I continue to reaffirm my belief that I am going to win a poker tournament one day. I've been working on it, it just hasn't come to fruition quite yet. I figure if I keep playing better than most people, I'll get there. I'm definitely top 10% (maybe better, this is the new humble aejones) in most tournaments, and even today's 10k Split event (sweet format: 9 handed first day, 6 handed second day, and heads up in the money-- if only I'd been able to make day two!) I was top 20% of the field. I'm just playing well. I'm no longer playing too loose in stupid spots where my opponents' biggest leaks are stacking off too wide and having too wide of value ranges. Sometimes I even fold K8 suited in the hijack, true story.

Today was not that day though. I played some funky hands. I played this hand where I opened button to 425 with queens, big blind 3-bet for the second orbit in a row to 1300, I 4-bet to 2900 intending to get it in ~28k deep (I think stacks are very good for him to 5-bet bluff and the fact that it's the second time he did it should make him think I am a reactionary poker player), he calls. TT6ss, check, 3100, call. 3 completing flush, he leads 4300 (lol), I call. 6 double pairing the board on the river, he checks, ~18k behind and ~20k in there, I think briefly about shoving for value and I think briefly about betting 3500 for value, but ultimately decide that my biggest leak in tournaments years ago was not identifying spots where people just aren't calling the river with worse and they're more likely to be trapping me than calling with whatever random crap they got there with. I check expecting to win >75% of the time I'd say (hmm... at least 60% I think, I'm not sure, felt like I had the best hand for sure). He had aces. I can dodge bullets baby!

I made a bad call in a WEIRD fucking spot where I had a sweet draw on the flop (tbh, probably should have just gone with it) and then made some showdown value and he backed into a straight trickily and I paid off a river bet like I usually do. I'm due to stop doing that. I'll make an extra awesome fold in the main event now in honor of how often I pay off the river with stupid hands (I actually made a sweet fold the other day in the shootout, Dan was very proud). I doubled back up to 20k when I flopped top pair in a 3-bet pot, but that only lasted about an orbit and I busted with jacks to AK all in before the flop.

I'm not sure why I felt like writing a little about poker, but I've just been playing live poker and keeping these absurd hours (much of them filled with disappointment after not winning a tournament when it's late night in Cannes and nothing is open) so I'll probably take to blogging a bit more. Made some plans for San Remo after this, but honestly I've only heard bad things. Fortunately I've heard equally as amazing things about the quality of local Italian poker players in San Remo... Until next time..

I am trying to come up with blog titles as good as "Must be the feeling" and "Brick-a-brack" but honestly I just keep whiffing.

I am at WSOPE playing some poker tournaments and staying in a sweet apartment in the middle of everything. I am pretty torn about my adventures so far here. On one hand, I of course like the idea (perhaps idealistically more than practically) of being in a new place that I am unfamiliar with. It provides me with an experience that I'll almost certainly take something from. But, (and I'm probably quoting someone famous here) experience for the sake of experience blows (but sometimes you have to experience the experience to experience that disappointment). It feels like some sort of pseudo bonding experience with other poker players being in a foreign land. I'm interested in many things about France and have appreciated much of their cuisine (the food industry in general just embarrasses the States-- LOLUSA). I feel like #firstworldproblems are coming too a head too often for me while I'm here-- I hate that everything is open ~20% less than in the States (especially with playing poker during the day and the hours that I keep), I hate the language barrier (frankly, I feel stupid-- I do not speak any French and I think it'd just be embarrassing to try to learn a dozen phrases while I'm here), I hate the timezone and dealing with staying up until 6AM to finish watching football and MMA.

I have a tendency to be a whiny bitch. I am cynical in a jovial way, for the most part (if that is even possible or makes any sense). I'm cranky for a number of reasons-- I haven't had a chance to lift (tried to go to the gym 30 minutes before they closed and they basically just LOL'd at me for trying to sign up and get a quick lift in... they were all trying to be out the door, gym cleaned up and lights out 5 minute before they closed, the French are lazy), I haven't been able to get on a good sleep schedule, it took me 30 minutes to cash out my $1,843 Euro mincash, it took me 30 minutes to "find" my own $20k Euro wire and then explain to the people (I blame the WSOP for not having at least one person fluent in English at the cage for the signup process) that I did not want to wear a half dozen fucking plastic bracelets for a week. Look, I hate negativity, but I'm just telling it like it is. I complain about most of thees things relatively tongue-in-cheek. In reality, I'm just trying to win a poker tournament and creep on French girls.

Speaking of trying to win poker tournaments, I got a bunch of chips in day 1 of this 1k Euro tournaments and made it to day 2 with an average stack. I was largely card dead until I ran queens into jacks, literally the first hand after the bubble burst. Yay me for cashing, yay me for busting early instead of playing a few more hours and still cashing for relatively the same amount. My arm is getting tired from patting myself on the back, but I'm playing poker tournaments pretty well. I hate them less than I used to since I've cashed in a few out of my last few. They are probably an okay outlet when traveling and a good break from grinding online cash, but I certainly couldn't be subjected to playing them exclusively for a living. Before that ship is sailed and online poker is overrun with bots (likely more on that in a later blog) I will hang it up before I turn to playing live tournaments. It's inconceivable that you could play better than everyone and have to wait for variance to run it's course (hint: it never does).

A lot of things have been swell lately in life, of course. UFC has been incredible lately. MMA has always been pretty interesting to me but I've only recently gone from being a casual fan to a slightly less casual fan. Last weekend's card (basically) lived up to the hype as one of the greatest cards of all time (both title fights were solid enough, Sonnen was remarkably dominant, and Phan/Garcia was awesome-- even some of the prelims were good). Can't really say I'm looking forward to much on this Condit/GSP card, although I always root for Denis Siver, who has the GOAT spinning back kick basically.

TV is also firing on all cylinders (even though I won't be around to keep up with a lot of stuff), as the Breaking Bad finale last night was incredible. I can't imagine they could have ended Season 4 and that general storyline any better, as the good guys won (which, tbh, I didn't fully expect), and it was clever without it seeming like the show was trying to hard. Multiple times I felt myself just smiling and laughing outloud while watching it by myself. Of course the double meaning of the title was elite as well... Do yourself a favor and buy it and watch all four seasons right now if you haven't, S3 and S4 are definitely elite. Boardwalk Empire and Sons of Anarchy are also in the midst of promising seasons, I'll be thrilled to get back and have a dozen hours of good TV to watch after all this traveling and pokering for sure.

I'm so tilted that I forgot to bring another book after I finished Where Men Win Glory (strong recommendation, 9/10, particularly relevant perhaps if you have strong feelings on the military), if you've got something I might be interested in and are in Cannes I'll appreciate it-- what I won't appreciate is you telling me how I'm a fucking asshole for not getting a kindle or something yet. Thanks, but I'm privy to things that obvious guy says too.

Yes I do write the best blogs but this one is getting a little long, so I'll end it here as I see the sun is coming up in Cannes, I took a nap earlier but hopefully I'll be able to get some sleep and workout before the shootout starts-- this is probably my best event (although there is a heads up I just found out about recently, non bracelet event).

Also, I lost a few games in fantasy football that I was definitely a favorite to win this week. There's variance in fantasy football, who knew?

I have been very bad about blogging lately-- I keep having ideas in my head and then deciding not to write about them. I now have some time to kill in the airport, so I'm going to type until it's no longer time to type. I hope that this blog will have very few uses of the delete button and I expect it to be disjointed.

I'm heading to Europe for the first time in a few years to play poker tournaments. I'm not sure why I decided to do this this year. I thought it'd be a good idea because I could play poker online when I wasn't playing in live events, but that was an oversight on my part-- I can't play on Poker Stars from France (I assume I can't play on other sites either, but I haven't opened accounts anyways). So now I feel like even more of an idiot: I can't play online and I've got a "home" at three places in North America, but am going to spring for more rentals in France and Italy for three weeks. What sounded like an efficient idea turned out to be quite the opposite. Either way, I'm prepared to try to win a bunch of money in a live tournament. Taking "shots" at live tournaments sounds more and more appealing as poker goes on to me.

My mind has an incredible ability to go from moving very fast to barely moving at all. To use a cliche, if a girl were to ask me (the stupidest fucking question in the world) "what are you thinking?" the answer my range from absolutely nothing (seriously, why do I always have to be thinking about something?) to something absurd where my mind is trying to remember details about some fiction book that I read 10 years ago. There aren't many middle grounds. I also have an incredible ability to auto pilot. Sometimes I find myself answering questions and saying relatively smart things and I've almost lost track of time, I can't consciously remember anything about it. It's very weird, it's like when you're driving on the highway and you have no idea what happened for the last 5 minutes.

The airport is an incredible place to people watch. I was just walking down the terminal, which must have been a mile long or something absurd-- it looked like the Matrix-- and just looking at everyone you can get a sense of who they are. I can tell who thinks they are more important than they really are and I can see people who are only concerned with themselves and people who are aware of what's going on around them. I realize most of this doesn't make much sense, but you can tell a lot about someone by the expression on their face.

A few weeks ago I finished The Ice Man, a book about Richard Kuklinski (Polish guy who was a Mafia hitman, killed a couple hundred people). It was an incredible story, but was written so poorly-- indeed, this guy loved the word indeed. Now I'm hoping to finish Jon Krakauer's book about Pat Tillman on the plane, even though I'm only ~15% through it right now (8 hour flights leave room for wiggle). No links, sorry, that is what happens when you title the blog "Stream of Consciousness" and you type real fast.

I've been doing pretty well in live tournaments lately, so here's to hoping that I win one of these crazy things in Europe.

I wanted to make this longer, but I can tell by how tired I am that I'm gonna half ass it. I played ~40k hands of midstakes this month. I started off hot and won a bunch, then I lost most of it back. I ended up breaking even basically. I am a little disappointed since I wanted to run my Stars account up, but with some random tournaments I played and staking and whatnot, I'm probably up a bit since I got my account open. It's still pretty low, but I'm just gonna run it up in November when I end up back in Toronto.

Overall I'd say that It took me 25k hands to figure out WTF guys were doing and what proper stackoff ranges are. I'm down a LOT 4-bet calling AQ in a spot I would consider standard at higher stakes, but I've adjusted that to only do it against "special" players. My value ranges were way too wide. I anticipated adjustments being made by my opponents that never got made. I was way higher on the leveling scale than I needed to be. Another thing I learned about myself was that I'm a great HU player, good at making my opponents uncomfortable, but honestly I get a little antsy grinding 6m. It goes from being a little fun to painfully boring.

A little disappointed that I couldn't have done better, but sometimes shit happens. I managed to have a bit of fun when I wasn't frustrated with getting kings to aces preflop, so I wanted to basically just make this blog some of my favorite (and unfavorite) hands.

In this one the guy didn't really try to rep anything so I let him shovel it in there with 6 outs twice.

Poker Stars, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

CO: $400
BTN: $564
Hero (SB): $1,056.25
BB: $718.50
UTG: $406
MP: $403

Pre-Flop: 4 4 dealt to Hero (SB)
4 folds, Hero raises to $12, BB raises to $36, Hero calls $24

Flop: ($72) 3 2 6 (2 Players)
Hero bets $50, BB raises to $132, Hero raises to $214, BB raises to $682.50 and is All-In, Hero calls $468.50

Turn: ($1,437) 2 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($1,437) 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $1,437 Pot ($3 Rake)
Hero showed 4 4 and LOST (-$716.50 NET)
BB showed Q 9 and WON $1,434 (+$719.50 NET)

This one had a bit of an aggressive dynamic in a heads up match, and I couldn't quite figure out what my opponent hand... but I don't think that makes me a bad hand reader, given what he turned up with.

Poker Stars, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 2 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BB: $2,009.10
Hero (BTN): $721.65

Pre-Flop: J J dealt to Hero (BTN)
Hero raises to $12, BB raises to $40, Hero raises to $94, BB calls $56

Flop: ($192) 2 9 5 (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets $100, BB calls $100

Turn: ($392) T (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets $160, BB raises to $1,352, Hero calls $365.65 and is All-In

River: ($1,443.30) Q (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $1,443.30 Pot ($0.50 Rake)
BB showed T 8 and LOST (-$717.65 NET)
Hero showed J J and WON $1,442.80 (+$723.15 NET)

This hand was great. "Okay... I guess I'm gonna barrel it off on good turn/river combos..." then I type $60 into the box instead of $160, start screaming FUCK!, and then try to compound my mistakes by making a hero call 2007 style... and it works.

Poker Stars, $3/$6 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG: $1,424.25
MP: $1,411.70
CO: $1,718
BTN: $3,212
Hero (SB): $909.40
BB: $1,581.75

Pre-Flop: A K dealt to Hero (SB)
UTG folds, MP raises to $12, 2 folds, Hero raises to $42, BB folds, MP calls $30

Flop: ($97.20) 7 6 8 (2 Players)
Hero bets $60, MP calls $60

Turn: ($217.20) 2 (2 Players)
Hero bets $60, MP calls $60

River: ($337.20) 3 (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP bets $223, Hero calls $223

Results: $783.20 Pot ($3 Rake)
MP showed T Q and LOST (-$385 NET)
Hero showed A K and WON $780.20 (+$398.20 NET)

This hand is pretty funny. Guy was minraising and c-betting 100% so I went into passive mode, snap shove the river, and he snap folds-- I probably just had the best hand.

Poker Stars, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 2 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $609.25
BTN: $412

Pre-Flop: K 7 dealt to Hero (BB)
BTN raises to $8, Hero calls $4

Flop: ($16) 6 8 2 (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $12, Hero calls $12

Turn: ($40) J (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $28, Hero calls $28

River: ($96) 3 (2 Players)...

Hey guys, sorry about the last blog post. Since I've decided to do that poker seminar in Berlin I've had a change of heart-- I found out that the person marketing the seminar is marketing too aggressively. That is, he's basically spamming everyone on 2+2 specifically (my hope is that no one on Leggo got PMs). That isn't my style. I've long believed that if you have a great product, people will gravitate to it (unfortunately, that isn't always the case, but in the poker community where you have educated customers, I like to think that they can do their research and spread by word of mouth). That is the reason that Leggo has stuck around while doing so little marketing and having such a small brain-trust of dedicated people despite having limited resources.

Truthfully, any kind of marketing that involves BIG letters and bold words to try and get the point across really irks me. I believe that most of it is embarrassing-- it is blatantly stating that you believe that the consumer is weak and emotional and affected by such "fluff." I hate when people treat other people like they're stupid (see: Girah scandal where DIH lied to a bunch of people smarter than him and knew he was lying). Going back to the "marketing," I hate when people spam other people. Getting a phone call or spam email tilts the FUCK (in this case, capital letters are just necessary, I'd be screaming it in real life) out of me. It really sucks that these things have any validity in the first place, but certainly they do work on weak people.

So I apologize to anyone who associated the spam PMs or emails that they got about the seminar with me-- I take responsibility because I approved of the person putting together the seminar. It's not my style, I think I'm more low key than people probably think, and it upsets me that even for a second I was associated with such tactics.

In more positive news, I'm back on Stars! I'll see you cats at midstakes for a few weeks, so hide your children or move down if you have to, and as always I appreciate all the HU action I get .

In ~6 weeks I'm going to Berlin to do a poker seminar. I'd imagine it's basically live group coaching with quite a bit of structure as far as content goes. I'd say it'll resemble the Memoirs 3.5 years later (holy shit I'm old), but there should be more heads up content and in a live format I'll have a chance to go off on tangents (in a good way).

The target audience for this seminar will probably be midstakes (and German!) players, although I can't imagine you won't get something out of it if you're a high stakes player. It's so interesting to learn from people who have had success and do things just a little bit differently-- I constantly have my eyes opened by listening to high stakes players talk about how their standards vary in various spots.

Anyways, if you're interested, I think the cost (complete with room and board) is ~$2k, here's the landing page created by the host (along with a relatively funny marketing video): http://exceptionalexperts.com/about.html

For some reason, despite living in Canada and having two other places of residence, I've decided to do a Euro-trip this year-- I'm just tired of sitting around and saying I'll do stuff next year. I'll hit this seminar towards the end of October after WSOPE-- everywhere in Europe is just down the block from everywhere else, right? Man I use a lot of dashes in my writing-- but hey, it gets the point across.

Maybe I should be doing a stand-up seminar instead of a poker seminar.

EDIT (no longer doing it): http://www.leggopoker.com/blogs/aejo...lin-10401.html

The good news is that Indiana Jones is being played right now on some station in Canada, so my lazy Sunday is being overtaken by a movie that I've seen a dozen times! I'm just getting settled in and working on getting a phone, I'm hoping to have my Stars account open by the end of the week at the latest so I can start playing WCOOPs and probably midstakes cash for a few weeks. I'm not sure exactly how I'm gonna do it, but I'll probably spend a week or two playing midstakes, make a video there and move up. We'll see, I might actually play a lot of hands, depending the setup I can get and how I feel getting used to online poker again.

A few weird things about my apartment (it's always dicey getting a furnished place, especially when I didn't get a chance to look at it beforehand, just had a friend drop in to make sure it wasn't AIDS): there is no dresser (just a little night stand with a drawer, wtf), no medicine cabinet or drawer in the bathroom (just some space under the sink, wtf), and no garbage cans (but there were garbage bags, wtf). The location is pretty good (although not perfect) and it's given me an opportunity to walk a lot (literally have walked nearly 20 miles in the last 2.5 days, taking today off because I think I've injured myself). I like walking around a city, and now I'm not a tourist, so it's my city (Sauce would say it's his city and no one knows it like he does).

None of the weird idiosyncrasies about the place I rented reflect poorly on Canada-- my experience has been good so far. Stuff is a little expensive but I'd imagine that is as much a reflection on living in the city as it is being in Canada. I've gotten so used to being able to get in my car and drive somewhere 10 minutes away and buy anything-- a video game, a pillow, ice cream, whatever-- at 3AM. So, it's weird when I can't do that and don't have a car. I'll have to get used to it I suppose.

I think I've got my third of five fantasy football drafts tonight. Drafts are awesome.

Hotdogs and baseball and whatnot for the last time as I move to Toronto on Thursday. I plan to be there for 4 or 5 of the next 9 months, but I am going to do a bit of traveling and generally try to live it up while I'm still young. Likely to play in WSOPE in September, and I'll probably make a stop in Berlin as well (more on that in the future-- rebuilding the wall, obv).

I'm looking at getting in at least one more fantasy football league. I'd prefer it to be between $100-$500 (I am a fish at higher stakes). I'm not sure how people are paying nowadays, I guess we could do it via PayPal. Anyways, I could probably get me plus one more for a league of those stakes. Let me know if anyone knows of one (I'd really like to know the guys at least a little, obv).

Ended two paragraphs in a row with "obv" at the end of parentheses. That just happened.

Since the parties involved in this scandal have been so unwilling to reveal information until they were proven guilty of it (a reluctance that shall be described in verb form as dogisheading from here forward), most of what we know is a bit of an incomplete puzzle. The hodge podge of information that we do have has been discovered in fantastic fashion by the 2+2 machine, a collection of poker players from all around the world that have been instrumental in the uncovering of many scandals. Before I go any further I want to make it absolutely clear that although I may get excited or be amazed by some of the events throughout this scandal, this is a lose-lose for those involved and the poker community. Since I am so closely related to the poker community, the entire scandal has no choice but to reflect poorly on everyone—it sucks, point blank.

It’s nearly impossible to paint a perfect timeline of the scandal (both because details are unclear and because I haven’t gone out of my way to familiarize myself with exact dates), but it starts with the infamous 2+2 thread looking for the Portuguese Poker Prodigy. The rough details were that some young kid has been crushing Euro sites and has gained the respect of some top players both at and away from the tables. Among some other poker players from outside the U.S., Jungleman (Dan Cates) and DogIsHead/INTERNETPOKERS/Ipokeder (Haseeb Quereshi) pop their head in the thread to give this kid raving reviews for his poker talent and ambition. Then, the Portuguese Poker Prodigy (PPP) is revealed, as Jose “Girah” Macedo makes his way into the thread. It turns out after tracking the IP of the thread creator and the 2+2 poster who posed as “Girah,” they were the same person (and possibly masterminded by Haseeb, although the IP is from Portugal, so it seems the extent of his involvement at this point could have been only planting the seed in Jose’s mind). [2] I have absolutely no idea how the mods at 2+2 missed this because they are usually very diligent in policing people creating threads for their own gain.

Jose’s internet fame grows as a posts a graph of results where he has won 1.6m over 800k hands. Although there is not a huge sample at high stakes, he is certainly crushing online poker, and all before his 20th birthday. The degree at which these results are true remains very much in question. At this point, I see no reason why Jose will ever show his face anywhere near the poker community and he has no motivation to answer questions truthfully (unless he is ultimately sued, which is far from out of the question). He played under many screen names while he was underage, so it’d be difficult to verify based on opponents who played him, and I doubt we’ll ever get a real list of names that he (and only he) played on. He also seems unlikely to surrender his database to someone who could determine if It was tampered with or he filtered his results to make them more impressive.

While Jose’s Q rating is through the roof, Haseeb becomes a mentor for him in order to maximize on the opportunity in front of him. Haseeb has experience in this endeavor, when he turned 18 he changed his screen names from Ipokeder (who was a midstakes player famous for whining about how bad he ran and tilting) to INTERNETPOKERS on FTP and DOGISHEAD on 2+2/Stars (where he now became a high stakes player who was famous for whining about how bad he ran and tilting). With this new persona he was not nearly as brash, and after being coached by some Deucescracked coaches (I believe I coached him a few times as well), he started to make some theory videos for DC. They were well received, and he had successfully shed the identity of immature midstakes chump to high stakes boss who spoke eloquently about poker. This identity change goes towards character for Haseeb in this case, and proves that he has experience in influencing the mob, essentially. After success with DC, he sold himself to the highest bidder in the training market industry. The allure of red pro status was too much for any of the other major training sites to compete with and Haseeb signed with Card Runners. I’d have a hard time guessing exactly how much he received per video, but he was a hot commodity at the time, so I’d imagine along with become a red pro he got a very lucrative contract to make training videos.

Haseeb’s mentoring for Jose came with a price tag. Jose agreed to give Haseeb 15% of all revenue he made throughout the relationship. With monetary motivation for Jose to be a successful and popular poker player, Haseeb set out create a social media sandstorm. He pimped Jose to training sites (as far as I know all the major training sites got an email stating that Haseeb was acting as his agent and would be entertaining offers from all sites), further promoted his results and poker skills (including a now famous post where Haseeb wants to bet his entire net worth [which as we found out, might not actually be a very big bet!] that Jose is completely legit), and wrote posts and blogs that sounded less like someone who had English as their second language and more like F. Scott Fitzgerald. He bought and created a website, advised Jose to rise above the haters, and assumedly talked poker theory and strategy with the PPP. Haseeb went the whole nine yards to live vicariously through Jose. It was successful (perhaps unsurprisingly, because this was Haseeb’s third run at creating an internet legend), Jose inspired many young poker players with his story (who knows how true that is exactly).

Somewhere around this point in time, Jose befriends a group of mid to high stakes shorthanded NL players. They create a Skype group chat to discuss strategy, exchange coaching and sweat sessions, and send each other hand histories. It seems odd to me that JM and Haseeb, two supposedly major influences on this kid’s poker game (although JM supposedly had very little influence on it, didn’t really coach him or interact with him much), were not invited to this group chat (or choose not to take part). From this group we get some mixed reviews of Jose and his poker game. He was sharp when talking about concepts and hand histories, but many members of the group thought he played poorly when they sweated him for short sessions (they said he seemed confused in extremely standard spots I believe). I’m a little fuzzy on how good this kid actually was—on one hand we have great poker players vouching for his ambition and intelligence, but on the other hand we have no real proof of his skills put to use. We have seen him post some irregular hands on 2+2, but even those hands seem eerily similar to hands that other good players have played (in particular, he posted a river bluff shove that posed similarities to a hand that ike posted years ago). It seems nearly impossible for his results to be real in light of the stake that he needed and the scandal that followed.

There are a bevy of lies associated to why Jose has won 1.6m and now needs to be staked for 5-10. I will save you the excuses that were given by the involved parties and just say that JM and Haseeb agreed to stake him for midstakes (and high stakes shots if he’s winning, I believe) across a lot of Euro sites. To do this, they agreed to send him $100,000, which was supposedly to be spread across multiple sites, despite their decision to send him the money on only Merge....

OK, so with no online poker I've been putting all of my effort into #girahgate. Given that there haven't been any developments for a little while and we're anxiously awaiting a statement from Jungleman (and likely subsequent statements by people that can fact check what he's saying), I'm going to hold off doing an official blog on that. I will certainly share my thoughts about the entire scandal if I can figure out the timeline when we get more facts.

In the meantime, I've been grinding quite a bit of PLO3FLOP (note: this game is subject to being renamed, and is right now just a compilation of facts about the game [it's PLO, there are 3 flops]; if you think of a name, feel free to suggest it below). We were playing Chinese, but that got a bit old and it's always fun trying to figure out 'optimal' strategy to a new game.

The rules of P3F are simple. You get dealt 12 cards and have to make them into 3 different PLO hands. 3 flops are dealt (without burning, you can play 3 handed). You choose one hand for each flop or one hand for all three flops. It's like in Euchre (for those familiar) if you go alone-- the punishment is severe if you get beaten. We score it like Chinese (we've been doing 2-4 scoring HU and 1-5 scoring 3 handed, no idea why). Without listing exact scoring because zzZz (and we basically change the scoop bonus scoring daily), you win a lot if you go alone and scoop, you get punished if you go alone and get scooped, and if you're playing 3 handed and you scoop both players, you win a bunch of money. Anyways, the game is great because I have no idea what I'm doing! I don't know if I should split up pairs or keep them together, I don't know how to weigh pairedness vs suitedness vs connectedness. I think I do okay and I have some ground rules, but overall I just use my best poker common sense (which often isn't very good when it comes to PLO).

In other news, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do for my next video. I was thinking of doing some kind of random Q & A or something a little less formal. I've always thought that poker is best learned when people don't know they're teaching it. That's a stretch and I can't really simulate that, but some of the best strategy is just informal discussion among good players. You hear things that you might not hear in a more formal format when someone is trying to think of what to say or is reading from a script. You also hear a lot of unique things from the tone of someone's voice-- it's one of the rare times when it's beneficial to hear uncertainty. I'm not set up in Toronto yet, so if someone could let me know what they want to hear from my next few videos before I am, I'll take everything except naked pole dancing into account (those secrets are going to my grave with me).

Finally, I'd like to include a photo for my blog viewers. In another episode of poker-players-are-absurd-human-beings, King left a bag of money (literally) for me to take care of in Vegas. The bag is full of money (American currency and other currencies throughout at least 3 other continents-- Europe, Asia, and Australia), chips (Bellagio, Rio, ...the Orleans? and probably others), and condoms (unused, of course). GirlChewy was nice enough to bandage money of like amounts together and give it a rough count. The estimated amount (lying around Dan's room, the living room, and crumpled up in his drawers) is >$2000.



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