiple buttons to my book of short stories and poetry, now what do I do?
Well, for one thing, I get back to what got me here – I blog a bit more. I had toyed around with keeping this page as a writing samples page and adding a blog elsewhere on the site, but that’s just not gonna work. I’m too lazy to update two sites, so it’ll just all be here.
And I’m going to work on new material. I’ve got some poetry to post in the next few days, some drafts of poems and story ideas that I’m working on, and things like that. Not to mention that I have 100 copies of Returning the Favor en route to my house, so I’m going to get out and do readings at local bars and bookstores and hope to move a few books that way.
Plus I’ll be continuing to polish Choices, work on a cover design and get it ready for print. I should have copies ready by fall for print and electronic format.
In other news, I’m trying to muddle through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform process and Returning the Favor should be available on Amazon for the Kindle within the next couple of days. Until then, you can already buy it for the Kindle at Smashwords.com.
Anyway, I really want to thank everyone for reading Choices. It was an experiment that grew into something bigger, and I hope better, and I appreciate my friends, old and new, who came along on the ride with me. Who knows where we’ll go next time?
by john | Jun 14, 2009 | Uncategorized
So I’ve realized that a lot of my poems are about people dying, or people dealing with people dying, or people getting dumped, or dealing with being dumped. It’s not that I’m in a particularly grieving or dumped state at the moment. As a matter of fact I’m happily married and all the people I care deeply about are as alive as they were yesterday, as far as I know. But dying and dumping are strong emotions, and that’s kinda stirring, so I kinda take myself back there a lot of times when I write. I just thought I’d mention that, in case anybody was worried that I was all depressed and stuff. I’m not. It’s all good. Enjoy the reading.
by john | May 28, 2009 | Uncategorized
It’s been a while since I tried to create this site, and with the current state of advertising on my other blog (i.e. nonexistent) I figure this is a pretty good time to start the process of moving things from one place to another. So we’ll start posting here, and start putting notices on my poker blog, and maybe slowly evolve this into my internet home.
