So I just busted out of the 10k at Commerce in the most absurd way. Before I go into detail with my bust out, I'll describe how my tourney went. Day 1 was kind of rough for me, as I got stuck at a real tough starting table with SCTrojans, Bushman, Neal Wang, and two other kids who play online 25/50 NLHE. I hovered around 20k (which was starting stack) until our table broke, and I got moved to a much softer table where there was the most absurd young kid lagtard ever to my left. At first I was just thinking that this monkey was on the most insane tilt ever, opening every other hand at the 100/200 level to a size between 425 and 500. In one hand, he opened to 475 with J4o from UTG and got in another 7k vs a short stack after flop came 3-4-8 all hearts (as he held the Jh). I proceed to play the following hand vs him: I raise to 600 with AK, he flats behind me, and one of the blinds flats. Flop comes 2-3-3 rainbow. Blind checks, I bet 1350, the lagtard behind me called and the blind folded. Turn was K, so I check and the kid thinks for a little bit then checks back. River was a 5, and I value bet 2,000 and he INSTANTLY tosses in 6k total. This was pretty puke since it really didn't feel like he was bluffing, and I was pretty positive he didn't have a hand like 3X or 22 since he check turn and slowplaying was not something he was doing with his current image at the table. So he had to have exactly 55 right? Which made me kind of sick to think that he rivered a 2 outer on me. Finally I just came to the conclusion that this is a bluff a higher % of the time than most people's raise in this spot (even thou I thought that % was real low) and thought he could also be going for VERY thin value with some hand that float flop and hit K on turn, so I called and he showed 64. /wrists
So that put me down to 7k, I squeezed AJs and got it in vs 88 to double to 15k, won a pot to get up to 16k, then hit a set when the lagtard hit top pair which ZOOOOMED me up to 32k. From there the rest of the day went pretty smooth. I ended up trying to fight back with the lagtard, but he toasted me with a 5 bet bluff (yea he was that sick) and bashed me back into my nit cave for the rest of the day, which was fine since the rest of the table sucked so whatever. With 5 mins left in the day I had 50k, and jmc (10/20 reg on stars) raises in CO, I flat button with KQ, and blind called. Flop came K-9-4 rainbow, and went check check to me so I bet smallish little under half pot, the blind folded and jmc check-raised all-in for like 2x pot so I called and he had 96o. Turn 9. Fuck my life T_T, so I end the day with 40,675.
My Day 2 table was super soft with the exception of Hafizzle and Neal Wang. Lucky for me, hafizzle never got things going and ended up busting pretty early. Neal Wang, however, got a hold of some chips and became a little bit of a pest to my left. To my right, there were two massive fish who clearly have no clue what they are doing. At the 200/400 level, it got folded to one of the fish who raised on the button to 1200, I reraised to 3400 w/ QsQc and he called. Flop came T-5-4 all hearts and I bet 5400, and he shoved for ~45k effective. Wat? I ask him if he knew how deep we were and he nodded, saying that he clearly ment to shove like x4 pot. I fold and he showed me Kh and said he had a pair with it. Later he claimed KK. That's fine. Lost a flip, missed a draw, got down to 30k, then won a flip, and raised some more pots and got myself up to 45k by the 300/600 level. I noticed my table had gotten pretty tight, as the blinds were raising so I decided to open up and start bringing some noise. Got my stack up to 60k without a showdown, easily being the most active at the table. Then this happens--->
That same fish who over-jammed pot on that earlier hand, opens in early position to 1600 from his 54,000 stack. I look at 88 and flat call in middle position. The small blind ends up calling too. Flop comes: Qc-8s-5c. BOOOYYAAAA!!! Small blind checks, the fish who raised checks, so I make my usual small gay 2900 bet. SB thinks for a bit, and counts out a raise, but then the nit inside of him made him fold. Action back around to the fish raiser who starts shuffling and moving around his chips, I see him say something so I take my headphones off to ask what he said. "I'm All-in" was the first words I heard, so I looked at the dealer and asked "What did he say?" The dealer announces the All-in and puts the All-in button in front of him. So fireworks are going off in my head, and I can hear people cheering my name as they shoot of streamers and sing songs of glory for my success. I stand up and give it the big wind-up fist pump like "YEEAAAAHH I CALL!!!!"
The fish calmly looks at me.......... then rolls over QQ.
HELLO YOUTUBES! It's been a while. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, you obv have not witness the musical genius of Ronald Jenkees so go youtube his ass asap! One of my New Years Resolutions was going to be to start updating my blog again, but since I'm super bored right now and my sister's house has the worst internet in the history of internets (can't even 1 table without getting disc every other hand) I thought that I might as well start updating my blog today. I've had a pretty rough last couple months in my life. A couple days after I came back from Mexico, I got a call from my dad that my mom had a stroke. At the time I was stuck in the middle of the 2k at WSOP going into Day 2, so I couldn't head back but my dad assured me that it was minor and she was going to be fine. Then a few days later my mom had another stroke, this one much worse. I'm not really good with the medical terminology and shit but my understanding of the situation was that the 2nd stroke was causing pressure to build up in her head so they had to do some brain surgery to remove the pressure and fix the swelling. After the Main Event (which was a disaster on it's own, that ended on the 2nd day for me) I immediately headed back home. My mom was in a coma for 3 weeks, and it was just really tough for me to see her like that. My mom eventually woke up at the end of August and was stable and coherent of her surroundings. The stroke had taken a toll thou, as she is bed ridden for a while, and is in the process of learning how to talk again. I stayed in the Bay Area for most of August, before heading back down to San Diego to move in with my new roommates: FrinkX and [vital]Myth.
Back in San Diego, things are chill as always. I spent most of September, October, and November surfing and playing poker. Raidan909 constantly told me over the summer that I was the laziest poker player he'd ever seen, since I would only log in 30-40k hands a month, and compared to my roommates over the summer, yea I was lazy caz they are all the sickest grinders of life. But I play WAAAAAAY more than both FrinkX and Myth combined lol. I swear if FrinkX replaced Diablo 2 / Call of Duty with just poker grinding he'd be such a monster. And if Myth takes a 1/10 of the time he spends trolling LP and turned that into serious grinding times, he'd be at nose bleed stakes by now.
In October we met up with a bunch of 2p2ers that lived in San Diego, along with Clayton and the ever so infamous carrotsnake. Meeting carrotsnake was pretty awesome actually since he was my arch nemesis back in the NL100-NL200 grinding days on stars. We found out that there was an entire house of 2p2ers that lived 3 mins from us, of which included: Tommyhawkers (aka ONEFINEAZN on cereus), TJorTeeJay (aka: RunHotBaby on cereus), Jfish (aka: SmartLAG on FTP), Sponger, and ktrieu (aka Mr_Tea). Had some fun nights chillin with those guys. In November, Rekrul decided to move his ass to downtown San Diego, and got a place in the same ballin' building that Markus (LURPED) lives in. It's pretty sweet having so many poker players in San Diego, esp to hang out with caz they really understand what you do. Like, I can't be complaining that I just played 5 hours only to make $500 after being up $3k to my college friends who have some $15/hr job caz then I sound like a douche bag. But the other poker players get it!
Me & Clayton from 2p2/Leggo
As for me and my poker, summer was a disaster over all. I was up 18k in the first 3 days of playing cash games at Wynn 10/20, and then spent the next 2 months bleeding it away. I ended -24k live, and -12k online (FUCK U FTP DOOMSWITCHING!) along with -40k in WSOP tournaments (Sorry peachy ) After summer thou has been pretty solid. I put in the grind, been playing upwards of 60k hands a month online, and have had constant 15-20k months in August, September, and October, before hitting a looooong break even stretch in November, ending in -2k for that month. December was one of the better months of the year for me. I moved a lot of my roll to CEREUS and other euro sites to grind (thanks Tommyhawkers for the advice), and been doing some sick heads-up grinding of 2/4 - 5/10. Live poker went awesome for me at Bellagio, as I ended up 12k at 5/10 and 3k at 10/20 along with being up 5k online all before the 15th of the month which was real nice. Only played 4 tournaments during the Bellagio series, of which 2 I bubbled then I cashed in the last one which was 13th in the 5k for basically nothing. Went back home only to see myself come back a week later when Evan made his WPT final table. Ship the life-shippin' shit hollaaaaaaa~~ Ended the year up somewhere between 175-180k which is some lol since I only made 63k online while spending most of the year online grinding. I need to play more live imo
Some more random pics of my friends from SD visiting Vegas during Bellagio series:
@ The Bank
Reppin' the SD in Vegas ez
So right now I'm just back in the Bay Area chilling. I'm stay at my sister's place playing with my lil nephew whos closing in on 11 months old. I'm trying to get the lazy ass to walk, but he has the thunder thighs which makes holding himself up difficult. I was walking at 10 months so this kid better get walking before I leave to SD. He can stand on his own, but now he needs to start moving in one direction. Visited my mom in the rehabilitation center and she is doing better. She is still in the process of learning how to talk, but is awake, very coherent, and is very emotional. The doctors are really optimistic, saying that it will be a slow recovery but she is making big leaps in rehab and will be able to come back home in 6 months.
Me and my boy Mike (the guy who did the cliff jumping earlier in my blog) who is moving back to San Diego in Jan.
My New Years resolutions:
1. 2500+ hands a day. 6 days a week. MINIMUM! I don't see why this can't be done. Poker is my job now, and the time it takes to play 2500 (~3-4 hours) is like nothing.
2. Work out more. Going to lay off the surfing for Jan and Feb caz the water is pretty fuckin cold, but recently in replacement of that I've been going to swim work outs at UCSD 2-3 times a week. I'm going to try and make that atleast 4 times a week and make better use of my 24 Hour Fitness membership during the nights when I don't go out. I really feel like I play better / more poker when I'm active with my life.
3. Update my blog. This is just the begining bitches...
4. Stop tilting my roommates. Somehow I find ways to keep them on infinite amounts of tilt.
5. Get more New Years resolutions.
One last pic, finally got the bigger size pic from Blair's WSOP Bracelet win from the summer, here you go LP:
Shout-out to Baal and his country, it's really not as dirty as I stereotyped it to be. This past weekend I went to Puerto Vallarta (Mexico) randomly for some vacation time with some friends. I was basically 50/50 about going, then decided to just go with it and bought my ticket 8:00pm the night before for a flight that left Vegas at 7:50am. Pretty standard. So I arrived in Puerto Vallarta at 4:00pm in the afternoon, and converted $1,000 into $9,900 play monies... errr I mean pesos (Baal-lin!). Checked into a beach-side room at the NH Krystal Hotel and went directly out to the beach to take a nap. Here are some pics:
Beach side view from the middle lobby area of my hotel.
Pre Epic Sun Burn.
My friends arrived at the hotel around 8:00pm and we ended up just drinking and chilling in the jacuzzi tubs til 1:00am. The next day we went out to the pool area:
San Diego girls out in Mexico with me
The pool's wet bar, which was sooooo clutch
Sunset on the beach
For those of you who went to PCA, you would probably know this bar: Senor Frog's. The one in Bahamas is one of my favorite bars, and the one here in Puerto Vallarta was no disappointment either. Definitely a pretty awesome time.
Such an awesome sign
Teh Drunkz
LOL @ Mexican who sneeks in on the left side of this pic
The boys and me
The girls and me
More drunk dancing
The next day we went downtown to shop and be standard dumb american tourists. Got a few fun souvenirs while I was there. While walking on the beach we saw a guy making these really cool rock formations. Note: These rocks arent glue'd together, the guy was just stacking them one on top of another. Sick balance?
Weird rock formations
Later on that night, we went to the night club (or "disco" as they say in Mexico) right next to our hotel called The Christine. For a $300 peso cover (approx $30 USD) we got a free table, and open bar all night. Sickest deal ever? It was pretty cool how they played a good mix of mexican and american music all night. Not really as upscale as some Vegas night clubs, but it definitly wasn't a shit hole. The place was built similar to The Bank at Bellagio, with the dance floor in the middle, and the tables circling around.
Two of my best friends
Tequila shots!
After one of the most awesome weekends I've had in a while, I left late Sunday afternoon and got back to Vegas at 8:00pm. Arrived home just in time to rail my roommate play his last 2 tables in the UB 200k gtd. After an hour long final table with big shots like AJKHoosier1 and ch0ppy, my roommate Thomas Gabriel (aka: plzlemmewin or GoGators86) took down the $45k for 1st place with help from some of his awesome roommates (*cough*). Pretty epic score. My next event at WSOP is going to be on Thursday, the $5,000 NLHE 6-max. Really pumped to play that! This break I had from Vegas should help clear my mind for it, so hopefully I can make something big out of that event.
So today I move out of my apartment. I told the cleaning lady that I'd be packed up and all my stuff would be out by 2:00pm. Guess what! It's almost 12:00pm and I haven't done shit today. I have to haul my bed, desk, bike, surfboard, chair, and a few boxes of clothes over to the storage unit I rented. But I woke up at 7:00am this morning in a very sad mood ... I going to miss being in San Diego so much. I had such a fun year, and even though I know Vegas is going to be a blast for the next 2 months, I really am going to miss chilling with all my friends down here. WSOP for me starts on Saturday with the $1500 NLHE donk fest. Weeeee~!! That should be interesting. I'll try to keep my blog updated on a daily basis with pictures (once I get my camera fixed since it's having some lens issues right now).
RiKD finally gave me back my camera the other night and I got more pictures from our fun night out at Stingaree. Check out these gems:
RiKD, myself, and my two friends.
Me and my hawaiian friends! They so chill.
Finally more pics from my friend's graduation
Can you guess who isn't graduating this year?
Me and my best friend from SD at her grad dinner
This picture def needs a caption. LOL
At the end of the night I was smashed and I kind of went through my friend's stone table. Oops
And if you still don't know why I miss this place... check out 8:00am in the morning on Mission Bay. It really doesn't get more beautiful...
See you guys in Vegas! Hopefully I'll be there soon. Not too soon thou~
I also enjoy making blog posts with flashy titles. Anything else you guys want to know about my life? May has been pretty good to me so far. Poker-wise, I'm doing average... I moved some money to FTP caz I got set up with a sick rakeback deal. In the 1st 3 days I had the most insane run at 2/4, making about 16k under my ID: COSMOWNED. Then I think I just got too cocky / started to run bad / started to play bad etc... caz over the past 2 weeks I've just been slowly bleeding away everything I won. Total, I'm up around 7.5k for the month in cash games which I'm definitely content about.
In all other aspects of my life, I continue to run like the lord Jesus Christ. I'm pretty sure I can walk on water, I just need to go out and try it tomorrow and prove to you guys that I can. With the exception of some retarded drama between a few of my friends, this month has really been the most memorable month of the year for me.
If anyone wants to photoshop my smile, here is your chance
Reggae Conerts! - My Hawaiian friend has introduced me to the insanely chill world of reggae music. Here is a clip that I took from my camera at Canes in San Diego / Mission Beach:
Song: Attention Span Artist: Rebelution
Mid-May our good friend (and fellow LPer) Richard Dayton known better in these circles as RiKD, decided he was going to come out to San Diego and live with Myth & FrinkX til WSOP time. Last week we all went out to get a table at Stinagree, needless it say it was a pretty fucking sweet night:
Pre-puking RiKD - In fine form if I do say so myself, trying to spit his game at one of my friends. Later on in the night was not so glamorous for our solider.
[vital]Myth...
...Expressed his love for me
Oh boy... Might make this my new facebook profile picture
After Stingaree closed we met up with Markus and Theo Tran, which was funny since Markus informed Theo that I had 4 bet bluffed him with T9 in the $2500 event I got 3rd in at the Bellagio Cup. Theo is definitely a fun guy with a good sense of humor thou. Around 2:30am, RiKD proceeds to puke all over the couch we were sitting on, along with all over FrinkX's shirt and shoes that he had loaned him. We get the boot and my 2 friends drag me into this car with this girl:
So I'm sitting there in her car as she is driving, thinking to myself that this girl looks really familiar, even though I had never met her in my entire life... She says her name is EV, and I think I cracked a poker joke assuming these 3 girls would get it. Epic fail. Besides the point though, I finally just ask her why she looks familiar and my friends look at me with a crazed looked and proceed to inform me she was on Real World / Road Rules challenge (like the Inferno and the Gauntlet) which aired on MTV. Oh hey that makes a lot of sense! She was SUPER down to earth thou, really one of the most real people that I've met down in SD so far. She was even nice enough to go completely out of her way to drop off me and my friend in Mission Valley.
I really love random things that happen like that. Ok last picture for this post:
The night before two of my best friends graduate from USD. Definitely makes me regret not working harder in school, because they are just so set and sure of what they are going to do with their lives and I'm sitting here feeling a little lost sometimes. I'm not complaining though! I got more good pics on my camera but RiKD and I seemed to have swapped our Cannon Elf's that we got from the FPP store so when I get that back from him I'll make another blog post. OK now! To the main part of this blog post:
WSOP is coming up! And I do indeed get a little chub every time I think of it. My plan is to leave the morning of the 30th and stay at the Wynn for two nights with my roommate Thomas Gabriel (aka plzlemmewin on FTP, GoGators86 on PS / UB). He's really one of the most humble / nicest people I've ever met, and I've been constantly helping him with his poker game for the past year. The improvements he has made have been insane, and so now he's one of peachy's horses for the WSOP. I really can't wait for the 31st, which is the first NLHE $1500 event. The field / prize pool is expected to be insane, so... RUN GOOD ONE (MORE) TIME!!!
Well my birthday is on May 8th, so it's not really my birthday yet, but last weekend we decided to celebrate it anyways mainly because it's the end of the school semester for everyone down here and shit is getting busy. So last Saturday me and a bunch of my friends met up at this sushi place called Mizu's in Mission Beach and then went off to Ivy downtown for a pretty shippin' night. Since this year has been so amazing for me already, and I'm up almost x2 as much as I made all of last year I decided this was the night to go totally degen and spew on. So spew #1: The night before I called up my best friend from Hawaii and asked him what he was up to, he said nothing so I told him to come to my birthday party. He's like wat, how am I going to get out there? So I ship him a $1300 roundtrip ticket, and he flys his ass out here. Spew #2: Saturday morning I'm calling around trying to book a party bus for the night but every place I call had been booked for weeks. I totally had no clue you had to book party buses so far in advance. In Vegas you can just call up anywhere and they insta ship you whatever you want. San Diego is not Vegas I guess So I spend like 2 hours calling up all these limo places trying to find something that will take us downtown and finally one of the last places I call, they pick up and tell me that a party had canceled their reservation for a 20 passenger party bus 2 hours before I called. How good do I run? Honestly... does anyone run better than me at anything? Finally, I call up my boy Markus (LURPED) and he calls up his VIP hook-ups downtown and books a sweet table on the rooftop at Ivy for $3k. After that, the rest of the night happened as follows:
Dinner at Mizu's - Anyone like the tie? Goes good with the $600 Armani shirt I wearing yeah?
Me and Mah Boy - Spending exactly 12 hours in San Diego before going back to school on Monday. LOL Sickest spew of life
Me and Mah Girls - 3 of my closest friends down here
Me and Mah Group - There are people missing from the pic But lol fun times
Btw, bottle service is a lot cheaper than in Vegas in downtown San Diego... like we were struggling to get close to the 3k minimum even after ordering a bottle of Cristal and Dom. Needless to say, Sunday morning was... painful.
Been grinding online once again, trying to log in enough hands this month so I can keep my supernova status going on PokerStars. It's really weird to be grinding online again after playing in some of the softest games ever in Vegas. Been doing fairly well for the most part. Today I decided to be a semi-tournament donk and entered the Sunday Million ($530) and my first WSOP Main Event package satellite. The Sunday Million went as usual, I got about 2 hours deep in it then got a bad beat to lose half my stack and proceeded to think it was a good idea to just punt off my last 15bb's instead of waiting for a hand like I am suppose to. Whatever. My main event satellite went a little bit better...
Ship it? Sucked out early to stay alive (K9 vs AQ), and from there all my hands held. For the last hour and a half of the tournament I had yellowsub86 with the chip lead to my direct left. It was gross, since once he got a hold of a big enough chip lead he started to open shove every hand for shits and giggles. The bubble lasted a solid 30+ minutes, and finally ended when it was folded around to the small blind who was the shortest stack at the table as he shoved right into my QQ. Sickest hold ever ftw~! Cool thing about this entire thing is that peachy is still going to be staking me for the main event (he's staking me for the entire WSOP series) so I get to pocket the cash. Sweet bankroll booster.
Other than that, things have been chill in my life. I surfed around today and found that I am still in the top 100 Player of the Year on Cardplayer.com, ranked 54th for Bluff Magazine's Player of the Year, and I'm 39th in Bluff Magazine's "Hot" Players. Reminds me of the my starcraft days when I use to care about my ladder rankings on WGTour. Hopefully WSOP will boost me up these "ladders". One last thing before I go...
Shakira is stupid hot. The way she can move herself is totally super sexy.
So here are all the details on the laptop I am thinking about buying. If anyone has any great last minute suggestions that would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise at the end of tomorrow I'm going to down kick the $4,000 to get this baby built and shipped to me.
On another note, congrats to mig.com for getting 4th in the $5k at Bellagio. Also congrats to peachy_keen for getting so deep at Monte Carlo. Still got a friend doing well in Monte Carlo right now, so everyone better sway all your luck to Micheal Martin (Martine23) for tomorrow's final table. I know mig, Daut, and Nazgul are going to want to see their horse pick up that $3million+ score.
I played my first session of online poker in like 3 weeks today... boy it felt weird. Just kind of strange playing with regulars that actually know what they are doing. I think I'm going back to Vegas this weekend and try and satellite into the $25k main event. If I don't win myself a seat I'll probably end up playing the 10/20 NL since those games are probably going to be so sick soft. Hopefully things will continue to go my way. Wish me luck! I'll leave you guys with another hot song:
Decided to make a random blog post caz it really tilts the shit out of me everytime I log onto LP.net and I have to see milkman's ugly mug on the featured blog front page. The man doesn't even smile! Who wants to look at that, let alone read his random crap! GG ur life milkman. So anyways, more on topic, I need a laptop for the summer and I really want to get a good high end one so if anyone can direct me to a good website where I can order one please let me know. I'm looking into Dell right now and am kind of curious about their 20" laptops that look sick baller (kind of like a mini-desktop pc). Alienware also has some pretty sick looking laptops as well. I've never been a big fan of apple computers, but the MacPowerBook might also be an option I'm looking into. I'd like to know what you guys think. If you can, please post comments / links or whatever to laptops would fit my needs. All I want is something that I can carry around my media on and play poker easily.
This weekend I dont know what I'm doing but I don't want to be in San Diego since a bunch of my friends are leaving other places. I might go back to Vegas to play some of the 10/20 while the main event runs, or if peachy is willing to put me in it, play in the main event myself. That would be one hell of an experience. I'm also trying to figure out what I'm doing for WSOP over the summer. I got a lot of options but some are less attractive than others, probably will end up getting a chill place with Lyric and Pavel or do something like stay at the Wynn for a month and a half.
Lastly, here is a fuckin rockin ass song by 3 of my favorite MC's ft. Thom Yorke: CRS (Child, Rebel, Solider) - Us Placers
Got 3rd place after 2 and a half hours of playing at the final table. Gigabet is one of the most aggressive tournament players I've ever seen, and everything he does is pretty well thought out. JC Tran on the other hand... apparently misred my ability to soul read, and analyize situations perfectly. I was looking over the final table chip counts last night and realized an interesting dynamic that was going to pop-up:
1 Roy Winston (Las Vegas, NV, USA) Going to the final table with 255,500 chips - seat 8
2 J.C. Tran (Sacramento, CA, USA) Going to the final table with 200,000 chips - seat 3
3 Darrell Dicken AKA "Gigabet" (Waterloo, IA, USA) Going to the final table with 190,000 chips - seat 7
4 Jonathan McGowan (San Diego, CA, USA) Going to the final table with 156,500 chips - seat 4
5 Kevin Iacofano (Concord, OH, USA) Going to the final table with 90,000 chips - seat 5B
6 Frank Cremen (Las Vegas, NV, USA) Going to the final table with 88,000 chips - seat 1
7 James Hoeppner (Las Vegas, NV, USA) Going to the final table with 65,000 chips - seat 6
8 Vasile Buboi (Anaheim, CA, USA) Going to the final table with 64,500 chips - seat 9
9 Allie Prescott (Memphis, TN, USA) Going to the final table with 45,500 chips - seat 2
Note the chip counts and seats, JC Tran is to my direct right. To my left is Kevin Iacofano and James Hoeppner who were easily the tightest two players I have ever met in my entire life. So... on my button, Gigabet is UTG so his raising range tightens up considerably, while both those nits are going to be in the blinds and it is basically a free round of blinds for me as long as JC Tran behaves himself in the cut-off. So naturally JC Tran isn't going to behave himself, and I'm sure he realizes this situation as well. 6 hands into the tournament, and I'm not kidding, litterally the 6th hand of the tournament we are still 9 handed and this spot happens. Action gets folded around to JC Tran in the cut-off and I'm thinking in my head "He is raising the deck" so naturally he pops it up to 11k at 2k/4k blinds. I look down at Q9o with the plan to reraise anything decent, so obv Q9o in position vs the deck range is good enough and I reraise to 33k. Both blinds insta-fold (standard) and action gets back around to JC Tran. This is what I expect him to do: I expect him to fold some of his absolute crap that doesnt flop well, flat call with everything that flops even remotely well (all the way down to as bad as 53o) and reraise a range of like 77+ and AJ+ for value. My plan was simple, if he reships it preflop I have to fold, otherwise I'm more than comfortable to see a flop in position. JC Tran flat calls and instantly I know that to do this profitably with a wide range (which he does flat call here with a retardedly wide range) he will have to be shipping it in insanely light on the flop to give himself some fold equity. So the flop comes T-9-6 which is almost like the effective nuts for my hand. He checks, I bet 44k and action gets around to him and he tanks for a little bit then shoves all-in. Whaaaa? The tanking threw my off a bit, since I expect him to insta-shove if he was actually doing it light. I looked over at him and said "I don't think I can fold this hand". In my head it just felt like the sickest cooler ever if I was beat in this spot since Q9 on that board beats prolly close to 80% of hands he shoves with on that board (KJ, KQ, J9, 98, 76, 65, J8, 85, etc etc etc)so I call for my last 77k and someone asks if I have an overpair, and I'm like "wat?" He turns up 76s, and I yell "HOOOOLLDD" as I table Q9. The look on everyone's face was fucking priceless since half the table had no clue what in the world was going on, or how I thought Q9 could ever be good there. I looked over at Gigabet and obv you could tell he was just like "so standard, how do u not snap call that with Q9 lol" Turn and river brick, and I double up to over 300k + the chip lead. JC Tran shakes his head after the hand saying "I knew you were making a move" trying to justify his play in some weird way obviously not realizing how bad his preflop call was given the situation vs me.
Then I get card dead, which sucked. Finally we get down to 4 handed and the short stack in the sb shoves into me and I look down at Ac and think about calling with just looking at one, then I squeeze out the other one and bam it's the As. LOL GG! Flop comes A-4-4 and the guy's 88 was dead. 3 handed vs Roy Winston & Gigabet, I have the chip lead. Roy is playing very tight and basically letting Gigabet and I clash. I try and establish some dominance and Gigabet insta-puts me back in my place with some well timed reraises. God he's so good Finally I get coolered when I call out of the bb with QTdd and the flop comes Q-9-9, I check he c-bets from the button and I check-raise an amount leaving enough behind where it looked like I could get shoved off the hand. He shoves, and I snap call caz I felt like I induced the shove given how we were playing and bam he happens to have AQ which was so sick! Finally I squeeze all-in with JTs for my last 12bbs and Gigabet calls with QJo and holds. Out in 3rd place for $58,890. Such a sick life Gigabet proceeds to annilate Roy Winston heads-up and wins. Boo!!!! Fuck my life
) After summer thou has been pretty solid. I put in the grind, been playing upwards of 60k hands a month online, and have had constant 15-20k months in August, September, and October, before hitting a looooong break even stretch in November, ending in -2k for that month. December was one of the better months of the year for me. I moved a lot of my roll to CEREUS and other euro sites to grind (thanks Tommyhawkers for the advice), and been doing some sick heads-up grinding of 2/4 - 5/10. Live poker went awesome for me at Bellagio, as I ended up 12k at 5/10 and 3k at 10/20 along with being up 5k online all before the 15th of the month which was real nice. Only played 4 tournaments during the Bellagio series, of which 2 I bubbled then I cashed in the last one which was 13th in the 5k for basically nothing. Went back home only to see myself come back a week later when Evan made his WPT final table. Ship the life-shippin' shit hollaaaaaaa~~ Ended the year up somewhere between 175-180k which is some lol since I only made 63k online while spending most of the year online grinding. I need to play more live imo 
