Oh Obama

I thought the Democratic National Convention was a big success for Democrats. I think we picked the right candidate and given the circumstances of the Republican's main attacking point (national security), I think we picked the right Vice-President in Biden. I don't really have that much to say on the convention other than the speeches were moving and watching this convention made me feel closer to the United States of America. We do all get bogged down in our daily lives to realize there is more out there than we are accustomed to in our everyday lives. Being a professional poker player probably distances me further from that reality in a lot of ways because working from home online limits contact with people other than friends or family. Going to tournaments and playing gives some contact to people, but not that often to people that struggle in the world. Not that often are there that many people that are even pleasant to be around. In fact, most of the people I enjoy being around in the poker world play online most of the time. Stories of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan serving the country and coming back to poor treatment is flat out wrong on so many moral and human levels its disturbing. I know that I am truly lucky after hearing a lot of this. I'm lucky enough to play a game and make good money doing it. Only professional athletes and people on stock exchanges can usually say the same thing. Either way, I'm looking forward to the election.

One more big mention is that if you care at all about online poker, the Democratic ticket is really the only way to go. McCain is a staunch opponent of online gambling most likely to please the conservative base. Several members of the PPA, democrats and republicans alike, demanded that the Republicans strike language from the RNC platform regarding the prohibition of online gambling. When the RNC agreed and removed it, it was put back up shortly after by the McCain train. The only sound argument that can be put forth by Republicans is that gambling is bad, immoral and ruins society. While we only hear about the extreme cases related to gambling, Republicans often forget that they support gambling on horse racing and state lotteries. You can't have it both ways. Please write your Senators and Congressmen. If you are too lazy, go to this website http://capwiz.com/pokerplayersalliance/home/. They have a letter all set for you and will even tell you all the representatives that matter. It takes two seconds, but politicians do eventually listen. The PPA has made good progress. They haven't made great progress until online poker is legalized and regulated.


As for me and poker, I came back to Vegas and have been pretty happy with how I'm doing so far. Since being back, I've had some good results including a $3000 win on Ultimate Bet in their 30 rebuy. I got 2nd in the Absolute Sunday tournament for $10k. I had another small second on Absolute. I also got ninth in the Pokerstars daily with a disappointing finish. To be honest, I've actually probably ran a little below average at these final tables as well. I've had consistent deep runs in tournaments, but I feel like my tournament game continues to improve. I know I have a long way to go until I become the best, but with hard work and more dedication, I believe I can get there. On a negative note, I had one poor high stakes cash session at $50/$100 HORSE. I played this game because of my success at lower limits in the past month. After playing for a while, I believed that I had a little edge over my opponents. Whether that was the case or not, the results didn't show for it. It will be a while before I try another experiment like that. Playing consistent multi-table tournament schedules with a lot of focus has been paying off this year, and I want to keep that going.

9. Win the Sunday Night HORSE tournament on Full Tilt.

Goal number 9 for 2008 is complete. In a thrilling comeback victory, I won the Sunday Night HORSE tournament on Full Tilt.

Here is the first hand heads up chip counts.


Seat 2: kice32 (106,800)
Seat 8: Diego Cordovez (469,200)
Diego Cordovez posts the small blind of 5,000
kice32 posts the big blind of 10,000

I have 10 BB's to his 46BB and end up coming back to win. I was thrilled. Not to mention I get the $200 pro bounty and t-shirt as Diego Cordovez is in red on Full tilt. It was a little over $10,000 for the victory giving me a decent Sunday as I played fewer tournaments. I had a great weekend with my girlfriend and family and this topped it all off.


I'm heading back to Las Vegas tomorrow to get back to business for a while. I'll hopefully have more good poker updates. The FTOPS is over and I don't think I cashed in a single event. Despite this victory, everything else over my break in Cleveland really didn't go that well. I plan to have a great WCOOP. I'm playing tons of games well and should be playing a good amount of events.

It's time for a sports blog

It's been a while since I talked about anything but poker, so it might be healthy to get some good thoughts out there about Cleveland sports and the Olympics. I've been playing poker at a minimum lately. I've basically been following the FTOPS main events around when I have time to and playing cash games when I'm bored here in Cleveland. This has giving me some good time to watch some Olympics and enjoy the games all day, while hardly ever exercising and typically eating too much.

Cleveland Cavaliers Trade

Cleveland hit the trade market hard again acquiring Mo Williams from the Bucks. We finally have our point guard. I can't say I know very much about Mo Williams because I really don't. If Mo Williams is even a slightly above average point guard who can play a lick of defense, it will make this team better. Damon Jones is only a loss if you enjoyed laughing at him over the past few years. I would like to thank him though for that shot in the Washington series three years ago. It was one of the most exciting moments in Cleveland and all Amon Ones ever did (NO D and No J) was want to be good. I hope that one play was enough. Joe Smith was the real loss. He provided solid depth at the big man position throughout the playoffs. He was a guy who did everything right. I think the best thing about losing him is it gives a chance for all the younger guys to develop into that role. It does leave a small hole in our front man rotation. If our old players (Z or Wallace) go down, we might be in trouble. My only other big concern about Mo Williams is that I've read a few places that he might be a selfish player. We don't need another Larry Hughes, so our coaching staff better be very direct with how they coach Mo Williams. He better be ready to work and win titles or you can kiss LBJ good bye in two years.

Cleveland Browns

The Browns are going to be good this year. How good? 10-6 again good. Our record range will be 8-8 to 10-6. I don't see this team going any different than that range of records. Our offense is probably in the top 4 in the NFL. I can think of NE, Indy, and maybe Dallas as those that our ahead of us. We just have weapons in every area. We have two all-pro receivers and Braylon Edwards is still underrated. We have one of the best receiving tight ends in the league in Winslow. Lewis looks pretty solid and behind the best offensive line in the AFC North, we'll win the division. Expect to be playing at home in round one of the playoffs against a team like Jacksonville or Denver. I expect a fall out in Pittsburgh this year. I think the team will hurt bad after losing Alan Faneca at guard.


Olympics

We need to check China!!!! China is really showing the dichotomy of its messed up nation. It puts on this unreal display at the opening ceremonies following a decade of unbelievable growth, yet it's partially fake. They leave out the fact that they put up a 7 year old girl prop in place of the real singer who was deemed to ugly for TV. How many 7 year olds are really ugly? Let's be honest. It's impossible to be ugly at 7 unless you are one of those 7 year old gymnasts on China's team. I really have a growing dislike for gymnastics because I think it's rigged and finally realize it is. China is not following the rules, and they would have never lost the gold at home. The USA would have never lost the gold at home in '96 either.

One thing I love about the summer Olympics are the great sports you never watch but are absolutely awesome come Olympics time.

1. Swimming--I would never watch this sport, but it's fun come Olympics time because medals are cool and the USA is usually dominant. Watching Michael Phelps has been real fun this Olympics, and I expect him to win all 8 golds. He will for sure win the two individual races barring lots of drugs injected into some crazy Chinese athlete. Can you even trust anything China does? They just went 1-2 in the 100M Butterfly. Is there any doubt they weren't drugged up like Marion Jones and Barry Bonds son?

2. Beach Volleyball--Fun to watch, but more fun to play. I love this sport and USA is sweet at it. Not to mention that I love the name Karch.

3. Track and Field--I watch this all the time when it's on, but your average American doesn't. This is going to be exciting this Olympics. You can't miss the 100M dash with Tyson Gay from the USA. He recently sprained his hamstring in the trials, so it will be interesting to see him compete against Jamaica's top dude. The 400M is going to be my favorite race with Leshawn Merrit and Jeremy Wariner. Here is there race from last Olympics, but since then Merritt has beat Wariner. This is the best race on the track hands down.



4. Table Tennis--Watch it live for NBCOlympics.com

5. Handball--See number 4


The worst sports at the olympics include women's sabre, anything involving rowing, trampoline and rhytmic gymnastics. Can't we seriously put golf in place of one of these? I have another idea. Let's make the PGA Championship travel to the Olympic city once every 4 years and play it there. It will be both the PGA Championship and the Olympic event. It will give the world a chance to see the biggest chokes out there including but not limited to Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia.

That is all for now. I'll be back with more later.

Cleveland

I've had a lot of fun so far in Cleveland with my family and friends. I've finally been able to golf since I haven't had a golf partner in Vegas. I've gone perch fishing on Lake Erie. We even made a trip downtown over the weekend that was a fun night overall. I'm heading to the Brown's preseason game on Thursday, so expect a pretty in depth Brown's blog coming up as I know we have some Cleveland fans reading out there.

On the poker front, I had my worst day of the entire year on Sunday financially, but I'm not all that upset about it. I had a pretty standard tournament buy in schedule and probably played too many tables. I think on Sundays, I'm going to limit the max tournaments I'm in to 6 at one time. I might even think about moving down to 4. The only problem with going to 4 is that I don't get a chance to play a lot of the lower buy ins that attract huge fields. These tournaments like the 11 rebuy I won can really help out a bankroll if you are consistently playing every big buy in on every site every Sunday. I have also had a mixed record in the cash games since being home. While I've beat the 2/4 pot limit omaha game, I dumped it all back in one horrendous session at pot limit omaha 3/6. Furthermore, I've had a couple of 25/50 PLO sessions where I went in short stacked with 1k and failed to do much. When this stuff happens all on Sunday, it compounds. Take away the Sunday and I'm actually up since I've been home playing a limited amount of tournaments and mostly different cash games.

The tentative future schedule of big things to come is

August 6-18. Full Tilt Online Poker Series. I'll probably be playing about 6-10 events depending on what is going on at home. When I'm at home with the family, it's often tough to make committments to play tournaments.

September. WCOOP. This is the Pokerstars big annual tournament series. I never have been able to commit to playing a lot of these events, but I'm planning on playing more this year. I know there will be a few Sundays though that I will miss in here for a wedding and of course Browns games. My Borgata plans for this year won't be coming to fruition. I love the tournaments there, but it will just have to wait for a different time.

October--Aruba??? We'll see if I can satellite into the tournament. WSOP Europe. We'll see if I can satellite into the tournament.


Other than that, I had a great comment about my personal poker leaks. Leaks are flaws in poker strategy that players should all strive to "plug up."

I decided I'll try to identify a leak in each blog and how I can fix it.

In my tournament game, I think that lately there have been times where I felt it was necessary to gamble when the optimal strategy at the time was to continue to play small ball poker. One example comes to mind when I was deepstacked with about 40,000 in the 100 rebuy on Full tilt. This is a shorthanded tournament where I was steadily picking up chips without winning too many big pots. Most of my confrontations were in pretty good shape preflop or small pots after the flop. I had KJ of hearts and called the under the gun raiser for 2100. He had 35,000 chips. When the flop came 8h 7h 7d. He bet out 4k. Now at this point, I just decided I was going to play for it all no matter what, so I put a good raise in, he reraised all in, I called and he showed QQ. I was then cripped and out shortly after. A similar hand came up in the 2k at the WSOP with KdQd on a two diamond board against a pretty large stack who had AA. Both times I missed and regretted my decision after. Let me first say that I think this play is sometimes optimal. Picking up a big draw has lots of value when you can get your opponents to fold their hands. Playing aggressively is almost always better than playing passively in poker. At times though, if I feel I'm in pretty good control of my table image and position at the table, I think it can be a big leak to just be ready to get in there and gamble. Poker is ultimately a strategy game. One component of strategy though is the propensity to gamble. Varying factors will contribute to how much a player should consider gambling in a tournament including stack sizes, relative skill levels, blind structure, payouts, etc. There are times though where I think it's a leak in my game when I take these situations where I'm in good control of lots of factors of play and waste them by gambling in possible 50/50 spots.


I hope that explanation is a good one and thanks for the questions/comments as always.