Well my current trip to the Commerce has come to an end.  I wound up busting out of the main event with a bit of a cooler with nut flush versus a full house.  The way the pot played I just got stuck and I guess had a bad read on my opponent.  The turn out was great with well over 700 players and as usual Matt Savage put together a sensational series.

Even with the snow I was able to catch a late flight back home to NY.  I am really missing my wife so it’s not all bad, although I would much preferred her to catch a flight out here to watch me go deep in the event.

I am trying to work out the details in my schedule to head to The Horseshoe in Indiana.  They have a great schedule of events with a heads up and main event that I don’t think I can resist.  Here is the link for those of you interested.

http://www.horseshoehammond.com/EventsDetail.do?locationCode=UHA&detailName=chicago-poker-classic-detail&eventTitle=Chicago%20Poker%20Classic

Tiffany Michelle

The WPT Celebrity invitational where 560 players began in a charity event with a chance to play a WPT TV final table and share in a $200,000 free-roll prize pool.  There where lots of the well-known Hollywood crowd, although I’m terrible at recognizing anyone, I even still saw many familiar faces.  I of course drew the tough table in the room with Matt Glantz, Brian Townsend, Jonathan Little, Tiffany Michelle, and Philippe.  Our table played really tight and while players were busting out in droves all around us we only lost one in the first 5 levels, and it was Townsend.  I took all his chips when he bluffed them off in position against me when I flopped an ace with A9 in the big blind on a board of A57 and he had 46.  King on the turn and a 9 on the river made it an easy call, but we both had the same size stack so I was still concerned.  He is a great player and very dangerous, but I was on the right side of this meeting.

The most peculiar hand of the night happened between Matt Glantz, who I consider one of the best high stakes cash players in the world and is a strong tournament player as well.   Tiffany Michelle seemed to play a fair number of pots with him throughout the night and was trash talking him pretty aggressively.  Trying to outplay Matt would put just about any player in a poor EV situation so I was surprised by her play, but hey it was a celebrity invitational and I guess a girl has got to have fun.

So in a pre-flop limped pot with about 5 runners, the flop came 446.  Tiffany bets about a pot sized bet on the button after it is checked around to her and Matt is the only caller from the big blind.  At this point there is about 6k in the pot and Matt has roughly 2,900 behind so when a 2 peels off on the turn he checks to Tiffany who gives a long speech about how she has to bet the right amount so that Matt will have to call and that he is way behind.  She bets 3,000 and Matt hesitates a second and throws all his chips in.  Tiffany looks surprised by what she thinks is a raise and doesn’t realize that with his chip stack size she actually has to take chips out of the pot. Clearly she didn’t expect a call and turns her cards over to show only ace high with the other card hidden behind the ace.  After a good 30 seconds of nodding Matt slow rolls her, with 84 off-suit.  Tiffany then takes her cards and throws them in the muck before the river is dealt.  Now she did have A3 and with a 5 on the river she would have made a wheel for the win, so mucking a live hand there isn’t a move I would recommend.  Philippe hunts through the deck to see what the river was and said it was indeed a five, although I’m not convinced, I still laughed myself silly.  Matt said he never likes to slow roll but after the speech he felt it indicated.

I made it deep the second day to 18^th, but it was a tough structure and with average chips you only had about 15 big blind’s so there wasn’t a lot of play.  I am excited about the main event which will begin Friday.

I’m back at the Commerce and I have to say when it comes to poker it the “nuts.”  The cash games downstairs with the tournament room upstairs in unparalleled.  Although I started the day with the 4pm 8 game mixed it didn’t go well for me.  Out of the 106 starters I went out in the middle of the pack, and right from the beginning just seemed to struggle.  Tiffany Michelle came over and gave me endless grief from busting her out of an event on Full Tilt the night before where she had KK and I held JJ, spiking a jack on the flop.  I had her covered four to one and the way the hand played I couldn’t lay them down based on stack sizes at that point of the tournament.  Still, she made me feel bad.  I know she got some negative criticism for her WSOP main event performance from 2008, but she is a really nice person, and has always been a good friend.

After that I went downstairs to plat $20-40 NLH and wound up in a pretty good must move game.  After a few hours and a few small hands I managed to recover my tournament buy-in when I flopped a set of sixes against KJ on a J62 rainbow board.  He fired the flop and turn, which I raised and he ran.  Then I get moved to the main game which was a much tougher game.

There were 6 solid pros and it almost felt like that stage of a tournament where every hand went raise and maybe one call, then bet fold on the flop.  I was pretty much even at this table when I looked down at KK UTG+2 and raised the standard $140.  I got two callers, the last guy who is a well known owner of a chain of high end restaurants.  The flop came KJ4 with 2 diamonds, the king being one of them.  With $480 in the pot I opened for $420 and the mid guy folded and the restaurant guy raised $800 on top.  I took a moment and he had about $6,000 behind and I had him covered, so with just under 3k in the pot, after counting my call of his raise, I re-raised $2,200.  His call hit the pot almost before my chips.  The turn brought the deuce of diamonds and he moved in instantly for around 4k, which was a little more than half the pot.  I felt physically ill.  I was sitting there with top set and I knew he either had a flush of best case for me AJ with the ace of diamonds or a lower set.  My mind said fold but I couldn’t bring my self to do it.  I figured worst case I had a little over 20% chance of the board pairing on the river.  I went ahead and called, and just to make matters worse the ace of diamonds came on the river.  I meekly showed my set of jacks and he quickly tabled 74 of diamonds.

I’m thinking “welcome back to the Commerce.”  So now I’m stuck around 6k so I added some chips to cover him.  I don’t always re-buy at this point and still had 7k in front of me, but felt like it was worth having him covered.  I played a couple of hands and eked up a little bit, and about 15 minutes later I looked down at 10 10 in the small blind after an early position raise of $160 and three callers and smooth call.  The standard pre-flop opening raise in this game was somewhere in the $140-200 range.  This is well over the 2.5-3.5 big blind tournament range, but has been the usual and customary here in the Commerce $20-40 NLH.  So the flop come 10 7 5 all hearts. I love it and I hate it.  I open for a full pot sized bet of $800 and it folds around to me restaurant friend and who raises me $2,100.  Of course I’m thinking “Danger Will Robinson, danger,” but this time I felt like he didn’t have it, at least not yet and if I can get to the turn without another heart, or of course if the board paired I’d be in great shape.  A black 4 hit the turn and I checked, and he moved all-in. This time I was pretty sure I was still ahead and he had middle set or the ace of hearts with a pair.  This was a whole lot more money this time, and I still had him covered, but it was around 12k with about $6,600 in the pot.  After quite some time I call.  The river brings a very pretty black 7 giving me top full house.  He shows 68 off suit and had turned a straight.  Suck out city, thank god.  Ironically I remembered him from playing with him last time around 9 months ago as very wild and live and I guess I turned out to be the wild live player.

I can’t decide what to play today.  There is a HORSE tournament and a Chinese event here at Commerce, as well as a $300 re-buyFTOP’s event today online.  So much poker, so little time.

There was an interesting thread on 2+2 about a hand someone played against me and he was trying to factor the added value of the pro bounty in his decision to call my all-in pre-flop shove with his 33.  The issue of whether or not you should or even could factor it into an ICM model.  Here is the link:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/87/high-stakes-mtt/correct-equity-vs-ftp-pro-roy-winston-given-bounty-707388/

There was a lot of rhetoric about the added fun of busting me, but only one person really analyzed it really carefully.  With his 33, unless he had some Jedi read which put me on 22, my range of hands at that point of the tournament to shove with isn’t all that large.  Also what’s not mentioned in the thread anywhere is that I play knowing the bounty is on my head.  This means I try and use it to my advantage, I will often shove AA, KK pre-flop in a multi-limp or minimally raised pot so it looks like I’m squeezing.  You would be surprised at the number of time I get called by less than marginal hands hoping for the bounty.  I had one opponent recently who raised 3 big blinds in early position and the button called.  I had AA in the big blind and shoved almost 100 big blinds.  He wrote in that chat before calling “AK, AQ? I’m ahead so I can’t fold.”  He then called with 10 10.  After he busted he wrote, “that’s just a stupid way to play AA.”  I didn’t respond at the time, however calling off your whole stack, especially when you are very deep with only a small amount invested in the pot, hoping you have a coin flip isn’t going to bring long term results.  Keep calling me light for the bounty, I love it.

So while I’ve been hanging around at home playing on Full Tilt the last few months.  I usually have the TV on in the background and although I am often watching something I saved on the DVR, occasionally I watch something that is on daytime TV.  I am specifying daytime because now I am setting the bar very low.  I could go off here on the horrendous quality of these daytime shows, like Jerry Springer where the theme for the day was “my boyfriend or husband got my sister pregnant” or some such nonsense.  Not only are these shows the lowest of the low and offensive but, I’m even more offended by the content of the commercials running during these shows.  They seem to be either advertising lawyers who want to sue someone for disability income, or a drug that you took that ruined your life, or perhaps you have cancer and someone must be responsible and has to pay or, you need an electric chair that can be paid for by Medicare so you can have an “active” lifestyle, or you have a settlement that you have already won from suing someone and you receive annuity payments over time and they will buy you out for a lump sum, that way you can blow your whole nest egg in one shot.

I realize the solution is simple and okay I’m turning the TV off and only watching the shows I DVR and live sports.  The broader question here is what does this say about our society and those who watch this stuff on a daily basis?  By and large I hate commercials, but it does seem like commercials were once about trying to market products, occasionally some are witty or somewhat entertaining like those during the Super Bowl. Nowadays it seems like so many are for parasites just trying to infect us.  What does this have to do with poker? Absolutely nothing.   I was just sitting here thinking.

Well I’m off to resume playing in the online world.  I’m feeling better and better about my online game, and I have gotten deep in a bunch of events lately, I feel like it’s only a matter of time.

I have planned my schedule now through the WSOP and have made some interesting choices.  After FTOP’s and Commerce I am thinking about the WPT in Indiana, at least I think it’s in Indiana.  I haven’t spent any time in Indiana, only having been there for refueling stops when flying cross-country.  April I am going to Europe for San Remo and Monte Carlo, then back for the WSOP.  My wife will join me for most of the Europe trip, which will be great, not only for her company, but she has lived in Italy and speaks Italian as well as several other languages fluently.

I am looking forward to heading to California and spending some time at LaserAway, which I helped found several years ago.  I have stepped away from a management role for some time now, but still serve in an advisory capacity.  I am often asked about what it is exactly and will elaborate here and now.  With multiple locations in Los Angeles, San Diego and Carlsbad LaserAway provides minimally invasive cosmetic procedures on a scheduled and walk in basis.  Services like Laser tattoo and hair removal, skin rejuvenation, Thermage, Botox and injectable fillers.  For more information you can visit our website www.laseraway.net .

I am considering spending a little more time working at LaserAway mostly because I miss the work.  Now that I’m traveling a little less and playing online a little more, I have more freedom in my schedule.  I would like to get back to doing some medical work.  We are also considering adding anti-aging medical services and products to our menu.  It seems that the these days more and more people ask about things like what can be done to slow the aging process and feel and look as good as we can for whatever our age happens to be.

While playing poker it is especially easy to get on a poor health path.  Staying up all night and for days at a time, little or no exercise, and poor nutrition combine to provide a severe obstacle.  I experienced this myself, until I began exercising and eating better starting in this past May.  The health dividends are great and I think it helps my poker game as well.

I am back at home after busting out of the Borgata.  I began the second day with 66,600 in chips, which turned out to be an ominous number.  I lost a couple of hands early against short stacks, all in pre-flop calls with KK and AK losing to AK and A 9, and there went half my chips.  I then got lucky in a 6 way limp pot when I cracked aces with deuces, with the deuce coming on the river.  I then lost a big pot with AQ on a QQ 10 flop, and of course he had Q 10.  I guess it was pay back for the win with the deuces.  I then was short but survived for a long while.  A young player with a ton of chips was moved to the table and he was playing 2 out of 3 hands, so when he opened from the cut-off for 3 big blinds, I had about 12 big blinds and looked down at AQ suited and shoved.  He insta-called and of course had AK.  I did flop 4 to a flush, but it turned out to be only a tease, so home I went.

At the risk of being berated by some I will say it again, dollar for dollar it’s hard to find a better value than the events at The Borgata.  I look forward to Tab’s next tournament series with eager anticipation.

This weekend I am headed for the ski slopes with my wife and parents in Western Massachusetts.  It will be my first time skiing in a couple of years and although I can’t wait, I’m hoping to keep all bones and joints intact.  Then it will be time for the Full Tilt FTOP’s, which should keep me pretty busy and allow me to spend the day with my new K9 and the night’s at home with my wife.

My next tournament stop will be Commerce in about ten days, which I am excited about attending.  I have not been on the West Coast much since relocating to New York and will have some time to catch up with friends that I miss.  The list of events at The Commerce should keep me pretty busy, it looks like a great action packed schedule, and with Matt Savage running the events I’m sure they will be excellent.

I keep getting asked about the new tour series being held at The Venetian right smack in the middle of The Commerce series.  Although I like The Venetian poker room, I’m not leaving The Commerce.  The main event also coincides with the WPT Invitational, which is a very fun event and the action at Commerce at that time is quite simply the best anywhere.  For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s hard to explain.  My recommendation is when in Rome, stay in Rome, why go to Venice?