CardRunners

Here are some of my sisters pictures.  A lil bit of a repeat but oh well.




Girls at the entrance



The entrance walkway.  This is like a mural of people coming out of the wall.




Girls Poppin bottles


A View of our table from the bar area.




Girls working the pole.



Rikd, Evan, and Corwin



Me, Sean, and Nick




Some Pics of the Party Crack a lackin'

Getting ready for the toast.

Raging



Cheers!



The Countdown

So XS was amazing.  We all had a great time and I got exactly what I expected out of the night club and the whole scene (although I got pretty hammered and left earlyish at 2:30).  I'm just going to jump into the pictures I got cuz there is not much to say except WOW.  In a few days I will get the pics from my sister's camera and get you some more angles on the scene. 


This is Me, Shana, My Sister Katrina (Kat), and my friend Nick (he booked the club).  We are chillin at the Wynn entrance before heading to Encore.



Shana and Kat at the entrance of XS, slightly to the right was the official XS wall which we got some professional photographs in.




This is from the near entrance looking out onto the dance floor, before anyone else has entered the club.  There is a pool area and gamble area out back behind the dance floor as well as outdoor cabanas and tables.




This is a view from our table looking out at some beezies who were with the crew.  To the left is the "pole" stage that all our ladies found fun to dance on.



This is another view from our table looking at one of the main bars.  Those are imprented sculptures which seems to be a theme of the club.





This is our table area looking out on the dance floor, again before it got bumpin'  We kinda got wasted later and failed at picture taking (my sis succeeded though).






This slightly blurring chandalier is really as awesome as it looks, and this is pretty much how I saw it for most the night.



This is an outside view at the pool area, the bar on the other side hosts the blackjack and table games.  The white "strip" in the middle of the picture is a railing.



This is another view towards the pool area.



This is the dance floor looking in from the outside.



These are the super baller chandaliers hanging above our heads all night.



Ballin'



The ladies near the toast.  Btw Steve Wynn is a genius for providing this stage and not having to pay for entertainment on it, girls just flocked to it all night.



This is Nick right after the countdown, doing his thing with the ladies.  You go Nick.




I gotta run I will give a second update in a few days from the bahamas, ENJOY.

        

Cole South and Tri Nguyen wrote a rather expensive book that has been slowly moving its way into the minds of good online poker players.  The book - Let There Be Range - costs $1800 and can only be read online, so the most important question is: Is it worth it?

    This obviously depends on who you are.  First of all you actually have to have $1800 to invest (and ironically I think the people that need this book the most, don't).  Then you need to have a pretty good fundamental understanding of the game.  This book talks to you the way two high stakes pro's would talk to each other about a hand they played at 25/50.  Examples of this are the frequent references to "Finding Break-Even Folding Frequency," "Polorized Ranges," "Card Removal" and "Re-re-bluffing." 
  
   I think the book is worth it for anyone who intends to play 5/10+ at some point in their lives.  Even if you think it will be a year or more to get to that level, and you have to cut your bankroll in half to get the book, I would recommend it.  This is the type of book that has to be in any good players library.

   Their is a lot of information in this book that has never been discussed in a book before.  However, it is the kind of stuff you discuss alot with your poker friends.  Obviously the book is centered around hand ranges, which is what all of poker is really centered around.  Isn't it funny that all the other poker books ever written don't even focus directly on one of the only concepts that truly matters in the game.

  For me I have had my fair share of hand range talk and how or why I should bluff or vbet thin etc.  This book does a good job refreshing some of those concepts in my mind and honestly the first half of the book probably was more of a refresher than a huge learning experience.  Being able to reconnect with some of the things I already knew but drifted away from is quite important.  Just like when you start to play poorly because you are tilting, if you don't have a well written piece of literature or a friend or a forum reminding you how and why you do the things you do, you just start drifting into a meh autopilot of a poker player and your winrate slumps.

Invaluable things I picked up from the book:

Bluff and Bluff raise the river more frequently - For a while I thought the book should be called "Bluff The River" just because it tries to nail this concept in you and it gives great examples of when and how and why.

"don't turn your hand into a bluff" goes out the window - this concept really, especially recently, has been scaring me off of making bluffs and I have basically just been giving up on pots.  Let's all forget this concept and use hand ranges to determine why we should bluff (a duh so simple why didn't I think of that).

Card Removal is the shizzle - this kind of goes along with turning your hand into a bluff.  If you have paired with the board, you can lower the frequency of hands your opponent may have and can use this to your advantage.  Don't get carried away cuz I said this here, reading the book will really help you nail this concept down (and alot of practice).

Less Tables really means Higher bb/100 - I like to play alot of tables, and I make a good amount of money doing it.  But I am autopiloting and not getting better.  This book helped me realize that focusing on recognizing unique situations and optimizing every spot to my fullest potential will a) help autopiloting in the future include near perfect play, and b) allow me to play in some of the tougher, higher stakes games.

Getting Caught Bluffing could be the best thing that could happen to you - if you aren't getting caught bluffing then you are not bluffing enough.  All that matters when making a good bluff is whether your opponent has enough hands in his range that he folds some easily calculateable % of the time (based on your bet size and the pot size).  Also getting caught bluffing is great for your image and gets you paid down the road.

People have selective memory - everyone is a victim of this, especially nonpoker players.  But its more important that poker players recognize this and use it to their advantage.  It doesn't matter if your bluff gets picked off, just analyze the situation and prove to yourself that its a good bluff.  Of course some times you will run into the top of their range.  The bad players (me included) are the ones remembering when the bluff didn't work and strongly (sometimes subconsciously but still quite strongly) thinking, "Oh, well I'm not gonna bluff in that spot again."  This is absolutely wrong and you must change your thoughts now or perish.  Also know that most of your opponents are thinking selectively and adjust accordingly.

Combinatorics is a word - wtf!?! - wiki quote, "Combinatorics is a branch of pure mathematics concerning the study of discrete (and usually finite) objects."


Overall the book would have been more helpful to me about a year ago, but still will help to boost my winrate by at least $20/hr (meaning if I had bought the book I would make the money back in a couple months).  Also the book really helps me to know where I can study on my own and how to best do it.

If you are a low-midstakes grinder and proven winner, and can afford it, get the book!

It was kind of a splurge, but I restrained from getting the really baller looking 15k Breitling with diamonds running all the way around it.  This is my new watch.  I gotta say there is something about wearing it that gives me an extra boost of confidence.  It's the Breitling Cockpit - Click Here for A Pic Of A Similar One.  I knew I needed it before the Bahamas, and there is only one Breitling dealer in San Diego so although I did alot of shopping online I did kind of impulse buy it, the prices are all set by Breitling anyways.



On an even more baller note, I got exciting news about New Years.  My friends were planning on going to Vegas and booking a table at Tryst, they even got a good friend on the inside that was suppose to give us a deal.  When they called their friend up they found out he is a manager at XS, the newest, hottest, nightclub, possibly in the world.  It cost over $100 million to build this place inside the new Wynn building, Encore.  The premiere event is THIS NEW YEARS EVE, and we are gonna be there.  There are supposedly alot of celebs expected to attend, and so far they are actually keeping alot of us in the dark about what is actually going to happen.  This nightclub is so new it doesn't even have a website, its like a whisper of existence, but when we bust open Dom this New Years I suspect it will be the best night of my life.  Here are some of the only Details I could find on the web.  They say the line to get in will be over 4 hrs long.

Tonight's the night, and it's going to keep happening... again... and again.




This show is soooo awesome.  It totally has me hooked and feeling more morbid and psychotic than ever.  I actually started watching at the beginning of season 2 up til current and have just got the first season in the mail and am through about 5 episodes.  It's interesting to see the extreme differences between the beginning of the show and where its at now.

  I am pretty sure the show was solely designed to make me feel like I should be the next Dexter Morgan. The show just makes the viewer feel soooo involved.    They like took something that would usually just be considered disgusting and inhumane and put in a code and made him only murder murderer's and alll of a sudden its a hit show.  And you are rooting for him the whole way.  Like any movie where the good guy is actually a bad guy, murderer, psychopath, etc. you are still never totally thrilled to root for them, but here its like omg GO DEXTER KILL THAT MOFO, DONT GET CAUGHT, PWN THOSE BAD GUYS.

I just got done with tonights episode and am can hardly hold on to see the next two.  If you aren't hooked on Dexter, get it now!!  Raise your hand if every episode makes you wonder why you aren't a psycho killer.  (maybe a healthy moral conscience is a good thing)

Today is definetely my biggest daily win ever.  I spent 3800 in tourny entry fees and found myself down 3.6k in cash games in my first few hours of the day.  I chose to be the DD last night instead of cabbing it across the greater San Diego area and therefore wasn't hung over this morning.  This was incredibly helpful towards my performance throughout the 11 hour session.   That and having an awesome fiance who brought me lunch and slaved over dinner while I stared at a monitor all day. After the first three hours of cash and through a few tourny's I had nothing going at all, the biggest pot I won at 5/10 was $600 (meanwhile losing KK to AA and a pile of small and medium sized pots) and I was throwing tourny buyins away faster than they were starting (which is kinda nice except for the losing piles of money aspect).  I  only cashed in 2 tournies for rather small amounts until I  eventually found my way to a 25k tourny score.   I also came back from -3.6k in cash to +2.9k giving me a rough 27k day.  Meanwhile Brystmar pummeled a huge field to take down a 133k score. We celebrated by bragging to each other online, unfortunately for me his brag is much more awesome than mine.

Something I learned today that I thought was pretty interesting is that I mathematically proved that I shouldn't 5bet shove 99 to a good players button 4bet (button to BB).  I have done it in the past and it could be right in some spots, but unless they 4bet call AJ 88 or some Axs, or you have a good read that this is the time they are making a move, its probably wrong.  Basically with the calling range of TT+ AQ AK, they have to fold nearly 50% of the time for the shove to be profitable.  Essentially what that means is that they have to 4bet bluff over 50% of the time, which is at least hard to find in full ring.  Moral of the story I spewed 1k to KK simply cuz I know my opponent is just as good as me and can make moves.

Also I made what I consider a painfully easy laydown.  I doubt to hear word from WCG Rider which is fine, but I really wanted to stack him and probably would have here.   We usually don't battle too much and stacking a good player is sooo much more rewarding than pwning a newb.  Overall we have found each other in the games together quite frequently and I plan to study his videos a bit more but I think I have him figured out.  I think his strategy is very Kelisitaan like and it leaves the door open for good players to attack, but I probably haven't even adjusted enough to him.  Its interesting to see how I should both stay out of his way and counteract his strategy, guess thats why it works so well.

After 11 hours at the computer I of course drank a bit with the ladyfriend.  It was awesome having her watch me make so much money since she usually isn't accompanying me by the computer side.  We had some champagne and tomorrow we will likely celebrate more with a nice meal out.  Maybe I will even take a day off before gearing down for grinding the Thanksgiving weekend.

_____________________________________

Basic math behind 5bet shoving 99 vs calling range TT+ AK AQ:


risk 890 to win 365 (250 open&4bet + 110 3bet + 5 SB)

-260* (% When Called) + 365 * (%when fold) = ?

Given : % when called + % when folded = 100%

If 80/20 = -208 + 73 = -EV
If 70/30 = -182 + 109.5 = -EV 
If 60/40 = -156 + 146 = -$10 EV
If 50/50 = -130 + 182.5 = +$52.5 EV

The 260 is derived from the equity of 99 vs the range TT+ AK AQ in a $2k pot (37% dog) and the $365 is derived from the pot I win when I get a fold.