Upcoming Poker Events

Cabana Restaurant in Nashville will be hosting a Poker Tournament with tonight and tomorrow being qualifying events and final table will be on Wednesday. I plan on attending tomorrow evening.

Then on Thursday night I will be playing at Bob's Bellagio, which is always fun.

14 days until I leave for Vegas Baby, can't wait.

PEACE!

Step 1 Completed

2009 WSOP Steps on PokerStars - Starts TODAY!

I have never attempted to win a seat to the WSOP online before, which doesn't make much sense since the name of this blog is "My Poker Path To... The Main Event". How the hell do I think I will get there if I don't work at it some how. Yes, I have the home league and that is going to be my ticket to the big dance but that's not until 2010.

Today on PokerStars, they have started the steps, so I have plenty of FPP to attempt to win a few steps up the ladder. This early on you can play for pennies but it's a tough field. I figured I will work hard and see how far I can get and at the same time it will help me with my skills for the home league.

Good luck to anyone else attempting to win a seat.

PEACE

A Marathon Day

I started playing online poker this morning around 9am and I just finished, it's been a marathon day of poker. I played two $2.20 triple shoot out's for the Sunday Million, went out 5th in one and 132 in the other. I played alot of $.25/$.50 No Limit and some Limit. It was nice to get to play alot of poker. Overall, feel like I did pretty well and made a few bucks along the way.

Now it's time to watch High Stacks Poker and WPT on GSN, then some Amazing Race and finally Celebrity Apprentice. I have to tell you Annie Duke is really good on this show. I am not a huge fan of her in regards to poker but she knows how to take charge, be a team player and overall is great on the show. Tonight she goes head to head against Joan Rivers and it should be interesting. Tonight's challenge is a charity event and basically who raises the most money wins. Annie is calling all her millionaire poker player friends. Joan River's team knows she is doing this so they are trying to find a poker player that hates Annie to donate a ton of money. If they manage to pull that off, it's going to be pretty funny. They apparently are talking to The Poker Brat but I doubt he would go against Annie as they both are the only Pro's on Absolute Poker. Who knows.

PEACE!

No Poker God

Two weeks ago when I was in Arizona I posted a blog about one evening of playing, nothing to exciting. What I didn't post was the day I was leaving I had a few hours to spare so I went back to the casino and it was a horrible experience. Within an hour I lost $100 from donkey's that would chase and chase the River and their golden ticket to my money.

As I don't want to upset myself again, I won't give details but let me just say that two hands back to back, I had flopped trips and raised, reraised, etc and both times someone called me down and made better trips from the river cards. This happened over and over and over again in that one hour.

I have a subscription to Bluff Magazine and I actually received the April edition the day before I left for AZ. I put it in my bag and boarded the plane thinking I would read it on the 4 hour flight down. I didn't. Instead my ipod touch was more entertaining and I actually watched 2008 WSOP.

Last night I finally pulled out the April edition and started reading it. Got to page 36 and found an article by Adam Slutsky called "Return To The Valley of The Donks, Who Knew The World's Biggest Fish Were In The Desert?" Next to it is a pic of the Arizona state flag. Interesting, I start to read.

The article goes on to explain why AZ doesn't have No Limit and how they have created this stupid $5-$150 game and about how bad the players are at Casino Arizona. Three full pages about DONKEY'S at this one particular casino.

Of course, now I am thinking if I had read this before would I have gone back for the 2nd adventure, knowing the night before (although I basically broke even) I was shocked at how that one guy was caughting all kinds of cards but the fact was he was playing EVERY two cards and NEVER folded!! First blog about Casino Arizona I think I said the Poker God's were looking over him that night... I take that back. There is no Poker God, just good poker players and DONKEY'S.

Next time, I'll read my magazine before I go, laugh.

PEACE.

Home League Update

Event #4 was played tonight. We had some drama earlier in the day when one of our 9 players had to quit the league due to financial hardship. I completely understand, times are really hard and I feel privileged to be able to play in this league myself. Nonetheless, with just a few hours to spare we tired and sucecced in finding a replacement player, Kyle. I have played with Kyle before at Bob's Belligo a few weeks back. Nice young guy. Honestly though, from a perspective of game skill and my chances of winning this thing, I would have rather kept the other player, laugh. Kyle knows a little more about the game of poker then the other player. It's all good though, playing with good players only make you better so I'm all for that.

We decided to let Kyle come into the league taking over previous players points. Everyone agreed and I hope we can maintain this current group of players for the next 14 months.

We changed the structure tonight to reflect that of Event #7 of the WSOP. We had to make some changes as we found the tournament was ending rather faster and didn't allow much time for skillful poker playing. I think tonight's structure worked great. Game took about 3 1/2 hours to play with a 20 minutes break but it's way better then a 2 hour game with a 20 minute break. We added ante's into the structure and this works great also. Hopefully the rest of the group agrees that it works better.

First few hands of the night I had some good starting hands, AQ, AK, KQ and managed to call off about a 1/3 of my chips pre-flop. Somewhere in the 1st level I look down at two unknown random crap cards. I raise it pre-flop and get I believe one caller. J 2 blank come of the flop. I bet out, one caller. Turn is another 2, I bet out, one caller. River is another 2 - I three bet this out and I get the call I don't want. I don't even look at my cards as he turns over a J which is good. My chip stack went down to just over $1200 (starting stacks are $4000)

A few hands later, I get pocket K's and min raise it to $200 and get one caller, flop comes K 5 something and I check and other person bets out $600. At this point that's half my stack and is actually what I wanted to happen. I raise it up to "all in" for the remaining $600 of my chips. She insta calls and has pocket 5's for trips. My trips hold up over her trips and I double up. At this point, I feel pretty good as I have some chips to play with. The rest of the night I play pretty tightly and finish in 5th. Not the results I wanted but overall I'm 2nd in points. My goal is to stay in the top three in points all he way until the last event.

Next games in on May 20th, 5 days after I get back from Las Vegas. I will be posting daily blogs from Las Vegas so make sure you check back in May.

Until then, thanks to all the member of the home league, welcome Kyle and I look forward to next month.

PEACE!

Played last night at Casino Arizona. I didn't realize that AZ didn't allow NL poker, that's OK though, I just played my normal $3/$6 LIMIT.

I got sat at a table, normal crowd, mainly locals. It was early around 4:30 PM Arizona time. Last night was the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship game in which my home state Michigan, got their ASS kicked... anyways, I knew once the game started that more and more people would show up.

If anyone hasn't hasn't ever played here before, they have a great room. They say they have 46 non-smoking tables, but it seems like twice that many. It's a nice room for sure. Full service wait staff dedicated just for the poker room players. The tables have automatic controls on them to call server or floor over to the table. Quick, friendly, service and good cheap food.

They also have a special every two hours called something like SPLASH POT with Kickers special which basically means they pull table numbers on balls like in bingo, if your table is called you get to play the splash pot. AT this point they come over and put $100 in the middle of the table, winner takes all. Everyone else, wins $20 in red chips!!! I didn't win that BIG pot. The POT was at $246 as everyone kept raising, re-raising etc because they wanted to win. The winner was a nice French guy, who was on a bad run up to that point. After he won that pot and had some chips in from of him, he played any two cards and won. I now believe in the Poker God. There is one. This guy couldn't lose a hand. He would play J2 and win with a flush or full house. He would play K3 and mack a damn 5 card straight to win the pot. He played for another 3 hours after the SPLASH POT and cashed out for around $800, I have never seen anyone in low stacks limit make that much money in that short of time, it was incredible... wish it had been me.

I really don't have much to share in regards to my poker playing, I played for about 5 hours and walked away $5 down, laugh. At one point I was up about $80 but things just didn't keep going for me. A family of three showed up at the table shortly after 9:30 and I didn't get a good feel from them, I don't like playing at a table anyways with family members but this mother and two 20 something son's gave me some bad vibes, so I left.

Overall, had a great time, wish I could have played more. I have one more night in Scottsdale, but won't have any time to make it back to the casino. Tonight work is having a Hawaiian Polynesian dinner event with an Elvis impersonator, so I won't be missing that.

Next poker playing event will be the home game on the 15th.

PEACE!