My Poker Comeback and E.B.'s Disaster

Today I have two more stories worth mentioning for my recent trip to Vegas. The first is a poker story. On Monday Jake, Brian and I made our way to the MGM poker room to play in a $125 no limit hold 'em tournament. The poker room was dead and only 22 people ended up playing, which according to the staff was a very low turn out even for a Monday (there had been 63 players the night before).

We started with 3,000 chips, blinds of 25/50 and 30 minute limits with Brian and Jake at the same table. I spent the early rounds chatting with two British guys who were about my age and folding almost all of my hands. As a whole the field was weak and inexperienced.

Jake was eliminated about an hour and a half into the tournament and as we combined into one table I was just shy of an average chip stack while Brian had somewhat more than average. They were paying 4 places so I liked the chances of at least one of us making it to the money. Brian quickly won a huge pot and found himself in great shape, but after a few mistakes and a little bad luck he went out 6th.

Meanwhile I'd been able to steal the blinds a few times, but hadn't really picked up a real hand and found myself severly short stacked. At the start of the 7th level the blinds jumped from 400/800 with a 100 chip ante to 800/1600 with a 200 chip ante. This is a ridiculous jump at this stage and only in a total bullshit tournament like this would a blind increase like this fly.

When this big jump happend we'd just come back from a break, were playing 5 handed and I was the short stack with 4000 chips. I threw out my 200 ante and planned on moving all in with almost anything. The 4 remaining players were playing super tight trying to make the money and the player in the big blind (we'll call him Captain Red Shirt) was a poor enough player that I thought he might fold to what amounted to a minimum raise. Sadly I looked down at 5 3 off suit and decided I'd go with whatever I got in the big blind.

In the big blind I almost caught a big break. After the other players folded, the guy in the small blind, the poorly skilled Captain Red Shirt, spent about 20 seconds looking at his cards like one was a deuce and the other was a zero. He was in a spot where given our realative stacks and the situation he should have raised with 100% of hands instantly. I was thinking, "Fold, fold, fold it you jerk! Folding, folding is the play that will work!"

The player two to my left (we'll call him Mellow Yellow) was also running low on chips with a little over 4000 and I thought if I could make it throught the blinds I might be able to out last him. The Captain was uninfluenced by my psychic suggestions and instead of folding he just called. I looked down at 6 9 which I thought might be the best hand, but I decided to look at the flop before commiting the last of my chips. Unfortunately the flop came down K J J and my opponent bet like he hit something. While I was planning on betting if it got to me I couldn't call with 6 9.

I resolved to call with anything in the small blind since I'd have half of my already meager stack committed to the pot. But, when everyone but Mellow Yellow called in front of me and I looked down at 7 4 I decided to let them take the flop along with the big blind. I was hoping that two of the three players would make big hands and one would go broke, putting me in the money. Of course Red Shirt bet and the other two folded.

Now I was down to 800 with 45,200 chips split up among my opponents with every hand costing me 200. My next hand was 7 2 and I folded. The hand after the Red Shirt came in for a raise and I folded J 4. The next one was 8 5 and I decided to give everyone else one more chance to do something stupid and wait until the last possible hand to go all in. So I was all in on the next hand for 200 chips (1/15th of what I'd started with and 1/46th of the average stack) and in the big blind spot.

I frowned when I saw the player on the button (he doesn't get a name) come into the pot along with Red Shirt in the small blind. I looked down at k 5 of clubs and was happy to see a flop of 7 7 3 with two clubs. To my total shock and surprise Captain Red Shirt bet enough to put the player on the button all in. This is a spot where unless one player flops a monster hand, both players will check all the way in an effort to eliminate the short stack (me) and get them both into the money. I was even more surprised to see the player on the button call! Now if I could manage to make the best hand AND have Red Shirt some how beat the player on the button, I'd make the money. I knew my chances were slim since all I had was king high, but at least I had a chance.

I was shocked (shocked!) to see Red Shirt (who had been the one betting) turn over 9 10 (no pair, no draw) and the other player show A 3 (a pair of 3's). The turn card was literally the best card in the deck, the 9 of clubs! Now I had a flush, AND the player with the most chips had the second best hand. The river was a blank and I was in the money!

After winning that pot I had 1,000 chips and after putting 200 in for the ante and 800 for the small blind I was all in again. I picked up A 2, the best hand I'd seen in a while and crossed my fingers. After taking the flop three way, Red Shirt bet and the other player folded. The board was 9 7 5 with 2 spades and even though I didn't have anything, I thought ace high might be good. I was sad to see that Red Shirt had J 5 of spades meaning I'd need a non spade ace to win. I was standing up to go when a red 6 came on the turn and a red 8 came on the river making a straight on the board. Now I was up to 1600.

On the next hand we got the confrontation you've all been waiting to hear about. The clash of the titans. Mellow Yellow picked up pocket 9's and went broke when Captain Red Shirt made a pair of J's after starting with K J. This moved me into 3rd place. I managed to run my stack up to over 5,000, but went broke in a hand which has since left my memory.

The difference between 5th and 3rd was $440 and the whole thing left me with a good feeling. They say all you need is a chip and a chair to make a comeback in a tournament and this tournamnet was proof of that concept.

The bad news is, I've now spent too much time writing about myself and you'll have to wait until tomorrow or the next day to hear about E.B.'s disaster. It is much more dramatic, both in terms of dollar amount (roughly 11.36 times as dramatic) and unusual nature.

Whisky City and Vegas

Before I get to anything else I want to congratulate Brian Ridgeway and his fiance' Andrea on their engagement! As soon as I hooked up with Brian in Vegas the first thing he did was tell me the good news. I was pleseantly surprised since I didn't know he was planning on proposing, but at the same time I was not at all surprised that he would want to marry such a fantastic woman. He said they have a tentative date of May 10th 2008 and will be getting married in Maryland. Also they've asked me to perform the ceremony! Very exciting stuff.

Now on to other topics. I managed to survive my vacation and now that it's over it seemed like it lasted about 45 seconds. The festivities started on Saturday night with the Whiskies of the World convention at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Jake, E.B. and I got to the hotel about 5 p.m. about 30 minutes before the event was going to start. After a short wait someone handed us a tote bag (for free goodies), we grabbed a few glasses and off we went.

I knew there was going to be a good amount of whisky at this event since it was $115 a person, but I wasn't sure how much waiting in line there would be or if the pours would be so insubstantial that it would be hard to get a buzz going. It turns out that it was a completely unlimited amount. There were roughly 50 vendors, each had between 3 and 6 of their best whiskies and there was virtually no waiting once we got into the tasting room.

We'd walk up to a table start with the 12 year stuff, then compare it to the 18 year and finally to the 21 year. We even tried two or three 30 year old scotches and whiskies which were over $400 a bottle. Three or four vendors had some other kind of hard alcohol in addition to their whisky and there was one that was exclusively gin and two that were vodka only.

Any worries I had about pour size were quelled in the first 5 minutes. While it was usually just a splash for the highest end stuff, it was a 1/2 shot or more for even the $100 a bottle stuff. And if it wasn't enough you could just ask for more. But after the first few I stuck to the plan of having a little taste and then dumping the rest in the dump bucket because I wanted to try at least one thing from every vendor (I think I hit about 75% of them) and like I said every vendor had at least 3 different whiskies.

Happily, there was also a huge table covered in hundreds and hundreds of bottled waters and a buffet that lasted all night. We hit the buffet three times and between the three of us probably had 25 bottles of water. During our first pit stop at the buffet we started asking each other if we knew exactly what the difference between a Bourbon and a regular whisky or a Scotch was. It turns out that none of us really knew, but the guy at the next table over heard us and ended up giving us an impromptu 10 minute lesson on what differentiates the various kinds of whisky.

All in all it was a great night. I managed to avoid a massive hangover in part due to the constant refueling and in part due to the fact that my stomach could only handle so much straight whisky. I found a few jewels and discovered conclusively that I prefer Bourbon or Kentucky whisky to Scotch. You can check out the pictures I took here

The next day we left Oakland airport at around 3 p.m. and after a little over an hour of the most turbulent plane ride I can remember we landed in Vegas. Before the trip I called a few hotels about getting a free room, but because there was one of the biggest conferences of the year in town (some kind of broadcasting conference) the only place I could manage was the Flamingo. Luckily E.B. was able to swing a free room at the MGM and the Paris so we had plenty of hotel space to go around.

The genesis of the trip was the fact that Brian was going to be in town for 4 days for a conference. He's an Oracle database administrator working for the U.S. census bureau and was attending an Oracle conference with his coworker Tom. Tom is an avid reader of this very blog (Hey Tom) and it was very interesting having someone who you've never met know a lot about you. Instead of "I heard your wife was pregnant" it was "So when is Jen going to have her next ultrasound?" While I might hear from a friend of a friend "I heard you were a poker player?" From Tom I got "I know April started out strong for you, how's it been going since?" To his credit, despite the fact that he was the least seasoned gambler among the 5 of us (by a mile), he was the only one who to my knowledge ended up winning for the trip.

For the most part the trip was a pretty standard Vegas Trip with plenty of drinking, eating and gambling but there were a few highlights. The first highlight was the best meal I've ever had (without a doubt) at 2 in the morning. We spent Monday and on into the early hours of Tuesday playing at the MGM. We'd had a late although sizable lunch but we skipped dinner, so by 2 a.m. we were all starving. After speaking to the pit boss we got a comp for a free meal at the Studio Cafe which was the only restaurant that was still open at the MGM. Every casino has one restaurant that's open 24 hours and I knew from experience that this one was one of the best.

The four of us (Tom split off earlier in the evening) sat down and as it usually does, the thing on the menu that caught my eye was the steak and lobster. Everyone else started mentioning the shrimp cocktail and we decided it was time to find out if there was a dollar limit on our comp. When our waiter came back we said "What's the limit on the comp" and he said (knowing he was going to get tipped based on the total) "It's unlimited, you can each get a 15 piece shrimp cocktail and a filet and lobster with desert and a bottle of wine if you want." Not wanting to over do it we only got two 15 piece shrimp cocktails ($35 per) for the table and a platter of chicken fingers (with 4 dipping sauces) that must have cleared an entire hen house. And, of course, all four of us got the steak and lobster. Throw in a few deserts and a half dozen 1 litre bottles of Fiji water and the bill came out to $357. Getting a meal like that for free made those of us that lost that night (not me, ha ha losers!) feel a little better about losing.

There is one major highlight and one MAJOR lowlight from the trip which will have to wait for tomorrow. The first one is about a miraculous comeback I had in a small poker tournament at the MGM and the other is about an unbelievably favorable situation that E.B. came across that ended up TOTALLY screwing him over. Both are stories that you will not want to miss.

A Baby Step Back

After 8 straight winning days, I took a small step back by booking small losses on Wednesday and Thursday. I'm still kicking ass and feel very comfortable with how I'm playing.

I think it's going to be difficult to make it to my goal of 60,000 hands in April. I'm taking today off and after I play for a few hours tomorrow morning I'll be at 25,000 hands. The big bump in the road is the 5 day vacation that I'll be starting tomorrow afternoon which I've really been looking forward to.

For Jake's birthday E.B. and I got him and ourselves, tickets to the 8th Annual Whiskies of the World Expo which takes place at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. I first heard about this event while watching an episode of Modern Marvels on distilling a few years back and have wanted to go ever since.

While I wouldn't consider myself a big whisky drinker by any stretch and I usually stick with wine or beer if I'm drinking, I have been known to sip on a glass if the occasion calls for it. Anyway it was $115 a person and there are supposed to be over 200 whiskies to taste so it should be an amazing event.

For anyone worried about my well being I promise to limit it to 100 shots of whisky and drive slow on the way home. Just kidding, Jen is going to drive us to the BART station (it's just like the subway, but it has a stupid name) before and pick us up after. Also the event features an evening long buffet and various speakers and it's only 4 hours long so while I expect to be intoxicated at the end, I won't be falling down dangerous drunk.

Then on Sunday Jake, E.B., Brian Ridgeway and I will be gambling away in Vegas for three days. The wives and girlfriends are staying home which for some guys would be a good thing, but since we all have awesome wives and girlfriends who like to Vegas it up as much as we do we'll miss them on this trip. I can hear the crys of "yeah right" and "You are an ass kisser, Huff!" coming from all directions, but it's true. Our ladies like to gamble and have a drink or two just as much as we do, we love then and enjoy their company!

When I get back, it will be back to work, but for now I'm looking forward to the time off.

This is Getting Pleasantly Ridiculous

It's days like today that make me love my lifestyle. I woke up and played for 4 hours. For my lunch break I took a 4 hours to watch the entire 4th round of the Masters. Then I played another 2 hours or so. Over the course of those 6 hours of play I won $1,532 which is my best day so far this year.

I have been totally dominating ever since I swtiched to playing these no limit cash games. So far in April (in 8 days!) I've won $4,417. I'm winning 22.7 cents a hand in the $1/$2 games and 31.8 cents a hand in the $2/$4 games!

I feel like I've finally gotten a chance to rebuild my bankroll a little and replenish my reserves. Hopefully I can keep up anything even close to this pace.

What's In a Name?

I've had a few different names on a few different poker sites and over the course of the past three years I've played against certainly thousands and probably tens of thousands of different players. Some people have names like AApoker, Igotthenutz, or treysfull21, others have names like BigJohn32 or StudSteve and still others have names that are as far as I can tell total nonsense such as Earyda342. But, in the mix of all of those names a few people come up with clever or at least interesting monikers.

My name ACESEDAI is no doubt confusing to most people. What it's supposed to be is Ace Sedai and it's a poker related spin on Aes Sedai, who are the most powerful characters in the series of books The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordon. I think the people who get it think it's clever. But I can tell from the chat box that most people think it's supposed to be Aces edai whatever the hell that would be. I know someone thought it was supposed to be pronounced like aces die and I'm sure others have thought my name was Ed and I was trying to say aces, Ed, artifical inteligence.

I wish I'd made a note of all of the best names that I've seen, but there are only a few that have stuck with me. Maybe my favorite one is Sarahbellum. When I saw that one I thought to myself anyone making clever references to a specific part of the brain is probably not an idiot. Two funny ones I remember are NuclearFart and Upay4myweed.

The main inspiration for this post though was the following name

>///' > ooO.
At first I looked at it and thought "What the hell kind of name is that?" But upon closer inspection I saw that it's actually a fish blowing 3 bubbles (I can almost hear a chorus of "Ohhhhhhhh yeeaaaaahs" in the distance). Although, it's no doubt a pain in the ass to enter a username that requires heavy use of the shift key, I thought it was a neat username.

In other news April is off to a good start. Happily I've turned things around in the $1/$2 games and while I've been unable to continue the furious pace in the $2/$4 games, I'm still thrilled with how it's going so far. After 4 days I've played 5,117 hands of $1/$2 and won $1,196 (23.3 cents per hand) and I've played 4,607 hands of $2/$4 and won $849 (18.4 cents per hand). So far I'm right on track in terms of making it to 60,000 hands and making it to over $10,000 for the month.

Jen and I are both taking today off to go visit our accountant and do our taxes for 2006. AWESOME! Happily I've made some quarterly payments to the IRS and all of those massive WSOP losses are tax deductible so the damage shouldn't be too bad. But, since all I can do is guess about how much I owe it's still a little (or a lot) stressful.

I'll also be taking tomorrow off since I need a little break. I've played at least some poker for 17 straight days (12 wins and 5 losses) and I've got 7 straight full work days on my calender starting Saturday if I'm going make it to 30,000 hands before I leave for Vegas on the 15th.

April Goals

I came down to earth a little bit yesterday when I booked my first loss over $500 since February 19th. It was the first time I decided to forget about the $1/$2 NL games games and jump into six $2/$4 NL games and I can't help wondering if I made a mistake by changing something in a system that was working so nicely.

Even with a little dip at the end March was a still success and now I'm looking ahead to April. I have a short trip to Vegas from April 15th through the 18th, (for fun, not for work) but other than that my schedule looks clear for the whole month. My goal is to play 30,000 hands of $1/$2 and 30,000 hands of $2/$4.

It still blows my mind a little when I think about how many hands I'm able to play compared to how many you can play in person. If you can make 20 cents a hand playing 6 games at a time on the Internet you're well into a six figure income. If you make 20 cents a hand in person you're making minimum wage. I've been getting in about 475 hands an hour which means in 3 hours I'm playing as many hands as you'd get in a 40 hour week. If I jumped into 8 games, which isn't crazy, I could play as many hands in a day as you'd get in a month playing full time in person.

I'll be shooting for 10 cents a hand in the $1/$2 and 20 cents a hand in the $2/$4. If I make these goals I'll pick up $9,000 plus $1,700 in FPP's. I'll keep you posted.

A Confusing, But Good Problem to Have

Over the past week I've continued my experiment with playing no limit cash games on pokerstars. So far my results have exceeded my expectations. After a few days of playing the $1/$2 blinds games I felt like I was doing a lot of breaking even with a little progress in the positive direction. So I decided to split the six games I was playing into three $1/$2 games and three $2/$4 games. Right away I made a few big hands in the $2/$4 games which made it easy to feel comfortable at the higher level (this is actually 1/5 the size of the biggest games I've played in, but that was over a year ago and it certainly wasn't while playing 6 games at a time).

It seemed like this was a good system so over the past several days I've been playing 3 games of each level. What's confusing to me is while I'm killing the $2/$4 games I'm breaking even in the $1/$2 games. When you double the stakes you're always going to have better players at the higher level so it doesn't make much sense that I should be winning WAY more than twice as much money against tougher players.

I have four theories, however, that might explain the disparity. The first is that while I feel I'm paying equal attention to all the games, I'm actually much more focused on the bigger games and thus able to make better decisions. The second is that the players at the higher level play much more how I'd expect them to. Perhaps at the lower level the players are playing so poorly that I'm having trouble figuring out what they have or I'm unable to manipulate them as well as better players who are thinking more. The third possibility is I might be unconsciously making riskier plays in the smaller games because the amount of money involved is less so I don't care as much if I lose. My fourth theory is that I've just been running really good in the bigger games and facing some short term bad luck in the smaller games. I suspect it's actually a combination of all of these aspects, but it still seems a little strange to me.

So how exactly have I been doing? Well over the course of 13,099 hands at the $1/$2 level I've lost $87. But, over the course of 4,373 hands of $2/$4 I've won $2,722 which is 62 cents a hand! I'm almost certain I can't keep that level of winning up in the long run, but if I could do even half that, I could make $4,500 a week. During the 17,000 plus hands I've played in the past 8 days I've also picked up about 40,000 FPP's which are worth $635 and I made a brief stop at the Oaks which netted me $375. All in all in the past 8 days I've won $3,732. SWEET!

The most important part is I've made a fundamental change in what I'm doing and that's what's bringing in all the money. If I'd just started winning more in the SNG's I wouldn't feel as good. It's the potential for future profits here that is so exciting.