CARDRUNNERS

VEGAS BABY!! It's not the summer, but it's actually kinda nice to be back out here. It's been 6 months since the summer, and I'll admit that I've missed Vegas a little bit. The CardRunners team is staying at the Wynn and it is gorgeous. This is seriously the best room I've ever been in, in my life, including any mansions I've hung out in or whatnot. Everything about the room is perfectly designed. When I sang a little bit in the shower this morning, I realized that shower was designed to have optimal acoustics just in case you chose to sing, you'd sound good. It really blows me away.

Anyways, when we flew out last night, Tay and I were checking in when the e-ticket kiosk offered us a first class grade for $130. We both kind of looked at each other, smiled, and were like shippppp it. We got Wiggins to upgrade too so we had the entire first row of the plane.

Unfortunately, I was not too impressed. It was a pretty busto American Airlines plane, but the service was pretty good. I had 3 glasses of champagne and a vodka tonic. If you assume like $6 a drink, plus $20 for the nicer chair, I really only lost like $80 or so on the first class ticket.

Taylor and I were pretty bored so we just started making the most ridiculous prop bets for the entire flight. We were betting on things like how many magazines were in the magazine rack, our exact cruising altitude, how many rows on the plane, etc. We bet $10 per bet and I ended up $10. shippppp. Mom, or my loving girlfriend, if you read this, I'm so sorry that I'm a total degenerate :( :( Butttt it was fun!!!

Poker has continued to go pretty poorly. I've lost nearly $5k worth of pots in the past week when i've gotten allin on the turn with a made hand vs a gutter. It continued yesterday. I lost a $1500 pot with AA on A864 versus 67 (no flush draw), and QQ vs A8 on JT76. I guess in the latter hand, he had 7 outs, but it's still just so sick. To be honest, I haven't been playing perfectly and I've made some bad calls. But overall, I should not be stuck nearly as much as I am lately. Oh, I got a donkey to overbet shove J6 on 6228 in a limped pot. I snap called with T2 and he rivered the 6. All I could do was laugh. One of the regulars in the game even typed into the chat "admit it, he outplayed you that hand."

Anyways, Townsend just got into the Wynn so I'm gonna go hang with him and Taylor for a bit.

Catch yalls later

Ezra

I just had my worst poker session in a long, long while. It's tough to be too upset because I've been winning fairly consistently lately, but this is for sure a pretty big hit. I lost just under $10,000 which really hurts. I haven't had a loss this big in sometime....I just wish I hadn't played tonight but the games were so juicy with so many idiots. I made a couple of bad calls, but probably didn't waste more than $1k-$1500 in equity tonight.

Bad hands were things like I 3-bet a big pair. Guy flops a flush draw (no overs), sticks it in and hits. Or I 3-bet a big pair, guy calls OOP. Flop is like 468, he c/r allin and shows 44. There were a lot of other kinda sick beats, but honestly I don't even know how I lost so much. Oh, the final hand of the night was that I called a 3-bet with 99. Flop was QQ4, and it went check, check. Turn was an 8, and I check/called 2/3 pot (this is debatable). River was my 9 and I shoved. He snap called QQ for quads. I was just like: okkkkk, tonight is not my night.

It just seemed like no matter what I did tonight, I could not win a hand. This is the first time in a long while I've felt kinda sad about poker, but it's all part of the game. I a big winner overall, and I was up about 18k since Thanksgiving, so I was bound to lose a little bit.

I think some nights you're simply not going to win. I wish I'd quit when I was stuck only a couple of buyins as opposed to $10k, but that's the way it goes. The worst part about it all is that I had my second biggest stock market day ever, gaining about $13k in my holdings, and I pretty much gave it all away. Sigh :(

Okay, I'm gonna stop whining. I'm gonna get some sleep, so I'll be ready for the long work day tomorrow. But man, I wish I'd just taken the night off.

OH AND DONT FORGET: Tonight is the start of the CardRunners only MTT league. I'll be playing along with Taylor, sbrugby, and many others. It's gonna be a great time with lots of cool prizes. Check out the details in the Member Activities forum. Shippppp.

Ezra

Edit: Somethings wrong w the blog software and it wont allow me to make paragraph breaks. I'm gonna try to sort this out.

Man, I'm such a bad blogger :(

I've been on the road pretty much nonstop lately. From the end of November until early Dec, I stayed with my girlfriend in Philadelphia. I hadn't seen a ton of her lately, and she's been going through some tough times, so it was nice to spend 5 days or so with her and just hang out and talk a lot. While in Philly, we went out to my favorite restaurant in the world, called Buddakhan which is just so freakin good it blows my mind. If you're ever there, try the Edamame Ravioli and the Wasabi Mashed Potatoes. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm :)

After Philly, I took the train over to Atlantic City for a couple of days. I have no clue really why I wanted to go to AC....there was a $500 buyin 6max tourney at the Taj Mahal that I kinda wanted to play. I came in 2nd in it last year and kinda wanted to win. All was going well until the following hand.

I had been on a short stack and gone allin 3 straight hands. The third hand I shoved KJ and got called by 55 and won so i had about 7500 chips. So, the very next hand at 150/300/50 blinds, it folded to the button who raised to 800 chips. My read on him was that his small raises often meant big hands. But in a 6max tourney, that can mean a lot of things. This player was probably the most competent player at the table, but was still pretty bad overall. I re-raised Queens in the small blind to 2700, leaving myself 4800 back. The BB thought for prob 2 minutes, before shoving his full 5500 in the middle. I put him on TT or 99. Came back to the button who said "so sick, so sick...", asked me how much I had, then said "let's do this" before shoving his full stack into the middle. I wasn't really sure what to do in this spot. We were still 13 people away from the money and I was def one of the shorter stacks. I find it really hard to fold in this spot, so I called off. It might be a fold in theory as I think the BB shows me KK+ like 80% here. But there's so much in the middle, I suck out 20%, and he shows me AK or QQ some % of the time. I dunno, maybe a tourney player can tell me if it's a fold.

Anyways, there wasn't a whole lot else to do in AC so I found a juice 5/10nl $3000 buyin game. I played in it and was pretty quickly stuck like $2500 before this hand. I have a pretty wretched image, I think, because everyone else at the table is mega weak/passive and I've the only one who's been raising and bluffing. Anyways, UTG+1 limps, MP limps (who is horrible. He earlier sucked out on me when it limped around, I raised KK from the SB to $100, he called in position. Flop came J35, I bet, he shoved for 1k, I snap called, he showed 24o and got there.) ANYWAYS, onto this hand...

Two limps, I bump Jh9h to $65 on the button. Both limpers call. Flop is AT8 with a backdoor heart draw. Both check to me and even with a bad image, this is a good flop to c-bet. I bet $120, and the BB pretty quickly checkraises to $320. The BB I think is a live pro and realizes that my range is wide, so I know he doesn't necessarily need a set/2pr here. I think he can have as little as AJ, or also maybe something QJ/KQ. I decide to peel one because we're about $2500 deep. The turn is a very interesting 5h, adding a flush draw to my hand. The UTG+1 limper fires out $600. I'm really torn between calling and raising here. But ultimately it came down to that his hand was too random, his bet too small (2/3 pot), and the fact that my image was poor. if I had a squeaky clean I would've raised here as I could prob get him to fold A8, but I didn't think this guy would fold T8 to me. So I called and the river was a very interesting Ace of Hearts, pairing the ace. He immediately goes allin for $1500 or so. I mean he didn't even think about it. It was just a shitty spot, but the pot was huge, I was getting better than 2:1. I also thought that if he had 88 or TT, the ace would've actually made him think because his boat was sort of a counterfeited boat and live pros are super weak. So, I figured his most likely hand was AK and called (not that his hand mattered, I pretty much have to call here.) He had AQ and I dragged the almost 5k pot.

The next day I flew to Chicago. We're having some meetings out here which is tight and then on Tuesday the whole CR team flies to Vegas for more meetings and the Bellagio 5 Diamond. I'm definitely looking forward to that and I bet it's going to be a great time.

Welll, Taylor and I are about to eat some lunch and watch some Lamont Jordan. Later yalls.

Oh, and ps, I never bet sports but the line on today's Steelers/Pats game was too good to pass up. Tay and I bet $400 on the Steelers at 5:1. Here's hoping for the best! Should be fun to watch the game.

Ezra

From Matt Maroon, entitled "Why I Quit Poker" over at:

http://www.thepokerchronicles.com/archives/000947.html

One of the most interesting passages is the following:

"Another thing to understand is that in poker you can't fake it, or at least you shouldn’t. If you're a writer, or an accountant, or a lawyer, or have just about any other occupation I can think of, you can phone it in when you need to and nothing too bad will happen. You can go to work, fly under the radar for a day, not be your fully productive self, and you'll still get paid. They won't cancel your health insurance and you'll still accrue your vacation time. It's likely nobody will even notice, and if they did, they might be understanding, since everyone is in that position sooner or later. At some jobs you can get away with this for days at a time, and a lot of people make entire careers out of it.

Not so in poker. You can play badly for a day, but you're just costing yourself money. You might get lucky and win, or you might not and lose, but you'll win less or lose more than you should have. Either way if you're playing badly you're costing yourself money. In a game where the best player has only a one or two percent edge, playing badly is far worse than not playing at all. It's the only job I know of where, 100% of the time, you will only hurt yourself by functioning suboptimally."

I've taken some extended breaks from poker before, but never quit. After a three month stretch last spring wherein I basically broke even/lost small, I took two months off. Two months!! I've never quit, but I found this post well written and an interesting glimpse into Matt's mind.

Ezra

Hey all:

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break.  I took 3 days off at the end of last week to be with my family.  It was really nice as my Grandpa came to town, as did my aunt + uncle, and a number of cousins.  We sat around, drank a ton of wine, ate lots of good food, and sang our little hearts out.  It was really cute :)  That's what my family does when we get together...we sing!

Things were not too eventful until Saturday night when I had my 5-year High School reunion.  Okay, I'm old...yea.  It was really nice, but also, well, so weird.

There were of course the people I never really had any interest talking to, and still didn't.  There were some kids who were unbelievably immature five years ago and are now kind, hard working, and successful (there's no justice in the world).  There were a bunch of people who I wanted to see, but never showed up.  And then there were the people I was always friends with who are doing really interesting stuff.  One of them, an MIT grad, just launched a website called Jobstick.com which is founded on a mathematical algorithm which he wrote that pairs law firms with perfect candidates in the same manner that Match.com or eHarmony suggests mates.  Seems pretty cool.

But what makes it all weirder is that I went to a small school.  My graduating class was 79.  And the elementary school, middle school, and high school were all connected so that I've known everyone since 3rd grade.  And now, with very few exceptions, I see them once every five years?  I've noticed the same thing hapenning with my friends from college.  Many moved away and I've already started losing touch.  Others live in New York, but I'm too lazy to make any effort to hang out with them.  I don't think most college students realize how good they have it, living in dorms or on campus, and close to everyone at all times.  It just makes life so enjoyable.  Now, most of my nights are spent alone, or with my girlfriend.  I still have friends, but I'm no where near as popular as I used to be.  It's depressing, but also a function of working from home and working long hours.  I don't feel like going out at night as frequently as I used to.  Maybe I'm just getting old.

Well, as this is certainly a sad post, I'm going to cut it short.  It's just hard to believe that 10 years of my life are now summed up in a three hour gathering once every five years.  Is this really what it all boils down?  It seems really unfulfilling.

Love,

Ezra 

I've found myself defending poker a lot lately. To people I respect, people I love, and people I want to get to know. I get it. I really do. Poker is gambling. What we teach here at CardRunners is to approach poker akin to investing. Every decision has a given expectation, every move a certain return on investment. But, in order to gain this edge, someone most lose.

We're not the losers, but someone still is. That's why i understand when people I respect frown on poker. It affects peoples lives. CardRunners ensures that poker affects our members lives positively. But most poker players don't have the CardRunners community watching over their shoulder.

What I will always look to is that the smartest people in the world play and love poker. The organizations responsible for demeaning the game are largely funded by the Christian right. And I don't mind coming out publicly to say that I would never trust the Christian right to run this country.

Barack Obama considers himself a "very good" poker player who played poker twice a week before hitting the campaign trail. The recent GPSTS organization which not only looks to legitimize poker, but to teach poker to CHILDREN is based out of Harvard Law School. Harvard freakin Law School. What about the individuals seeking to prove mathematically that poker is a game of skill? Oh, right, they're based out of MIT. What about that virtually every American President has enjoyed playing poker, often playing inside the White House. Hell, a certain US President even funded his first Congressional campaign through poker winnings.

I think the point I'm try to make is that I'm sick of feeling ashamed for loving poker. I am absolutely sick of having to defend it. I have made my decisions. Would people perceive me differently if I was doctor, or hell, even if I were a baker? Yes. But I am done feeling bad about finding passion in the game I love. Is poker my only passion? No. Is it my only hobby? No. Do I worry when I see nineteen year old kids who've won $20k on a hot streak planning to skip college to pursue a life of professional poker? Hell, yea, I do. But honestly, the vast vast majority of these people will either lose everything back (and be right back where they started -- in college) or make good money for a while and find that they're tiring of the game. That's just the natural cycle in the poker world.

My mother was incredibly worried as my involvement in poker increased. I remember her demanding I invest my winnings properly, convinced that I would lose everything I had. But the winnings didn't stop. And her understanding of the game increased. She found out from her colleagues that poker was an intricate game, one that mathematicians had been analyzing for centuries. She found out that it was legitimately beatable. She found out that an esteemed colleague had even written a book on the similarities between Law and Poker. She was told not to worry. That some of the most successful people in the business world were avid poker players, some of whom even played professionally for a while. While she's still concerned with my welfare, she's no longer concerned that I'm on a misguided path.

This has been pretty ranty and poorly organized, but oh well. It needs to be said. Poker is not some evil entity. Are there downsides?? Well, of course! Does it negatively effect some people's lives? Of course!! But so does everything. I don't know about you, but when my instincts tell me one thing, and the smartest people in the world all agree with my instincts, I'm going to follow that ship.

Best,

Ezra

I'm a bit upset I didn't get to finish the essays that I started for this week. I was looking forward to posting them, but they'll have to wait a bit.

I found this quote in Fooled by Randomness that really got me thinking about poker and my life. It's the author speaking legendary investor, and forex trader George Soros: "But in spite of some of the nonsense in his writing, probably aimed at convincing himself that he was not just a trader, or because of it, I succumbed to the charm of this Hungarian man who like me is ashamed of being a trader and prefers his trading to be a minor extension of his intellectual life."

I thought that was a really poignant statement, because it reflects a lot of how I feel about my current life and poker in general. I love my job, don't get me wrong. I think that CardRunners is an amazing company that has helped thousands of people and continues to help thousands of people improve at poker, earn side incomes, and become more confident in their lives. And while it's somewhat depressing to accept that life can often be driven by money, it's just a harsh reality. I wish life could be driven by candy canes and hershey kisses, but that's simply not that case -- in this country, at least. I'd like to think that I'm not a greedy person. But I am. I always want more. I'm never content with a $30,000 winning month at poker. I want more. Is it my competitive nature? Sure. But it's also in some part greed.

But back to the quote at hand. For someone like me, with my background, it is hard for many of the people important in my daily lives to accept my current path. And by "someone like me," I don't mean to sound too conceited. But, my parents both have PHDs, they're both professors, my father was even the Dean of a governmental school at a major university for a while. And their son, who started with so much potential... now works for a poker company?

My parents could not be more proud of me. They tell me all the time that what I'm doing never cease to impress them. Yet, I can't help feeling somewhat ashamed of what I love. Why couldn't I love heart surgery as much as poker? I do enjoy helping people. Immensely so. But at the end of the day, I'm always one to focus on my happiness and my priorities. This does not mean I'm selfish I don't think...I commit entirely selfless acts all the time. But when it comes to my life in its entirety, I choose myself before I choose others.

Okay, I keep digressing. What I love about this quote is that the author says Soros views trading as a "minor extension of his intellectual life." I love this passage so much. Because it's exactly how I feel about poker. When I'm forced to justify poker in my own mind (which is a frequent occurence) I look at the radical differences between my past life and my current life -- a life before poker, and one after. I am a much more calm, calculated, logical person that I ever was four years ago. People around me are always impressed at how I handle difficult situations. I don't blow up, I don't freak out. While I may be hurt, offended, or nervous, I get freakishly excited that there's a new problem to solve. There are different options to consider using the information at hand. There may not be a right answer, but there's generally a best answer.

Life, as far as I can tell, is just a huge compilation of problems. For nearly every action we make (besides breathing perhaps) we must consider a set of options. In theory, we can even choose to stop breathing, but meh, let's not get too philosophical here. The point is that poker has made my life much more practical, logical, and efficient. I love that Soros doesn't few trading as simply "making money" or "a job" he views it as an intellectual activity that reflects his internal, intellectual nature. I feel the same way about poker. I get that much of the world considers it gambling and a vice. I'm not ignorant, boo hoo. But when it comes down to it, I see poker as inherently reflective of my thoughts and creativity. There should not be one set way to communicate intellect. Right now intellectuals are thought to only exist in academia. But what if I'm an intellectual too? Even if my thoughts aren't communicated through literature or over a glass of whisky.

I have to run and catch a train to head south for a Bar Mitzvah, but I hope I can write more on this subject soon. Poker has made me a phenomenal problem solver. People act so rashly and without thought so frequently. I have to assume that many of the world's ills could be solved if people thought through a whole slew of possiblities and what was proper before acting. What if we could tame our impulses? To a large degree, poker has helped me achieve that goal. Am I tilt proof? No. But compared to the masses, I think I approach the world differently, with a different view. One that is highly understanding, fair, and logical.

More later...(i wish i had time to edit this, as I'm sure it rambles and the structure is poor, but oh well...good thing its not getting published....yet!!)

Love, Ezra

So last night I came off as a total freakin pool hustler. I actually felt kind of bad that I was winning so much, and am glad that I gave a bit back at the end.

Basically, I've been pretty stressed at work and myself and friends agreed that it was time for a Tuesday night blowout ----- I met up with my good friends Emil (Whitelime), Jay (Krantz/Pry1nnraid), Chuck (danzasmack) at this bar Doc Holliday's. We were joined by this kid Dov (TheWorstPlayer) who seemed pretty cool. While $4 beers at Doc's was pretty sweet, the bar was serioulsy the most run down, trashiest place I'd ever been to. That said, I also remember it being the first bar I ever snuck into in my life. I was 15 and doing an acting program at the New York Film Academy. All my friends were older and they somehow got me in...no clue how :) 8 years later....BOOM.

Anyways, I basically couldn't take the bar after an hour because it smelled like urine, so I suggested we move things over to this lounge called Niagara where the clientele was not of the trucker variety. I have no issues with truckers at all, in fact I think they do our country a great service, but when I'm out getting drunk, I like to be surrounded aesthetically pleasing things (girls). I love my girlfriend very much, but I think it's a no brainer to say that it's preferable to be surrounded by girls and modern settings rather than large men and urine trails.

Somewhat tipsy, the four of us made our way to Niagara where the beers were now $7, but the bartender was 1) female and 2) not scary. Chuck pretty much insto fell in love with the bartender, and did the ultimate marry-me move by opening a tab to induce a conversation. It worked pretty well until the bartender's boyfriend came in :) good game, Chuck.

After 30 mins or so Niagara was kind of winding down and I felt that there was a dearth of skee ball action in our night. So we moved things over two blocks to Ace Bar. On the way, we encountered this beat up, run down Vespa that had its handlebars chopped off and on the ground. It was prob the most busto vehicle of any kind that I'd ever seen (**more on this later**). Pretty applicable given that we'd started the night at the most busto bar in world history.

Upon arriving at Ace Bar, we decided to have a 4 person HU style match where the 4th place loser bought the first round. Though I got owned by Emil in the owner, I fought hard in the loser's match vs Krantz and managed to eek out a 70 point win so Krantz lost the first of his many bets for the night. Krantz offered me $20 on a rematch which I won. While I went to buy some more drinks (to be nice) the guys decided to move things over to the pool tables which definately does not play to my strengths. I am HORRIBLE at pool. Like seriously, I am one of the worst. I have missed so many gimmes in my lifetime, it's insane. I am baaaaaaaad.

Anyways, I got paired up with Whitelime because he claimed to have the best hand eye coordination of the group (I dunno, it made sense at the time) and I was the worst. We were all getting pretty drunk at this point and started out betting $20 a game. Emil and I won the first game in an epic battle. While they racked up the balls, Jay wanted more skeeball re-matches, and obv I obliged because he's a mega skee ball fish and I'm decent. I went 3/3, so ship the $60!! After this (and I don't know how or why), but I pretty much went on the sickest pool rush of all time. I highly doubt I will ever replicate how hot I was running and how on my game was. During one improbably shot, Chuck even laid me 8:1 on a $10 bet. I didn't flinch and smacked it in. I mean it was not an easy shot, it was one of those "hit the ball super duper thin, manage not to scratch, and if you dont hit it perfect it'll hit a wall and bounce away." Obviously, I smoked it. We continued double or nothing betting until the matches were worth like $320 each. Emil and I had won the first 5 games before I finally got unlucky and accidentally knicked a piece of some weird ball that pushed in the 8 ball :( :( But I still managed to book about a $200 win on the night!

We then went to grab some pizza, but on the way (and my memory is a little fuzzy here) Chuck found the beat up Vespa, picked up the handlebars off the ground, ripped a tire off the frame and started running around the street screaming.  (Sadly, this type of behavior does not alarm anyone in New York City).  As I recall, Chuck brought the most nasty looking handlebars and tire into the pizza place and asked for a couple bags so he could carry them.  While in the pizza place he kept trying to buy the decals off the wall, but the funny little pizza men would not agree.  I think at one point he offered like $25 for a Gatorade sticker.  It was pretty hysterical.  Anyways, we then put Chuck in a cab to go home, complete with handlebars and wheel!!  I'm not sure I'm proud that one of my friends jacked Vespa parts, but the thing was most definately inoperable, so it can't be that bad.

Anyways, the moral of the story is that I'm a hustler.  Just like raptor.

<3,

Ezra

Sometimes I fall into lack of bloggery.  It's only been about a week so not too bad.  I'm currently preparing two longer blog essays which I hope to post during back-to-back days later this week.  One will be entitled, "How Poker Saved My Life," and the other, "How Poker Ruined My Life."  I think it's safe to say that I live a good life.  My life is neither ruined nor was I in need of Jesus Camp style saving.  The point I will try to make in those two essogs is that poker has added a considerable amount of value to my life in certain areas and detracted quite a bit from others.  Just for example, while I have more money than 99% of other kids my age, my long term earning potential may be somewhat devalued because of my focus on poker as opposed to economics or a job at Morgan Stanley.  But am I happier working for CardRunners than a finance job?  Was I happier when I played for a living?  What is the value to being your own boss and making your own hours emotionally, financially, and in a long-term benefit analysis?  These are the topics I'll deal with later on this week.  I hope my efforts don't dissapoint.

Here is the latest tomfoolery:

• Went out with Whitelime on halloween wherein we agreed to a prop bet of the following terms.  He is of the belief that given two years to train using any and all available resources, he could beat Anna Kournikova in a single match of tennis.  I am willing to offer him a variety of terms including a single match, best of three, best of five, etc.  The match would be contingent on Kournikova not falling ill to some terrible injury that would prevent her from playing tennis.  He has two years from the time we formally get the bet off the ground.  We agreed to bet $10,000 on it, but he won't accept unless there's enough money on the table to make it worth his time.  I'd say $150,000 or $200,000 should be enough to get it going so if you're interested, post a blog comment or PM me.
• Am more than halfway done with a book entitled "Fooled by Randomness" by a fascinating author named Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  He is a trader at a large wall street firm who basically wrote a book looking to disprove the way most people look at work.  It's no real sociolological surprise that people congratulate themselves for a job well done when things go well and almost always believe that they made proper decisions when things go wrong.  Taleb's thesis is that there's so much uncertainty in the world that very few people are "deserving" of their successes.  The people who are, are extremely conscious of risk management and are aware of the possibility of catastrophic changes to their changes.  I'm making it out to seem way more random that it is, but it's a very interesting book for anyone associated/interested with gambling and the economic markets of the world.
• I don't understand why the prices on Amtrak trains are so varied.  While looking to purchase a ticket this morning from Philadelphia to New York which is a whopping 100 miles or so (maybe less) and about a one hour and ten minute journey, prices varied from $43 to $165.  These are all for reserved coach seats.  Admittedly, some of the prices were for the Acela Express train, a higher quality of train that arrives all of eight minutes faster for double the price.  But even on the slower (eight minutes!!) regional train, prices varied from $43 to $95 even with time differentials of under an hour.  I could certainly make sense of this if the $43 ticket was at 4:40 AM, but the $43 ticket was at 1:30PM with the $95 ticket at 1:55.  Can someone make sense of this please?
• Last night I saw the movie "Michael Clayton."  My girlfriend thought it tried too hard, but I really loved it.  I thought George Clooney was simply engrossing the entire movie, and I never experienced any sort of disbelief.  I thought his character was riveting, and the plot, despite being guarded and subtle hit with emphasis.  I was impressed.

Till next time,

Ezra

The final day of the PPA fly-in was great.  I went to a panel in the morning and all the big name pros showed up.  It was cool to have a big panel on poker in the House Office Building on Capital Hill with lots of staffers and reporters in attendance.  Howard Lederer was on the panel and it was fun to look around the room and just see big name pros everywhere.  I had some nice chats with Barry Greenstein, Annie Duke, and Victor Ramdin before heading off to lunch.

In the early afternoon, I had the honor of meeting with the top aides to Barack Obama.  Because CardRunners is an Illinois based business, I was invited to meet with them.  While poker is obviously not a top priority for Obama's campaign, he is an avid poker fan and his top aide noted that he was "really, really good."  They were very sympathetic to our issues regarding the UIGEA especially because of Obama's poker acumen.  They told us they'd keep an eye on the Frank bill as it approached the Senate floor.

As for poker, things have been tough lately.  I simply cannot win.  I've basically been playing 1 day a week, losing huge, taking a week off and repeating.  Ive played poker three times since October 5th, and have lost $15,000 during the period.  It's really frusterating because I don't think I'm playing that poorly, but I simply must be.  My timing is wrong EVERY single time I make a decision.  Still, I don't understand how I'm losing so much because I'm playing against the biggest donkeys in the world.  My stocks have also been losing a lot of money, and although I'm still well off, it sucks to be losing for October.  I keep telling myself that I'll drop down, but I never do.  I jsut see the same idiots sitting at high stakes tables and go after them.  They keep wrecking me.

A hand I played at 5/10 today really upset me.  I was playing an opponent who I stacked on the first hand when he shoved 3rd pair on the turn and I called with flopped trips.  He is horrible and tilting.  I've seen him call me down with ace-high multiple times, even on boards like QJ9. 

Headsup I raised button with 78s, he re-popped it 3x to 90 and I called.  The flop was 722.  He checked and I knew he didn't have a big pair.  I bet $140 and he insta called.  I thought his only range was AK/AQ, 44-66.  The turn was a 3, bringing a diamond flush draw.  Often I'll check here looking to induce a bluff on the river, but I knew this guy would look me so light because he was starting to tilt and that flop looks so innocuous.  I bet $300 and he thought a little bit and called.  The fact that he called convinced me he had some piece, but there was no way I could be behind here.  I thought 66, 55 were his two likeliest hands.  The river was a ten, completing the diamond flush.  He checked, and I just didn't see how my hand wasn't best given the way he'd played it.  I only had a pot sized bet left, so I stuck it for $600 or so.  He snapped me off with AQdd.  That was a really annoying hand that I feel like I played perfectly.  I honestly think he would've called me with 55 or 66 and called with AK/AQ high.  Maybe I'm underestimating my opponents.  All I know is that I am incinerating money and I should drop down to 2/4 to rebuild some confidence.

Ezra