So,... It's been a long time! No excuses, really. I've spent a fair amount of time on a basketball project w/ Aaron and Assani. http://pointsperpossession.com/ Check it out! We've knocked out a bunch of podcasts. I've done a total of about ~10 articles up to this point.

Life has been alright. Rather than do a recap of the past 2 months - it's been like 70 days since my last blog post, which is clearly the longest drought of my blogging career - I'm going to just sum it up with "no complaints except some, but I'm not sharing those complaints"! Instead, time to dive into Vegas!

I just finished watching G2 of Dallas-Miami. I've been doing all my basketball content on PPP (obviously!) so this isn't really the place for me to go in depth in terms of either analysis or emotion. But, for those who watched G2, wow what an amazing game. Dirk is playing on a higher level than anyone else in the world. If you haven't seen this video, it's gold:



I wasn't supposed to watch this game in the Vegas house though! Alex and JC rented their car yesterday, while Travis and I were supposed to rent ours today. Travis went w/ Alex with a plan to come back, pick me up, and we'd all go play poker. (For the 1st Vegas sesh) Apparently Travis "stopped by", and "called out" (but didn't knock on my door or call my phone...) so he left without me. So all day today I've been left to my own devices, which I generally enjoy, so I just NBAed alone. It was quite fruitful! And, of course, that free time has rolled into actually blogging!

I feel the need to note this: I want to coach. I have had 1 student the past ~6 weeks or so, and I forgot how much I enjoy it. I periodically am contacted by people but in the past I've turned them all down, no real reason aside from lethargy and malaise. I now feel differently, so, if you want coaching, come to me.

A sad story, Pre-Vegas...

Memorial Weekend I drove from Cambridge, with my girlfriend Eva, to visit my mom in West Hartford. My sister flew in from San Francisco to visit for the weekend, so this seemed like a great juncture to see them both, seeing as how I hadn't in quite some time. It was a great 2-day stretch, no complains, I generally enjoy family even though the action of actually visiting them can be quite burdensome.

Eva and I wanted to beat the Memorial Day traffic, so we left Monday afternoon around 4. We got to the highway entrance (a mere 5 mins from my mom) and I was pulled over by a West Hartford cop. Keep in mind I wasn't speeding or anything - his reason for pulling me over was because my tags said 2009. Oh well, he took my license etc., and walked back to his car. 20 minutes passed and he finally strolled back to my car.

He told me, "Robert, it looks like we have a problem." Uh-oh, not really what I want to hear from a cop! Apparently in addition to my old tags (since I live in Mass I never bothered to update my CT registration when it expired, obviously stupid on my part, but they don't do stickers in MA so I figured what the hell?) my license had been suspended. For whatever it's worth, this isn't the 1st time that has happened to me.

Regardless, that came as a shock to me. I had no idea why. Since I was driving home to Boston, the cop wouldn't let me just go. So, he called a tow truck, they took the plates off my car, and towed it away. He was nice enough to drive me back to my mom's house.

I don't have a real reaction to what transpired... On one hand, I was wrong to not have current 2011 registration (I had 2009), and the license was a total shock. On the other, I'd rather not have cops making random stops that have nothing to do with actively breaking the law, like reckless driving and the like. I tried reasoning with the dude, but I didn't have much leverage. Since my flight was on Tuesday, and out of Boston, I couldn't take care of things immediately... Eva and I ended up taking a bus back home. (The ride itself was really quick and enjoyable - I played on my computer the whole time with my wireless card, plugged into an outlet. Far better than actually driving!!!)

Tuesday morning I went to the Boston RMV to try to figure things out, and they wouldn't let me register my car in MA, because I didn't have the car title with me. (I had brought the car receipt, not the actual title) My license was suspended from a speeding ticket I never paid (I forgot about it) several months ago. They slapped me with an additional 100$ reinstatement fee, but the good news is at least I am a licensed driver again. Oh, the ticket the CT cop gave me was ~400+. And the towing place is charging me 25/day for "storage". (It's not clear when I'll actually *have* MA registration again!)

So, a life nuisance I need to take care of which will probably cost me ~1000+. Doubly painful that it occurred the day before leaving for Vegas. Oh well! The flight itself was interesting - Alex and I booked our flight together, JC joined us a little while later, and at the airport itself not surprisingly a bunch of various poker players were also on board. Including my friend Alex Santiago, who is on several on my BBall teams/is from West Hartford. (He hasn't lived in any of the Vegas houses with me, but rather just know him from playing ball with him out here -> learning that he too lives in Boston) Santiago is a tourney player.

~~

We flew in May 31st, got in around 11 pm, were exhausted, and unfortunately missed G1 of the finals. Jet Blue has like 40 different channels, but for some reason does *not* have ABC. This has happened to me before (been on a Jet Blue flight when I really wanted to watch a national game on ABC) but what can you do, this was when I had to fly into Vegas.

Dub was comped 2 suites at Paris, he got one and I shared the other w/ JC. I won the coin toss to see who got the king size bed. (He got a red velvet couch - the suite was actually pretty baller, and I'm impressed that Alex was comped them, considering he's a low volume pit player) I was going to take pictures of the place but I was exhausted then, and slept until we had to check out, so I couldn't take pictures in the morning either. Oh well!

In the morning we (JC, Alex, me; Travis arrived this day) went to pick up their car and then check into the house. I'll probably do a walk around the house similar to last year. The main note is this house is def. better than last year, and probably the 2nd best of the 5 houses that I've stayed over the years. We finally have a nice pool too, so I'll utilize that.

The three of us ate at a place called "Pin Kaow" (we all mistook it for "Pink Cow") which is a decent Thai place. We ate outside, seeing as how it was beautiful. Since we've been here (3+ days?) the weather has been very un-Vegaslike. Just warm, fairly cloudy, and a nice breeze. We played Johnny Lodden for the bill (HU, 3rd person plays the loser, if the loser loses twice he pays, repeat). Dub lost the check. The only interesting Q was "how much money does Rob (I was Lodden) think Travis will spend at the Rhino this summer". I thought 1400, whereas Alex and JC more than doubled my guess. (JC won by taking the under on a pretty high sum) We asked Travis when he arrived and his answer was more in line with what JC/Alex thought - I suppose I just don't know their spending habits that well OR I just know them better than they know themselves. I think the latter, for the record.

We hung around until it was time to drive to the airport, picked up Travis, met up with Mikech at a new - and I mean very new, this place is a week old - restaurant called "Urban Grill". Oddly enough it is right next to Pin Kaow. (Mike chose the place, so just one of those rare oddities)



Food was OK. Don't know if I'd go back. CCRed, Mike lost, so that was great All of dinner was basically finding out from Mike how the games have been, what the hub bub has been around Vegas, etc. It's good to have a source of information. I made a startling observation from dinner as well, which I'll share at the bottom*.

We were all pretty tired, still transitioning from the EST schedule, so we came back to the house. We did a PLO flip for the rights to each room. Last year I came in 2nd - we do elimination style where the 1st loser gets the last pick, and so on - and this year it boiled down to JC and me for the master bedroom. We generally turn over 1 card per street, and the person who is behind goes last. On the last street my hand was:
A 3 9 6 (suits irrelevant) and the board was
Q J J K 3
JC's hand was 3 blanks (4, 5, and 8 I believe) so he needed to pair either with the board or his hand, obviously, to win it all. He offered to switch hands - I think he had 17 outs, and I have 22 good outs - so the play is to hold. I denied, he slowrolled the card, and BOOM... 4! He had 44, edging my A3, and the master is his. I suppose I need to better my HU PLO flipping game, since taking 2nd 2 years in a row = no master bedroom for me.

They went to sleep, I stayed up until 4 am playing Chess. Why have I committed so much time to playing chess? I have no idea. I've gotten about 300 points better from last summer, so obviously I'm improving, and I've made myself into a competent blitz player. But I've spent so, so much time on it. I just really enjoy it, I suppose. I've probably watched more Curtains' videos than anyone, heh. Dunno if I should be proud or ashamed of that...

And now today. I slept later than the lot of them, Alex and JC went to the gym to lift, and c'est la vie about playing a session. I really wanted to. Good news is I cleaned up the kitchen (I was the one who made a mess, I made brownies for the house yesterday... And yet I think I've eaten 80% of them), did all my laundry, got completely settled, etc. Now I'm just stuck at home w/ no car.

*So, here's my observation. It's kinda blunt, but I'm not really a poker player. Mike, JC, and Alex engaged in a talk of the random live players around Vegas, and it occurred to me I literally only knew about 20% of them. It's not that I don't remember - my recall is very strong. It's that I just have never played with most of them. Similar to online, I feel very distant from the action. It's a little worrisome - on one level I think so clearly, I have insights about the game, and I follow logic so that poker makes sense. But on the other level, I'm so out of practice. I've admitted to my best friend, Dave, that it's often like "riding a bike" - whenever I have a long lull of not playing I'm shaky the 1st session for an hour or so then get back into it. But I also have fears that I never will get to where I've been or how I've played in the past.

I believe I've written about biting the hand that feeds you - poker players (or, me, specifically) being spiteful and nonchalant about the way they/me make money. Let's face it; poker is how I've gotten where I've gotten. Why do I treat it so haphazardly? I dunno. The good news is those of you who like my live hand history summaries, well, the 1st few seshes I'm going to be pretty OCD about recording and breaking them down. So maybe you and I will get back into pro-game shape together

All for now, later.