Irish Open April 09

The 5 of clubs, that's all it took for this young Cake player to make his way to Ireland this past April. You know those gold cards you get when you play ring games at cake, well Brad had the 5 of clubs and won a FREE tournament and won the Ireland trip (by the way, this was to be his FIRST ever live tournament) and not only did he win the trip to a great destination, but he ended up coming in 7th at the tournament for a total almost 75,000 euros ($100K). Yours truly also won the trip and Amanda and I were off on our 3rd international trip in less than 6 months (Aruba with Ultimate Bet in Oct 08, Australia with Cake Jan 09 and now Ireland ) . We flew to Dubin via Amsterdam and upon arrival to Dublin, was a bit unimpressed, as there was construction and traffic and looked like any other city. We took a cab out of the city about 20 minutes to a resort called Citywest. It was a hotel/ golf resort/ convention center/ and pub. It was definitely upscale with a private helicopter sitting out front. After getting unpacked, and resting a bit, we headed down to the pub, where all the cake players were going to get together for some drinks.....did I say some drinks, I meant a whole lot of drinks, these Canadians and euros can put them away. I also met new friend Jim, scrpionkng, and his beautiful girl Chantal where we immediately hit it off. Scrpionking, it seems had just recently been to the Bahamas for big tournament and made final table taking home over 150 K. I am soooo jealous..nice job Jim. Anyway, back to the drinking, we have a lot of characters in this group including a 6'2" Irish lad that maybe weighs 110 with long hair and is a metal head and loves poker. He can drink too, we also have a Asian gangster with a screen name of raginghardon...nice, Cake was very proud of that one. We also had some Germans, some from Finland, Canada and the states. Oh, did I mention freaking Mel Judah shows up and has some drinks with us, yes, that's him in the picture above. This pub ends our day every night after this, and there are all kinds of things going on..they have oldies playing in the bar (like Neil diamond) and everyone in the bar is singing along...we are at the bar about 3 in the morning and some dude (the dude with the guitar in the picture above) and I'm thinking he's hitting on Amanda and says in his Irish accent, " you Americans like Garth Brooks " and we're like, yeah I guess and he grabs his guitar and starts banging our Garth Brooks songs but has an Irish accent, I'm cracking up. We did have one down day and I had set up a private tour of the Guinness storehouse in Dublin through a connection I have back home, so we hop in a cab and head for Guinness. I really did not know what to expect, hadn't studied it and we pull up in this industrial looking area of warehouses, etc. and I'm thinking, blahhh. We get to this little street with a little door and there are hundreds of people waiting to get in, wow. We go inside and it's amazing in there. It's 7 stories high and as you stand in the middle of the room, you look up and see all 7 stories through the middle of a pint glass. This brewery was celebrating it's 250 year anniversary while we were there and I had no idea what a national treasure this company was and how vital it had been through hundreds of years to the Dublin economy. We got taught how to properly pour a draft Guinness and I'm not really a Guinness guy, but it tasted really good after seeing the literally thousands of people there celebrating this company and all it's history. Amanda got chosen to make a batch, and so there is an Amanda batch of 19,000 pints out there somewhere.

POKER

The main event started and I doubled up in the first hour with 10 10 with a board of K 10 10 rag rag against an opponent with K K...ouch....I made it through day 1 with no other notable hands that day and started off day 2 with about chip average (Brad, that kid I told you about playing his first live tourney, was chip leader) . We play about 5 hours into day 2 and have lost a few chips and am sitting with about 26k and a young player to my right with about the same amount of chips pushes all in with 6 6. Now, we are at 103 players left and 70 get paid, so he pushes his 6 6 for 26k all in and I look down and woop woop, there they are ,

A A and I Hollywood a bit (wanting another caller behind me to participate) and I call. No one else does call and it's heads up with me having a huge advantage, right ? Flop comes a 6 and I am done, so sad. Oh well, nice trip at least, right.

I moped around for a bit and then wanted more so I jumped into a 180 euro 10 man satellite and easily won it for about $2000 so not all was lost. I just kept the money, instead of playing the higher costing tournament, to pay for all the other stuff we had going on. Jim, scrpionkng, Chantal, Amanda and I decided to go see some real Irish countryside and a very famous pub up the hill about 20 miles. The Irish countryside was green, plush and fun to watch. We got to this really little old pub (over 100 years old) and it was crowded, quaint and full of atmosphere. We had a nice dinner (starting with frog legs) and then this Irish band came on and sang Irish folk songs, and was a blast, an adventure I won't forget. I had signed Amanda up for a ladies only event the next day and off she went. She didn't last long though (unusual for her) and came back REALLY pissed. She had flopped a set of Q's and lost runner runner to a straight, but the hand that really got to her was when she was mid position and had 9 9. There is limp ahead of her and she has a somewhat short stack because of the set that lost and so she raises 3 times the big blind. There is a caller behind her and it folds around to the big blind and that 'player' says raise and throws a chip in (not clear what the chip was), but the limper folds and Amanda thinks about it for a long time, decides she is beat and mucks. Well the caller behind her says 'call the floor' and the floor comes over and agrees it was a bad raise, and takes it back. Well Amanda had mucked even though she had the right amount of chips in. The flop has a 9 of course, the raiser wins the pot with K K and Amanda never recovers .....

Aussie Millions January 09

The picture is of the twelve apostles in southern Australia a couple hours outside Melbourne. I won a satellite on Cake and Amanda and I were able to take a vacation and visit a place we may not have gone to otherwise. What a great experience it was. We took a red eye from LAX direct to Melbourne hoping for less crowds...WRONG...every seat was booked and this was a 15 hour flight. I usually like an aisle seat but got the window on this one, bad move. I had Scotty Nguyen sitting in the seat directly behind me with his girl/wife (?) and their two kids. One of the kids had to sit in our row next to Amanda and she became a nanny for the flight, although he did great and was a good traveler. We crossed the dateline so we completely skipped a day but arrived safely and took a cab to the Crowne Plaza Hotel. For those of you not familiar with the Crowne, it is a HUGE place, with hotel, casino, mall, movie theatres, dance clubs, and many places to eat. It was THE PLACE TO BE, and literally thousands of people were there every day. It is located right next to the Yara River and there is a very modern urban feel there in Melbourne. Mind you, January is summer there and it was definitely warm, but not too bad. We were lucky because after we left, it got really hot (over 115) and they also had the worst fires in decades soon after we left. We had dinner the first night on the banks of the Yara on a boardwalk restaurant called the Waterfront. This boardwalk is a very wide and cool walking area through the city and next to the river, great for people watching. It was almost sunset (8:45) and we were enjoying our meal and the scenery and then at 9, we heard this whooosh and fire started shooting out of these metal towers along the river. There were about 9 of them and it turned out to be a planned choreographed show. How sweet is that ? A great start to our trip. As far as poker goes, I made it through day one with a short stack and day 2 started at the feature table with Patrik Antonios. My first hand I get A K suited in early position, and I push all in, Amanda is freaking out, but no callers and I chip up a little. I ended my day top pair and a flush draw but got beat out and the Open was over. I did pick up about $1500 in cash games though and that pretty much took care of food and excursions. A couple interesting (to me) notes...you don't tip in Australia, of course i didn't find out till day 3 and was keeping everyone happy there for awhile. Also, when you go to a fast food place, NO one picks up their trash, they just leave it there for the porters, keeps em in a job I guess, just found that interesting. The Australian Tennis Open was in town while we were there and we went over to check that out too at the Rod Laver arena. Very fun. On one of our excursions, I ran into Jim Worth or krazykanuck and his girl and hung out with them and ended up having dinner with them that night. I very much enjoyed his poker stories as he has had many more experiences than I have had. I knew of him because of seeing him in Aruba but had never met him. We ended the day with a great dinner near the river and some wine and topped off our wonderful trip to down under.

June 09

June was an interesting month in many regards. I always look forward to the beginning of summer, as I always think of the many things I will do in the coming months. Unfortunately, summers pass quicker than they used to and there never seems to be enough time to do all the things I want to do (spend time with the kids, play golf till sunset, go shoot hoops at the beach, see a movie and of course, play poker). The news was filled with stories of Iran. These stories brought a new perspective of that country and although the government is wrong and standing firm, the people expressed themselves publicly in the eyes of the world for the first time in a long time and it is clear they want to be part of the world and all it has to offer and I support their efforts and hope. My son plays club soccer and they won the California state championship for boy u-13 and we got to go to Washington. Amanda, Kory and I and all the boys and parents travelled to Pasco WA via Seattle. We rented 6 mini vans and drove the 4 hours outside Seattle. The first 90 minutes is scenic and beautiful and then as you get more east, it becomes more desert like. We had a great time there and beat Oregon 12-1 and Washington 9-1. Our soccer team is now ranked 8th in the nation...one of the other boys on the team is from Iran and his parents and I had some good conversations about the current events there.

POKER

I had won a seat for event 54 at the WSOP with Cake and travelled there in late June. Rooms are crazy cheap there now and I stayed at the Oreleans for $30 a night. I wanted OFF the strip as the events i would be attending (Palms and Rio) are on the other side of the freeway. I got there at 12:15 and wanted to get some poker in right away so I got the room and hustled down to the poker room and got the last seat for the noon tournament. There were 110 players and it paid 10. i grinded it down and got close, 13th but didn't cash. Event 54 was a $1500 buy in NL tournament and Cake had planned a get together for all the winners at the Palms the night before the tournament. My son, Kyle, happened to be in town with his buddy and their girlfriends so I had them meet me over at the Palms and I got them into the party. It was in the Fantasy Suites tower and on the 30th floor. The suite was very nice and actually had a private pool on the balcony outside the room overlooking Vegas from 30 stories up. Cake gave me my buy in and said ' you better get over to the Rio, they are gonna sell out' WHAT ? i hopped in a cab and got over there and they were right, there were about 300 people in line registering for the tournament. I did get in and was relieved. Back to the party, I ran into a new friend and great player, dougblazers, and a couple buddies I met in Ireland, brutus44 and luckyshaun, from Ireland. It was a kick ass party with models running around in bikini's and in the pool and open bar, etc. The next day arrived and I was ready to battle. I chipped up a little in the first couple levels and then after the break, I raised a couple times in late position with A Q and A J and got pushed and decided to lay em down, putting me on a shorter stack. Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson came to the table about this time with a very short stack, about 1600. The blinds were at 75/150 and a 25 ante and he played NO hands until his stack was down to 1100 and he minimum raised to 300 under the gun, leaving him with 800. Two players behind him re reraised and it folded around to him and he mucked. Two hands later, he pushed his last 800 from the button with A J and the big blind called with A A and 'jesus' was done. I hung on for about another hour
and reraised all in with 9 9 to the other short stack and he turned over A K and turned a K, ending my day.....maybe next time