CARDRUNNERS

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of updates.  I have been in Vegas since June 3, and as Wiggins blogged about a few days ago, it just doesn't seem like there has been much to talk about.  We've just been doing the typical Vegas stuff - restaurants, clubs, etc.  Our house is much better than last year, when I was very underwhelmed.  We have a nice pool area and a basketball court.  Having a basketball court is great.  I hadn't played since last summer pretty much, but we have been playing most nights at around 7pm when the weather starts cooling down.  My game has improved lots in just a few weeks, although I still basically suck.  In any event, it is a lot of fun as well as a nice workout during a time where there is not much other healthiness going on.  It is really hard living with 8 guys and not eating grossly unhealthy.  To put it in perspective, the last 2 days I ate Pizza Hut for lunch both days, and KFC and Jack in the Box for dinner.  It hasn't been that bad the whole time, but it hasn't been good.  Pizza makes me feel really gross inside about an hour after eating it.  I would be fine with not eating another slice of it for several months.  Yesterday's meal choices were necessitated by the fact that we left both cars at the strip Saturday night and everyone was too hungover to pick them up yesterday.  In Ithaca this would not be a problem as there are some great choices of restaurants to order delivery from, but as far as I know in Vegas this is not the case, all I really know that we can order is pizza, Chinese, and Quizno's.  If anyone knows of good restaurants in Vegas that deliver, please let me know.

The eating hasn't been all bad, though.  I've had Lotus of Siam, the Thai restaurant of recent 2+2 fame, three times so far on the trip.  I wouldn't necessarily say I was blown away, but the food is very good.  My favorite entree is the crispy duck, that is actually pretty phenomenal.  I actually haven't been to many places on the strip so far, but my favorite of those is probably Botero.  It has a really cool atmosphere and some great food, and has the added benefit of being located in the beautiful new Encore casino, the new tower of the Wynn.  It is really amazing how visually stunning the Encore is.

I haven't played any live poker on the trip yet, but I've been playing a decent amount online.  I had been running very poorly the whole trip until Saturday, when I won 124k playing 25/50 and 10/20 PLO ante games.  The games were as good as I had seen them in months and I was fortunate enough to play well and run super hot as well.  Unfortunately, this win still only puts me to about even for the trip.  Hopefully my luck continues to turn in that direction.  According to Holdem Manager, I have played 13.5k PLO hands since June 3 (not counting a session vs Gus at 500/1k), won $29k, but my allin EV says I should have won $98k.  I don't know how much stock to put into allin EV really, but I do feel like I've been playing mostly very well of late even when I was losing.

I have a very exciting week coming up.  I have 3 friends from PA getting into town for today thru Saturday.  Also, Bruce (cornellxc) gets in today and should be out here for the rest of the Series.  And most fun of all, Wednesday is my 21st birthday!  I can't wait to finally be able to drink and gamble legally.  I'm not totally sure what our plans are for Wednesday except that it will involve lots of alcohol, good food, some gambling, and most likely a club.  Does anyone know of some good places to go out in Vegas on Wednesday nights?  Last week my roommates went to a local place called Blue Martini, I took the night off but they said they liked it a lot.  I am probably thinking more something on the strip though.  I know how each major club has a given night of the week that is their biggest night, but I'm not sure what that club is for Wednesday.  Any help would be great!

As for the WSOP itself, unfortunately most events that I would be interested in playing fell before my birthday.  I am excited to play the main event and will likely play the 5k 6max event as well, but that's all.  I'm bummed that they dropped the 5k PLO rebuy, I think that was on June 27 last year, oh well.  I would have liked to play events like the 10k HU, 10k PLO, and a few others as well.  I don't think I ever see myself playing a full schedule of events, but next year I will probably play 5-8 or so, depending on what the schedule looks like.  One of my roommates, Mike McNeil, final tabled the $1500 shootout, but busted quickly in 8th.  Other than that, not much to report from our house WSOP-wise, except Taylor's hilarious claim that he was going to play in 20+ events.  Maybe in 4 years, haha.  Although he did go deep in a $100 6max tourney on FTP yesterday and is playing more poker than I have ever seen him play.  Anyway, I just don't see how some people grind out event after event every day.  Grinding out 10+ hours of live poker every day with super high variance for less expected profit than a good midstakes grinder makes just doesn't seem worth it to me.  I do realize that I am very fortunate to be able to just play high stakes PLO and make good money online, but some of my roommats who are playing at much smaller stakes aren't keen on grinding out event after event either, and I don't blame them.  If someone really enjoys doing it, more power to them, but it's just not my thing.

I'm going to try to put in an online session this afternoon before my friends arrive later on in the day.  Hopefully I will run even 1/4 as good as I did on Saturday.  Good luck at the tables to everyone!

In my last blog I talked about the beginning of my family vacation in Florida.  I mentioned that I had signed up for surf lessons but that I wasn't feeling great and it was supposed to rain, so I probably wouldn't go.  Well, I did!  It was an interesting experience.  My sister and I were the only two people taking the lesson.  We drove to a state park nearby with a lady who worked at our resort (who was very nice) and then met up with our surf instructor in a pavilion.  She talked for the next hour or so about safety, technique, and all that good stuff and then we practiced on our boards on top of the tables at the pavilion some before heading over to the ocean.  When we practiced it wasn't so hard standing up on the board properly, but in the ocean it was a totally different story.  The water made the board so much more slippery, not to mention the fact that it was moving due to waves and currents.  Also I had a nice sunburn on my stomach so it didn't exactly feel great with that rubbing up against the board.  We had an hour of ocean time, and for the first half hour I hardly made any progress and was getting pretty frustrated.  I took a few minutes out of the water to regroup and collect my thoughts, then went back in and gave it another try.  Eventually, I got up on my board a few times, sometimes on one knee, but a couple times I legitimately stood up and rode the wave for a few seconds.  This made me very happy.  Overall, I'm not sure if I am eager to try to surf again, but I'm glad I did it.  It's very difficult and there is certainly quite a learning curve, especially for someone like me who has never really even skateboarded or snowboarded, but it sure felt rewarding when I started seeing some results.  I would also imagine that it is a ton of fun once you get legitimately good.  I doubt that will ever be me, but you never know...


sister and me with our boards, unfortunately no action shots

The next day, we headed to Walt Disney World, Joe 'LL2' Ward's favorite place on earth.  I know it is commonly thought of as a place for kids mainly, but if you haven't been there at least once you are missing out.  There is some great stuff to do in Disney World.  I have been there with my family I believe 7 times now, so I wasn't concerned with trying to see everything this time, I just wanted to do a few things I felt like doing and relax.  Each night we were there we ate a great dinner out.  My favorite was at Narcoossee's at the Grand Floridian resort.  I had an Ahi Tuna dish that very well may have been the best tuna dish I have ever tasted, it was very rare, almost like sashimi, and featured an Asian sauce and spices that were very spicy.  I probably consumed about 7 glasses of water due to the spiciness, and at one point the waiter just started bringing me 2 at a time.  If you like spicy food, you'd love it.  My parents and sister also enjoyed their meals very much.

On the second day there, I planned on sleeping in while my mom and sister went to Disney's Hollywood (formerly MGM) Studios.  Then, my dad received a phone call around 8:30 am.  There is a new American Idol attraction there in which people can audition in the morning and maybe other times of the day in order to appear on the show.  There are seven shows during the day and the winner of each advances to a finale at 7pm, with the winner of that getting a free pass to cut the line at real American Idol auditions.  So anyway, my sister had auditioned when the park opened, and she was going to be on the first show at 10 am.  My dad and I quickly showered and then called a cab since we were kind of in a rush (we were instructed to be there at 9:30).  We called at 9 and the company said 10 minutes, ok cool.  We met the cab in front of our resort at about 10:12 am or so.  The cab driver was apparently very unhappy that we were 2 minutes late.  My dad tried to start a conversation with him, and he mentioned something about us being late.  I responded, "Sorry about that man, I tip well" or something along those lines, and I really did intend to give him a decent tip, because cab drivers are on a tight schedule and all.  Then, for the rest of the 10 or so minute ride, EVERY TIME one of us tried to talk to him, he would spin it back into guilt tripping us for being 2 minutes late.  For example, he made a smooth pass of a car on a 2 lane highway, my dad said, "Nice pass, you're a pretty smooth driver," cab driver responds, "Yeah I am, but I don't make any money because I wait around for people too much."  A PSA to cab driver's:  if you are trying to earn solid tips, being an asshole and making the passengers feel guilty for minor things is NOT the way to do it.  Just be nice.  I gave him a $2 tip on like a $17 ride, and honestly I think that was too much.  What a jerk.

Anyway, we made it to the park, and got in to see the show.  My sister was up third.  The first two people were, surprisingly, middle-aged, probably both between 35 and 45.  I don't think I've ever seen this on the real American Idol.  They were okay, although the lady who went second sang "Waiting for Tonight" by Jennifer Lopez which was kind of weird for American Idol I thought.  My sister chose to sing "Old Time Rock and Roll" by Bob Seger.  Her taste in music is much better than most girls, obviously.  She did a pretty good  job and the judges (who were trying to act like the real American Idol judges) had all good things to say.  The audience of about 600 people voted and she ended up winning and advancing to the finale! 

As it was still only about 11:30am after we got out, we had plenty of time to kill before the finale.  We decided to go to the Indiana Jones stunt show, which I hadn't seen since I was 14 or so.  I was very excited for this.  A few minutes after we got into our seats, I was checking email on my phone waiting for the show to start when I heard a voice announce, "If anyone 18 or over wants to be an extra in the show, shout and wave your arms!"  I had never done anything like this in my life, but after just seeing my sister performing on stage, naturally I wanted to try.  I got up and shouted and waved, and sure enough, I got called on stage along with about 20 other people.  We signed some waivers and put on some Arabic costumes and then headed for the stage.  Most of the extras' tasks were simple, like running around as a group, yelling, pointing, etc.  But then, one of the performers said, "I need one of you to come over here and do some acting, how about....you (pointing to me)!  Would you like to come act out a death scene!"  I have never acted in anything in my life, I have never been in a school play or anything.  So naturally my response was, "Sure, I'd love to!"  I was instructed to look menacing and pretend to hold a knife in my hand and walk slowly toward the stuntman, who would shoot me with his imaginary gun, and then I would fake getting shot and act out dying in a very elongated fashion.  Hilarity ensued, as I was pretty terrible at looking menacing and acting in general but as a result it was very funny and I think the crowd enjoyed it quite a bit, for one reason or another!  I had an awesome time doing this.  Here is a pic of me with the extras on stage, I think I am in the yellow:

After that, we killed some more time.  It was raining for much of the day, but that didn't stop us from having fun.  The new Toy Story ride there is awesome, although my sister bet me $1 that she would outscore me, and she won :(

We headed to the finale around 6:30.  There were 7 performers, and my sister went 5th.  The competition level was naturally much higher, some of these people were very impressive.  Rachel didn't win, but she had a great time doing it and we had a great time watching.  Here is a picture of her from the show:




The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful, aside from meeting up with the aforementioned Joe Ward at ESPN Club.  We watched game 2 of the Cavs/Magic series, in which LeBron hit his incredible buzzer beater for the 1 point win.  Unfortunately his teammates did not play very well in the series and they lost in 6 games, so there will be no LeBron/Kobe final, which would have been really cool to see.  It was nice seeing Joe and we had a good time.  He headed with a group that we met there to the piano bar down the boardwalk but I was too tired as I had been out since the morning and just called it a night.  My family headed home on Sunday the 24th.  Despite a LOT of rain, it was one of the best vacations I've ever had, and certainly one of the most eventful.

Over the past week and a half or so I have been getting back into the swing of things with poker.  I hardly played from spring break through vacation, so I was actually very excited to get back into a daily grinding routine.  Fortunately lady luck has decided to welcome me back in a grand fashion, as in these past 9 or 10 days I am up a hair short of 200k online, and also had 15% of Alec Torelli in the 40k WSOP event, which he finished 6th in for about 330k, giving me about a 50k score there.  My online play has been mostly 25/50 PLO, with some 10/20 and a trace of 50/100 as well, which I ran very good in.  I don't expect to maintain running quite this good, but I am feeling very confident again just 10 days after feeling very rusty and much less confident.  I also intend to grind a good amount in Vegas, at least until my 21st birthday on June 24, at which point I can promise nothing :)

So speaking of Vegas, I am heading there tomorrow, and staying in a house with Taylor, Andrew, Joe, Scott (irockhoes) and a few other friends, 9 of us in total.  I am really pumped to get out there as I had a blast last year, and even moreso because I will actually turn 21 and be able to play some this year.  I will be playing the main event, likely the 5k 6max NL, and perhaps some live PLO cash, depending on what kind of games run.  Mostly, I am there to have fun though.  I very much look forward to it.

I have to run, I meant to post a few hands too but this is long already.  I will do a more poker focused post in the near future.

 

I wrapped up my finals this past Thursday and am now officially a college senior!  I really worked my ass off this semester in school and I think the results will show.  I don't have all my grades yet, but I got a B in my econometrics class, which is one of the hardest classes econ majors at Cornell have to take.  I am very happy with this as my major GPA hasn't been all that great to this point.  I am still planning on taking 3 more semesters, because I have 35 credits left and taking 18 and 17 credit semesters my senior year right after turning 21 doesn't sound all that fun.  Instead I am going to just take 3 light semesters so I can really enjoy myself.  This sounds like much more fun to me.

Right now I am trying to get myself back into the swing of things with poker.  I played probably about 2 hours during finals week and not much at all since spring break really.  I just didn't have much time with my focus more on school and my social life.  Unfortunately, getting back to the grind hasn't really been that easy, because I seemingly lose every session I play.  I think this is a combo of me being rusty and me being 'avatar cursed' on FTP (just kidding.....maybe).  As an aside, I did recently get my avatar on FTP.  It is pretty solid imo but the pic was taken 1.5 years ago so I don't look exactly the same, but it's better than most avatars and I'm happy with it.  Anyway, I'm not gonna whine about running bad or anything, I know in the grand scheme of things I have nothing to complain about.  Tax day made things less fun, but I'll deal with it.  I do want to make one observation though.  I have been playing a lot of 25/50 and railing some of the 300/600 and 500/1k PLO games.  I could be wrong, but from what I've seen I think the 25/50 games are often tougher right now.  Some of the regulars in the big games just make some very fundamentally flawed plays, particularly preflop.  The good regs at 25/50 are just super solid and don't do this really.  There are some worse regs at 25/50 who do, but in some lineups I really think 25/50 plays tougher.  Unfortunately I don't have the roll to be playing 300/600 at the moment, so all the evidence I have is my armchair quarterback observation.  I think it will be really interesting to see how some of the other 25/50 guys do in the big games if/when they take shots at them though.

On a brighter note, I am currently in vacation in Florida with my family for the week.  We're staying at the beach for 4 nights then heading to Disney World for 3 (shoutout to Mickey Mouse's best friend, Joe "LL2" Ward!).  It hasn't gone all smoothly - my dad separated his shoulder yesterday bodysurfing (he's pretty ok though), I made the brilliant decision to stay at the beach for three whole hours yesterday, which is not a very good idea given my naturally pale skin, and today set a record for the most rainfall Vero Beach has ever gotten.  However, I am still enjoying myself.  The beach time yesterday was very nice and relaxing.  I picked up Shadow Divers to read on the plane rides and the beach.  It is a novel about two men who discovered a German U-Boat from World War II 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey, completely against what all military records had stated.  I am only about halfway through and don't want to provide any spoilers, but it is a very fascinating read and difficult to put down once I start.  I picked it up because a few posters on 2p2 recommended it, and I am very happy I did so.  I really need to start reading more.  There's not much that beats a great book, imo.  After the beach, I went to get a massage at the resort.  Luckily my sunburn hadn't really set in yet and the massage was great.

Today, I went to see Star Trek with my dad since it was pouring out and I couldn't really go back in the sun anyway.  This movie was really impressive imo, the storyline was pretty compelling and there were some great special effects.  I hadn't really ever watched any older Star Trek stuff or sci-fi in general either.  I'm not a fan of mindless action movies, but this was something more.  Iron Man is a fair comparison, although the storyline isn't really similar or anything.  Anyway, check it out if you're remotely interested in this kinda thing.  Afterwards the whole family went to a seafood place and I had some really delicious yellowtail snapper.  I'm probably just taking it easy for the rest of the night and definitely watching game 1 of the Lakers/Nuggets series.  Since the Bulls were eliminated in their great first round series, I have jumped on the Nuggets bandwagon.  I'm a huge fan of their bench, especially the Birdman.  He just brings so much energy and I love the fact that he created his own nickname.  What a baller.  Their whole team is really fun to watch and I do think they beat the Lakers, probably in 6 games.  I don't expect them to beat the Cavs but will be rooting for it to happen.

Tomorrow my sister and I are supposed to get some surfing lessons.  That is contingent on both the weather and my sunburn cooperating though.  I'd say it's pretty unlikely that I end up going, but I sure hope I do.  I've always wanted to learn how to surf.  If worse comes to worse I will have other opportunities though.

One last thing - I recently did a podcast with Nick Wealthall of "On the Rail," the UK's most popular poker podcast that he co-hosts with CR blogger Kara Scott.  Nick is a great guy and a great interviewer and I think this turned out really well.  I've had several friends who don't listen to many podcast interviews say that they really enjoyed it, so check it out if you get a chance.  You can listen to it here.

That's all for now, good luck at the tables all!

Brian

Hey guys, long time no blog.  I guess I just haven't had a ton to talk about, certainly nothing as fun as going to Europe.  This upcoming week is my last week of classes for the semester.  I've been pretty busy with school, which has accounted for a good deal of my free time.  Here's a quick roundup of what else I've been doing:

• I went to the Yankees' home opener at the new Yankee Stadium.  It was a good game for 6 innings, then the Yankee bullpen took over for CC Sabathia and proceeded to give up 9 runs in the 7th and the Yanks lost 10-2.  I still had a blast though, the pregame ceremony was awesome.  It featured tons of former Yankee greats, Bernie Williams playing "Take Me Out to The Ball Game" on guitar (damn he's talented...), and an F-14 flyover after the national anthem, which was sung by Kelly Clarkson.  Really cool stuff.  The stadium itself is super nice, although our seats in the right-center field bleachers had an obstructed view of deep left.  There were flatscreen TVs that we could see the left field action on though.  The stadium has a wide open feel, so you can see the field when walking around the concourse.  We checked out an inning from behind home plate, just standing above the field level sections.  That was cool.  There have been lots of empty seats recently though because the Yankees priced many tickets way too high.  The good news is I'll be able to get some tickets at face value this summer, usually impossible.  Home runs have been flying out of the park at an alarming rate too, it's been a big news story lately and it'll be interesting to see how that gets sorted out.  It will also be interesting to see if Hank Steinbrenner can stop being a clown and just put Joba back in the bullpen already.  I'm not holding my breath, though.
• I've been rooting my Bulls on hard against the Celtics.  I'm biased but I think it's by far the most interesting first round series.  The Bulls really laid an egg in Game 3 but as I'm writing this they have the lead in the 2nd quarter of Game 4.  I'm confident in their chances, during the 4th quarter of game 1 I bet a friend that the Bulls would win the series, getting 2-1.  I like it a lot for that price.  The Powe injury provides additional help for us.  And D-Rose is the man (although Rondo has outplayed him in the last 2 games).
  
• I've been loving the nice weather!  It took forever to finally get warm in lovely old Ithaca but it feels so sweet now.  I'd be very curious to live in a warm weather place for a year and see if I still appreciated nice weather as much.  I think I very well might be a four seasons kind of guy.  Anyway, I've been taking advantage of the nice weather by playing a lot of golf and doing some daydrinking.  I'm really motivated to become a better golfer this year.  Getting into better shape since last year is paying off, I put a 4 iron on the green from 210 yards out the other day.  Last year I could only hit my 4 about 190.  Also, my roommate Shane used to be a 4 handicap in high school and still knows his shit pretty well, and he's been a big help with some adjustments.  I intend to play a bunch this summer and I'd love to get down to 15 handicap or so.  Another good use of the weather is my front porch.  Sitting out on the porch listening to music and either doing work or playing poker is much nicer than doing these things inside.  It's funny because when I was younger I'd often waste beautiful days inside playing video games and stuff.  Now I find it difficult to not go outside when it's nice out.  I guess I used to be kind of weird, I like it much more this way.
  
• Social life has been pretty good lately.  We've had some fun parties and mixers at the frat, as well as the aforementioned daydrinking.  We play a fun wiffleball variant in which the batter hits the ball and then immediately starts chugging from a pitcher instead of running, and he continues to chug until the fielding team hits him with the ball.  2 outs in an inning (only Ks or caught fly balls are outs), team scores a run if it gets down a full pitcher in an inning.  The pitcher is refilled each half inning.  It's a very fun game, I recommend giving it a shot.  Also, this coming Friday is Slope Day.  It's always a ton of fun, but I'm very disappointed with the musical selections this year.  The Pussycat Dolls are glorified strippers, but less attractive and with more clothes on.  And I'm not even a big fan of strippers in the first place.  Asher Roth is a guy who, to my knowledge, spent about half a semester in college, yet his hit song is about all these memories he has of it and stuff.  It's so fake and doesn't even make sense.  I'll probably end up going to the slope, but I don't even really want to.  We'll see...
  
• If you haven't been following Wiggins' blog, check out his last 2 entries.  Awesome trip reports from his Asia trip with lots of great pictures.  I'm very jealous of the water gun fight, among other things.

Hey guys.  I've actually been back in the U.S. for about a week and a half but have been busy getting back into the swing of things, but this blog entry is going to focus mainly on my trip.  Hopefully I don't mess up posting pics!

So anyway, I arrived in London on Sunday, March 15.  I went to visit my sister, who's spending this semester studying abroad there.  I stayed there for 5 nights and then on Friday we went to Barcelona for 3 nights, and then I spent a long day traveling home (3 flights, 4 airports, 4 different countries, 4 hour car ride home after arriving in the U.S., ~17 hours spent in airplanes and cars, lots of fun!).  Instead of doing a typical play-by-play of the trip, I think it'll be more fun to make a list of general observations about cultural differences between the U.S., London, and Barcelona that I saw, and then do a little bit of storytelling along with pics after.  So here goes:

• The drinking age is 18 (maybe less?) in Europe and 21 in the U.S.  Obviously everyone knows this, but it really makes quite a difference in the lifestyles of young people.  It was great being able to do simple stuff like ordering a bottle of wine at dinner in Europe.  Also, we went to a concert featuring the band, "The Rifles," at a smaller concert venue in London and we had a great time.  Afterwards I was talking with my sister about it and realized that in New York City, many similar venues are 21+, so even for someone who doesn't care about drinking, their options for seeing live music, comedy shows, etc in the States are limited.  That seems wrong to me.  I also met up with some CR members for lunch/drinks/low stakes poker on Tuesday the 17th.  Most were about my age, and talking with them about this subject really made me realize how different it is.  From the middle of high school or so it's just routine for them to have drinks with dinner, in family settings, wherever.  To me, this makes a lot of sense, because I think people often develop drinking problems because it's exciting to drink due to the illegality (at least in H.S. or other places where it's not easily accessible).  I could be totally offbase here but I'd like to see some statistics on alcoholism rates in the U.S. and Europe.  The casino was quite different too, much stricter with dress codes and identification than Vegas casinos, but 18 to gamble.  Seems like some fun mid-high stakes PLO games go too, kinda bummed that I didn't get to play those, maybe next time.
• London runs on an earlier schedule than anywhere I've ever seen.  From what I've heard the bars close later on weekends, but during the week most were closing at 11!  This is even earlier than Ithaca's 1:00, which I thought was earlier than anywhere.  Clubs stay open longer, but I'm not really a huge club person (although we went to Notting HIll Arts Club and I thought it was awesome, they have different music depending on the night of the week but we went on Wednesday and I really loved the music selection and the atmosphere, basically a smaller club with loungy area and a cool dance floor that doesn't just play top 40 crap).  My sister told me that London just kind of goes to bed and wakes up earlier than most other places.  Quite a contrast to New York or Barcelona or probably 99% of cities in the world really.
• Tea and crumpets are not really popular in London, but fish and chips are.  At least that's what my sis told me.  I decided I'd have to give the fish and chips a try, so I went to a takeout place down the street from her flat.  I got cod with chips (all fried obv), paid 6 British pounds I think, and got the hugest serving ever.  This was especially weird because portion sizes at most other places I went were smaller compared to the U.S.  This thing was huge though!  I think the fish was about 10 inches long or something, and fairly wide.  I was very hungry and managed to eat about half.  It was very good but I don't eat much fried food so I don't think my body liked me after.  Well worth it though, imo.
• The number one word spoken by British people has to be 'lovely.'  It is used as a response to any typical greeting e.g. "How are you?", in place of 'thank you,' as the only adjective to describe pleasure e.g. 'This soup is lovely,' 'You look lovely,' etc.  I think that's it but let me know if I missed some!
• People in London were mostly very nice.  I had heard various things about this before the trip, but I was very impressed with how friendly everyone was, even when I needed them to repeat something because I couldn't understand their accent.  I only had one exception, the first night there we went to a small pub down the street from my sister's flat.  They had only been there once, and it happened to be someone's 50th birthday party, which ended up with them dancing with a bunch of old people and stuff.  For some reason, they decided we should go there again.  We got there, and there were 2 other people in the place, besides a live band that was playing (jazz I think).  We had a group of 7 people, 2 of whom don't drink.  The other 5 of us went up to the bar, and a man behind the bar (presumably the owner) says to me, "If your friends over there aren't drinking, they're going to have to leave."  This really boggled my mind, as this place was getting no business and then 5 of us were trying to give them some and they almost seemed to not want it.  Maybe he was just in a bad mood because of the emptiness of the place though, I don't know.  He didn't actually make our friends leave, so whatever.  But other than that little incident, everyone was extremely friendly, even cab drivers!
• Tipping etiquette is very different.  Apparently it's not really necessary to tip at all in England, except in nice restaurants and cabs.  Every time I tipped a bartender there they seemed very surprised.  Apparently they already have tip money built into their salaries.  Same goes in Barcelona, and from what I read most everywhere but the U.S.  I was surprised at the differences.
• British food is not as bad as it's reputation.  Okay well it is pretty hard to find anything but premade sandwiches for lunch, unless you look really hard, but I enjoyed most of the dinner food I had, and I went to both higher-end and lower-end places.  One place I really enjoyed was Harwood Arms, a pub that featured some good English food.  The ingredients are all from England and fresh, the deer are all shot by one of the owners and maybe some of the other stuff too, I'm not sure.  We tried a few things, and I really enjoyed one of the venison appetizers and a lamb entree.  Also, the service was great and one of the owners kept checking up on us, he was really friendly and helpful.  This place was really cool and different from anywhere else I've been, I highly recommend it.  Besides that, there were some higher-end places that rival those in other major cities.  I really enjoyed the food I had in London, but maybe my opinion would change if I ended up eating premade sandwiches for lunch everyday.
• Spanish cab companies aren't very smart.  We went to see The Killers in a venue a couple miles outside Barcelona (pics to come).  The concert was great, I've become a huge Killers fan in the weeks leading up to the concert and they did not disappoint.  The atmosphere was awesome, I spoke briefly to a girl next to me who said she only spoke a little bit of English, yet she was singing along with probably about half the songs.  I'm trying to picture me learning all the words to about 10 songs in Spanish, and I just don't see it, even if I was exposed to the music a lot.  That was really cool, and I think many others there knew just as many words as her.  Anyway though, after the concert we walked outside and tried to hail a cab.  There was a turnaround area where some cabs were coming.  The thing was, most of them were full already.  One would think that local cab companies would realize that 12,000 people were going to be here searching for transportation at the same time and subsequently send legions of cabs to the site and make lots of money.  Instead, there was about 1 empty cab coming every 10 minutes.  I think it took us about an hour and a half to finally hail a cab.  Others were still there when we left, it could have taken them another hour for all I know.  In the U.S. cabbies would be lining up outside the concert to try to recruit people to come with them.  It was basically the same story after the FC Barcelona futbol game we went to, we ended up just taking the subway, and that was in the city of Barcelona.  Note to entrepreneurs in Spain:  if you start a cab company with a brain, you'll probably make lots of money.  Preferably hire drivers who can speak English too, although that's less of a big deal than just not understanding basic supply and demand.
• Paella is awesome!  I had paella back-to-back nights in Barcelona.  The first night was at a high-end tapas restaurant, which was very good but seemed aimed at tourists.  I enjoyed the meal overall a ton, as we tried a bunch of different dishes and had some excellent wine, but the next night we went to a more authentic Spanish restaurant (server didn't even speak English!) and I got paella there and it was just unbelievable.  I want to figure out how to make my own, it's just so good and there's nothing quite like it in the States.  If you go to Spain make sure to try some good, authentic paella!
• Security is very lax in Barcelona.  Not sure if this goes for all of Spain but I'd imagine so.  I was really amazed at the scene when we arrived at the Killers concert.  There was a big wraparound line that didn't seem organized at all.  On either side of the line there was garbage on the ground everywhere.  There weren't even garbage cans anywhere really either.  I guess this is standard?  There were literally 0 security people until the very front of the line.  A couple in front of us rolled and smoked a joint while they waited in line.  Inside the concert was no different, all the tickets were general admission and everyone was just kind of pushing their way as far forward as possible.  I didn't see any fights or anything though, maybe it works here.  But it's quite different than what I'm used to.
• Beaches in Barcelona are funny.  My first day in Barcelona my sis and I decided we'd grab lunch then get a cab to the beach.  I went outside in a short-sleeved polo and shorts, and realized that I was the only person in the whole city wearing shorts.  It was about 55 degrees out, but I just relate the beach with being warm and not wearing heavy clothes.  But I was very cold so we went back to change before the beach, I changed into jeans, and then when I got there I saw people in winter coats even.  I must admit, even in heavier clothes the beach is nice and relaxing, but it's just so different to what I'm used to.  Also, the beach is cluttered with people trying to sell stuff.  I bought a can of beer for 2 Euros from a guy walking around, it was a little bit warmer than the 'ice cold' he advertised, but not bad.  The only Asian people I saw in Barcelona were on the beach too.  They were women walking around offering massages.  It almost seemed like they outnumbered the people lying on the beach, but they weren't very successful, aside from a group of drunk American guys behind us who each got massages.  I probably would have done the same if I were drunk and with some friends just for the hilarity, but it is kind of weird and sad how many of them there are walking around the beaches.  Aside from the vendors, the beaches are quite nice though, and even nicer when the weather warms up a bit I'm sure.
• FC Barcelona is good.  Really, really good.  We saw them play against Malaga, who came into the game 5th in La Liga out of about 16 teams.  Barca completely destroyed them, winning 6-0 and seemingly possessing the ball for 80% of the first half.  Malaga didn't even really get any decent scoring chances.  It was amazing to see a team play such high level soccer.  We had pretty good seats in the corner about 8 rows up and got great views on one end each half, seeing a pair of Barca goals at our end in the 2nd half.  The fans are a lot of fun too.  3 rows in front of us there was a guy wearing an FC Barca scarf and a Budweiser hat (didn't even know Bud existed in Spain lol).  He was quite inebriated and started cheers about every 3 minutes or so.  The cheers were awesome too, although most were in Spanish and I couldn't understand them.  It was a great atmosphere to see a game though and we had a ton of fun.

I might have actually missed a few things but I'll add them later if I think of them.  Here are some of my favorite pics from the trip:


me with sister with London Eye in the background


inside the Eye


looking down


cool shot of Big Ben

Note:  My camera ran out of battery so I bought a cheap digital camera in Barcelona to take all the following pics.  Quality is sorta low because of that...


the afforementioned line for the Killers concert


inside


action shot


another one


the view from our seats, Malaga warming up for the game


sister and me at the game


the crowd at Camp Nou


sadly my best attempt at a Messi action shot

-Brian

Hey guys.  I'm happy to say that tomorrow I leave for London!  I am very excited and can't wait to get there already!  I had a midterm last Thursday and another on Monday and since then I've just been taking it easy, which has been great.  I'm definitely ready to leave though.

In my last blog entry I asked if anyone was interested in meeting up in London.  I received several responses both on my blog comments and PMs, and I think I responded to everyone, but if not, read on.  I'm going to try to organize lunch with CR members on Tuesday, Wednesday, or maybe both.  If you're interested, PM me and include your email address, I'm going to send out a group email to try to coordinate things.  I'm looking forward to meeting up with some of you!

In other news, my new computer arrived a few days ago.  I ordered a Dell Studio XPS 16 based on a recommendation by RodeoBlue and a bit of research, and so far I couldn't be happier with it.  It's a 16" laptop, weighs less than 7 pounds, and supports 1920x1200 resolution (enough to 6 table with no overlap), which is all I was looking for in this computer.  I still have my massive XPS, which I use as a desktop basically, but this computer will be great for traveling and just playing outside of the "office" of my bedroom.  For anyone looking into new computers, I'd definitely check this one out though, it's been great so far.  I'm just hoping it doesn't start bluescreening every day or something, but so far so good!

After getting the computer I decided to purchase Holdem Manager for it (using Cardrunners' own great deal, obviously).  I had held off because they didn't have an Omaha equivalent and I like the continuity, but it's due out soon so I figured I might as well.  HEM seems really impressive, although admittedly I still don't fully know what I'm doing with everything.  I've had 2 real issues so far, one is that I can't get a HUD to load on Stars, and the other is that when it processes my hands it moves my PLO hands to the processed folder as well.  I had to dig them out today when I got PTO for this computer and retrieved them fine, but this would be a major annoyance if I had to do it regularly.  If anyone can help me on these it'd be much appreciated.

So given that I purchased poker tracking software, I figured that I'd avoid being a complete lazy bum and play a little poker on the new computer.  I did play a little bit of NLH and won $12k or something in 2 fairly short 25/50 NL sessions, but I'm not even sure if I could retrieve hands from HEM right now if I tried so I'll just stick to some good ol' PLO.  The most noteworthy session I played was at 500/1k against Gus Hansen.  I ran really hot at first and went ahead by about 300k before he flipped the doomswitch and started winning every pot.  Gus won about 389k off me, although I only had a small piece of myself so my personal loss is much smaller.

Before I get to some hands, I want to address action sharing and tracking sites (namely Highstakes DB).  Pretty much every player who's not an everyday regular sells off a bunch of action when they play nosebleed games.  Although I hadn't done this before 2009, I realized it's a smart way to manage risk while still being able to play in good games.  To play 500/1k with all my action, I would ideally have a net worth of about $10 million, maybe even more, as winrates aren't especially large given that even if there is a fish, the rest of the competition is made up of world class players.  For example, say an unnamed fish sits at 500/1k HA in a 6 handed game and is a 10ptbb/100 loser in the game.  That means that the net win of the other 5 players in the game is 10ptbb/100, or an average of 2ptbb/100.  At 25/50 (especially PLO), this is still a great situation for me, even if I think the other players are all at least marginal winners, because I am often the best player in the game and thus winning much more than 2ptbb/100.  At 500/1k, however, like I said, the other players are often world class players, like Phil Galfond, Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, and the Dang brothers.  Also, a fish losing 10ptbb/100 in a lineup like this is a much better player than a fish losing 10ptbb/100 at lower stakes against weaker competition.  So in a 6 handed game with 10ptbb/100 losing fish, the 2 Phils, durrrr, and Hac Dang, all 5 of us are clearly winning poker players, but our winrates are not going to be very large in this game.  Even in PLO, where I think I can hang with these guys step for step, if I'm winning at an equal rate to each of them we're each winning 2ptbb/100 with a ton of variance.  And in practice, the fish in this game is often just a fish relative to the competition who's losing quite a bit less than 10ptbb/100 in this game and may be a winning poker player in games that are a bit softer.  With all the variance in PLO, the confidence interval for a reasonable hand sample might be something like {-4ptbb/100, 8ptbb/100}.  So you can see how silly it is when a big fuss gets made about results over a few month period, even longer given the relatively low volume of hands that are played by nosebleed players.

That was pretty longwinded and hopefully made sense, but I wrote it because people post some dumb stuff on the internet and I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, especially family members and friends who don't play poker.  If you Google my name you can probably quickly find Highstakes DB results that have me losing about $1 million this year, although in reality I'm up a few hundred k.  Tracking sites don't cover action sharing, so while HSDB has been quite accurate in tracking my play at 50/100+ in '09 (although it missed lots of hands in '08), it doesn't tell anywhere near the full story when it comes to my personal results.  Another example is whitelime last year, there were some posts questioning his skill level and financial means because HSDB had him down $800k or something.  Well obviously he didn't have 100% of himself, and he lost a max of 20 buyins and a min of 8 depending on whether he was playing 200/400 or 500/1k.  Every poker player has downswings like these.  My 10 buyin downswing to Gus is probably about my 5th worst downswing buyin-wise this year, and I'm still up a lot of money.

If you read all that, I hope it made sense and maybe you learned something.  If not, at least I have a simple link to post the next time a "Brian Hastings going busto" thread pops up in NVG.  This did get quite long though so I'll hold off on hands til next time.  Thanks for reading.

Hey guys.  I recently booked plans to make a trip to Europe!  My sister is studying abroad in London and I'm going to visit her.  I'm flying from NYC - London on the night of Saturday, March 14 (on Virgin Airlines, wifi!), and I'll arrive in London Sunday morning then probably just sleep a bunch if I don't on the plane (I'm pretty bad at falling asleep in cars and planes).  We don't really have any set plans for London yet, but my sister is having a blast there and I'm sure we'll find lots of fun stuff to do.  If anyone has any recommendations, please let me know.  Also, she has class during the daytime on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so perhaps I could meet up with some CR members for lunch?  My alternative is probably playing online poker in my hotel until she gets back, so I'd def be interested in meeting up with some of you.  If anyone is in London and wants to grab some lunch or do anything else during the daytimes then, let me know also.

On Friday the 20th, we're going to fly to Barcelona for the weekend.  Saturday we're going to see a Killers concert.  The Killers are probably one of the top 5 bands currently touring that I'd like to see, so it's awesome that the dates matched up so well.  I've been getting into them more recently, partially because of a recommendation of a CR member in my well thread, also because I always kind of liked what I heard but didn't know much of their music.  I just downloaded their newest CD and have 8 other songs of theirs, if anyone has any recommendations of songs I'd love to download and listen to them.  Here's a sample clip that has me excited:

Then, the day after the concert we're going to see an FC Barcelona home game against Malaga.  I'm not a hardcore soccer fan but I do watch more games than the average American sports fan, and if I had to pick a favorite team it would be Barcelona.  Their level of skill is unbelievable and unlike Man U I'm not focusing half my attention on watching Cristiano Ronaldo diving all game.  I'm really looking forward to this, I've always wanted to go to a major European soccer match, I even ordered a Messi jersey yesterday!  We should still have a little time to tour the city too and maybe do a good night out, I've heard the city is amazing and really can't wait. 

As for poker, February went pretty well, after a slowish start I ended out on a tear and won about $180k for the month.  I did have a disturbing trend in my PTO though where I basically crushed 2-5 handed and got killed 6 handed, but it's probably just a lot of variance.  Still I think I might be playing a bit too aggro 6 handed and I'm going to focus on that to start March.  Included in these February results was a 1 hour 4 table 25/50 PLO session vs Mafews where I won about $34k.  He actually played very well I think but I ran very good, we were playing over $10k deep for a lot of it so $34k isn't really that hard to lose.  I think it's debatable whether I have an edge on him paying $1k/hr but I'll probably give him more action if I have the time and he wants to play.  I also have interest from a couple others so I'll probably be playing some fun HU matches soon, although I am kind of busy in the near future.

As for CR, I recorded about 85 minutes of 4 tables of 5/10 PLO today.  I'm debating whether or not to use it though because I think I played kind of poorly and lost almost 6 buyins.  I think I'll probably do it anyway though, because I think correcting mistakes is pretty educational and I made a few fairly big ones I think.  Also it's good for my image to put up videos of me being a fish!  (Just kidding.  Sorta.)  Let me know what you guys think but I'm leaning toward using this for a 3 part series which would go up on the site in about 2-3 weeks with part 1.

That's all I got for now.  Hope everyone wins lots of monies in March!

Brian

Hey guys, I posted about a HU PLO challenge on 2+2 last night and figured I should talk about it here.  Here is the post, verbatim:

After sitting actionless at a bunch of HU tables for hours today and seeing the fullflush/plastikcards thing, I thought of a fun idea. I'll pay 1k an hour for anyone to 4 table me at 25/50 HU PLO. I might not accept vs everyone but most who I wouldn't accept are either good friends or 500/1k players who wouldn't want to waste their time anyway. I might also quit someone who's being a huge nit, but I'd still play at least the first hour and pay up front. PM/AIM if interested

Not sure what else to say about it here, but yeah.  I've been getting progressively less and less action at HU PLO lately (HU NL has been fine, ty fullflush) and HU PLO is probably my favorite thing to play, so I want to play more of it.  I think this is a pretty reasonable offer to those who think they are good at HU PLO.  So far I have 1 taker, who I will play some on PokerStars tomorrow (Note: would much prefer to play on FTP for those interested, but this guy only plays on Stars) and also 1 maybe.  Hopefully I get more interest because my poker playing time lately has been lots of 2 tabling 6max waiting for new games to form and that just feels like a huge waste of time when I have a bunch of other stuff that I could be doing.

Anyway, like I said I've played a few solid sessions of HU NL this month, a few vs the new worldbeater _FullFlush1_ and a session vs CR's own INTERNETPOKERS.  I'm also up $52k in 2600 hands of $25/50 NL 6max, although that's obviously heatering to a degree.  Here are a few hands:

1  Here I turn TPTK and make a larger than normal raise trying to rep some combo draw with a heard like AhT or KhT and end up getting it in really good.

2  Here I take a nonstandard line deep and make a big river call to scoop a huge pot.  I like my play against this player and I think I should check strong hands more often.

3  Here I prove that I'm not always super awesome and sometimes play like a fish.  I didn't really like this call after reviewing the session, the only way I think it's good is if he's shoving worse hands like A5hh for value, and I really don't see that.

4  Another pretty fun call, for all you monks who think you can bluff me off the highest pair on the board.

Life has been good too.  This weekend I did a bunch of frat stuff, nothing too special but all good fun.  Also, one of my frat brothers had his brother visiting this weekend.  His name is Bo Burnham.  He's 18 years old and already has a record deal with Comedy Central Records to produce satirical, comedic songs.  He has a new album out in March and has one currently available on the internet, titled Bo Fo Sho.  He didn't ask me to give him a shoutout or anything, but I think he's really funny and thought you guys would enjoy this.  He also hung out at my house on Friday so I feel cool and stuff.  Here's a sample song (NSFWish, I tried to pick the least offensive one for my blog, just don't take it too seriously haha):

If you want to see more of Bo's videos just search for him on YouTube.  Also, if anyone reading this wants to take the PLO challenge, just PM me here or on 2+2 or shoot me an IM if you have my screen name.  Later!

 Hey guys.  I've never been great at following through on New Year's Resolutions in the past, so in this blog I'm going to grade myself on how I'm doing with all of them so far.  I think doing this will help reinforce them and maybe lead me to actually follow them.  So, without further ado:

1.  Make more productive use of my time.

This one is tough to judge.  On one hand, I'm writing this at 11AM, lying in my bed on my laptop, haven't eaten anything yet today, and I think this happens too many days where I just wake up and do absolutely nothing for an hour or 2.  I've probably browsed 2+2 way too much in general too.  On the other hand, I think I've gotten a good handle on routines, which is pretty important when I'm trying to balance so many things.  Basically from whenever I wake up til about 7PM I go to classes if I have any, do schoolwork, and in the meantime keep an eye out for good poker games.  When a bunch of games are running I take a work break and play for an hour or 2, then resume after.  Also, I take an hour out of this time to work out, usually around 4 or 5.  This schedule has gone pretty well, as I've done a pretty good job getting work done, played a decent volume of hands for being in school, and done a pretty good job with workouts (more on that later).  Around 7 I eat dinner, if I eat at my frat (surprisingly excellent food from our chef) I drive to the house for 7, otherwise just order food because I'm too lazy to cook.  Hopefully I stop being too lazy to cook someday.  My roommate cooks occasionally and we just got a George Foreman grill though.  Campusfood in Ithaca is awesome and has a wide variety of good stuff though, so I can't really bring myself to cook instead of that.  After dinner I finish my schoolwork if any, occasionally play a session (generally if I didn't have time or there weren't any games in the afternoon), and then just hang out with my roommates or go out.  I can't stress enough how awesome having a pool table is.  Late night pool is awesome.

Grade: B-

2.  Get in better shape.

I'm very pleased with how this one is going.  In order to get some structure that would hopefully lead to more discipline, I signed up for a workout program on menshealth.com.  They have a personal trainer feature where you choose between 12 different workout plans and also 4 different diet plans if you want, although I've chosen to ignore the strict diet part but just make a conscious effort to eat pretty healthy.  I chose the At-Home Workout, which is perfect for me because it uses all dumbbells and I have dumbbells and all the necessary equipment to do the workouts in the confines of my own house.  From last summer to December I had lost about 15 lbs, mostly by eating well, but in the fall I probably worked out about 2x/week, which was better than before that, sadly.  So far this spring I've been working out probably about 4-5x a week.  I'm pretty great at never missing a workout during the week, but it's much harder on a Saturday when I wake up after drinking copious amounts at a party the night before.  I need to change this.  Otherwise, I think it's going great though.  My mom's cookies that she recently sent aren't helping because they're so delicious, but for the most part I'm great at avoiding junk food altogether and eating pretty healthy overall.  If anyone is interested I can post my workouts to see how effective they'd expect it to be, but I sure think it's doing the job since I almost feel nauseous toward the end of my weight workouts.  I have weights 3 days a week and cardio on almost every off day, usually somewhere from 30-45 minutes, which I've been doing on a stationary bike that I have.  The weight workout is a pretty comprehensive circuit workout featuring on big muscles (lots of legs and back) that has so far evolved from 1 set per exercise to do.  Again, if anyone is interested I can post more details.

Grade: A-

3.  Perform well in school.

This one is tough to quantify yet because I haven't had any tests.  However, I'm doing a great job to date on my main goal, which is to do better in my major classes.  I got a C+ last semester in my Microecon class, which was pretty disappointing although the instructor and book were both hard to learn from, and I felt that I could have worked harder and performed better.  So far in my Econometrics class this semester I've kept up with the material by reading all the chapters we've covered so far in the book, which is pretty unprecedented for me, and I did a very good job on the first 2 problem sets we've had.  In my other classes, I haven't worked quite as hard but there hasn't really been much due yet.  I'm not prioritizing them as much though.  I think I'm doing fine.

Grade: B+

4.  Improve my social life a bit.

This hasn't quite gone quite according to plan because I can't really go to the bars here, so often there is nothing to do.  My social life has mostly been just going to frat events, which isn't to say they're not fun.  However, a few of my other friends turned 21 and I went to dinner/parties with them, which was fun.  I've seen my freshman floor friends more than I did all last semester already I think, and that's a good thing.  Overall, I'm probably staying in a bit more than I'd like, but that might even be a good thing for now while I'm trying to balance so much.

Grade: B-

5.  Become a bit more of a bankroll nit.

Couldn't ask for more here.  I've played over 40k hands of 25/50 and 10/20 since I've gotten back to school on Jan 12.  I've played a very small number of 50/100 hands, which is acceptable since I've built my online roll back up some, and I've only played higher than 50/100 when I've had exactly 50/100 worth of my action.  This has most notably happened against Gus Hansen, whom I've played twice at 500/1k.  Unfortunately I didn't win either of those, but I plan on playing him again soon, with just a fraction of my action of course.  The 25/50 grinding has gone pretty well, I've been running a bit badly in 6max PLO in February but I'm about about 50k in a few small number of NL hands and crushing HU PLO.  I've also started to play the CAP PLO games more because there are often some big fish and it's rare to have 9 25/50 tables running otherwise so it's nice to be able to add those tables during a session to increase volume.  As an example last night I played 5 CAP tables while playing 2 HU tables, and although the CAP was frustrating and I took some nasty beats and lost 10k, I won 5k for the session.  Basically I feel like if I put volume in at 25/50 and play focused sessions, results will come, so I'm going to keep doing just that.  I've been very content just playing a lot of 25/50 and even 10/20 though and I expect this to continue for months, although once I build my online roll up some more I'll take some more shots at juicy big games.  But overall I intend to make 25/50 my main game for the foreseeable future.  Cole is a great role model for this, he obviously has the skills and bankroll to play nosebleeds semi-comfortably but rather than exposing himself to huge swings and tons of variance he chooses to just grind lower and make lots of money.  I intend to do the same.

Grade: A

That got pretty long, so I guess I'll hold up on other updates.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading!  It was definitely a good personal checkup to think about and write all that.