Sup Breaux,

This is easily one of my favorite times of every year: the NBA playoffs are here,biatches! Da Bulls are on a roll, having finished slightly ahead of most peoples' (including my) predictions at exactly .500, and they received their gift in the form of an out-for-the-playoffs announcement by The Big Ticket. This gives them a chance, albeit a small one, to upset the defending champs (though obviously they're not going anywhere deep this year). I'm pulling for them, the Hornets, Atlanta, and Portland. I love the styles of those 3 teams, and they all should be in close and well-played series, imo; let's get it on! Oh yeah, and I'd love to see the Jazz make some noise, but they drew the fricken terminator in the first round, so gg D-Will et al (sorry Bobbo).

You can't sleep on the Bulls; something very good has happened to their big men since the trade that brought Salmons and Brad Miller in. It's not just those two good players' presences that have improved the team; Tyrus Thomas inexplicably began to "get it," ; he is clearly focusing on rebounding and defense now, and it fills my heart with joy to see him snapping up every defensive board in his vicinity, which is typically 1 foot above the rim. Joakim Noah is playing very good D as well; he's blocked or changed a lot of shots recently, and he's also finishing a bit better around the basket. It's hard to believe I'm preaching the praises of these guys, but if you've watched the Bulls closely (as I have) over the last few weeks, you can't help it; they are playing well and it makes the Bulls formidable. Also, Kirk Hinrich has apparently broken out of the shooting slump that has lasted approximately 2 goddamn years, and he always was a huge asset in every other area. Oh the downside, they acquired Tim Thomas, who could not be phoning it in more right now; his presence on the floor means shot attempts are gobbled up by forced 3s and half-assed drives that end about 4 feet out, as well as a matadoresque defensive showing. Retire, dude.

Things with poker are good: I'm piling up satellite money pretty fast, and doing well at 20/40 8-game. I'm also looking forward to doing a small amount of coaching, which I haven't felt like doing in months, and I'll hopefully even be getting some help with my tournament game from a couple of experts I've had the fortune of meeting.

Peace

Hi Everyone,

Here's a quick update. I followed up my nice live PLO win with a couple of good 8-game sessions and a 2k win in the weekly 30/60 limit holdem game at Poto. I was only there for a few hours because my sister was flying in to Milwaukee very early the next morning and I didn't want to wake up any earlier than necessary.

The Cubs were in town to play the Brew Crew and Ted Lily and Ryan Dempster stopped by to play some poker. These are two very classy guys, based on my short experience with them. I didn't recognize them despite being a casual Cubs fan, and they just introduced themselves by first name and conducted themselves well. I only found out who they were after they left. Ryan is a pretty serious player, from what I can tell; my first impression of him was that he was probably a poker pro from the Chicago area. Both guys were very competitive, yet both were good sports in spite of being on the wrong end of a bunch of beats and cold decks. They quit the game in time for their curfew; well done, gentlemen.

Besides that session, I made a couple of nice deep runs into tournaments with big fields, and got close but never cashed a big number. I really didn't care, though, because I could tell I was playing about as well as I'm able to; I stayed away from my tendency to get reckless after amassing a nice stack, and was bounced from the tourneys on fairly standard beats.

Then, on a whim, I entered a $400+25 turbo satellite to the 10k SCOOP main event, and after needing my 1 rebuy very quickly, I ran in god mode the rest of the tourney: AcKh > AhKc in a big pot all-in pre, AQ>KK and 99>QQ, both for most or all of my chips. Some quick math indicates that I had about a 3% chance of surviving all 3 of those, but I will take it; ship the 10k W$. I withdrew from that event immediately and will probably use that money to enter the WSOP main event, or perhaps I will partake of some of the Midwest's finest hookers and blow--as you can see, Cubs pitchers ain't the only ones in this blog with class comin' out the ass.

BFF,

Cero

PLO beats: do they even exist? Here's a hand I played from my last live session, detailed in my previous post. Tarantino says that movies are like S&M, and the audience is the M. That would apply here as well, but who am I to say you're not allowed to read something so boring it could actually kill you? I mean, you are reading a blog.

A kid had come into the game who was well-known to the other two players in the game but not to me. He brought his chips from a NL game that he had apparently been running over, and I think it was about $800 or so. He then proceeded to win every pot he played for the first 15 minutes or so, and basically showed himself to hate folding even more than I do and to have the marginal understanding of PLO that decent NL players usually have. He happily got 2/3 of his chips in before the flop with AQQT against an extremely nitty NL reg who was playing PLO for maybe the 2nd time in her life, so her reraise (and possibly even a first raise) was always Aces, and obviously flopped gin and held up. I didn’t have many playable hands during that period, and the ones that I did play, I played aggressively and he conceded on the flop. He was young, and handled his chips confidently, but his clothing and something about his demeanor suggested that he was a rich kid as opposed to an internet pro. He seemed to get off on making moves, so I assumed he was very anxious to make one on me.

I had passed my button twice in a row, 4-handed, so I put in a raise in a straddled pot when I picked up JT62 double-suited to the J and T. The rich kid (the aptly named Victor) called in the SB, and the BB called. Both players had about 1500 and I covered. The flop was Q62r, giving me bottom 2 and 2 backdoor flush draws. It was checked to me and I bet 70. Victor check-raised to 200, which I expected him to do a huge percentage of the time with whatever he had. I expected him to have something approaching pure air a lot, but even hands like 4567 have a lot of equity against me, so I decided to reraise. I also expected him to jam his hand some of the time, even with air, so I was definitely leaning toward calling a shove. I reraised to 600, and he thought a few seconds before calling. The turn was a J, bringing a flush draw but not for me, and then he shoved his last 700 in fairly quickly. The whole thing reeked so bad of bull****, but still, I had to consider that he may’ve flopped something like top and bottom pair that he hoped was good, and then turned Qs and Js, which he would like much more. A set was seeming really unlikely, though, because it’s not the kind of flop where you would look to take a card off, since an inside wrap is the biggest draw. One thing that did give me pause is that I hadn’t gotten a good physical read on the guy at that point, and I generally like to have some sort of strong physical tell before I commit 130BBs w/ 2 pair on a dry board. Here, I just had the general sense that he would not wait very long before trying to make a big move on me, and the pot odds of 3:1. I hesitated a couple of beats and called. He looked up sheepishly and said, “Do you have a flush draw?” I shook my head. “I have a straight draw,” he giggled, not turning his hand over. The dealer dealt an offsuit 4, and I was pretty sure I had lost. Victor showed his 53, and when the dealer asked to see his whole hand, he revealed 3458 no flush draw.

That was an irritating hand, probably only because it came on the heels of some losses for me and threatened to turn a great night into an OK one; I normally don’t get annoyed with someone putting their chips in bad against me. It was a little more annoying when he immediately began racking up and quit very shortly thereafter, but he was very classy about the win and was just fun to play with in general--nh Victor. I plowed on in a very good game after he quit; it was me, the NL nit from before, and another college kid who is a wannabe pro but who’s painfully tight and straightforward as well. There honestly weren’t a lot more interesting spots throughout the night, because I was just stealing lots of small pots and running away quickly whenever they bet or raised. If I ever decided to look either one up even slightly light because I thought it might’ve gotten too obvious how much respect I was giving their aggression, they showed me the super-nuts. $3k was a nice win for me, and I was tired by 6am, but still, I was sick when the game broke with $2400 on the table between them. All in all, it was a fun night.

I finally got to go play some live poker this weekend, which I've been wanting to do for a while. I had lost about 12k straight playing various games online. 30/60 O8 and 20/40 8-game were the main culprits. One good thing about being able to play a number of different games is that when I'm struggling in one area, I can turn to a new one to get the feeling of a fresh start and to break up whatever monotony may've set in. Playing a different game or format (live vs. online, HU or full ring vs. 6-max, one game vs. mixed games, many tables vs. few tables) has become my go-to way of dealing with poker problems, and it seems to work well. I went to Potawatomi in Milwaukee and ended up playing 3-handed PLO all night. More on that in a bit.

My mini-downswing is no big deal to me; the online games above are great, and although I will play basically anyone who sits, I have had the good fortune to sit at tables that were about as juicy as they ever get lately. I managed to string together a few 2k-4k losses, and for me that means moving down from where 20/40 and 30/60 are my regular games to where I will take shots (up from 10/20 and 15/30) when known fish are playing. Not fun when I feel I'm one of the top 3 players at either limit but oh well.

I also have been playing a guy HU in a mixed game and he has gotten the better of me so far. I'm not going to go into specifics right now because I want to continue to get action on the off chance that he reads blogs and whatnot but I have been coolered extremely hard in the two matches I have lost (I think we're 2-2, but my 2 losses were significant and my wins were not). He's better than me at some games and worse at others. However, I will eventually post some NL hands of interest here, and they will make you laugh.

At "Poto," as it's known around here, I saw that the PLO game (5-5 blinds, 500-2500 buy-in) was dying for the evening, which is unusual for a Saturday night, but good for me since I prefer to play shorthanded. There were 2 regulars, who are both winners in this game but who are probably mediocre to poor by online mid-stakes standards, and one guy I'd never seen before who turned out to be a local businessman/gambler. Both regs had between 2500 and 5000 and the other guy had 1500 or so. I bought in for 500 and most everything went well for me right off the bat. I did lose a medium-sized pot with AA overpair on a dry board against a guy who flopped 3s up, but immediately after that hand, I doubled up by freerolling one of the regs.

4-handed, I limped QJT9ss UTG because the fish behind me was raising every pot, but sometimes folding if I raised. He potted it behind me to 25, and everyone called. I considered reraising small since my hand was miles better than the average hands the table was playing in this spot and because it plays great after the flop, but I was shallow-stacked (I began the hand with about 275 because I hadn't had time to reload from the previous hand) and didn’t want to end up isolated out of position by the fish on the off chance he reraised.

The flop was JT4 with a flush draw. The BB led into me for pot (100). Obviously, my chips are going in, but the fish behind me looked interested, so I thought it was likely he held a flush draw or possibly a duplicating/dominating straight draw. I decided that my raise would definitely not get any of those hands out, but the possibility of being reraised by the BB, who covered his 1500, might. I min-raised, because in my mind, that would highlight in his mind that I was re-opening the betting. He looked aggravated, tanked a while, and then said, "I'm not worried about you, but he (the BB) will charge me if I call!" He folded, and the BB put my last 50 in with bare JT. I hit a straight and dodged the backdoor flush draw he picked up. The folder claimed he folded KQ with a Q-hi flush draw, which if true, is awesome.

It definitely is possible; one thing that I really have learned about live games vs. online is that live players tend to value “made hands” way over draws, even in a game like PLO where those distinctions are much murkier. They tend to take a "Wait until I hit" approach with draws, yet rarely wait for bricks to fall with their marginal made hands like 2 pair (and never with anything stronger). This is important to realize, because when you are considering calling a jam from them, you need to discount big draws and weigh made hands more heavily in their ranges.

I played about 10 hours until about 6am, and it stayed 3- or 4-handed the entire time, though the lineup changed a couple of times. I won about $3k, which would’ve been six if I’d been able to fade the following beat. I include it because it has live components and because this is my blog, so if I choose to torture you with bad beat stories, so be it. Actually, I'll save it for the next post. Read on if you are a masochist like me.

Hey Leggo, I’m Cero Zuccarello and this is my poker blog. I’m really excited to be a part of the team here, and I hope that my videos entertain you and help you improve your game. I’m not sure what this blog will look like once it rounds into shape, but since I’m such a maverick, I’m going to use this entry to introduce myself. I’m 32, married to a poet named Erin, and we have a 4-year-old son, Dario. We live in Madison, WI, having moved back from Virginia recently to be near our families. Poker has been my sole source of income for about 8 years, though Erin has also had a full-time job for the last year. Before that, I played professionally for 2 years, during my college-ish years. In between, I managed a video store in Virginia for a year, and aspired to be a filmmaker, before realizing that poker was my greatest passion.

I started with a couple thousand bucks that I’d won playing poker for recreation, and built it up to around $100K in the first couple of years playing live 10/20 Stud 8 and some 5/10 NL around Charlottesville and Richmond, two cities with A LOT of poker action. Then, over the next year (my 3rd as a pro), I lost almost every penny of it playing much higher stakes games, in backrooms in Virginia and on the internet. I recovered it at micro limits online, and since then, I’ve managed to earn a decent middle-class income while working an average of 20 hours per week, but have not managed to sock away a lot of money or progress back through the top of mid-stakes NL (I haven’t played above 1000NL regularly for a couple of years). I am a happy person, with a family I am grateful for that provides endless fulfillment and amusement. I play guitar and am very mediocre (jealous?). I sing decently and write songs. I play video games, shoot hoops, and play a little soccer during the 6-week window that grass can grow in Wisconsin. Other than that, I fill what’s left of my free time reading, talking, and thinking about poker. So that’s me.

I plan to share some live poker stories and hands quite a bit here. I mainly think of myself as an LOLivepro (I read that term on 2p2 recently and I think it‘s awesome, and kind of fits me), as they say, though I’m currently putting in more time online than live. I am digging hanging out with Dario a lot these days, and I can tell that it means a lot to him. I much prefer live games to online, but playing live means traveling an hour to Milwaukee or 3 hours to Chicago and staying overnight at least one night, so the internet is an obvious choice for me. There may be games bigger than 1/2 NL around my town, but I don’t know about any. Too bad, because I’ve always loved private games.

I try very hard to be a well-rounded person, and that extends to poker. I try to play all games well, and love learning new games: I currently feel that I’m in excellent shape against a typical online lineup at 20/40 and below in the following limit games (ranked in order of how well I play them) Omaha 8, Stud 8, Holdem, 2-7 Triple Draw, Razz, and 7-Stud. It’s difficult say what those limits equate to live, and there aren’t a ton of mixed games where I live, but I’d guess that 20/40 online probably plays about like 100/200 live (the live/online gap in less popular games is not as wide as it is in Holdem or PLO). I know that if I was in a casino anywhere but Vegas or LA and they were spreading a mixed game, I would play anything I could afford to play, I guess up to 300/600 (not that I can afford that). I also play NL, obviously, and PLO. I’m not really sure if I’m good at that game, but I’ve done pretty well overall, probably due to other people being bad at it. Online, I play between 2/4 and 5/10 in those two games, and live, I play 5/10 or 10/25 if I can get it.

So, I play mid-stakes, but a by-product of having consistently won at higher stakes than what I currently play is that I believe I’m a favorite in many high-stakes games which I'm not rolled for. I’m OK with this and not OK with it; I’ll explain. I definitely did not get into poker to get rich; at the time that I turned pro, internet poker was just a baby, and getting rich wasn’t even a realistic goal. Money’s not very important to me in general; my main goal was to live comfortably without working anywhere near 40 hours per week doing something I enjoy. I’ve accomplished that. However, the landscape has obviously changed a ton, and now it is very possible to make enough money to retire on in just a few years . That appeals to me, if I can do it without playing full-time.

I don’t need to make a lot of money.I’m positive I would be satisfied to make 75k/year (inflation-adjusted, for the blog nits) for my entire life, from a living conditions perspective. But, I do feel the need to move up from a professional perspective. I guess I feel a need to prove to others what I believe to be true about my own talents, which is admittedly not a good reason to do…anything. Knowing that doesn’t make it not so, though, so I aspire to climb the ladder again. I would be especially proud to become a dominant winner in the biggest 8-game mix available on Stars, and I believe that’s a realistic long-term goal for myself. I LOVE 8-GAME, and believe me, the all-caps is merited. If people are interested in seeing a mixed-game video from me, I’d definitely be down, so if that is you, post comments and I’ll show them to the big cheese. Thanks for reading all of this, for those of you who’ve slogged through it all.

Cero_Z