I don’t know if it’s the being in high school, the being a girl, the west village, or the being in a place where you can eat delicious things with very few calories, but something about the pinkberry in the west village apparently encourages girls to act like complete moronic fools.  i have nothing more to say about that.

in other news, mike brabiglia is funny.  we saw him tonight in the bleecker street theater which is a nice venue that attracts way fewer annoying high school girls than pinkberry.  i give the show a B+, as i was bored for a little bit toward the 2/3 point and some of the schtick was a little predictable/repetitive.  but all in all, a very solid time.

So my family and the Green-Spectors (Sue, Don, Lara, Avery, and Hal) have this tradition of making sushi and playing games together.  It started as a Rosh Hashanah thing, you know, typical Reconstructionist traditional meal for one of the most religious holidays of the year… but it has grown to an at-least-once-annually-but-usually-more event.  I’ve brought it to my own life with great success last year, and I’m actually planning on having a sushi-making party this coming week with some friends back at school.

Sue is such a classic Jewish mother - loves to cook and entertain, and wants everything to be perfect for everyone.  As the entertainer, everyone needs to have their favorite ingredients for the sushi making.  As the cook, new ingredients are constantly added for more adventurous sushi.  You can see where this is going.  Last night we had 16 sushi ingredients, most of which worked incredibly well.  They were:

Tuna

Yellowtail

Salmon

Smoked Salmon

Eel

Cooked Shrimp

Lobster Salad

Egg (Tamago)

Cucumber

Avocado

Mango

Inari (Bean curd pouches)

Masago (Flying fish roe)

Sesame Seeds

Cream Cheese

Imitation crab sticks

The best rolls were actually the ones with cream cheese in them, in my opinion.  Cream cheese was the new addition, and it worked very well.  The winning roll from the evening was:

Cream cheese, tuna, smoked salmon, cucumber, egg, masago, and sesame seeds with a touch of wasabi, all wrapped in nori.

Runner up of the evening:

Tuna, salmon, cucumber, eel, mango, and masago wrapped in nori.

There were lots of other crazy adventures, but these worked the best.  Sushi-games night is always a good time.  One observation: My brother still can’t cut sushi so it doesn’t completely fall apart.  I told him how to do it but he insists on doing one quick cut down each piece quickly (this method decidedly does NOT work).  I think he secretly wants to be a samurai ninja, and is using the sushi to practice for more important battles yet to come.  Beef, maybe.  I blame it all on the ninja costume he insisted on wearing for Halloween 8 years in a row growing up.

Well, no promises this time… but I’ve heard it’s good for people to write so I’m hoping that this will make me feel good.  Plus, I have the world’s shittiest memory, so I’m hoping that writing more details about my life will actually make me come back and remember them later on.  I apologize in advance for the lack of too much poker content (I don’t play that much anymore!) and any law school content I may post, but hey, life is pretty simple these days and there ain’t much more to say.

I guess I haven’t really written in 6 months - I could try to catch up, but that seems silly… I feel like I’m getting coffee with a friend I haven’t seen in 6 months - where do you begin?  The long and short of it is that I moved to New Haven, bought a sweet condo there, (almost) completed my first semester of my 1L year at Yale Law School, ended my relationship with Nora, met a whole group of amazing people, got my life somewhat in working order where I kind of get shit done now, and (almost) kicked the poker bug.

OK, that last sentence was a lie.  I didn’t kick the poker bug.  In fact, every so often, I just get it bad and have to make a trip to Foxwoods or something, but it’s never very satisfying.  I think some friends are going out to Vegas for my friend’s birthday coming up in February, so maybe I’ll tack on an extra day or two then and hit the tables.

I finished my semester a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been hanging out in NYC since then.  I have to head back to school tomorrow though to begin studying for finals, which start in a week.  Luckily, they’re all pass/fail, so I’m not really stressed at all.  The last semester was sort of brutal in that I had class at 8:30AM every day.  Towards the end I didn’t go all the time, so I really don’t know as much as I should about the last 1/4 of the material in any of my classes.  That with my bad memory and the return to freshman year of college style drinking that law school invites, and the last few weeks before classes ended were kind of a blur.  But I’m psyched for next semester now, I’m only taking early class twice a week, and I’m not going to drink for a while to clear my head.  I’m taking sweet classes though - law and economics, another microecon class, an LBGT rights litigation clinic, property, and a latin american film class with undergrads to bone up on my Spanish before heading to Argentina for a month this summer.

Last night was New Years’ Eve, but a relatively uneventful one.  I went with Beth (law school friend) and Erin (old MIT friend) and her girlfriend Laura to this party out in Prospect’Heights.  That isn’t a typo - it was in the neighborhood of Prospect’Heights.  My friend originally told me Park Slope, then switched it to Prospect Heights.  At the party she clarified that what she said was “Prospect Place in Crown Heights” but just said it very quickly.  Crown Heights is quite different than Prospect Heights, you see.  Anyway, it reminded me a lot of how realtors skew the nicer neighborhoods to have very generous district lines… and it seemed funny to me.  The party was fine - I met a couple nice people I guess, but we didn’t really talk to anyone else.  It seemed like everyone else knew each other, and the layout of the apartment wasn’t great for getting to know people - the narrow structure sort of made it difficult to have group conversations.  Also, we tried to play the finger game but it didn’t catch on!  In fact, people were too bored to even finish one round of it.  W T FFFFF!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this vacation is now coming to an end.  New Years’ resolutions are pretty cliche.  Especially weight loss new years’ resolutions.  But fuck it.  I had lost a lot of weight last yr just eating healthy and not drinking much… and I’ve been in terrible reverse since the start of law school.  so one of my new years’ resolutions is to make the last weight-loss new years’ resolution I will ever make.  And that includes a 1 month from this date no-drinking period, followed by a reevaluation and possible continuance of the policy.  Also, personal trainer time, it is.  I was going to start this last term but I was playing a lot of basketball and squash - maybe 4 or 5 times a week.  So I got spoiled and thought I didn’t have to waste time boring myself at the gym.  But then I realized that when we actually had a lot of work to do, 2 hours playing basketball is sort of an unreasonable hope.  So I’m going back to my old ways, I’m gonna hopefully find some Yale-based personal trainer to work with me, and start lifting again.  Actually, if anyone reading this knows anyone in the New Haven area who would work with me, please let me know.

In poker news, I went to play the WPT at foxwoods a little while ago and I’m planning to go again in April.  I managed to make some huge laydowns in the 10k (including correctly folding a set to one bet on the turn on a K946sss board and laying down TPTK way too many times to count) but I couldn’t make the last one, sadly one of the more obvious ones despite being against a crazy aggressive player, and I was out.  That brings my record of cashing in 10k WPT events to like 0-12 or something insane.  And it’s sick that I’ve become one of those live pros that brags about all the sick laydowns they made rather than the sick bluffs.  Ha.  Weep for me, please.  Luckily I took down one of the 2k preliminary events for 115k so that was nice.  Especially after being in law school and not being able to play really, an unexpected 6 figure score is a nice bonus.  I’m excited for the WPT in April and sad that this is my first World Series that I’m not going to be able to be in Vegas.  Between Argentina for a month and a summer job in NYC, I’m cutting it really close to all of the weeks of the summer.  I’m waiting for the schedule for the WSOP to come out to see what I can swing, and sort of trying to finagle a summer job where I can take a week to go play, but I’m not too hopeful.  Still, I’d love to head out there for the 10k HU of course, the 10k PLO, the women’s event, and anything else.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Last but certainly not least - DJ and I got together again and made a sweet series for season 1 of the 2nd year of DeucesCracked.  I can’t say too much about it but I think it’s better than unconventional wisdom - I’m just throwing that out there.  Stay tuned.

And with that, I’m done.  I’m not going to promise to keep blogging, but I’m certainly going to try.  Like a friend you haven’t seen in 6 months, the first chat is always very superficial.  I promise to add more of the ridiculous idiosyncracies of my every day life in future posts, should I be inclined to make them.  Have a wonderful 2009 everyone.

in maybe 2 hours of 2 tabling 5/10 plo, i managed to make 18k. add that to the 11k brian made me playing 8 hands of 100/200 deep against a fish (all in on flop of J64ss with KcKh v AsQs. Turn A. river Kd for the one outer resuck for 84k pot) and the 15k jay made me playing 300/600 300 ante nl/plo and i shipped a 44k day playing very little poker. i’m pretty happy about that since, well, i didn’t do very much to work for it.

the plo session just now was insane - there was this total maniac fish playing on one of the tables who potted it whenever he didn’t have anything. i played this hand against him ; http://www.pokerhandf.org/?2855780 the river was a snap call though i must say i wasn’t too pleased with it.

some other fun hands:

here i float the flop because i think he has nothing a lot. on the turn i’m confused but think he might be attempting to barrel me off AK, so i call to bluff the river. backup plan is to raise a river bet and rep aces full, obv. but then i get there. lol.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2855809

on the following hand, i am sort of bluffing or value betting the turn, i’m not really sure which. i think bluffing. basically i think the guy has Q9 at best here though usually an overpair or something of the sort, and i expect him to fold that if he doesn’t have a draw to go with it. the river is a total blank and unless he has Q9, i don’t think he would value bet. so i put him on some sort of draw and called. why the hell he bluffed his Q, i have no idea.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2855771

there were probably some other fun hands, but i don’t use PT so f it, i have no idea. but i won a lot of money very quickly, so i’m happy. tomorrow is waterskiing, so i’m gonna head to bed so i can get a bit of rest for that.

well, as you can probably tell from the title, i played both the 10k plo event and 25/25nl cash today.  so clearly, i busted out pretty quickly from the 10k plo.  i don’t mind my play for the most part, just bricked a lot of everything.  i potted/called a pot reraise in position with KJT9ds and bricked.  later i 3bet the most aggro guy at the table with TT99ds and ran into aces so i called his 4bet and bricked the flop.  later i hit a flush under a flush and lost some more chips… just a lot of crappy situations.  meh, so it goes.  i definitely could have saved chips by playing some of these hands less aggressively, but if i just hit one of the big hands, i double up and get a healthy stack.  so it goes.

anyways, after i busted i went and sat in a 25/25nl game which was super-juiced.  i played for 4 hours and made 14k, so a solid session if i do say so myself.  the money definitely didn’t come easy though.  there was some guy named john who i guess won a wpt back in 2005 or something.  he lost a big pot and then started raising every single hand.  one hand i complete the mississippi straddle, two callers, CO makes it 250, john calls, and i make it 950 to go with red kings.  CO calls with 2k behind and john calls with whatever BS he has.  i have 7k total at the start of the hand.  the flop is a beautiful AQ5 all spades… i freeze up and check, putting the 2k guy on AQ, JJ or TT, and I’ll fold if he bets because he isn’t going to bluff with the pairs.  he checks and john bets 2500 into the 3k pot.  i put him on bs suited connectors preflop (or offsuit, who knows) so basically GG if they’re spades and i ship in the 6k.  he mucks quickly and i pick up almost 5k on the pot.

another hand john opens to 250 when we’re 8 handed and i pop it to 800 in position with ATo.  this gets a lot of respect i think b/c i’d only repopped twice before, with kings when it was shown down, and with QQ which didn’t see a flop.  we were playing pretty straight-forward due to john being insane.  anyways, the SB, the same guy from the last hand, cold calls 800 with 5k behind.  John folds somehow.  the flop comes JJ2r and SB check/calls 800.  turn is a T, check/check.  river is a 3 and SB now bets out 2k.  i couldn’t put him on a J since he cold/called 800 preflop, and i didn’t think he was really value-betting QQ here so i figured it was KK, AA, or something retarded, possibly AQ or AK bluffing now.  since he was obviously pretty bad i called and he turned over 99 which made 0 sense whatsoever, but i scooped the 8k pot, so ship it.

last fun hand i played right before i left - straddle on the button again, limp limp MP makes it 350, i flat with AQss and the SB overcalls.  the flop is KJ7ddd, checked around.  turn 3h, checked around.  river 5h for a final board of KJ735ddd, and MP bets out 700.  I call, SB mucks 99, and I win vs MP’s ATo.  Talk about thin calls

Anyway, after that the game got kind of bad, the donkey busted and John left, so I just picked up and went home with a very healthy win.  I’m chilling back at the DC house and I think we’re going out to a movie tonight, so until then I’m just gonna relax and unwind.  I might head down to Bellagio to play the 2k tourney tomorrow, depends when I wake up I guess.  That’s all for now.  Later!

Yesterday was sort of a weird day.  I woke up after 4 hours once again and couldn’t get back to sleep, so it was one of those tired hungover feeling days, despite not drinking.  This is something that’s happening to me as I get older - I start to get hungover when I have two or three drinks the night before, and I guess I sometimes feel hungover without even drinking at all!  So I was sort of groggy and sat at the table in the dining room/computer room in the DeucesCracked house just reading 2p2 and playing mid stakes HU for a bit.

I won 2 buyins after some guy did the anti-hit’n'run, also known as the “insta-quit” which is where they make some terrible call that’s sort of embarrassing, and then instantly leave so they don’t have to look at the table anymore.  In this hand, I 3-bet J9o and he called and the flop came J92dd.  This was actually the first time he finally defended to one of my 3-bets.   So I bet 140 into 200 and he called.  The turn came a 5d and I had about 950 left behind with 480 in the pot.  With 3 diamonds up there I decided to jam it in to try to represent AdXo or whatever, so I jammed 950 into a 480 on the J925ddd board.  He thought for 10 seconds and called with 9To no diamond, drawing dead.  So yeah, he did the insta-quit.  It always comes after I do something sort of unconventional and thoroughly own someone’s soul, so it generally makes me feel good and boosts my ego a bit.  This was no exception.

Ego intact and flying high, I rounded up some of the jews to go play some bball down at 24 hour fitness.  Chuck and Jay came and the three of us met a group of punk high schoolers who were too cool to play defense and generally very mediocre at basketball.  Only having three people, we acquired two of said high schoolers onto our team and proceeded to play 3 v 5 every time we had to play defense.  We lost the game and it was just really shitty.  We had waited long already and had to get back soon so we didn’t have time to wait for another game, so we left after the shittiest basketball session ever.  But wait, just before we left, we discovered that one of these high school punks has actually stolen Jay’s wallet.  Some searching happens and after a while, we leave, dejected from a trip that can only be described as epic fail.

The rest of the day was uneventful I s’pose.  Or really I just have to leave to go to my tournament now (10k PLO holla).  But basically I sweat 5x 6max final table for a bit, had my ESPN interview which hopefully they air during the ME coverage, gambled for a little bit, and had a pretty quality dinner at Delmonico at the Venetian.  All in all, the second half of the day was much better than the first, and after my first good night’s sleep in 4 days, I’m ready to go crush some live donkeys in PLOmahahahahaha.   Wish me luck!

if y’all follow the world of online poker news, you’ll know what my post title is about.  and stevesbets, if you ever find me and you get done with dogishead, i’ll challenge you to HU as well.  i’ll just challenge the whole damned world right now; i might as well, seeing how this thing with neverwin never panned out and i just want to be able to feel again.

the past two days i have busted not one not two not three but four tournaments.  i busted the two wsop’s in timely fashion, going out in 45 minutes and 1.25 hours, respectively.  that left me plenty of time to go deep in the bellagio events both days without cashing (which is annoying considering i have all my own action in those and the one tonight was 110k for first).  i ran up a big stack early, making two full houses and getting paid off on one of them.  then i was card dead for the entire day, and then anna wrobleski thought AJ was the nuts vs my first three-bet in forever with a stack i can never three-bet bluff with (24BB).  of course, it was the post-flop nuts so not much more to say about that.  i went down to 2.5bb, ran my stack back up to almost average, and then made a very questionable UTG shove when i was down to about 14BB.  we were 8 handed and ppl fold way too much live so i thought i’d get called by 99+ but 88 and 77 would fold bc they dont want to flip and i shoved utg etc.  so only 6 pairs would call me and blah blah i dunno it might be a fold.  anyways i ran into kings and that was that.

ive been somewhat enjoying playing tournaments actually, which is probably why i go about these masochistic undertakings.   but i’m taking the day off tomorrow so i can be good to go sunday for the 10k plo.  i’m doing an interview tomorrow evening with ESPN - i think they’re going to do some sort of feature on me when they air the coverage for the series.  or maybe just an interview or whatever it is, not feature per se, but whatever it is, hopefully it will be some good espn face time, which is always good for business.  they wanted to do it today but i made them wait because i had bags under my eyes due to lack of sleep today.  luckily they waited because i’m just that baller (lol donkaments?)

in other news we have some elves living in the DC house.  we leave treats around and they come and steal our treats.  it’s frustrating but i think keeping the elves happy is the most important thing, so i acquiesce.  if you don’t know about the elves, it’s probably just better that way.

in unrelated news, some crazy guy has been sending me crazy pms on 2p2.  he said some crazy mean things and then asked me to hang out when i explained the misunderstanding i guess he had with himself, at which point i just thought he was crazier.  i might post the pms anonymously but i’d have to go through and edit out his relevant info, so i don’t know if i have the time or energy.  not right now anyways.  but you know who you are, crazy guy.  so stop involving me in your insanity!

ok i’m out for the night.  peace!

i haven’t played online in a while so i thought i’d donk around a bit at stars 5/10. i 2 tabled this guy for about 1.5 hours, he 3bet like a madman and i would call to spike a pair but i never hit a pair, so that was frustrating. i sucked out once, hit nice turn/river cards for stacks twice, got sucked out on or coolered 5-6 times, and owned him 10-15 times for a grand swingy total of +4k.  it was sweet, i still got the touch. stupid windows vista doesnt save hh’s unless i remember to run as administrator which i of course never do, but i still have this one gem of a hand. note: i had not called down a single 3 barrel of his yet (i think he only did it twice all match) because his 2 double barrels i called down (and then caught on the river for one, folded the other) appeared to be huge hands. but this was sweet.
PokerStars Game #18277369282: Hold’em No Limit ($5/$10) - 2008/06/21 - 02:15:52 (ET)
Table ‘Carme’ 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: suckoutqueen ($5347.50 in chips)
Seat 2: hvete ($1000 in chips)
hvete: posts small blind $5
suckoutqueen: posts big blind $10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to suckoutqueen [9c Ks]
hvete: raises $20 to $30
suckoutqueen: calls $20
*** FLOP *** [2h Js Td]
suckoutqueen: checks
hvete: bets $50
suckoutqueen: calls $50
*** TURN *** [2h Js Td] [Ad]
suckoutqueen: checks
hvete: bets $140
suckoutqueen: calls $140
*** RIVER *** [2h Js Td Ad] [7h]
suckoutqueen: checks
hvete: bets $380
suckoutqueen: calls $380
*** SHOW DOWN ***
hvete: shows [Kh 4s] (high card Ace)
suckoutqueen: shows [9c Ks] (high card Ace - King+Jack+Ten+Nine kicker)
suckoutqueen collected $1199.50 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $1200 | Rake $0.50
Board [2h Js Td Ad 7h]
Seat 1: suckoutqueen (big blind) showed [9c Ks] and won ($1199.50) with high card Ace
Seat 2: hvete (button) (small blind) showed [Kh 4s] and lost with high card Ace

Yawn, this is getting pretty boring. I have accepted neverwin’s challenges to a HU freezeout so many times it’s unbearable.

Here’s the BS he posts on his forum today:

“She just jumped into my 25-50 plo game and I asked her when we are going to play that hu match. She replied, “I was just about to ask you the same thing.” I told her I am ready to play whenever she wants. She then began insulting me saying she would have to see the money first. Then proceeded to say that I am over 500k in debt. LOL. Get your facts right before you come in talking smack to me. Before she abruptly left we semi agreed to a 20k freezout, and she said she preferred online. No other details were mentioned, so I will clarify here.

First since you have to see the money, I will now only play you live, so that you can see all the money I have in front of me with your own eye. Yes, Vanessa you will be able to see all the money you can potential win right in front me, and you may salivate over it like you do with your girlfriend’s p****. Only difference is it will be much tougher for your tongue to get a hold of, but I promise you it will taste just as sweet.

So here are my stipulations and since you have no class, I will show no class with u as well. If you want to be civil and act appropriate, I will too, but so far you have shown no attempt whatsoever.

My challenge will be 50-100 nl, 20k freezout. Loser has the option to ask for a rematch as many times as you desire. I will also throw in 50-100 plo 20k freezout option as well. Terms of a bigger freezout may be negotiated later, but I am ready to play whenever you get back to vegas.

I would also like to video record the match if you agree. However, I am sure you will decline just to save face and embarrassment. So now the official offer is on the table. You claimed I backed down, because I never responded on 2plus2. I do not have an account there. So here is my challenge for the world to see, im ready whenever, lets see who backs down now. Bring it!

Neverwin”

and my response:

“jesus, I have accepted his challenge so many times it’s annoying already. he asked me whether i’d rather play live or online and i said online. he agreed, then when i hopped out of chat, he said he’d only play live.

dustin, i will play you live, but i’m not wasting my time or anyone else’s for 2 buyins. we can play 25-50nl for several 20k freezeouts, or we can do 50-100 for 40k freezeouts. it’s not about the money, but i don’t want you luckboxing this too quickly. so assuming you can get that money together (your choice of which stakes), i would be more than happy to play you.

i get back to vegas on the 26th in time to play the shorthanded event. since i have events scheduled almost every day, the best time would be while the main event is going on. if i have time before then, perhaps we can do it on an impromptu basis, but i can’t make any promises. if you would like to schedule, let me know what day you are playing the main event and i’ll register as well. we will pick a different day and make this happen.

i will not stoop to visit your joke of a site, so have one of your degenerate scumbag posse alert you to this post. and if you have more random stipulations as a result of this, which seems to be a trend, do me a huge favor and just stop wasting my time.”

it’s getting pretty old at this point but if you guys see that scumbag lying in a gutter somewhere, let him know i’m waiting for him if he ever wants to actually play poker, like, for real money and stuff. i’m not gonna waste my time hoping anymore.