Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Vancouver and Onwards: Prague, Epic #3, etc

Two blogs in a week?! Crazy, I know. Really it's just because I was tired and got carried away making fun of my friends and forgot to write about some stuff, but I'm going to say it counts. Between rolling around in my purple euros and grinding online I also went to Vancouver for a week after my Eurotrip to visit friends and play the BC Poker Classic. I busted the main very quickly but final tabled the $5k high roller event. I ended up placing 7th when I got AQ in vs KK, but given I won 99 vs KK all-in on the exact bubble I can't complain.

Tonight I leave for Prague where I'll be playing the WPT as well as the EPT and side events. Unfortunately I connect in Heathrow tomorrow morning where apparently there is a 24 hour border control strike. Heathrow is brutal at the best of times and with amateurs working the passport control it's likely to be a shit show. I only have an hour-forty to make my connection to Prague and I'm pretty concerned this going to turn into one of those travel horror stories. If you awake to find a ranting series of rage tweets from me you'll know why. I'm very excited for the trip though as I've heard so many amazing things about Prague and of course the tournaments should be great value.

After Prague I fly straight to Vegas for the 3rd Epic main event as well as the charity event. Not a lot to say here other than if timex can win one I like my chances. After that I'm home to Newfoundland for Xmas, and while I haven't quite finalized my plans for the new year yet I'm probably going to go straight to Australia for a month skipping PCA then come back for the events at Fallsview which are now in February. This is subject to change if I do well in Epic and qualify for the freeroll which is at the same time. The first 10 days or so in Australia a bunch of us are renting a house down the Mornington Peninsula and spending our days golfing the various courses in the area and then hitting the Portsea pub for a couple jugs of beer and some fresh seafood. It is unlikely to suck.

Mike

Monday, November 28, 2011

An Upswing!

I've been even lazier than usual about blogging lately despite the fact that there's actually been quite a bit to write about. It seems my attention span has continued to shrink to the point I have a hard time explaining what's on my mind using more than 140 characters at a time. Nonetheless I shall do my best to crank out a blog entry that isn't entirely the regurgitation of my last 100 tweets and actually goes into some small amount of meaningful detail on at least two occasions or something. I'm losing focus already so let's get onto it.

Last time I left you just as I was heading to Vegas for the 2nd Epic event. Things were going well for me and with three tables left I won AA vs KK all-in preflop for 10 times starting stack and I must have been top 3 in chips. Unfortunately, after that things stopped going so smoothly and then timex got moved to my left and I punted him a bunch of chips with top pair against an overpair when I played it kinda bad. He subsequently busted me in a standard spot. Here is a picture of me all-in with my 96s against his AK after I wished him terrible luck in the hand. Hopefully that made the TV broadcast.

Don't you still just hate him?

Anyways we'd swapped 10% and he ended up winning so I still got pretty paid and crashed his party and drank all his kegs and told all his friends how awful a human being he is, so I'd say I got the last laugh.

[Ed Note: a certain 4-letter noun has been removed from the last two paragraphs in 4 different locations and the adjective formed with the suffix "y" an additional six. I'm told I'm too vulgar]

Next up was a super awesome Eurotrip that began in Munich for Oktoberfest. Yes, it was incredibly amazing, and yes I am a better person than you because I was there and you weren't. The four us surprisingly survived the three days with merely minor battle scars. No one fell off a table and broke their head or anything. Outside of winning stuffed animals at the carnival games and bringing them to the beer hall with us where we force fed them alcohol no crimes were committed. Our stuffed turtle developed a serious drinking problem he may never recover from. Some drunk bitch grabbed our stuffed tiger and tossed him across the hall. I have never seen Scott angrier I thought he might pimp slap a ho. An extensive search was eventually called off. It is presumed he was trampled to death. We poured one out for our dead homie and soldiered on.

After that we flew to London for the EPT there. I did not sleep well and played kinda bad in the main event. I did however cash the 2k side event for my first live cash in 9 months or so! Then I played a hand even worse. The short version is after a series of comical mistakes I arrived at the river holding T7o in the small blind on a board of 97675. I checked the BB bet 17k, button called and with the game theory optimal hand to bluff with in this situation I went all-in for 50k total. This would be kinda cool if I had like 100k but obviously it did not work here.

Then I went to France and won all the money in Cannes. The final table of the 3200 shoot-out was incredibly tough but I made it heads-up with the chip lead after getting really lucky against Elky a couple times. Not a lot went right in the heads-up though and I bubbled my first ever bracelet at my first WSOP final table. Still I won like 112k euros for 2nd place. I had a decent run in the main event but lost my first all-in despite having the best hand. This worked out ok though, as the next day I beat 58 people to take down the 5k Euro turbo side event for another 105k. I was told at the bar later that I was allowed to be happy I won a tournament! I, however, stake Tony Dunst in poker tournaments so I knew the winnings would be short-lived.

Next up was EPT San Remo and I fought my way into the top 128 players who made the money yet again! I then busted the next hand to finish exactly 128th. I had a lot of chips in the 2k side event at one point but I kinda got velocitized and spewed them off. Velocitized is some term Driver's Ed people made up for the feeling of when you get off the highway where you were driving real fast onto city streets where the speed limit is lower but you still want to drive fast because you're now accustomed to it and it doesn't feel fast.

I am now coining the term in poker to mean when you've just played a bunch of hands against some euro tards and gotten the money in semi-light and been right a few times in a row because they're idiots and never have anything but still try to win every pot, but then you get in a pot against a solid player and you forget that you can't just 3b/call it off against his early position raise with TT for 40bb. So that happened and I lost a flip and I bubbled. Then I left and went back to Canada because San Remo sucks, especially when you've already been eating pasta and/or pizza for half your meals for the previous two weeks.

Since then I've spent most of my time rolling around in purple euros and playing online a bit. PLO cash has still been going really well overall though I haven't played as many hands as I should have, and I even had a decent Sunday score one week. Tony has a lot more work to do if he's still going to try to bankrupt me.

Mike