Wow. Fun bustout hand. Keep reading.

I just busted in the final minutes of the third level from event number 1. I drew a starting table with Steve Zolotow in the 1, Tom McEvoy in the 2, an unknown Euro in the 3, Jen Harman in the 4, Toto Leonidas in the 5, Cory Carrol in the 6, Thomas Fuller in the 7, an unknown weak spot in the 8, and me in the 9. For the first two levels not too much happened. The biggest pot came when Thomas opened up front to 800, I called in EP with KJcc and Cory defended in the BB. The flop came KQ5 rainbow. Cory led out 1600, Tom folded and I settled on call. I wanted to avoid Cory for the most part because he's a very tough player and doesn't mind inflating pots. The turn was a 6, still rainbow I think. Cory checked and I finally settled on check because I wanted to give him the chance to bluffbot some on the river, and the stacks were such that I thought he might CRAI if I bet like 4000. The river was an offsuit 4. Cory checked and I bet 3700 into 5750. Cory thought for 45 seconds and called, and my hand was good.

I took 23350 to the break. We got back and I dribbled down to 19000 after I got reraised preflop once and then lost a pot to David "DavidP18" Peters. Then, the insane bust hand came up. It was folded around to the weak spot and he raised to 1200 from the SB. I found AhJs and called in the BB. The flop was A99 with two diamonds.. He checked, and again I checked. This guy had been caught bluffing a few times, and I was perfectly willing to let him continue. He'd 3bet pot AI against the nitty Zolotow for all his chips earlier on J65 with two hearts with black AQ. Zolotow called with KJhh and the guy rivered the Ac. Anyway, the turn was a black 8. He checked and I bet 1500. He checkraised me to 3500, and I called. The river was the Ac for a final board of A998A, giving me he second nuts. The guy asked the dealer how much was in the pot, received the answer and then bet just 3400ish into the 9400. I have a trivial raise, and thought for a bit before raising to 8300. The guy moved all-in and I obviously have to press call for my last 6000. He showed me quad nines. Sigh. I've only run top boat into quads like one other time in my career in live tournaments, and you hate to have it happen in a 10000 dollar event, but that's poker. I can maybe, maybe, maybe just call on the end against a good player but not against a spewy unknown who sees he has Aces full and is just gonna slam it.

Gonna relax. Event #2 actually has two starting days, and tomorrow is sold out. I'll take tomorrow off and play Sunday.

EDIT: I've changed starting days to day 1a for Event #2. I will be playing today (Saturday).

SS

We arrived back home from our Lake Meade houseboat trip earlier today. Man, it was a really good time. We rented a speedboat as well and went intertubing and wakeboarding. I tried to wakeboard a few times and was able to get up but never put a good run together. I'd like to try it again sometime this summer. I got sunburned as I always do because I'm too lazy to thoroughly put on sunscreen. We also grilled lots of good food and put away cases upon cases of beer. The whole trip cost a little over 6000 between 9 people but I lucksacked a complete freeroll because I didn't lose any flips. Weeee.

On a business note, the 2008 World Series of Poker begins in just 12 hours. The WSOP commences with a 10 thousand dollar PLHE event which I'll be playing. There is a magic feeling when you walk into the Rio at the beginning of the summer. We went in today to register, and it was hard to believe that it has been a year since the start of last year's series. I want so, so bad to win a bracelet this year. It will be extremely difficult though as I play pretty much only hold 'em events. Still, I don't think I'm much worse than like 12:1 to get one each year. Starting tomorrow there will be almost zero days off for 6 weeks. It will be a long summer, but it's one that I'll be ready for. I'm going to do my damndest to stay as focused as possible and not let one bad tournament have a domino effect on the tournaments for the rest of the week.

I'll have plenty of blog posts for anyone interested in following. I also am going to partake in the Cardplayer pro blogs, so you can look for those on Cardplayer during the days if you really wanna follow along. Unfortunately, we were never able to get our roommate prop bet off the ground. We had interest from about three different groups of players but could never really come to terms. It suffices to say that there aren't many groups of five roommates in the world that are willing to put up 50 thousand dollars in prop bets, I think.

I don't have much more. It's only 11:35 p.m. right now, so I think I'm going to sleep, get up early, go to the gym, and try to get in a really good mindset for the PLHE World Championship tomorrow.

SS

It's been a few days since I've blogged. Not too much has been going on. I'm very proud of myself as I went to the gym everyday Monday through Saturday this week. I feel so much better about myself in doing so. I really recommend it to anyone. If I can do it you sure as hell can. The true test will be if I can still go 3 or 4 days per week for the next 6 weeks during the WSOP. It's very difficult to bust out of a tournament, come home, and go to the gym as you can probably imagine. I genuinely have been looking forward to going each day though, so I think that's a turning point. I weighed in at 205 this morning and hope to be down to like 190 by the end of the summer.

I've been on an old man's sleep schedule lately, going to bed by 10 p.m. and waking up at like 6:30 or 7 a.m. It's really weird. I've been exhausted from working out though and retired early each night I guess. Most of the rest of mine and my roommates' time has been occupied watching sports each night. It is such a great time of year with all the great baseball and NBA and NHL playoffs. It's hard to tear ourselves away from the TV, so we'll sit there 6 hours. Yesterday and today I played some online tournaments. Yesterday I flirted with a couple of WSOP seats but missed both. Today I redeemed myself though and won another WSOP package on FTP, ship. I also had two min cashes in the Sunday Warmup and the 215 dollar weekly HORSE, lawl, that was fun. It turned out to be a decent weekend of poker as I won a little bit in cash games as well.

I don't think there's much more to talk about. Tomorrow we're going on a houseboat trip on Lake Mead. I will probably be unreachable until Thursday afternoon, as phone service is basically nonexistent on the lake and I obv won't have internet access. We're really amped about the trip. It will be nice to get a little more relaxing (and partying) in before the first WSOP event on Friday. It's a 10000 dollar PLHE tournament. Can't wait!