It has been a little while since I’ve posted anything interesting. Just basically been grinding away at the Sante Fe Casino yet again. On April 15th I took down the Tax Day Extravaganza or whatever. It was a $160 buy-in and we chopped 3-handed for $1550 a piece so that was a nice bit of change.

This past weekend I went to Reno to visit my girlfriend at school and we took a nice vacation to Lake Tahoe for a few days. It was really nice to get away from the gambling grind and to just relax and enjoy life not having to worry about money.

The break must’ve helped my focus but it sure as hell didn’t do anything for my results. The past week has been atrociously bad. Day 1 -$20, Day 2 -$260, Day 3 +520, Day 4 -$360, Day 5 +540. Yeah, sounds like a fun week huh? I just took down the nightly donkament that I’ve won a few times tonight for $660 and left $50 for the dealers so I was pretty happy. Tomorrow is a day off to watch the Celtics hopefully destroy the Hawks. Can’t believe that series is still going on, ugly stuff.

On a strange note I walked into a potential full time job dealing poker at Planet Hollywood. I played a tournament there with a few FCP friends and the dealers were telling me they really needed some help and that I should audition. So I went in there after my Binion’s audition and they gave me an audition on the spot. They said I was really talented and needed to call them on Monday so we’ll see if they have anything for me. I am going to be dealing at Binion’s at least during the summer so we’ll see what happens. Fingers crossed.

Oh man, if you aren’t ready for a whining blog please just click the little X now. I’m just kidding, I’m only gonna whine a little bit because I’m about to go get my party on with cardcore at the Venetian.

On to the actual whining. I’m pretty sure I mentioned in a previous blog how I’ll most likely end up dealing at the Venetian for the summer deepstack extravaganze. well I got the living shit scared out of me the other morning when I recieved an email from the Venetian HR saying I did not get the job. I immediately panicked and drove to the nearest bridge. Turns out in Vegas there aren’t many high bridges. Oh well for that. Not really, I just freaked out a bit. When I called the poker room they claimed that the email meant nothing and it was a stupid auto-response that was sent to everyone who applied for the position. Problem averted for now.

On the poker front I am break-even for the past few sessions after I had a +200 in the span of 20 minutes as well as an awful grind of a session that left me -200 for a profit of $0. I do math goot. I feel like I’m in a real grind and that has been limiting my sessions. I honestly only want to play when I feel like playing and when I lose interest after an hour or two it really hurts my focus and I generally end up leaving after only 2 or 3 hours of play. Anyone have any suggestions on making poker feel like less of a chore and more fun? I’ve never had this problem before and I think it’s because of the stress of not having any form of income.

That’s enough whining for me, but I do need to tell you all to check out this awesome rakeback site www.rakerobber.com It’s run by a really nice guy and a good friend of mine from the FCP forums. He’s done a great job with the site so far and I figure it can’t hurt to send a little of my traffic his way. If you play online poker at any site you should check this service out as it can only benefit your monthly profit.

Alright, so this whole poker as a job again thing is quite the rollercoaster. Pretty standard but I’m not sure I’m ready for it at this stage of my life. My first three sessions playing 1/2 went pretty well, winning about 3 buy-ins in like 12 hours.

But of course with the good comes the really bad. I managed to donk off $200 playing 4/8 mixed with troyomac, xzanos, and gilbertology when I was just playing real bad and running even worse. The next night I of course pissed away 2 buy-ins at 1/2 by just running like death combined with a bunch of spewing but overall playing pretty well.

Tonight I decided for a change of pace and played a silly little $60 donkament with about 50 horses. Turns out I run good in that tourney as I took it down for around $900. Not too bad after the past few days. So I guess you could say I’m truly on a rollercoaster of a week but hopefully I stay on the good side of variance for the next few months.

Oh, and I”m pretty much 100% dealing Venetian Deepstack during the summer. Dope

Alright, so I actually went to play some live poker tonight. Weird I know. I went to go check out the Sante Fe because it’s like 3 miles from my BRAND NEW HOME! Yea, I neglected to say that I bought a house and moved in over my 22nd birthday weekend. Pretty nice place, definitely a bachelor pad(even though I’m not a bachelor).

So yea, poker fun times. Sat down for some typical 1/2 NL in the amazing Sante Fe poker room. Much nicer than I thought, tons of plasmas everywhere. The room is secluded from all of the hustle and bustle of the casino but close enough to the sports book. Made a little more than a buy-in on the night for my first session of live poker in a LONGGG time.

Typical group of locals and donks at the tables for a Saturday night in Vegas. Best hand of the session was a fairly standard drunken play from two very sober people. A raises $15 preflop and gets 2 callers. B is a total idiot who talks way too much while he’s in a hand and he and A see a flop of 923 along with a tight local player. A leads out for $25 and B thinks for a while and calls while local gets out of the way. The turn is a 5 and at this point A asks if B wants to see either card to which B says of course. A shows the Td for an OBVIOUS overpair. At this point he leads out for $50 and B takes a good 2-3 minutes to call. I’m baffled at this point and they see the Ks on the river. A still has his T exposed and bets $50 again on the river expecting B to fold. B simply stares at him, claims he’s making a silly call and flips over 92o for two pair AND AN UNBEATABLE HAND. The other guy just looks at him in disgust. Hilarity.

I love live poker. Yumyum.

So uh…turns out that I’m the 3rd most viewed blogger on this site and I don’t think I’ve said anything of interest in months. Work has been a royal pain in the butt but the money is good and the people are starting to grow on me. Hopefully I’ll still be able to work the world series and consider that my “vacation time.” It really is a vacation and the money is insanity.

Haven’t been playing much poker as of late because of a fun reason. At 21 years old I just bought my first house. Go me! It’s just an investment property but of course I’m going through the fun process of signing everything under the sun and giving the title company lots of my hard earned money. Also fun. But yea, the last couple times I’ve played poker have been quite laughable. I proceeded to get 7 and 2 outed in consecutive live tournaments by the 9h on the river both pots. Math wizzes can figure out the odds of that happening.

Other than that I’ve just been truckin along. Hopfully in the near future(most likely start of summer) I can get back to blogging about fun stuff that happens with me and a bunch of silly poker related shenanigans. Either that or my next blog post will be about the May 30th FCP Golf outing. Hey-OOOO!

So everyone remembers how life tilty I was from the beer throwing incident correct? If you don’t know I don’t feel like talking about it again so just read my first or second blog entry. It was the angry one.

So anyways I’m filling out my paperwork for my “New Start” awesome job at Bally’s and lo and behold when I get out my bottom grill of my mercedes is STOLEN along with the liscence plate that once hung there. Oh Goody! Just what I wanted to do today. So I had to go to the police station to file a report and they take my back plate as well stating that if I got seen with the plate the cops would “pull guns first, ask questions later.” Nice to know I guess.

So yeah, the worst part of this story is that my car is registered in Massachusetts and my insurance company does not insure for Nevada. So either I have to get crafty and sucker my insurance company into believing I’m only in Nevada for a little while or I have to switch my information and plates and insurance to Nevada and get raped for the extra 600-1000 a year. Thanks crafty Mexicans you have foiled my life yet again!

I just got a job(finally) where I’ll be a jack-of-all-trades sort of guy at Bally’s. My technical position is “Poker Cashier” but apparently my job title also includes occassional dealer, tourney director, brush person, and board operator. So I’ll basically be doing it all which is awesome. Considering I eventually want to become a tourney director or Poker Room Manager this will be a good first full time position in Vegas. Orientation of course has to start when all the FCPers get to Vegas so that should be a huge pain in the ass. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

On a poker note I’ve been playing the $60 “Grinder” tourney at least 2-3 times a week for the past few weeks. Out of the 7 or 8 times I’ve gone I’ve final tabled(cashed) twice getting a disappointing 3rd and 2nd. Overall I think I’m up a grand or so but knowing that it could be 2k+ definitely gets me. The tourney has a horrible structure but even worse players. Last night I went from top 5 in chips with 30 left to out in 25th or so. That’s how crazy the swings are. There are also plenty of players who will fold with 4k in the big blind with 2k back so it’s def. a profitable tourney. Now if only I could get A5 to hold up against A3 when all the money goes in. Sigh

So I went busto on Full Tilt the other day. I only had like $600 on there and was kinda bored so I decided to sit at $2/$4 NL and play like a total moron. Well 20 minutes and 0 broken monitors later I was online busto. It doesn’t suck at all because I turned $0 into $800 and then pretty much just got bored. Playing while you’re bored is a death sentence when you’re playing for serious money.

Oh, and on that note I broke down and bought the iPod connector for my navigation system because I’m not interested in changing the radio station 9 million times on my cross country trip this week. If anyone knows how to drive from Mass to Las Vegas without suicide please tell me.

On a lighter note, I’m actually moving back to Vegas at the end of the week. Either this trip will be the greatest time of my life or I’ll be crying like a baby and broke in a few months time. I’m assuming it’ll be a grand ole’ time but you never know in Vegas. All that matters is I have a dope car so I don’t look like a total loser driving up and down the strip looking for “nice girls”.

I deal cards for a living. Hooray jobs! I will post in this blog about how much I hate the average poker player in Las Vegas and I’ll probably sprinkle in some funny tidbits about pros you know and love.

My first bit of dirt dishing is that Brandi Rose and I are dating. I get to dictate how many guys give her POB a week and for how much of her bankroll.