CardRunners

 feel like I type this every day. I got up to 70,000 chips by the dinner break in the $5000 wsop event, which made me happy. I then made a few speculative plays and bustoed my 50bb stack. It sucks when average is only 25bbs. It makes it pretty easy to lose at any point. I like when average is at least 50bbs, so usually one hand wont wipe you out, but that isnt what the wsop is. Today in the $2000 event, I doubled in a weird hand where I raised J6s from mp and got 2 callers. It came JJ5, we all checked. The turn was a 6, I bet 800 and got one caller. The river was a 2 or something, which put a runner runner flush on the board, so I pushed for 2xish pot and he called with the nut flush to double me to 8000. A few hands later I raised KK and got 2 callers. It came JT9. I bet 700 and they both called. The turn was a 5 and we all checked. The river was another 9. The guy that called in the bb lead for 800 and I called and he showed Q9 for trips. A while later, I got TT and a guy that had been opening to 800 a lot in 100/200 made it 800 from mp. I of course pushed for 18bbs and he tanked for 2 minutes before calling with QQ. Very nice slowroll sir.

I also made an intresting observation today. There were about 6 people with headphones at the table today and 4 of them were constantly headbobbing. Every one of them were horrible horrible ladtards constantly raising and checkraising and bluffing, and all going broke early. So, if you bob your head to the music while playing poker, you may need to rethink your game.

The wsop is half way over and this has not been a happy year. At least we are getting the the bigger buyin, smaller fielded events so the good players actually have a real chance to win. Hopefully I start getting the set up hands in my favor, instead of against.

Well it is 3 am and I cant sleep. I have been awake thinking about the future and what I really want to spend my time doing. I have been tossing around the idea of writing a book for a while now and I think I am. I prob wont go into any details about it until it is about to come out, but I have basically decided that I would rather put out some info that would hopefully help people instead of sitting around grinding online all day. I also made a little online store using cafepress.com tonight. So far, it is just a bunch of random stuff, but eventually I will put a lot of time into it and make it really good. Here is the link if anyone wants any of these things.

http://www.cafepress.com/jonathanlittle

As for the wsop, it is still going poorly, but that should be expected when every small buyin event is a crapshoot. Tomorrow is one of the first big ones where I thiiink we are actually going to start with chips. It is a $5000 buyin, so I know we are going to get 10,000 chips and I am assuming we are going to start at 25/50 blinds, although they may pull the crap they did in the $10000 plhe and start us at 100/200, which would pretty much be the nut low. Today was the $1500 plo event. I got it in with AKKQ against KQxx early and doubled. to 4000ish. I then got it in with KKQ8 against KQxx on a K72 board and doubled to 8000. I then got it in with JT87 against AAT9 on a J82 board in a kinda weird spot where I was pretty sure he had nothing. He hit a 7 though to put me down to 3000. I then got AJTT in against QQJJ getting 2;1 (when I had 42% equity) for the rest of it and didnt win.  All in all, I think I played this tournament, as well as every single other one, just fine. I just havent been winning any big hands early, which you have to do to make it far. Thank goodness we are finally to the part of the wsop where the bigger buyin tournaments are, so we can have some decent structures. Hopefully they go well.

Today was the $1000 rebuy, which I was going to skip because I was sick but durrr convinced me to play. He basically said it was too +ev to pass up, as long as it didnt seriously effect my happiness ev, which it might have. I am very happy with the way I have played every hand of the series so far, so that makes me happy, which also greatly increases my happiness ev. I also think I am basically over my cold, besides a stuffed up nose, so thats good too. Hopefully I can get in both full health and full luck, as you simply have to win a decent amount of hands to win any of these super large field mtts.

Here is my schedule for the rest of the series. Basically, I will play every nlhe event and if I bust early, will play the 5 pm events, as long as I know how to play the game. I am also unsure about what I will do with the Bellagio Cup events.

6/4 2000
6/5 1500 6max
6/5 2500 o8/78 5pm
6/6 5000 shootout
6/6 1500 limit 5pm
6/7 2500
6/7 10000 7stud 5pm
6/8 o8 5pm
6/9 1500 shootout
6/10 1500 plo
6/10 2000 limit 5pm
6/11 5000
6/11 4000 horse 5pm
6/12 2000
6/12 2500 plhe/plo 5pm
6/13 10000 hu
6/13 1500 razz 5pm
6/14 1500
6/14 plo rebuy 5000 5pm
6/15 3000
6/15 10000 limit 5pm
6/16 2500 6max
6/17 1500
6/17 5000 78 5pm
6/18 1500 plo rebuy
6/18 1500 7stud 6pm
6/19 1500
6/19 10000 o8
6/20 2000 plo
6/21 1500
6/22 2500 2-7 draw lowball
6/22 1500 mixed holdem
6/24 plo8 1500
6/25 1000 rebuy
6/25 50000 horse 5pm
6/26 5000 6max
6/26 1500 78 5pm
6/27 2000
6/28 1500
6/29 10000 plo
6/29 1500 horse 5pm
6/30 1500
7/1 1500
7/2 5000 charity
7/3 10000 ME 4 day 1s

bellagio cup

7/2 2000
7/3 3000
7/4 5000
7/5 2000
7/6 3000
7/7 5000
7/8 1500 sat
7/9 5000
7/10 1500
7/11 15000 day 1a
7/12 15000 day 1b
7/13 15000 day 1c

Today started out great despite having a terrible table. I had Phil Ivey, Gavin Smith, Bill Gazes, Orel Hershiser, and Rafe Faust at my table, and they later got replaces by Marco Tranello and Allen Kessler. I won a few hands early to get up to 26000 then got AA early in the day and somehow managed to only lose 7000 chips to Orel when he flopped a set. I later busted him with AK vs QQ and he gave me a signed baseball, which is pretty cool. Eventually, me, Ivey, and a european guy were the only left from the starting table. Ivey had been raising like 60% of hands and I had repopped him a few times and he folded them all. Two people limped and he potted it in 800/1600, leaving him 16000 behind. I found QQ and repotted and he got in with AK. Axx put me down to 10bbs. A while later I got AJ in the cutoff. A pretty wild guy that has shown down 74 and 72 both in raised pots reraised my raise with AJ and I obv got in for my 10bbs. It should be obvious by now that he had AA and I bustoed around 11:30 pm. Tomorrow is day 1a of the $1500, which I have off because I play day 1b.

I really didnt get much sleep last night. I must have been a little excited. The first year I played the wsop, poker was going poorly besides taking 2nd in the sunday million for $90,000. I cashed 4 times but lost a decent amount. Last year, I was on happy tilt from winning the mirage wpt for $1,000,000 and probably didnt play optimally, although im sure I played pretty good. This year, I feel a little hungry again. Things are going fine, but not great, and I want them to be going great. I am going to make every effort possible to play my A++ game for the entire 6 weeks and hope for the best. Hopefully I win with AK a lot and beat AK a lot.

So I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about where I want to live, spend the rest of my life, etc etc. Katy and I have decided we most likely want to spend the majority of out time in Pensacola, mainly because that is where our families and live, and I guess we are starting to miss them. I always wondered why these young kids would live where they grew up and then just get a hotel room in Vegas for the tournaments, but I am starting to understand. I am also in love with the food they have there. There are actually only 2 places in Vegas that I would miss on a regular basis if I didnt live here full time, those being Jamba Juice and Noodles at Bellagio. That is kinda weird though, because Vegas is known for having some of the best food places in the world. I guess I just miss the food I was raised on, which is lots of fresh grilled and blackened fish and chic fil a.

When deciding how to go about getting a house in Pensacola, we fumbled around with the idea of getting either a $150,000 house, which we would later resell or just get a nice $500,000 house right off the bat. Being just myself, Katy, and a little dog, the big house option seems kinda dumb, at least for now. As for buying a $150,000 house, that really is a lot of work. Then all of a sudden I remembered that I still have my condo in Pensacola, which is in a pretty good location and basically unsellable at the moment. I actually remembered talking to a well known young mtt pro about how he has a condo in Vegas but still lives where he is from.  In Pensacola, and the rest of America right now, real estate simply cant sell. I bought the condo for $125,000ish about 2 years ago and now probably couldnt sell it for $110,000. I was thinking about renting it to someone, so at least I would break even on it, but why would I want to risk letting someone trash my other place when I could just live in it myself? Also, the condo fees are something like $2400/yr, which they say most of goes to hurricane insurance. It is kinda redic because the condo people in Pensacola do nothing except keep the pool clean and cut the grass. I think the fees here in Vegas are something like $1600/yr, but that includes a heated pool, tennis courts, lots of security guards, and a nice little meeting building....which is nice even if I dont use most of that stuff.

So, what am I to do? It seems like the only clear play is to just to split my time between Vegas and Pensacola, giving Pensacola something like 2/5, Vegas 2/5, and the circuit hotel rooms 1/5 of my time. I decided to actually look at my condo bill from Pensacola and realized I am paying them $450/mo in intrest, which just seems silly. I still owe $84,000ish, but w/e. A $5000 leak per year that is 100% unavoidable simply has to be gotten rid of. I will have 2 paid off condos then, which will make bill paying a lot easier.

What else? Ohhh, When I was camping with the family in florida last week I bit the crap out of my cheek, which probably happens to me somewhere around once every 6 months. A few days ago, after it was basically all healed, I bit it suuuuuper hard in the same spot, so now it is hurting like mad, to the point that I cant eat hard things or open my mouth without it hurting, so that is the nut low.

So it is 850 am and I couldnt sleep and we keep getting these phone calls from what I now know is a debt collector service. They keep asking for "jonathan littleshifield" or other random names that have jonathan little in them somewhere. They also call at horrible times, like 9 am and 10 pm, so I am on hold now to tell them that I dont owe some random Valley Hospital $531.21. If I knew they would stop calling, id pay the bill myself, cause it is getting silly.

Well, I guess thats about it besides a little poker talk. I havent played much lately, but when I have, I have been running the nut low. I have had like 4 set over sets and KK vs AA 3 times in like 5000 hands of 2/4, but I am only down 4 buyins or something, so thats ok I guess. I also degened some hu sngs last night and made $3000 or so. I am also going to dabble a little in the other games, mainly for practice for the wsop events, which start in a few days. Ohh, one more thing to complain about. I went to the rio yesterday to sign up for the $10000 plhe and the $1500 nlhe event. I got there around 10 am and was told to come back in 15 minutes, which is fine. When I got back, there was a group of ladies all happy because one of them was singing up for the ladies event. The cashier lady gave them their tournament ticked and then walked to the back. I assumed she was filing something or w/e. After 5 minutes of standing there like an idiot, I asked another cashier if I could get some service. She was kinda snappy and said "she is with someone else right now." Im looking around and the lady is doing something on the computerm not helping anyone at all. After another 25 minutes of standing there, she finally game and was like "how has your day been?" all happily and whatnot. I wasnt happy but acted it and got registered , so thats a good thing. If this is any indication of how the wsop will be run this year, we are in for a mess. Last year, the line for the nondiamond card people was at least 6 hours long, maybe more, to sign up for the first $1500 event. I dont see it being any better this year, so if you can, you should prob sign up today or tomorrow. GL to everyone in the series.