Barney Frank wants to lift the restrictions on Internet Gaming
by Tourney Staff -
It seems someone is finally stepping up.  Rep. Barney Frank wants to make sure online gaming is legal, taxed and regulated.

Let's hope he can push this through:

The Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act

It only seems fair when there are lotteries, horse racing, dog racing and numerous other forms of legal gaming throughout the 50 states. 


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Days 15 thru 24 - back home
by russo -
Well that's it.  Sorry for not blogging my last week there.  Days 15 and 16 were pretty good.  I did well in the satellites again and got in that Friday's $2K NL event.  Well the same thing happened as in the week before.   I even took a Unisom, went to bed at 2:30 and didn't fall asleep til after 5am.  I was pretty tired and played a AKs hand pretty badly in the 2nd level to lose about 60% of my chips.  I survived one all in when my AK held up against AJ, but my AK lost to 88 early in the 4th hour and I was done.

After this point I was really just totally disgusted and discouraged.  I mean, what does it matter how good I am and how well I do in the satellites if I can't get a good night sleep and be prepared when it really counts?  I talked to my Full Tilt buddy Ray about this and he said a lot of the pros take sleeping pills, especially when they get deep in big tourneys like around days 3 and after.  He also told me that over the counter sleeping pills are really nothing more than anti-histamine type ingredients which just tend to make you drowsy.  In order to get a good night sleep, most people I talked to said that prescription Ambien is best.  Looks like that'll be at the top of my list of stuff to pack for next year.
This is pretty much why I stopped blogging.

I basically took a week off poker at this point and just hung out with some more friends who came into town, and enjoyed myself at the Full Tilt Gala.  It kinda sucked because I caught a cold the day before, but I still had a good time.  There were a handful of B and C list celebs there like Shannon Elizabeth, Matthew Lillard, and Robin Tunney, along with your typical poker pros.  We were at Pure at Caesar's which is the hottest club in Vegas right now, and then we went to an afterparty at one of the suites in the new Palms tower.  It was pretty mellow there though as most people seemed pretty whipped.  Everyone was pretty much just lounging around playing pool and what not.

All in all, it was a good trip.  It was definitely a good learning experience, basically learning how to make next year better.  I'll definitely get a house next year, as the place I stayed in was kinda ghetto.  I've got to have internet access where I'm staying next year too.  Also, I want to stay somewhere closer to the Rio just to save time every day and so I can feel free to have a couple drinks at the end of the day and be able to cab it home without having to worry about spending $40 each way for a 7 mile trip.

I'll jump right into the $325's next year too, if I decide to play satellites again and not NL cash games.  I crushed the $325's this year and would like to play nothing lower than this level next year, and even play a handful of the $525's and $1030s. Looking at it from an hourly rate standpoint:

A good return on investment (or ROI) for one-table tourneys is ~25%.  If my average time playing these is about 1.25 hours, then for the $325's my hourly rate is ($325 * 0.25)/1.25 = $65/hr.  That's not a bad expectation.

For as solid as my single-tables went, I just didn't have any luck in the mult-table tourneys.  I ended the trip 0 for 4 on my last 4 coin flips in big buy-in tourneys.  I did play a $1060 multi-table satellite for the main event the day before I left, and lost 2 key hands with AK vs. 88 and 77 vs. JT.  So if I wasn't tired, I just didn't get the cards to get deep.

That's about it.  I really appreciate y'all reading along and encouraging me along the way. I hope this was a bit entertaining and exciting for you.  It was for me.  Thanks for all the great comments and emails you guys sent.  Hopefully next year will get me at least a bit closer to a final table.

Overall I ended up ~$7700 in the STT's and down just about as much in the MTT's.  In all the MTT's I played in, I had zero cashes.


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Day 14 - no luck
by russo -
Well, I think I played really well yesterday.  There were a bit over 2100 entrants yesterday and I busted around 360th.  They paid the top 198 spots, I think.  In levels 4 and 5, I pushed all in 5 times, but won only the blinds and antes each time.  I was never called.  So I basically just survived during this time, and never accumulated any chips.  I made the dinner break, but knew I was really shortstacked after we got back.  I busted my 4th hand after break when my pocket 3's lost to QT suited.  It would have been a nice coin flip to win.

A really unbelievable series of things happened at my first table.  3 times there was a showdown where 2 opponents had the exact same pocket pair.  Once was AA against AA, then 55 vs. 55, then JJ vs. JJ. This was within a 3 hour span.  Johnny Chan said that he's never seen anything like it in his 35 years of poker.  This truly confirms that live poker is rigged.


Comment by: instant karma
Live poker is soooo rigged. Play it big!!

Comment by: Jason Wrigley
I was once dealt trip 10's twice in a row playing 7card stud (1st three cards). Odds are 1 in 30.5 million of this happening! In all fairness I would have been equally freaked out if it came any same card trips twice--odds are 1 in 2.35 million. Anyhow, that's poker!

Comment by: Jasson Wrigley
Assuming you were 10 handed at 30 hands per hour...the odds of any same pocket pair vs any same pocket pair occuring at least 3 times in 3 hours is 1 in 5.6 million. Pretty cool.

Comment by: Jason Wrigley
My bad, the 1 in 5.6 million applies to heads up play....for 10 handed it's 1 in 10.4 thousand. Still pretty cool.

Comment by: Last odds post, promise :)
To put Johnny Chan's comment into perspective, you'd have to play 10 handed for 5 years without taking a break just to have a 75% chance of seeing this event occur.

Comment by: bustergonads
Give us an UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!

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