CARDRUNNERS

I just went on a 21 buyin downswing...I paid my taxes. It sucks, but I was pretty worried about getting an audit this year with the whole neteller thing and being out of college and whatnot. I haven't had to pay them since I was about 17 when I had my last job. Also was important since I get paid by Cardrunners for my internship.

But I feel good it's out of the way. It really wasn't as much as I thought it was. I had to take out some of my bankroll online to pay, but that's fine. I still have a sufficient roll for 1-2. Only thing is I have major projects due in the next few weeks and will have little to no time to play poker. However....once may hits and the last project or exam is out of the way early on, I can play as much as I want. and i'll be playing A LOT in may. I'm gonna shoot for 20k. Now, I haven't had a 10k profit month yet (feb. was 9k, i think march was negative...oops). But I feel good about my game right now and I think I can do it. I don't have a whole lot going on in may and will probably be getting eyelid surgery then so I'll have time to kill while recovering.

But right now, I have to do school work. Im gonna try to get in an hour or so a day to play, but no long sessions. My time management has greatly improved I think so spending a little time on poker a day won't hurt. I just hate the end of the semester. why did i go to grad school? and why didn't I win something like the PCA like daut so i could drop out of grad school...lol. maybe i'll have a nice tourney score soon as i look to be playing a few tournaments here and there as i miss them. in may i'll probably be playing one tourney and 3 cash game tables at a time. i think that's a pretty profitable combo for me.

is very relaxing and very comfortable. wake up late, lounge about. go get lunch with ezmogee and gaucho. refuse to eat outside in 60 degree weather claiming it's too cold. return to chez ezmoucho for lunching and lounge about some more. make a few phone calls for card runners which takes all of 20 minutes. read 2+2. laugh at donks on pocketfives.com who chk/call flopped middle set on flop and turn, then lead river for 1/6 pot, get shoved on and agonize.

conclude after a moments silence that there has been a lack of gambling. decide to a first one to $50 in a $5 flippament contest with ezmogee. lose $20 buyins before ezmogee invites whitelime to the table. run hot and build stack up to $40. whitelime also runs hot and stacks ezmogee who is in for $100 at 5 cent/10 cent no limit. get allin with AA vs J9 for $80. flop KTx. Turn queenball. scream so loud that ezmogee wonders if the whole "green plastic doesn't tilt" mantra is just a charade. refuse to rebuy and do more flippaments. the table starts to fill up because we have an average pot size of $29 at a 5 cent/10 cent table, when average pot sizes are $0.89. after railbirds keep asking taylor to vacate his seat if he doesn't plan to rebuy, he buys back in for $2 and insta stacks. ezmogee is on the floor laughing. here is a pictoral:



shower and hop in a cab with ezmogee to attend whitelime's business law class even though both have graduated. get introduced by whitelime to the class as green plastic, not taylor. midway through the class, is called on by the professor asking "mr green plastic, what would you think about this." ezmogee dies laughing inside while taylor shifts around awkwardly. professor, attempting to prove a point tells a girl that the two options she's suggested are effectively even. "6 of one, half dozen of the other." in order to drive home the point, professor pulls a quarter out of his pocket, and says pick heads or tails. cannot pass up a gambling opportunity so insta turn to ezmogee and say "$10, heads" to which ezmogee excitedly nods his head and says tails. tails for the win and the $10 is shipped to the hostest with the mostest.

come home to rest up after being seriously hung over from the night before wherein copious amounts of pomegranite margaritas were consumed, bud lights flowed like water, patron shots were being hoisted and toasted every 10 minutes, and skee ball matches were used to determine who bought the next round. still feel after effects of the night before while heading out to dinner with Krantz, emogee, whitelime, j-mac, fsalexfuck, foxwoodsfiend, and Noah? sign non disclosure agreement at the dinner table (don't ask) and get hooked up with a free baller dinner and some bomb ass gnocchi.

buy a razor, nail clippers and shaving cream, hop into a cab, and get a good nights sleep before the following days forbes.com interview.

i'm not sure if this post can be comprehended. i think i switched styles and tenses like 25 times. but im pretty tired, and still hung over from crazy drinking wednesday night with taylor. once we got home weds night, we decided to play $5 sngs going allin every hand until we won. $100 later we hadn't made the money

i gotta get some sleep. oh sweet i just stacked some fish heads up. poker can be fun sometimes.

<3,
Ezra

I'm back and resting up still. I had a red eye flight monday night and got back to chicago 530 our time. Got home around 7am. Slept til 2. Then stayed up til 2am and didn't get up til 130 this afternoon. Guess I needed the catch up.


Vegas was pretty good. I was on a roller coaster the whole time there with respect to gambling. First day I won at everything I played...even my first official time at craps - $5 table up $170. I was happy with that. I was up maybe $300 or so the first day. 2nd day....gave it all back. I was losing at everything and then I went to play poker again (as I did the first day) and lost. It was pretty sick. All this gambling was mainly done at the tropicana and/or mandalay bay. A little at new york, new york.

Playing live the first day was a joke. I got it all in with KK vs. KQ preflop. LOL. I won thankfully when he missed a 4 outer on river. 2nd day was another story as I caught nothing. Live poker can get so boring, but I spent the time studying my opponents, looking for tells, betting patterns, etc. People are so ridiculously bad live it's hilarious. I can always put them on a hand. Always. Guy minraises river against 2 opponents: nut straight. And he gets paid off of course. People just making ridiculous moves. Betting hard when they have it, checking when they dont most of the time. But I wasn't getting anything to capitalize on their bad play. I decide to limp Q2dd just so I can play. flop: 322. I check raise this guy I think...maybe turn. I dont know...anyway, he ended up having 33. gg me. I went to bed.

Saturday was a different day altogether. I decided I needed a different game so I went over to 2/4 limit at the mgm. I was planning to play higher limits but I was pretty discouraged from the night before and was back to even. Well, I just got hit in the face with the deck there and there were plenty of donks paying off everything. I profited $230 in 5 hours of play. That made me happy again. My grandma also won $560 on a penny machine so that was cool. I then took a nap at the hotel so I could go out later with my ex and her bf and friend. It was alright. I was kinda exhausted by the end of the night. Wasn't really feeling the gamble. Although I did play casino war at the bellagio which is hilarious. $10/hand minimum...just beat the dealer. It was awesome.

Sunday I checked out of THEhotel and went to the stratosphere. To save money I took the trolley which took forever. From checking out at thehotel to getting to my room at the stratosphere took a good 3 hours or so. I went to the pool to relax and then played some poker. Didn't do all that great. I also lost playing craps and blackjack. So another bad day. I went to the wynn to see if any CR members were around but I didn't see anyone and I guess no one saw me. I hung out there awhile before heading back to the stratosphere. When I got back I sat back down for more poker and won a huge pot my 5th hand or so.

I limp UTG with K10o. I know this is bad, but live people limp so much. I almost mucked it but that was what pushed me to play. Flop: QJ9 rainbow. yahtzee! with 3 others in the pot i bet $5. Got 2 callers. Turn: 3c. Flush draw possible now. sb checks, i bet $20, button minraises me to $40!!! yes! i love minraisers. sb folds, i think for a little and raise to $125 which puts him all in. he calls and the river is a 9 which scares me but he has QJ. lol. awesome. they can't fold live. it's awesome. i guess I dont blame him much, just a cooler.

A little later i limp 68h in sb and bb checks. flop is Kh 10h x. bb bets $10 so i put him on a K obv. mid position calls, dont know what to think he has, i call. turn: Qh. i check, bb bets $15 mid position calls, i raise to $50. bb folds and mid position thinks maybe one second before pushing in his entire stack of $300. lol! this is like the easiest fold ever. he would never risk that much unless he had me beat. i say i have a flush and fold. we talk about the hand and he was saying how he put me on a flush draw and didn't want a higher heart to come. so im like...shit, maybe i had best. he ends up saying he had 9 high flush. so i made the right fold...he also said he had the 2h. lol, 92 sooooooooted. it was such a donk move on his part....i'm not calling without a J or A high flush there, which I'd play the same way. it was hilarious. ended up $135 that session.


Monday i took easy since it was my last day. I walked to downtown, went to the outlet mall, played some poker at the plaza, $40 sng which i should have had no problem winning but i made a call for 90% my chips pre with 77 against KK. i thought he had AK or a low pair cuz he says...your AQ is no good buddy. something else too. im like..why would you try to get AQ to fold if you have KK?? lol, i laughed inside. he didn't want to get drawn out on. he has the best hand obviously when i didn't insta call and he wanted me to fold. so so great these live players.

I played a little more at the stratosphere winning a small amount and then headed to the airport.

Overall I ended up $100-$200 or so gambling I think. So not great but at least I didn't lose a lot. I had a good time too.

Playing live poker has changed my online game I think also. I noticed that playing so many tables I wait for premium hands too much. I didn't realize before that most people aren't getting that great of hands. I'm basically stretching out the one table play to 4 tables if that makes sense. Let's say I play 20% of hands live...well i noticed i was playing 20% of my online hands, total. not 20% of each table. this is bad. i think i should be raising and reraising more. i just played a session and won a decent amount. Would've won more but ya know, things dont always go good. man, people are so bad at poker it's ridiculous. they have no idea when to raise and when they should call or fold. even on the wpt tonight, david mitchell was making some retarded plays like pushing all in with mediocre hands. it's like...you're only getting called by better hands. makes no sense to me. people just like all ins.

One other thing is that this is NO LIMIT HOLD EM. With videos here and watching people play, the game has become too mechanical like limit. People are only raising pot preflop and 3-betting around pot. Try mixing up your play more. I read a hand-to-hand article with OMGclayaiken at cardplayer and he talked about this. raise more or less and see what happens. live players raise to like $15 or $22 or so and it's crazy how much of a difference this is if you apply it to online play. overbet the pot, underbet, do whatever. the game was getting too mechanical and menotenous (sp?) for me. I think it'll change some. Too bad I have a lot of school work coming up plus taxes to finish. ugh. not too much time to play but I'll try to get some hours in.

Spring is upon us. Which means that I consumed my first jamba juice in like 2 months. it was straight illin -- if you see someone with the name "iheartjamba" playing on Full Tilt, youll know thats me. It so pretty outside which I love...god its beautiful. <3

I've been playing some poker lately and shippin it pretty hard. I just don't care that much unforutnately. I've been working on my HU PLO game by experimenting at 1/2plo, but I've been getting rocked there...prob down like 10 buyins. I do think I've run horrific, btu I still think I have a ton to learn. But I like the challenge...the 1/2 players are not that tough, I've just been beating myself I think.

Fwiw, I think the games are the best they've been since the UIGEA made it through Congress. I dunno what hapenned, but the fish seem to be reappearing.

The next few weeks are gonna be crazy busy. Next week Taylor (Green Plastic) will be sleeping over at me and Gaucho's apartment (aren't you all jealous??). Word on the street is that a bunch of us are gonna be filming some sort of music video...I'll let the rumors swirl, beotch. Unfortunately my time with Tay may be limited because I'll be spending most of my time working on my cousins wedding video. It's like three years overdue, and I'll admit I've never had so much trouble with anything in my life. There were 8 hours of footage and I've had every problem in the world -- from friends bailing on me midway through editing, tapes getting stuck inside the playback dock (had to get it specially removed, so that the footage on the tape wasn't affected), plus so much more. It's really a bad situation and I feel horrible, but it's been tough considering that I just don't have the capabilities to do it myself. I should have it done by next Saturday (I hope) so that I can give it to my family. My friend Andrew and I have been and will continue to put in an insane amount of hours to try and polish it and make it perfect.

The reason Saturday is impt is bc I'm going to Chicago for Passover with most of my family. After passover, I'll be spending 2 days chilling with Taylor at his condo before heading back to nyc. I hope he takes me to Bulls games and other Chicago awesomeness just like he did for Gaucho. Only seems fair

Much love yalls,
Ezra