Poker Blogs

Hey guys, I just got back from a trip to Niagara Falls and I decided to play the 1/2 game they have there at the Niagara Casino.

I arrive, I'm a bit tired but nothing a large Tim Horton's coffee couldn't solve. It was a Thursday night so it wasn't too busy, I went there with a friend who doesn't really know anything about poker. I gave her $60 (The min buy-in) to splash around with to have some fun and apply some concepts I kind of nonchalantly been teaching her about.

I sit down at a table and my friend sits at the one next to mine. As I take my seat, I recognize one of the players there: a girl that played at the CNE casino I've been dealing at in the summer. I remember her because she's cute, funny, very friendly and talks a lot.

Oh yeah, she's also a massive, massive whale.

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/aww-yea-meme-original.jpg

There's five hands until I'm the big blind so I observe the table. A ~30-year old black man in seat 7, from the table-talk, he is very tight and from the way hes putting in bets pf and post, I'm assuming he's nitty-TAG. The white-man to my immediate right has tattoos, and the way the dealer knows his name I assume he's a regular. He's in a hand with an older white man ~40-50, where he gets it all-in on the river and Showdowns the J10 nut straight. The older white man from the way hes looking had a very very badly played Two pair. He re-buys for $260

The white man to my left is around ~20-30 enjoyed talking about poker and he threw around terms like equity, set-mine, and pot odds so I assumed he was a bad-but-thinks-hes-good player.

So I post the big blind. UTG White Poker Player (~$350) limps, and the Friendly Whale (~$170) limps when the Black Man(~$200) raises to 16. It folds to me where I peel an Ad. Then I think about the ranges I'm continuing with hoping for another A, where I peel a Ks.

I wanted to play longer than this for my first real decision since my friend was still splashing around learning and having fun and my stop loss was only at $260 and I didn't have any REAL reads. My initial reads weren't really concrete but I decided to just flat OOP (which is probably a mistake) than the other option of re-raising where I didn't really expect anyone to fold and playing OOP in a large pot. UTG flats and we see a flop of:

Pot (~$55)
10h 9h 5d

I check, Poker-Player checks, Black-man checks to a

Turn:
4d

I check, Poker-Player bets ~$15, Black-man calls,
I fold.

River bricked and they checked down to SD where

Poker-Players shows 22
Black-man shows QJo

http://t.qkme.me/3525c4.jpg

Dead-wrong reads... So I think to myself: I play so bad...

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/554/facepalm.jpg

Lamenting my play, it goes to the VERY NEXT hand where the Friendly Whale(FW)(~$150) limps, and Black-man raises to $5 this time.

The White-Man-w/ Tattoos (WMT)(~$450) whom I assumed hes a regular from the way the dealer knows his name calls and I peel the Ks. Then peel the Kh.

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/005/742/sweetjesus.jpg

It's going to be a good trip right? =D.

I make it $26 (probably should have made it larger ~.~) in the sb and the FW calls as well as WMT on the BU. Flop comes:

Pot ($~79)
10d 5h 6d

I c-bet to $55 (should have made this larger as well)I bet $55 in the moment because it was the rest of my one hundred dollar stack.

The Friendly Whale sighs and folds, then the WMT thinks and announces he's all-in.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/131/399/fry.PNG?1307468855

It's my second hand T_T and I wanted to play longer for other reasons as stated above. So I'm thinking that he's a regular and probably a some-what decent hand-reader who knows what I probably have. I wasn't sure if he could do this with a FD so I thought for about a minute and whispered call. He didn't reveal his hand or anything and the dealer didn't seem to catch it, so I moved my chips to the middle and announced louder my call.

My thought process was that I didn't know how he played and since the pots around ~$300 and I'm risking $100 so I'm getting ~3:1 and in a vacuum against 1/2NL players, I could be against badly played QQ or a FD. I thought 55 and 66 would play it exactly like this and it was my first thought. But I figured there was too much in the pot to fold and I was going to shove any turn anyway so might as well.

Turn came the 4s and the river measured the 5s where he announced two pair. I show my KK and he says that's good. Apparently he had pair + FD.

http://iruntheinternet.com/lulzdump/i...-good-man-goat-squint-12883904505.jpg

Feels good bro.

Which comes to the VERY next hand on the BU where I have 66 and limped behind. I was talking about the KK hand where people thought I was going to fold and told them that maybe he had a set and I continued talking where I saw a flop of

Pot (~$12)
Qs 10s 6c

Then continued talking without skipping a beat.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lr6gxv3sdV1qial2l.png

Checks 6-way to me where I bet $10.

Get snapped called by White-Poker-Player (WPP)

then bet $30 to a 7c turn and I get a fold.

It continues, I play tight, get AK two more times, Raise PF this time! And get folds around. Pick up KK (AGAIN) UTG-raise to $11 and get folds. Get AA Raise $15 pf to a limper. Bet flop he folds.

http://www.terrariaonline.com/attachments/okay-meme-jpg.3008/

I ran really good but no action unfortunately. I'm just talking, agreeing with people's poker logic, listening to stories, laughing, making sure everyone's having a good time. I somehow got the image of a tight-winning-poker player. I decide I should start stealing more and making more bluffs.

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/o.../006/550/feel-like-a-sir-template.jpg

Until we come to this hand.

Kind-of new player sits down, Middle-Aged Lady (MAL) who seems nice, we welcome her to the table and I assume she's a reg as the dealer knows her name. She posts 4 to the bb away so I assume fishy.

She checks her option and flops two pair where she bets it aggressively.

I'm dealt AsQs UTG so I raise to $11 and get called by (MAL)(~250) in the sb and (WMT)(~$85) in the bb.

Flop comes;

(Pot: ~$35)
Ac Jc 5h

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lltzgnHi5F1qzib3wo1_400.jpg

(MAL) donks $20 and (WMT) shoves for $75.

Going on my reads, I guess MAL is doing it with ~A5 or ~AJ or ~55 but I wondered if she could be doing it with a smaller Ace as thats what 1/2NL players do. The shove from (WMT) could be an Ace or a J or a FD. Pretty weak and I'm almost certain I beat him. I think for about 10 seconds and fold.

(MAL) calls and showdowns AK and (WMT) had a FD apparently.



Then we come to this hand where I feel like I made a pretty bad mistake.

UTG+1,(MAL)(~$350) limps, I limp on the BU with 4s4d, sb completes and the bb (Tight-Older-Asian-Gentleman)(TOAG)(~$500) decides to raise $15.

(MAL) calls, I call and sb thinks and folds.

Flop:

pot (~$50)
10h 6h 5d

(TOAG) does something strange and he decides to c-bet to $10.

(MAL) calls.

I smell weakness, like (TOAG) has ~AK, AQ because I figured he'd bet bigger for value unless he's looking to c/r, and like I don't really think this particular gentleman would play AA,KK,QQ that tricky on this board. (MAL) I guess maybe picked up on this? Has something like a pair of 6 or a 5, maybe a FD, maybe a SD and maybe a 10.

So I re-raise to $50. Reason: TOAG probably has a weak hand and MAL has something pretty marginal that she might fold. I had a plan to bet a A,K,Q,3, MAYBE 7, and obviously a 4 turn card.

TOAG folds and MAL starts thinking, and looks pretty distressed. So I felt pretty good about it until she asked how much it was and she did that,

"Mehhhh, Ehhhhhh, Okay, I call."

Turn:

6c

Bad bluff card =[. Not folding anything but maybe a draw. But if she's calling with those on the flop I think I have to bet huge on the turn to make draws fold.

She checks.

I check.

River:
6s

Worse River card haha, but Maybe I'm good so I check behind,

and she SD's a Jc10c for 6's full of 10's.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/002/830/sad_frog.jpg

I always pull stupid bluffs to take a chunk of my profits almost every session but w/e, I'm still trying to learn and I did leave with a healthy $200 profit after ~2 hours of playing.

Plus my friend ended up with $85 (She was up ~$130 at one point) which is really really good for her first EVER live poker casino experience and probably her 10th time playing overall.

Anyway thanks for reading =D


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Well I'm really settling into my schedule. Grinding 3 days during the week for 7 hours (5-12), and grinding 8-10 hours on fridays and trying for 8-10 hours on Saturdays and doing Sunday + one random weekday off. Seems like a good work-life balance right now, so hopefully that keeps up. Ok, enough with the scheduling mumbo jumbo...

RESULTS:

http://i.imgur.com/aOdVE.jpg

I'm still a bit behind pace on hours played, but I should get 180 hours in this month because I've been playing a lot, which will almost cover up my 95 hour January. If I can add a couple extra hours here and there I can bump my monthly average up to 150 hours by May I'm sure.

For other stats, Hands per hour is probably around 30 for live play, so you can derive most things from that. i.e 240*30 = only ~7200 hands played so far.


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http://imgur.com/t65Qj.jpg

Mostly ~10 tabling FR 10nl, sometimes more. Tilted a bit too much for my liking. Prolly played 3k of them today, the rest over the course of a week.

So, isn't it a bit weird to have all my $$ won from NSD? Do I just need 2 learn to fold pre?


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I've recently started playing PLO again after a two year absence. I've got a full-time job so I don't have a tremendous amount of time. My goal was to just focus on learning and not care about the results. At times my emotions still get the best of me but I'm getting stronger at dealing with it. Knowing I don't care about the money and I can just approach poker as a hobby certainly makes it easier.

In 18k hands I've won $257.00. A pithy amount playing PLO50 but hey it's something I guess. The all-in EV has me at $710.00 so as usual I'm well below equity. That of course isn't calculated by street so it's a pretty useless metric considering the number of 3-bets in PLO and if you run bad on flops (where you get it in most of the time) you're losing huge amounts of money to trash play from gambling fish but it is what it is.

I'm used to it so it's no big deal I suppose. I'm trying to play a maximum of four tables and preferably less. Focusing on just learning as much as possible and improving my game. I feel like I've gained a lot of knowledge this month and hopefully I'll keep getting better. My roll is short because 1k is still tied up on FTP but I see no point in playing lower than PLO50. It's a 10pt/bb rake trap even at the stakes where I am now.

Winnings: $257.00
Rake Paid: $1788.00

Yep that's fair. I kill the games at 12pt/bb and Pokerstars takes nearly 10pt/bb for my trouble. that really makes games beatable and fair. I'd estimate 97% or more of PLO players at PLO50 and below are losers. Even the players who deserve to be winning. Honestly not sure why I even bother playing for such a greedy site.

They repackaged a bunch of lies about fixing things but don't kid yourselves. Pokerstars is 100% in it for themselves. The sad thing is if there were say 40% of players being winning players, then Pokerstars would have thousands of people spreading the word about how they're kicking ass and making money. People can't help but brag. People who hear them bragging can't help but want to get into it themselves. That's how the poker boom got going. The idea of easy money. Oh well though, Pokerstars still wins and rakes in millions so they're obviously doing it right for them, can't really fault them for it.

Just remember though if you play poker and you think you work for yourselves, you don't. You basically work for Pokerstars. Part of a giant pyramid scheme. A brilliant one at that.




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Hey guys!
If you dont know yet I challenged myself into making 20K playing MTTs in Thailand in the next 6 months starting in February. I bloged about it a couple entries ago so if you wanna know more about it take a look.

Here is how I'm doing so far:

http://i.imgur.com/FmlXj.png

Yes I know, almost 1 month gone and I havent made any money.
I'm feeling pretty good about it actually! I've been putting some good game volume and have learned a lot so I dont feel it was a waste of time. I strongly believe I'm gonna be able to accomplish this challenge. My average buy-in is $6 cause I have a pretty nitty BR Management. At the moment my BR is $2.9k. Take a look at my BR Management Chart:

FOR FREEZE-OUT TOURNMENTS

BUY-IN___________MOVEUP__________MOVEDOWN
$10,00___________$3.000,00___________$2.500,00
$13,50___________$4.050,00___________$3.375,00
$16,50___________$4.950,00___________$4.125,00
$22,00___________$6.600,00___________$5.500,00
$27,00___________$8.100,00___________$6.750,00
$33,00___________$9.900,00___________$8.250,00
$44,00___________$13.200,00__________$11.000,00
$55,00___________$16.500,00__________$13.750,00
$109,00__________$32.700,00__________$27.250,00
$165,00__________$49.500,00__________$41.250,00
$215,00__________$64.500,00__________$53.750,00
$530,00__________$159.000,00_________$132.500,00

FOR REBUY TOURNMENTS

BUY-IN_________MOVEUP__________MOVEDOWN
$2,00__________$3.000,00__________$2.500,00
$3,00__________$4.500,00__________$3.750,00
$5,00__________$7.500,00__________$6.250,00
$8,00__________$12.000,00_________$10.000,00
$11,00_________$16.500,00_________$13.750,00
$16,50_________$24.750,00_________$20.625,00
$22,00_________$33.000,00_________$27.500,00
$33,00_________$49.500,00_________$41.250,00
$55,00_________$82.500,00_________$68.750,00
$109,00________$163.500,00________$136.250,00
$215,00________$322.500,00________$268.750,00
$530,00________$795.000,00________$662.500,00

Very nitty right? I like it this way cause I know MTT variance is pretty crazy and I hate mixing my finances with poker, so I rather make sure I will never need to put a penny in PokerStars ever again.

Lets keep this forum active guys! Dont let LP die.
And grind hard!
Cheers!


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Just checked my account today just to keep track of the transfer then I see that a whole lot of vip exchange rates got unlocked for me out of no where. For the past month I only had 3 options as far as exchanging points go and my highest option was something like 130 points for 3$. Now I have like 40 options and a lot of them are like 1800 pts for 80$, 6k points for 300$ etc. Did this happen to anyone else? Just bought 300$ woot OoO


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main poker is dead. hand histories is shit. general still kickin' but I dunno for how long. what's going to save this wonderful site!?!


die howard and bilat power posts is what I see everyday. i try to contribute but the cynicsm kills my stupid threads. lol


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About a month ago I had an interesting dinner conversation with some close friends that are also poker players about poker communities (one of the very rare times we talk about poker). One side of the argument was that making any sort of contribution to a community of serious poker players is a really bad idea. You're decreasing your own future EV by making other players better at taking money out of the poker economy, and you aren't really doing net overall good in the world when it's specifically a zero (or negative with rake) sum game like poker, where one man's gain is another man's loss. It was the opinion of the guy who held this side of the argument (don't wanna out anyone as they might get berated lol) that while leeching advice when he was new and coming up in poker was really useful for him, he always thought even then that the people giving the free advice back then were being stupid and should've kept quiet to preserve their bottom lines, and all current pro poker players should also be keeping quiet.

The main pro-community participation argument was, if you gained so much from the community by reading forums and leeching advice when you were new and coming up in poker then you owe it to the community to give back/pay it forward. Even though you're not giving back to the same people whos forum advice helped you years ago when you were learning poker, it's not about specific members but the idea of community as a whole. The idea that if you give and help freely in an environment with people who are also giving and helping freely, and encouraged to do so then the net outcome is better for all participants than if everyone keeps to themselves - the very idea of a community.

I'd be interested to hear what you guys think.

Personally I didn't have any strong stance either way and hadn't thought about it before this conversation came up. Years in the past I may have thought similarly to the guy in the first paragraph (and that is a part of the reason I haven't done almost anyblogging or hand posting here since 2008), but during this conversation I became increasingly convinced by the pro-community side. Even though it might hurt your bottom line and this might outweigh the intangible benefits of being a contributing community member (debatable), I think it's a better way to live life. On this vein I plan to participate a bit more on 2+2 and especially here starting now. Don't expect replies to every single strategy thread or anything like that (infact I never open any strategy threads just cause I find it kinda boring to engage my mind in poker strategy in any way that isn't directly playing, not cause I don't wanna share knowledge or something) but I def have an updated attitude towards community.



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If anyone has any information or knows where I can find a furnished apartment across the border (Fort Erie'ish, Ontario'ish)
Please PM me, goin back up when I find a place;

GL LP,
Ry


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Having a problem with log in on pokerstars, the log in screen appears, I enter my username n password but nothing happens.. anyone having the same problem?


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hi guys,

I swear i read someone writing something about this, but i cant seem to find it anywhere. Basically it was about, you can drink caffeine as normal on a day to day basis for x days, then you have to take y days off so that your body doesnt become dependent. Has anyone got any info on this? - links to articles or studies etc would be great. I tried googling, but not really having much luck on finding this


Thanks everyone, hope you're all crushing it at the tables in 2012


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Have some ideas, have some theories, have alot of monies now



https://p.twimg.com/AmGPB_zCIAAwXzh.jpg:large


http://i.imgur.com/t4VuV.jpg


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Hi guys, after a few people asked me to make my games available, i have decided to make them available for download.

Note that i am not sure if it will give you warnings or something since i am not a "known publisher" or anything.

First game: http://www.filedropper.com/gems_1
This game generate 20 random gems that give your warrior various attributes. By pressing "autopickforp2" the gems of p2 will be auto picked in a very smart way. If you manage to beat the computer in a best of 3 or something like that, it would be very good. Me and my friend played against it and lost a lot, so we tryed it with only 8 gems for the luls and it still somehow owned us lol

Second game: http://www.filedropper.com/substract_1
this is a mini game which is possible, and first time you will look at it you might think its easy, but its actually borderline impossible unless you are either a math genius or spend hours calculating.
Its about being the first to reach 0, but the computer plays perfectly (but the starting number favors you).

I will probably make new games in the future. If anyone have ideas, you welcome to post here, but i am not good yet at "graphics games", i am more interested in possibly board games, or other strategy games or rpgish games which would most importantly involve a very powerfull AI.

Few things i have in mind:

#1 Some sort of war game where a few soldiers fight a few soldiers, with attributes such as speed (decides who shoot first) and accuracy, where fights are often uneven. I was thinking of making it a game where you see both sides and need to quickly guess which side will win (retreat or fight) and call it general training. This is nice because its so easy to make

#2 chess AI. hmm not very original or anything tho

#3 Poker bot or Poker AI. probably hardest project tho.

#4 Some sort of rpg fight generator, where the fight generated is always possible, but very difficult, and once you loose maybe even have an option to see what the solution was. Could call it RPG puzzle.

#5 Some sort of more elaborated version of my gem game.

PS: please no more comments such as "you have too much time on your hands" or "go fuck your gf" or things like that. I do plenty of things beside this (spend time with gf, school+work, see friends, etc) but now instead of wasting my free time on games, i am develloping my skills as a programmer since im studying computer science. THose games really doesn't take that long to make.


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Hey guys!
Was supposed to blog this a week ago but I got banned for 14 days for posting "dick in the ass" in the Valentines Day Presents thread lol This is like the 3rd time I got banned in the last 3 months or so, and dont know if I'm being a dick or LP is turning too gay and boring but anyway. I'll try to be a nice boy from now on.
OK, about Thailand now!

I've been here for a month already and it has been a great experience overall. The biggest problem for me here is the food, I'm sooo picky with my food and thai food isnt even close to the kinda of food I like. Lucky me my girlfriend cooks very well our good old brazilian food so thats nice. Of course I can find nice places to eat out but I have to be very carefully about my choices otherwise its imposible for me to eat out.

We rented a 2 bedroom apartment very close to the Thong Lo BTS station so that makes a lot easier for us to go anywhere since the traffic in Bangkok is jammed all the time. We have a couple(I really mean a couple, a man and a woman) of brazilian friends living here, the guys works for the brazilian embassy in bangkok. Their compainenship has halped a lot adapting to Bangkok and having more fun that we would have if we didnt know anybody in the city.

We are paying 35,000TBH/month for rent, thats around $1,200 USD, kinda of expensive but our place is so nice and well located that I think it is worth it. We have a nice pool and gym in the building and the view is great! I'm living a lot better that in Brazil for sure, where a used to pay $1,000 for a very small studio lol.

Internet in my building is very good but the cable tv in thailand sucks. We didnt even signed it cause channel selection was so poor that it wasnt worth it. Instead what did I do? I signed netflix. "but netflix is not available in thailand" you may say! yes I know that! I'm using an amazing proxy service that I already used in Brazil (even though Brazil already has netflix available) in orher to access USA Netflix. It is the www.unblock-us.com ! Costs $5/month, its really easy to setup and NEVER fails. I configured my router so every device in the apartment can connect directly thru the proxy, really amazing stuff.

Pics of gtfo

where I grind whenever I can
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6H...HLUM/s800/2012-02-20%252004.27.32.jpg
main bedroom (1)
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-sy...-W2A/s800/2012-02-20%252004.28.36.jpg
main bedroom (2)
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Sr...GkpU/s800/2012-02-20%252004.29.42.jpg
main bedroom's toilet
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fh...BnEo/s800/2012-02-20%252004.30.44.jpg
guest bedroom
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Fq...Xuuc/s800/2012-02-20%252004.31.07.jpg
kitchen
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-4k...k528/s800/2012-02-20%252004.35.11.jpg
living room
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Jt...f5TM/s800/2012-02-20%252004.35.52.jpg
my supplements, damn those are hard to find in thailand!
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-xy...99w0/s800/2012-02-20%252004.36.09.jpg

EDIT: added view pictures with day light!

bedroom view
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Ga...iSPY/s640/2012-02-20%252014.13.01.jpg
living room view
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-gQ...cD6o/s640/2012-02-20%252014.14.07.jpg


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http://i.imgur.com/oTkT2.jpg


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So I had dinner at my girlfriend's house tonight. Her mother has a sister. This sister is married to Mark Ferguson. Mark Ferguson is obviously brother to chris ferguson.

I have always wanted to meet one of them if only to try to get a 100% rakeback account but they lived in Vegas until now. Mark is back in Palo Alto for a new job now that the whole full tilt thing fell apart (his brother didn't break him off enough to retire? I know he worked on tiltware).

Anyways I probably should have just kept my mouth shut but I didn't

had to ask her what her take on this whole thing was. Told her i was lucky enough to have money on stars but some of my good friends lost tons. Basically she just said the DOJ faked as payment processors for two years taking all the money and that is why when shit hit they fan they didn't have the money to pay out the players. As to why full tilt extended credit to everyone for like a month with no way to collect the funds she said there was a good reason but couldn't put her finger on it. Just really annoyed me how she put it all on the DOJ not acknowledging bad management on the part of ray howard and chris.

She had no information I hadn't basically already heard so maybe I was just being an ass figuring her husband was more involved than he really was but I know if I was scamming millions my little brother would be right next to me.

My girl and I got in a pretty decent fight over this and i'm pretty tilted but do you guys really think she just knew nothing (or got lied to the whole time by the hubby). I was just bothered being in the same room as someone who may and likely did benefit from stealing from my friends.

Guys was I being a dick should I just give this woman the benefit of the doubt????

Apparently chris ferguson is just chillin in Arizona no criminal penalties or anything.


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As a lot of you may I have a career outside of poker as a golf professional. The past few months I have been in the running for a new job, and I landed it! My new job is Head Golf Professional at Mohegan Sun Country Club at Pautipaug. And yes, Mohegan Sun is a pretty large casino located in Connecticut. Needless to say I'm pretty pumped about the new job and can't wait to get started. The course has been closed for almost two years undergoing renovations and is really sick now. It it going to be a lot of work starting from scratch this year, but at the end of the year it will be totally worth it.

LP tourny at Mohegan Sun anyone?


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