- Vegas tomorrow

Had a good day at the tables today and ended up getting some good volume in, too. Really couldn't come at a better time since I had to buy a plane ticket home and get ready for the holidays. Made another solid decision to put off getting that plane ticket until prices would be expensive (right...like people are supposed to expect flights to cost more around Christmas? no way...). So, now I've only got 4 days to get enough volume in to make 200k vpps. Why so little time, you ask? Your flight to Milwaukee isn't until Thursday?

This weekend I'm finally going to Vegas. I'm not into shiny lights and hookers like everyone that usually goes there - just the fact that cash games allegedly run like the online games of 5 years ago is really enticing to me. Since the majority of my friends here in LA are in the entertainment industry, I guess we're on the list of some clubs and Jamie Foxx's birthday party at the Venetian or something. Apparently it's also a CD release party - I guess he's going to sing. Maybe I'll skip out before then (honestly, why does he have two "x's" in his last name).

5 years ago when the online poker industry was still in it's infancy (or adolescence, I guess), huge schools of fish circulated an insane amount of money up the food chain on various sites. Unfortunately, the same methods that I used to improve are now so readily available that the learning curve is dramatically reduced for beginners. Thus, harder games all around. I really wish I knew what I do now 5 years ago. Honestly, I would be a very rich dude right now. Very.

Quick hand from today:
PokerStars Game #22836408323: Tournament #126444962, $55+$5 Hold'em No Limit - Level VIII (200/400) - 2008/12/11 21:39:51 ET
Table '126444962 1' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: litlleWop (2200 in chips)
Seat 2: fattymcbones (3700 in chips)
Seat 5: slipperily (3730 in chips)
Seat 8: Nevermine (3870 in chips)
litlleWop: posts the ante 25
fattymcbones: posts the ante 25
slipperily: posts the ante 25
Nevermine: posts the ante 25
fattymcbones: posts small blind 200
slipperily: posts big blind 400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to fattymcbones [3d Jh]
Nevermine: folds
litlleWop: folds
fattymcbones: raises 3275 to 3675 and is all-in
slipperily: calls 3275
*** FLOP *** [3s 2s 2d]
fattymcbones said, "omg"
*** TURN *** [3s 2s 2d] [Ad]
*** RIVER *** [3s 2s 2d Ad] [Jc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
fattymcbones: shows [3d Jh] (two pair, Jacks and Threes)
slipperily: shows [6s Ac] (two pair, Aces and Deuces)
slipperily collected 7450 from pot

This is a spot 5 years ago people would constantly fold. The threat of losing the hand and bubbling the sng would be too much for most people. After the guy made the call, he typed "make a note" - probably because I was berating him (dumb move on my part) in the chat box. His call was so incredibly bad it's hard to describe. With a small stack like this on the bubble, I'm making an unexploitable shove (basically, I could have the worst hand possible, 27o, turn my cards over before I pushed all in and he still can't call with very many hands in that spot). After plugging the hand into my ICM calculator and reversing the situation, he made a -1.99 ev call. Normally, the goal is to avoid even the slightest -ev pushes (like, say, 0 to -.3). The fact that he made that huge of a mistake is just crazy. Even if he was trying to send a message to me about pushing any two cards in that spot, it's still incredibly dumb.

Rant over.

Well, I guess I'll update after we get back from Nevada. Time to dust off my cash game chops.